Milly turned away. "No," she said shortly.
"Coming out with your old father this morning, when he goes for a drive in his perambulator? It's devilish dull with no one to talk to."
She stared at him coldly. "I have my violin to practise; I'm sorry I can't come."
The colonel winced; she was more than a match for him now, this impudent daughter of his, perhaps because he loved her as deeply as he was capable of loving. Once, when she had been unusually rude, snubbing his advances with the sharp cruelty of youth, Joan had seen his bulgy eyes fill with tears. She waited until they were alone together and then she turned on her sister.
"Beast!" she said emphatically.
"I don't know what you mean," retorted Milly.
"I think you're a perfect beast to treat Father the way you do lately. Anyone can see he's terribly ill and you speak to him as though he were a dog."
"Well, he's treated me as thoughIwere a dog—no, worse; he'd give a dog a sweet biscuit any day, but he denies me the only thing I long for, that I'm ready to work for—my music. It's my whole life!" she added melodramatically.
"Rot!" said Joan. "That's no reason for speaking to him as you do; I can't stand it, it makes me feel sick and cold; his eyes were full of tears to-day."
"Well, my eyes are almost blind from crying—I cry all night long."
"That's a whopper, you snored all last night."
"Oh!" exclaimed Milly, angrily. "How I dohatesharing a room with you, there's no privacy!"
Joan laughed rudely. "You are an ass, Milly, you try so hard to be grown up and you're nothing but a silly kid."
"Perhaps if you knew all," Milly hinted darkly, "you'd realize that some people think me grown up."
"Do they?"
"Yes, Mr. Thompson does, if you must know."
"I didn't say I wanted to know."
"Well, Mr. Thompson doesn't treat me as though I were a little girl; he's very attentive."
"Do you mean the young man at the library, who smells of hair oil?"
"I mean Mr. Thompson the tennis player."
"Oh, yes," said Joan vaguely, "I remember now, he does play tennis."
"Considering he's the best player we've got," said Milly flushing, "it's not at all likely that you didn't know who I meant."
"Oh, shut up!" Joan exclaimed, growing suddenly impatient. "I don't care what Mr. Thompson thinks of you. I think you're a beast!"
Joan tried clumsily to make it up to her father; she tore herself away from her books to walk beside his bath chair, but all to no avail, he was silent and depressed. He wanted Milly, with her fair curls and doll's eyes, not this gawky elder daughter with her shorn black locks. He fretted for Milly; they all saw how it was with him. Milly saw too, but continued to treat him with open dislike. In the midst of this welter of illness and misery Mrs. Ogden flapped like a bird with a broken wing; she reproached Milly, but not as one having authority. All day long the sounds of a violin could be heard all over the house; it was almost as though Milly played loudest when the colonel went upstairs to rest; he would doze, and start up suddenly, wide awake.
"What's that? What's that?" And then, "Oh, it's Milly; will the child never think of anyone but herself!"
The doctor came more often. "I'm not satisfied," he told Mrs. Ogden. "I think you must take him to London for the Nauheim cure. It's too late to go to the place itself, but he can do the cure in a nursing home."
Mrs. Ogden looked worried. "He'll never go," she said.
"He must, I'm afraid," the doctor replied firmly. "But before moving him we must have Sir Thomas Robinson down in consultation."
They told the colonel together. "I absolutely refuse!" he began. "There's no money for that sort of nonsense. Good God, man, do you think I'm a millionaire!"
The doctor said soothingly: "I'll speak to Sir Thomas and ask him to reduce his fee, he's a charming fellow."
"I won't have him!" thundered the colonel. "I refuse to be ordered about like a child."
Doctor Thomas motioned Mrs. Ogden to leave the room; presently he called her in again.
"He's promised to be good," he told her with an assumption of playfulness.
The colonel was sitting very upright in his chair, his face was paler than usual but his little moustache bristled angrily above his parted lips.
"Well, I must be off," said the doctor, hastily picking up his hat.
Mary Ogden laid her hand on her husband's arm. "I'm sorry if this annoys you," she said.
For a moment he did not speak, then he cleared his throat and swallowed. "He tells me, Mary, that it's my one chance of life, always providing that the specialist man consents to my being moved." She was silent, finding nothing to say. He had died so many times already in all but the final act, that now, if Death had moved one step nearer, she scarcely perceived that it was so. Her mind was busy with a thousand pressing problems, the money difficulty, how to manage about her girls, who to leave in charge of the house if she went to London, and where she herself would stay; it would all cost a very great deal. She thought aloud. "It will cost a lot——" she murmured.
He turned towards her. "They say it's my only chance," he repeated, and there was something pathetic in his eyes.
She pulled herself up. "Of course, my dear, we must go, no matter what it costs. And as it's certain to cure you the money will be well spent."
He looked at her doubtfully. "Not certain; there's just a chance, Thomas said. And after all, Mary, I suppose a man has a right to take his last chance? I'm not so very old, you know."
He seemed to expect her to say something; she felt his need but could not fill it.
"Not so very old," he repeated, "and I come of a good sound stock; my father lived to be eighty-five. Not that I aspire to that, my dear, but still, a few years more, just to look after you and the children? What?"
His lips were shaking. "Mary!" he broke out suddenly; "damn it all, Mary, I've got to go if my time has come, but do for God's sake show a little feeling, say something; it's positively unnatural the way you take it!"
JOAN took two letters from her jacket pocket; one was from Elizabeth, the other from her mother. Aunt Ann had come to the rescue in the end, and Joan and Milly had been sent to the palace during Mrs. Ogden's absence in London; they had been there now for three weeks. There was peace up here in the large, airy bedroom; peace from her dominating, patronizing aunt, peace from the kind, but talkative bishop.
She looked at the letters, undecided as to which to open first. Her fingers itched to open Elizabeth's, but she put it resolutely aside. Mrs. Ogden wrote from the family hotel in South Kensington where she had taken up her abode.
"My own darling Joan," she began. "At last I hear from you; I had begun to fear that you must be ill. Surely a postcard every day would not be too much trouble for you to send? If only you knew how I watch and wait for news, you would be more regular in writing, my darling. As for me, I write this from my bed. I am utterly worn out and suppose that my general condition is accountable for my having caught a cold which has gone down on to my chest. The doctor says I must be really careful, and my heart has been troubling me again lately, especially at night when I try to sleep on my left side. I have had the strangest sensation in my throat and all down my left arm. However, I must get up as soon as I feel able to stand, as your poor father has no one else to look after him. I do not myself think the nurses are very kind or the food at all good at the Nursing Home; I spoke to the matron about it just before I went to bed, she is an odious person and was inclined to be offensive. This hotel is very uncomfortable, my bed hard and unsympathetic in the extreme, and the servants far from attentive. I rang my bell six times yesterday before anybody came near me. I shall have to complain. I cannot attempt to eat their eggs, which is very trying as I am kept on a light diet. Your father varies from day to day. The doctor assures me that he is quite satisfied with his progress, but I think the cure altogether too severe. Oh! my Joan, how cruel it seems that there was not enough money for you to come to London with me. I feel that if only I could have you to talk things over with, I could bear it so much better. I am such a child in moments of anxiety, and my loneliness is terrible; I sit alone all the evenings and think of you and of how much I need you—as never before! I feel utterly lost; your poor, little mother in this big, big city, and her Joan so far away and probably not thinking of her mother at all, probably forgetting——"
"My own darling Joan," she began. "At last I hear from you; I had begun to fear that you must be ill. Surely a postcard every day would not be too much trouble for you to send? If only you knew how I watch and wait for news, you would be more regular in writing, my darling. As for me, I write this from my bed. I am utterly worn out and suppose that my general condition is accountable for my having caught a cold which has gone down on to my chest. The doctor says I must be really careful, and my heart has been troubling me again lately, especially at night when I try to sleep on my left side. I have had the strangest sensation in my throat and all down my left arm. However, I must get up as soon as I feel able to stand, as your poor father has no one else to look after him. I do not myself think the nurses are very kind or the food at all good at the Nursing Home; I spoke to the matron about it just before I went to bed, she is an odious person and was inclined to be offensive. This hotel is very uncomfortable, my bed hard and unsympathetic in the extreme, and the servants far from attentive. I rang my bell six times yesterday before anybody came near me. I shall have to complain. I cannot attempt to eat their eggs, which is very trying as I am kept on a light diet. Your father varies from day to day. The doctor assures me that he is quite satisfied with his progress, but I think the cure altogether too severe. Oh! my Joan, how cruel it seems that there was not enough money for you to come to London with me. I feel that if only I could have you to talk things over with, I could bear it so much better. I am such a child in moments of anxiety, and my loneliness is terrible; I sit alone all the evenings and think of you and of how much I need you—as never before! I feel utterly lost; your poor, little mother in this big, big city, and her Joan so far away and probably not thinking of her mother at all, probably forgetting——"
"Oh, I can't read any more now!" Joan thought desperately. "It's always the same; she's never contented, and always sees the darkest side of things, and I know there's nothing really wrong with her heart or her chest!"
Her poor mother, so small and so inadequate! Why did her mother love her so much? She oughtn't to love her so much; it was all wrong. Or if the love was there, then it ought to be a patient, waiting, unchanging love; the kind that went with making up the fire and sitting behind the tea-tray awaiting your return. The love that wrote and told you that you were expected home for Christmas, and that when you arrived your favourite pudding would be there to greet you. Yes, that was the ideal mother-love; it never waned, but it never exacted. It was a beautiful thing, all of one restful colour. It belonged to rooms full of old furniture and bowls of potpourri; it went with gentle, blue-veined hands and a soft, old voice. It was a love that kissed you quietly on both cheeks, too sure of itself to need undue demonstration. She sighed, and thrusting the letter away, opened Elizabeth's. She smiled a little as she saw the small, neat handwriting. Elizabeth always left a margin down one side of the paper.
"Well, Joan, I have been waiting to answer your last letter until I had something of interest to write about. Will you be surprised to hear that I have been up to London? Do you remember my telling you about a friend of mine at Cambridge, Jane Carruthers? Well, I heard from her the other day after having lost sight of her for ages. She has some job or another at the Royal College of Science and lives in London permanently now, and as in her letter she asked me to look her up, I struck while the iron was hot and went straight off, via a cheap excursion."But it's really about her service flat that I want to tell you. She lives in a large building called 'Working Women's Flats' or 'Gentlewomen's Dwellings,' I can't remember which, but I prefer the former, in a street just off one of those dignified old squares in Bloomsbury. The street itself is not dignified, but if you walk just to the end of it you are surrounded at once by wonderful Georgian houses with spreading fanlights and link extinguishers and wide shallow front-door steps. They are the most quietly friendly houses in the world, Joan; a little reserved, but then we should like them all the better for that."Jane's flat is on the fourth floor, so that instead of seeing the undignified street you catch a glimpse of the trees in the square, and of course there are plenty of roofs and chimney-pots, always interesting things, or so I think. Even in London the roofs have character. It's the most delightful little flat imaginable, two bedrooms with a study in between. She has made it very homey with books and brown walls, and she tells me that it's cheap as rents go in London; only it's difficult to get in there at all."Oh, Joan, it's the very place for you and me. I felt it the moment I set foot inside the front door; don't think me an idiot, but I felt excited, I felt about fifteen. I could see us established in a flat like Jane's. The whole time I was trying to discuss tea and cakes I found myself planning a new arrangement of Jane's bookshelves, the better to hold your books and mine—I should have put the writing-table in the other corner of the room too. I murmured something to this effect just as Jane was expounding some new scientific theory she has hit upon; she looked a little surprised and rather pained, I thought."I asked her about my chances of finding a job in London. I thought I might as well, as it will be very necessary, and she says she thinks that I ought to be able to get quite a decently paid post, with my fairly good Cambridge record."And now for a confession. I have put my name down for one of the flats. I saw the agent and he says that there's a long waiting list, but we can afford to wait for nearly three years, you and I, and if one is available before that, we must beg, borrow or steal in order to secure it. We might buy some odds and ends of furniture on the hire system and let the place furnished until we want it for ourselves. Jane says the flats let like wildfire, but I think I should try to live there while you were at Cambridge. I'm sure I could make both ends meet, and then you could come there for part of your vacations. But if that were not possible it wouldn't matter much for I could always put up at Ralph's."I am beginning to laugh all by myself as I write, for I can see your astonished face. Oh, yes, I know, I have acted on impulse, but it's glorious to be reckless of consequences sometimes, and then think how un-Seabournish I have been. Can you hear Ralph's consternation if I told him?—which I shan't. I think we will keep it as a secret between us, at all events for the present. Never cross a Seabourne bridge until you come to it."Joan, I am missing you."
"Well, Joan, I have been waiting to answer your last letter until I had something of interest to write about. Will you be surprised to hear that I have been up to London? Do you remember my telling you about a friend of mine at Cambridge, Jane Carruthers? Well, I heard from her the other day after having lost sight of her for ages. She has some job or another at the Royal College of Science and lives in London permanently now, and as in her letter she asked me to look her up, I struck while the iron was hot and went straight off, via a cheap excursion.
"But it's really about her service flat that I want to tell you. She lives in a large building called 'Working Women's Flats' or 'Gentlewomen's Dwellings,' I can't remember which, but I prefer the former, in a street just off one of those dignified old squares in Bloomsbury. The street itself is not dignified, but if you walk just to the end of it you are surrounded at once by wonderful Georgian houses with spreading fanlights and link extinguishers and wide shallow front-door steps. They are the most quietly friendly houses in the world, Joan; a little reserved, but then we should like them all the better for that.
"Jane's flat is on the fourth floor, so that instead of seeing the undignified street you catch a glimpse of the trees in the square, and of course there are plenty of roofs and chimney-pots, always interesting things, or so I think. Even in London the roofs have character. It's the most delightful little flat imaginable, two bedrooms with a study in between. She has made it very homey with books and brown walls, and she tells me that it's cheap as rents go in London; only it's difficult to get in there at all.
"Oh, Joan, it's the very place for you and me. I felt it the moment I set foot inside the front door; don't think me an idiot, but I felt excited, I felt about fifteen. I could see us established in a flat like Jane's. The whole time I was trying to discuss tea and cakes I found myself planning a new arrangement of Jane's bookshelves, the better to hold your books and mine—I should have put the writing-table in the other corner of the room too. I murmured something to this effect just as Jane was expounding some new scientific theory she has hit upon; she looked a little surprised and rather pained, I thought.
"I asked her about my chances of finding a job in London. I thought I might as well, as it will be very necessary, and she says she thinks that I ought to be able to get quite a decently paid post, with my fairly good Cambridge record.
"And now for a confession. I have put my name down for one of the flats. I saw the agent and he says that there's a long waiting list, but we can afford to wait for nearly three years, you and I, and if one is available before that, we must beg, borrow or steal in order to secure it. We might buy some odds and ends of furniture on the hire system and let the place furnished until we want it for ourselves. Jane says the flats let like wildfire, but I think I should try to live there while you were at Cambridge. I'm sure I could make both ends meet, and then you could come there for part of your vacations. But if that were not possible it wouldn't matter much for I could always put up at Ralph's.
"I am beginning to laugh all by myself as I write, for I can see your astonished face. Oh, yes, I know, I have acted on impulse, but it's glorious to be reckless of consequences sometimes, and then think how un-Seabournish I have been. Can you hear Ralph's consternation if I told him?—which I shan't. I think we will keep it as a secret between us, at all events for the present. Never cross a Seabourne bridge until you come to it.
"Joan, I am missing you."
Joan folded the letter and sat staring in front of her. So it had really come very near; her freedom, her life with Elizabeth. The flat would have a study with shelves for their books; they would go out of it every morning to jostle with crowds, to work and grow tired; and come back to it every evening to talk, study, or perhaps to rest. They would cook their own supper, or sometimes go out to one of the little Italian restaurants that Richard had told her about, queer little restaurants with sanded floors and coarse linen tablecloths. Sometimes, when they could afford it, they would go to cheap seats at the theatre or to the gallery at Covent Garden, and afterwards find their way home in the 'bus, or the Underground, discussing what they had seen and heard. They would unlock their front door with their own latch-key and hang up their coats in their own front hall; then they would laugh and joke together over the old days in Seabourne, which, by then, would seem very far away.
"Joan!" came her aunt's voice with a note of irritation; "Joan, I asked you to do those flowers for the drawing-room. Have you forgotten?"
MRS. OGDEN wrote yet again: "I brought your father home yesterday; the doctor thought he would be better in his own house. God knows if the cure has helped him at all, I do not think so; but, Joan, my dearest, come back to me at once, for I am so longing to see you."
Joan looked into the fire; she did not care whether her father was better or worse, and now she did not care whether she cared or not. From Seabourne to Blumfield, from Blumfield to Seabourne! And that was just life; not a tragedy at all, only life, a simple and monotonous business.
As their train drew in to the familiar station the tall figure of Elizabeth was waiting on the platform. She was standing very still, like a statue of Fate; a porter, pushing a truck of luggage towards her, called out: "By your leave, miss!" and seemed to expect her to move; but the tall, impassive figure appeared not to notice him and he pulled up abruptly, skirting it as best he could.
Milly said: "Hallo, Elizabeth!" and then: "What a beastly station this is. I hate the bare flower-beds and the cockle-shells!"
They collected the luggage, Elizabeth unusually silent. It was not until they drove off in the fly that she began to talk.
"Joan, your father is very ill; Mrs. Ogden told me to meet you, she couldn't leave him to-day. He's no better for the cure—they say he's worse; but you'll judge for yourself when you see him."
They bumped down the High Street and on to the esplanade. A weak, watery sunshine played over the sea and the asphalt. Walking stiffly, with his hands behind his back, General Brooke was taking the air. A smell of seaweed and dried fish came in through the open windows and mingled with the pungent, musty smell of the fly. The cliffs that circled the bay looked white and spectral, and far away they could just discern the chimneys of Glory Point, sticking up in a fold of green. Joan roused herself from a deadly lethargy that had been creeping over her.
"How is Mother?" she asked.
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Just the same," she said. "Very worried about your father, of course, but just the same as usual." She was staring at Joan with hard, anxious eyes, her lips a little compressed. "I'm glad you've come back, Joan, because——" She did not finish her sentence, and the cab drew up at Leaside.
They got out, tugging at their bags. Milly rang the bell impatiently. Elizabeth pulled Joan back.
"Look here," she said in a low voice, "I'm not coming in, but, Joan—remember your promise to me." And before Joan could answer she had turned and walked quickly away.
Mrs. Ogden met them in the hall; her eyes were red. She flung her arms around Joan's neck and began to cry again.
"Your poor father, he's very ill. Oh, Joan, it's been so terrible all alone in London without a soul to speak to or to appeal to! You don't know what I've been through; don't leave me again, I couldn't bear it!"
Joan pushed her gently into the dining-room; it was all in confusion, with the remnants of luncheon still on the table. "Don't cry, dear," she said. "Try to tell me what has happened."
Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes, clinging to Joan's hand the while. Her soft greyish hair was untidy, escaping from the net. "The cure was too severe for him; he ought never to have gone to London; he didn't want to go and they forced him, the brutes! He got worse and they sent him home two days ago; they said he was quite fit to travel and had better get home, but he wasn't fit to travel—that's the way they get rid of their responsibilities. And the nurses at that home were inhuman devils. I told them so; he hated them all. He seemed better yesterday, but this morning he fainted, and when the doctor came he put him to bed. He's there now, and oh, Joan, he's groaning! They say he's not in pain, but of course he must be, and sometimes he knows me, and sometimes he's delirious and thinks he's back in India."
"Come upstairs," said Joan drearily. "I want to see him."
The familiar bedroom was not familiar any longer; it looked strange and austere as Joan entered. The blinds were down, flapping in the draught from the windows. A large fire blazing in the grate added to the sense of something important and portentous that hung about the place. On the bed lay a strange figure; someone whom Joan felt she had never seen before. Its face was unnaturally pale and shrunken and so were the wandering hands extended on the coverlet. This stranger moaned incessantly, and turned his head from side to side; his eyes were open and blank.
Joan took one of the wandering hands in hers: "Father!" she said softly.
He looked through her and beyond, breathing with an effort.
A quiet tap came on the door and the nurse, hastily summoned from the Cottage Hospital, came in. She was a pink-faced, competent-looking girl, and wore her cloak and bonnet. She took in the situation at a glance.
"I'll just take off my things," she said, "and be back in a minute."
Presently the doctor came again. He said very little, and pressing Mrs. Ogden's limp hand, departed. The nurse, now in charge, had rendered the bedroom still more unfamiliar, with her temperature chart, and a table covered with a clean white towel, upon which she had set out strange little appliances that they did not know the use of. When she spoke she did so in a loud whisper, glancing ever and anon towards the figure on the bed. Her cuffs creaked and so did her shoes. A smell of disinfectant was everywhere; they wondered what it was, it was unfriendly, but no one dared to question this empress ruling over the kingdom of Death.
The colonel belonged to her now; they all felt it, and submitted without a protest. He was hers to do as she pleased with, to turn in the bed or to leave in discomfort, to raise up or lay down. She it was who moistened his lips with cotton wool, soaked in a solution of her own making. Sometimes she opened his mouth and moistened his tongue as well. He lay there utterly helpless and unable to protest, while she subjected him to countless necessary indignities. Her trained hands, hard and deft, permitted of no resistance, doing their work quietly and without emotion. It seemed horrible to Joan to see him brought so low, but she, like the rest of the household, stood back respectfully, bowing to the realization that only three beings had any control over her father now: the doctor, the nurse—and Death.
Just before he died, on the afternoon of the fifth day, he knew his wife and called her: "Mary!" His voice was unexpectedly loud.
She went and put her arms round him.
"Mary!"
"Yes, James?"
"I'm going to die—it's funny my going to die—wish I knew more about it."
"Hush, dearest, don't talk."
"Mary."
"Yes, James?"
"Sorry—if I've been hard on you—but you see——"
"Hush, my dear, you mustn't try to talk."
But the colonel had ceased to try to do anything any more in this world.
THEY buried him in the prim cemetery which had somehow taken upon itself the likeness of Seabourne, holding as it did so many of the late occupants of Seabourne's bath chairs and shelters. Everyone attended the funeral. Admiral Bourne, General Brooke wearing a top hat, the despised bank manager, Ralph Rodney, in fact all the members of the club, and most of the local tradespeople. Sir Robert and Lady Loo sent a handsome wreath, but Mr. and Mrs. Benson came in person.
Colonel Ogden had never been really liked in his lifetime; an ignorant and over-bearing man at best. But now that he was a corpse he had for the time being attained a new importance, almost a popularity, in the eyes of Seabourne. His death had provided an excitement, something to do, something to talk about. The four days of his final illness had been more interesting than usual, in consequence of the possibility of tragedy. People would not have admitted it even to themselves, but had he recovered they would have felt flat; it would have been an anti-climax.
It was not until the funeral had been over for a week that Mrs. Ogden could be persuaded to think of ways and means. At first she had given way to a grief so uncontrollable that no one had dared to mention the family solicitor. But now there were bills to be paid and plans to be made for the future, and at last Joan persuaded her mother to write to the firm in London who had attended to Colonel Ogden's affairs.
When the quiet man in a frock coat came down to Leaside, Joan was present at the interview, which was short and to the point. The point being that there was very little left of the three hundred a year that should have been hers and Milly's. The quiet man made a deprecating gesture, explaining that, against his firm's advice, the colonel had persisted in changing the trust investments. The firm had refused to act for him in this, it seemed, whereupon he had flown into a rage and acted without them. They had inquired at the bank, on Mrs. Ogden's authority, and had discovered that the bulk of the trust moneys had been put into a mine which was paying nothing at present and seemed unlikely ever to pay again. But Mrs. Ogden must surely be aware of this, as she was the co-trustee? Had she not had papers to sign for the sale of securities and so on? Ah, yes, of course, she naturally did not like to question her husband's judgment—just signed whatever he told her to; still—she should have been more cautious, she should have insisted upon knowing what was being done. But then ladies were proverbially ignorant of such things. Well, well, it was very sad, very distressing; there would be her pension, of course, and about fifty pounds a year left of the trust moneys—No, not more, unfortunately, but that fifty pounds came from a sound investment, thank goodness. The two young ladies would have twenty-five pounds a year each; that was better than nothing, still——
They thanked him, and when he had gone sat looking at each other helplessly.
Joan said: "This is the end for Milly and me, now we shall never get away."
Her own words astonished her, they were so cruel; she had not meant to think aloud. Mrs. Ogden burst into tears. "Oh, James, James!" she sobbed hysterically; "listen to her, she wants to get away! Oh, what shall I do, now that you've left me; what shall I do, what shall I do?"
"Stop crying, Mother, I'm sorry I said that, only you see—but don't let's talk now, by this evening we shall both feel more able to decide things."
She left the room, closing the door quietly, and snatching up a hat went out of the house. A black anger was slowly surging up in her, anger and a feeling of desperation. What had they done to her and her sister, the overbearing, self-willed father and this weak, inadequate mother with her exaggerated grief? For now that the colonel was dead Mrs. Ogden elected to mourn him as though he had been the love of her life; she gave herself up to an orgy of sorrow that permitted of no interruption. It had puzzled Joan, remembering as she did the things her mother had told her. Through it all her mother could not bear to have her out of her sight for an instant, it was as though she craved her as an audience. She thought of all this as she strode along, the fine drizzle soaking her shoulders.
It was not so much for herself that she cared as for Milly, and above all for Elizabeth; how could she ever tell Elizabeth the truth, that now there would be no money for Cambridge or for their little flat in London? But, yes, it was for herself that she cared too. Oh, horribly, desperately she cared for herself. She clenched her hands in her pockets, a pain almost physical possessed her; she could not give it up like this, all in a moment. She realized as never before how much that future with Elizabeth had meant to her, and now it had been snatched away. What would she do, what could she do? Nothing, if her mother would not help her to get free—and of course she would not; she could not even if she would; she was poor, poor, poor, they all were, poorer than they had ever been. What would Milly do now? What would Elizabeth do? Milly would rage, she would metaphorically stamp on their father's grave. And Elizabeth?
Elizabeth was alone in the schoolroom when Joan got back. As she came in, pale and drenched with rain, Elizabeth held out her hand.
"I've been waiting for you; come here, Joan."
Joan took the proffered hand and pressed it.
"Joan, I know what it is you want to tell me, I've known for some time."
"You know—but how?"
"My dear, all Seabourne knows that your father had been speculating before he died. Do you think there's ever anything that all Seabourne doesn't know? I heard something about it from Ralph; he told me."
Joan snatched her hand away, she spoke bitterly: "All Seabourne knew and you knew, it seems; I see—only Milly and I were kept in the dark!"
"Don't be angry. What was the good of making you unhappy before it was absolutely necessary; surely you know soon enough as it is?"
"But I don't understand, Elizabeth; do you realize what this means to you and me?"
"You mean that now you have no money you can't go to Cambridge?"
"Yes, Cambridge, but above all the flat. I was thinking of our plans for our life together."
"Go up and change and then we'll talk," said Elizabeth quietly. "You're wet through."
Joan obeyed.
"And now," Elizabeth began, when Joan, wrapped in a dressing-gown, had sunk into a chair. "Let's thrash this thing out from clue to earring. How much has he left you?"
"Twenty-five pounds a year each."
Elizabeth considered. "It might be done," she said. "With care and scraping, I think it might be done, providing of course you take a scholarship, which you can do. You remember I told you that I could get a job in London? Well, I'm more sure of that now than I was when I wrote, I'm practically certain it can be managed. Don't interrupt, please. This is my plan: you will go to Cambridge when you're twenty-one and I shall take the flat. If it's available sooner we'll let it. While you're at Cambridge I shall find a P.G. That oughtn't to be difficult, and the little money that I've saved will go to help with Cambridge. Oh, don't argue, you can pay me back when you get into harness. And there's another thing I never told you; I have a relation from whom I must inherit something, a most disagreeable relation of my father's who can't help leaving me his little all, because it's entailed. Well, I propose to raise a loan on my expectations, 'borrowing on reversion' is what they call it, I think, and with that loan we're going to make a doctor of you, so you see it's all arranged."
Joan stared at her, bewildered. "But, Elizabeth, I could never pay you back, perhaps."
"Oh, well," said Elizabeth laughing; "then you'll have to work for me, you may even have to keep me in my old age."
Joan began to cry, with the suddenness of a child; she cried openly, not troubling to hide her face.
"Oh, for God's sake, Joan, don't do that!"
"It's you," sobbed Joan, choking. "It's you—justyou."
Elizabeth got up, she hesitated and then went to the door, she did not look at Joan.
"Think it over," she said.
Mrs. Ogden's hands fluttered helplessly over the litter of papers that lay among the plates on the half-cleared supper table; the eyes that she raised to Joan were vague.
"Can you make all this out?" she said drearily. "I shall never be able to understand legal terms."
Joan picked up a letter and read it through. "There's your small life interest under grandpapa Ogden's will, and then there'll be your pension, Mother, but it's very little, I'm afraid; we shall obviously have to leave this house."
Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "I can't do that," she said, with an unexpected note of firmness in her voice. "Where could I go and pay less rent than I do here? Only thirty-five pounds a year."
"But you see, dear, there are other expenses, servants and light and coal." Joan spoke patiently. "And then the rates and taxes; a tiny flat in London would cost so much less to run."
"How can you suggest London to me now, after all I went through there with my James's illness?" Her lips began to tremble. "I should never be able to face the noise and the dirt and the fearful climate, with my heart as it is. You're cruel, Joan."
"But, Mother, we have to face things as they are."
"I can't," said Mrs. Ogden faintly. "I'm too ill."
Joan sighed. "You must, darling; you can't stay here, you haven't got the money, we none of us have now. It'll be all right, truly it will, if you'll let me help to straighten things out."
A sly, stubborn expression came over Mrs. Ogden's face; she wiped the tears from her eyes and tucked away her handkerchief. "Tell me exactly what I have got," she asked quietly.
Joan told her.
"And then there's the fifty pounds a year, dearest, that your poor father saved from the wreck; surely with that as well we can get on here quite comfortably."
Joan dropped the letter, something seemed to turn very cold inside her. Even that, then! She meant to take even that from them. "But, Mother, there's Milly's future and—and mine," she finished lamely.
Mrs. Ogden flushed. "I don't understand you," she said.
"Oh, Mother, don't make it all so terribly difficult, you know what I mean; you know quite well that Milly and I want to work for our living. We shall need the little he's left us if we're ever to make good; it's bad enough, God knows, but we might manage somehow. Oh, Mother, dear! won't you be reasonable?"
Mrs. Ogden's mouth tightened. "I see," she said; "you and Milly wish to leave home, to leave me now that I have no one else to care for me. You want to hide me away in a tenement house, while you two lead the life that seems amusing to you. This home is to be broken up and I am to go to London—my health doesn't matter. Well, I suppose I'd be better dead and then you'd be rid of the trouble of me. Your father must be turning in his grave, I should think, feeling as he did about your ridiculous notions. And what a father he was, devoted to you both; he killed himself working and striving to make money for you, and this is the gratitude he gets." She began to sob convulsively. "Oh, James!" she wailed, "James, James, why did you ever leave me!"
Joan got up. "Stop it!" she said harshly. "Stop it at once, Mother. You know you're unjust and that you're not telling the truth, and as for my father, he had—— Oh, never mind, I won't say it, but stop crying and listen to me. Milly and I are young, we've got all our lives before us and we're unhappy here, don't you understand? We are not happy, we want to go out into the world and do something; we must, I tell you, we can't stay here and rot. It's our right to go and no one has any business to stop us; you least of all, who brought us into the world. Did we ask to be born? No, you and father had us for your own pleasure. Very well, then, now you must let us go for ours; it's your duty to help us because you are our mother and we need your help. If you won't help us we shall go just the same, because we must, because this thing is stronger than we are, but——"
Mrs. Ogden clutched at Joan's hand, she dragged her to her, kissing her again and again. "You fool!" she said passionately. "Can't you understand that it's not Milly I care about, or the money, butyou; will you never see that I love you more than anything else in the world?"
THE two years that elapsed after Colonel Ogden's death were years of monotonous uncertainty. There was no charm about this uncertainty, no spirit of possible high adventure raised it from the level of Seabourne; like everything else that came under the spell of the place, it was dull. Mrs. Ogden had sunk into a deep depression, which expressed itself in the wearing of melodramatic widow's weeds; when she roused herself now it was usually to be irritable. There was a servant less in the house, for they could no longer afford to keep a house-parlourmaid, and things had already begun to look dingy and ill cared for. The overworked generals provided a certain periodical variety by leaving at a moment's notice, for Mrs. Ogden was fast developing the nagging habit, and spent hours every day in examining the work that had been left undone. And then there was the money. Always a difficult problem, it had now become acute. Released from the domestic tyranny of her husband, Mrs. Ogden lapsed into partial invalidism. She scarcely did more than worry along somehow. The books went unchecked and sometimes unpaid, and in consequence the tradespeople were less respectful in their manner, or so she imagined.
Elizabeth still crammed Joan, but for this she received no payment, and they studied at Ralph Rodney's house during his office hours. In his plush-hung study, beneath the portrait of Uncle John grown old, they sat and worked and made plans; sometimes they were happy and sometimes inexplicably sad. Elizabeth knew that Mrs. Ogden hated her, had always hated her with the stubborn hatred of a weak nature. In the old days she had not cared, except inasmuch as it might separate her from Joan, but now she had become acutely sensitive to the atmosphere of antagonism that she met at Leaside. It had begun to depress her, while at the same time her will rose up to meet the emergency; it was "pull Devil, pull baker" more than ever before. Between these two passionately determined women stood Joan, miserable and young, longing for things to come to a head, for something that she felt ought to happen; she didn't know what. She was conscious of a sense of emptiness, of unfulfilment; she was sleeping badly again, tormented by dreams that were only half remembered, the shadow of which haunted her throughout the day. She longed for peace; when she was away from Elizabeth she was restless until they met again, yet when they were together now their companionship was spoilt by Joan's consciousness of her mother's disapproval. Elizabeth had swift gusts of anger now that came up suddenly like a thunderstorm; she, too, was changing, breaking a little under the strain. These two had begun to act as an irritant on each other, and the hours of study would be interrupted by quarrels that had no particular beginning or end, and reconciliations that were only partial because so much seemed to be left unsaid.
Joan became scrupulously neat; she found relief in grooming herself. Her hair no longer tumbled over her forehead, but was parted and brushed till it shone, and she took an unconscionable time over her ties and the polishing of her brown shoes. If she had had the money, she would certainly have bought silk stockings to match her ties, a pair for every new tie. The more unhappy she felt the more care did she lavish on her appearance; it was a kind of bravado, a subtle revenge for some nameless injustice that fate had inflicted on her. Elizabeth secretly approved the change, but was silent; in vain did Joan wait for words of approbation; they never came. She longed for praise, with a childish desire that Elizabeth should admire her. Elizabeth did admire her, but a new perverseness that had sprung up in her lately made her refrain from saying so.
Events were moving slowly, but all the more surely for that, perhaps. Less than a year now and Joan would be of age, and then what? The unspoken question looked out of Elizabeth's eyes. Joan saw it there; it seemed to materialize and stand between them. They could not evade the hungry, restless thing; it made them feel self-conscious and afraid of each other.
It was summer now and still Mrs. Ogden wore her heavy mourning; she looked frailer than ever in the long crape veil, and her pathetic eyes seemed to have grown dim with too much weeping. Seabourne elected to pity her, and looked askance at Joan. Not that Mrs. Ogden ever accused her daughter of heartlessness; she only implied it, together with her own maternal devotion. People thought her a helpless little woman, worthy of better treatment at the hands of that queer, cranky girl of hers. They began to talk at Joan rather than to her.
The loss of her money had had an entirely unexpected effect on Milly, who had not raged after all, but had just smiled disagreeably. "I knew he'd do something devilish," she said, "and how like him to die and leave us to bear the brunt."
If she fretted she did so silently, taking no one into her confidence; it was curiously unlike the old Milly. At eighteen she was beautiful, with the doll-like beauty that would some day become distressing, the beauty that would never weather pleasantly.
Her little violin master had wrung his hands at the news of her misfortune; to him the disaster meant the end of his hopes, the end of a life-long ambition. Tears had stood in his eyes when Milly told him what had happened; he had put his arm around her, thinking that she must be in need of consolation, but she had flung away from him with a laugh.
Mrs. Ogden behaved as though her younger daughter were non-existent, and Elizabeth, though she saw that all was very far from well, had become absorbed in her own troubles and held her peace. Joan, on the other hand, watched her sister with increasing apprehension; she felt that this unnatural calm could not go on.
In the circumstances, it was too foreign to Milly's nature, an alien and unwholesome thing that might some day give place to a whirlwind.
Milly still played her violin, but lately there was something defiant, almost cruel, in her playing; she played now because she must and not because she wanted to. She appeared to have grown calmly frivolous, but there was no joy in her frivolity, or so it seemed to Joan; it was premeditated. The society of Seabourne welcomed her advent with enthusiasm; it found her bright and amusing. Her principal pleasure was now lawn tennis, which absorbed her during the summer months; she was bidding fair to become a star player, and she and Mr. Thompson of the circulating library vied with each other in amiable competition.
Mr. Thompson was sleeker than ever, and slightly impertinent in his manner, Joan thought; his hair shone and his flannels were immaculate. "No, reely now, Miss Milly, reely now!" he protested, failing to take her service after an exaggerated effort. It became quite usual for him to see her home in the evenings, carrying her racket confidentially under his arm.
Joan said: "I can't understand you, Milly; why on earth do you treat that bounder as if he were one of us?"
But Milly only smiled and held her peace.
She seemed to spend hours every Saturday afternoon at Mr. Dodds'. "He's teaching me some new German music," she told Joan, when questioned.
Milly had become a great letter writer; she was always writing letters these days, and always receiving them. She made a practice of collecting her post before the family came down to breakfast, slipping out of the bedroom on any transparent pretext.
But gradually a subtle change began to come over Milly; some of the bravado left her, its place being taken by a queer, resentful desire to please; it was almost as though she were frightened. She offered to run errands for Joan, but was quick to take offence if her offer were refused. She was no longer so secretive either, and seemed to welcome occasions for confidential talks. When they were in bed at nights she tossed and complained of sleeplessness; she was constantly hinting at some secret that she would gladly divulge if pressed. But Joan did not press her; she was growing sick of Milly.
One morning it happened that Joan herself went early to the letter-box; Milly had overslept, and was in her bath. Among some circulars and a few bills, there was a letter addressed to "Miss Ogden" in a neat clerical hand. She opened it and read, turning white with anger as she did so.
The letter was fulsome in its details, leaving nothing to the imagination. So this was how Milly spent her Saturday afternoons! Not in learning new music with innocent little Mr. Dodds, but hiding guiltily in an old sand-pit on the downs, with Mr. Thompson of the circulating library. Indulging herself in vulgar sensuality like any kitchen-maid courting disaster. Here then was the explanation of the man's impertinence, of her sister's new-found desire to propitiate; this then was Milly's revenge for her wrong, this low intrigue with a common tradesman in their own town. She tore upstairs with the letter in her hand. Milly was only half dressed and looked round in surprise as the door burst open.
Joan held the letter out towards her. "This!" she panted. "Thisbeastlything!"
Milly saw the handwriting and turned pale. "How dare you open my letters, Joan?"
"Iopen your letters? Look at the envelope; he forgot to put your Christian name; it came addressed to me."
Milly snatched the letter away. "You beast!" she said furiously, "you cad! you needn't have read it all through."
"I didn't read it all through, but I read enough to know what you've been doing. Good God! You—you common little brute!"
Milly turned and faced her; her eyes were wild but resolute, like an animal's at bay. "Go on!" she said, "go on, Joan, call me anything you like, but at the same time suppose you try to realize that I'm also a human being. Do you imagine that I really mind your knowing about Jack and me? I don't care! I've wanted to tell you scores of times. Yes, we do meet each other in the sand-pit every Saturday, and he makes love to me and I like it; do you hear? I enjoy it; I like being kissed and all the rest. I love Jack because he gives me what I want; if he's common I don't care, he's all I've got or am ever likely to get. You stand there calling me names and putting on your high and mighty air as though I were some low creature that had defiled you; and why? Only because I'm natural and you're not. You're a freak and I'm just a normal woman. I like men they mean a lot to me, and there aren't so many men in Seabourne that a girl can afford to pick and choose. How am I going to find the sort of man you would approve of in Seabourne; tell me that? And where's the harm? Lots of other girls like men too, but they go to dances and things and meet what you, I suppose, would call gentlemen. But it's all one; they do very much what Jack and I have done, only you don't know it, you with your books and your doctoring and your Elizabeth! Well, if I'd had a chance given me to meet your precious gentleman, perhaps I'd be engaged to be married by now, instead of having to be satisfied with Jack in a sand-pit." She began to laugh hysterically. "Jack in a sand-pit, how funny it sounds; Jack in a sand-pit!" She stopped suddenly and stared into Joan's eyes. "Listen," she said seriously, "listen, you queer creature; haven't you learnt anything from all your medical books? Don't you know that some people's natures are like mine, and that they can't help giving way sometimes to their impulses; and after all, Joan, where's the harm; tell me that? Where's the harm to anyone in what Jack and I have done? Perhaps I'll marry him—he wants me to—but meanwhile where's the harm in our being happy, even if it is in a sand-pit on Saturday afternoons?"
Joan looked at her in amazement. This was Milly, beside whom she had slept for years; this was her sister, talking like some abandoned woman, quite without shame, glorying in her lapse. This was the real Milly; all the others had been unreal, this was the natural Milly. Something in her own thoughts made her pause. Natural, yes, natural. This was Milly upholding the nature she had inherited, fighting for its pleasures, its gratifications; Milly was only being natural, being herself. Were other people like that when they were themselves? Was that why a housemaid they had had years ago had left because she was going to have a baby? Had she, too, been just natural? And what was being natural? Was it being like Milly, or like the housemaid with her sin great and heavy within her? What gave people these impulses which they would not or could not resist? Was it nature working on them for her own ends? Milly and the housemaid, she coupled them together in her mind. They were both human beings and what they had done was very human, too; very pitiful and sordid, like most human happenings.
She looked at her sister where she stood half dressed, her head drooping a little now, her cheeks flushed. She was so thin. It was touching the way her thin arms hung down from the short sleeves of her vest; they were like young twigs waiting to complete their growth. Seen like this there was so little of Milly to upbraid, she looked so childish. Yet she was not childish; she was wiser than Joan, she had probed into some secret. How funny!
"Come here," Joan said unsteadily; "come here to me, Milly."
Milly went to her, hiding her head on her shoulder. She began to cry. "Joan, listen, I didn't mean half I said just now, all the beastly, coarse things, I didn't mean any of them I know it's wrong, it's awful—and I've been so horribly ashamed—only I couldn't help it. I just couldn't help it!"
Joan thought quickly; she knew instinctively that her moment had come. It was now or never with Milly.
"Do you want to marry him?" she asked quietly.
Milly looked up, a little smile trembling over her tear-stained face.
"Of course not," she said. "Would you want to marry Jack?"
"Well, then, look here; do you still want to go to the Royal College, or have you lost all interest in your fiddle?"
"Lost interest? Why, I want it more than anything on earth; you know I do."
"Right!" said Joan; "then you shall go. I'll speak to Mother to-morrow."
"IT'S no good, Mother," said Joan firmly. "Things like this can happen, they do happen; it's human nature, I suppose."
"It's not my idea ofhumannature," Mrs. Ogden replied in a trembling voice.
"Well, in any case it seems to have been Milly's nature, and the point is now that she ought to be sent to London."
"To think," Mrs. Ogden burst out suddenly, "to think that a daughter of mine could stoop to a vulgar intrigue with a common young man in a shop! Could—oh! I simply can't bring myself to say it—but could—well, go to such lengths that he ought to marry her. It's too horrible! It's on a par with our servant Rose, years ago; that was the milkman, and now it's my own flesh and blood—a Routledge!"
Joan sighed impatiently. "Good Lord! Mother, what does it matter who it is, a Routledge or a Rose Smith, it's all the same impulse."
Mrs. Ogden winced. "Please,please; surely there's no need to be so coarse, Joan?"
"I'm not coarse, Mother. Life may be, but I'm not; I'm just looking things squarely in the face. It seems to me that people have different temperaments. Some are pure because they can't help it, and some are impure because they can't help it. Milly likes men too much, and I like them too little, but here we are, we're your daughters, Routledges if you like, and all you can do is to make the best of it. It's horribly hard on you, Mother, but the only way that I see out of it for Milly is for her to go to the College. She'll probably forget this miserable business when she has her music again." She paused.
Mrs. Ogden voiced a sudden, fearful thought. "Joan," she said faintly, "will there—is there going to be a child?"
"No," said Joan. "I don't think you need fear that, from what Milly tells me."
Mrs. Ogden fell back in her chair. "I think I'm going to faint," she whispered, wiping her lips with trembling fingers. Joan went to her and, lifting her bodily, sat down with her mother on her knee. "You can't faint," she told her with the ghost of a smile. "We've no time for fainting, dear; we must go into the accounts and see where the money's to come from."
Milly took her scholarship and went to London. As the train moved slowly from the platform, Joan had an overwhelming sense of something that mattered. Was it Milly's departure? Perhaps. Milly's face had looked very small and young peering from the window of the third-class carriage, it had stirred Joan's protective instinct; yet her sister had smiled and waved happily, filled with joy at her new-found independence. But something had happened that did really matter, there was a change at last; change for Milly, it must be that Milly had got out of the cage. Why was Milly free while she, Joan, remained a prisoner? Was it because Milly was heartless, a callous egoist? Milly did not submit, she took the bit between her teeth and went at her own pace no matter who pulled on the reins. And her own pace had led her not to destruction, as by all the laws of morality it should have done, but to the actual goal of her heart's desire; surely this was immoral, somehow?
Milly's letters were full of enthusiasm. She wrote:
"I can't begin to tell you, Joan, how ripping it all is up here. I like Alexandra House; some of the others kick at the rules, but I don't mind them. Good Lord! After Leaside it seems Paradise to me. And I'm going ahead with my playing; I'm in the College orchestra, which is jolly good, I think; of course it's only a students' orchestra, but it's splendid practice. The students are quite good sorts, I've made one or two friends already. I never tell a soul about Jack; you said not to and I'm being cautious, for once. He keeps on writing, but I don't answer; what's the good? I hope he'll soon leave Seabourne, as it will be so awkward to have him there when the holidays come. By the way, he says he's going to try to get work in London, but don't worry, I shan't see him if he does; that's all over and I'm very busy."
"I can't begin to tell you, Joan, how ripping it all is up here. I like Alexandra House; some of the others kick at the rules, but I don't mind them. Good Lord! After Leaside it seems Paradise to me. And I'm going ahead with my playing; I'm in the College orchestra, which is jolly good, I think; of course it's only a students' orchestra, but it's splendid practice. The students are quite good sorts, I've made one or two friends already. I never tell a soul about Jack; you said not to and I'm being cautious, for once. He keeps on writing, but I don't answer; what's the good? I hope he'll soon leave Seabourne, as it will be so awkward to have him there when the holidays come. By the way, he says he's going to try to get work in London, but don't worry, I shan't see him if he does; that's all over and I'm very busy."
It had worked better than Joan had dared to hope. Milly, absorbed in her music, had apparently submerged the other side of her nature, at all events for the time being. Joan could not help thinking of herself as a benefactress, a very present help in trouble. She had saved the situation, and perhaps her sister, and yet she felt discontented. No clouds of glory trailed for her, there was no spiritual uplift; she was conscious of nothing but a great restlessness that swept over her like a wind.
She would soon be of age; Elizabeth never let her forget this, for Elizabeth was restless too. She urged and drove to work; once she had held Joan back, but now she thrust her on and on. They slaved like two creatures possessed, working well on into the evenings. If Ralph turned them out of his study they went upstairs to Elizabeth's bedroom; work, always work and more work. On Saturday afternoons they tore themselves away from their books, and tired and dispirited walked slowly up to the Downs and sat there, looking out to sea.
Elizabeth said once: "You were little when I first knew you, Joan."
And Joan answered: "Yes, I was little then."
It seemed as though they had uttered a momentous statement, they quailed at the solemnity of their own words. It was like that now; their overstrained nerves tanged sharply to every commonplace.
"Next year," said Elizabeth thoughtfully.
"Next year," Joan repeated with a sinking heart.
"I'm growing old, Joan, but you'll make me young again."
And Joan's eyes filled with tears. "You're not old; don't say things like that, Elizabeth!"
"Oh, yes, I shall be old quite soon, and so we mustn't wait too long. Joan, I can't wait much longer."
She turned her tired eyes on Joan. "Good God!" she said passionately, "I've waited long enough."
And Mrs. Ogden complained. She always complained now; about her health, her house, the servant, her daughters. She was indefinitely ill, never quite normal, yet the doctor came and pronounced her to be sound. She complained of feeling lonely because Joan left her so much, pointing out that even their evenings together were broken into by the prolonged hours of study. She cried a good deal, and when she cried the evidences of it remained with her for hours; her eyes were becoming permanently red-rimmed. She said that she cried nearly every night in bed.
Elizabeth, far beyond being able to control her feelings, now expressed open dislike of her. "A selfish, hysterical woman," she called her; Joan winced, but remained silent, and alone with her mother was forced in turn to listen to elaborate tirades against Elizabeth. That was the way they spent their short evenings now, in bickering about Elizabeth. Mrs. Ogden said that she was a thief, a thief who had stolen her child from her, and occasionally Joan's self-control would go with alarming suddenness and a scene would follow, deplorably undignified and all quite futile. It would end by Mrs. Ogden going slowly upstairs, clinging to the banister, probably to cry herself to sleep, while Joan, her head buried in her hands, sat on far into the night.
ON Joan's twenty-first birthday it poured with rain. She woke early, conscious of a sound that she could not place for a moment, the sound of a gutter overflowing on to the leads outside her window. She got up and looked out through the streaming panes. The view was almost completely hidden by mist, and her room felt cold with the first approach of autumn. She dressed and went down to breakfast, to find Mrs. Ogden already behind the coffee-pot.
Her mother looked up, smiling. "Many happy returns of the day," she said.
There were two parcels and two letters on Joan's plate. She opened the parcels first; one contained a writing-case, from her mother, the other a book, from Milly. Her letters were from Richard and Elizabeth. She recognized Elizabeth's writing on the unusually large envelope, and something prompted her to open Richard's letter first.
He wrote:
"This is to congratulate you on coming of age, that is if there be cause for congratulation, which, my dear, rests entirely with you. I hope, I believe, that now at last you have made up your mind to strike out for yourself; this is your moment, and I entreat you to seize it."
"This is to congratulate you on coming of age, that is if there be cause for congratulation, which, my dear, rests entirely with you. I hope, I believe, that now at last you have made up your mind to strike out for yourself; this is your moment, and I entreat you to seize it."
The letter ended:
"Joan, for the fourth time, please marry me!"
Joan laughed quietly as she folded this epistle and opened the long envelope addressed in Elizabeth's hand. It contained no letter of any kind, only a legal document; the lease of the flat in Bloomsbury.
She found Elizabeth in Ralph's study, writing letters. As she came in Elizabeth got up and took both her hands.
"My dear," she said, and kissed her.
Joan sat down. "So you've done it!" was all she found to say.
"You mean the flat? Yes, it's my birthday present to you—aren't you pleased, Joan?"
"Elizabeth," Joan tried to speak quietly, "you shouldn't have done this until we'd talked things over again; when did you sign the lease?"
Elizabeth stiffened. "That's not the point," she said quickly. "The point is what do you mean about talking things over again? Our plans were decided long ago."
Joan faltered. "Don't get angry, Elizabeth, only listen; I don't know how to say it, you paralyse me, I'm afraid of you!"
"Afraid ofme?"
"Yes, of you; terribly, horribly afraid of you and of myself. Elizabeth, it's my mother; I don't see how I can leave her, now that Milly's gone. Wait; you've no idea how helpless she is. She seems ill, and we never keep a servant, these days—what would she do all alone in the house? She depends so much on me; why, since Father's death she can't even keep the tradesmen's books in order, and with no one to look after her I think she'd ruin herself, she seems to have lost all idea about money. We must wait just a little longer in any case, say a year. Elizabeth, don't look like that! Perhaps she'll pull herself together, I don't know; all I know is that I can't come now——" She paused, catching her breath.
Elizabeth had come close and was standing over her, looking down with inscrutable eyes. "Her eyes look like the sea in a mist," Joan thought helplessly, reverting to the old habit of drawing comparisons. But Elizabeth was speaking in a calm, cold voice.
"I see," she was saying. "You've changed your mind. You don't want to come and live with me, after all; perhaps the idea is distasteful to you? Of course we should be dirt poor."
Joan sprang up, shaking with anger. "You know you're lying!" she said.
Elizabeth smiled. "Am I? Oh no, I don't think so, Joan. It's all quite clear, surely. I've been a fool, that's all; only I think it would have been better, worthier, to have been frank with me from the first. I will not wait a year, or a month, for that matter; either you come now or I shall go."
"Go, Elizabeth?"
"Yes, go!"
"But where?"
"Anywhere, so long as it's away from Seabourne and you. I've had enough of this existence; even you, Joan, are not worth it. I'm going before it's too late to go, before I get so deeply rooted that I can't free myself."
Joan said dully: "If you leave me, I think—I don't think I can bear it."
"Then come with me."
"No, I can't."
"You can. You're quite free except in your own imagination, and your mother is not ill except in hers. You'd find that she'd get on all right once she hadn't got you as an audience; naturally she'll depend on you as long as you let her. But I say to you, don't let her, she's little short of a vampire! Well, let her vampire herself for a change, she shall certainly not vampire me; if you choose to be drained dry, I do not. Good God! You and she between you are enough to drive anyone insane!"
Joan faced her with bright, desperate eyes. "Elizabeth, you can't go away, I need you too much."
"I must go away."
"But I tell you I can't let you go!"
"Oh, yes, you can, Joan; you need your self-esteem much more than you need me; you'll be able to look upon yourself as a martyr, you see, and that'll console you."
"Don't, Elizabeth!"
"You'll be able to wallow in a bog of sentimentality and to pat yourself on the head because you're not as other men.Youhave a sense of duty, whereas I—— You'll feel that you are offering yourself as a sacrifice. Oh, I know it all, and it makes me sick, sick, do you hear? Positivelysick. And you actually expect me to sympathize. Perhaps you expect me to praise you, to tell you what a really fine fellow I think you, and that I feel honoured to follow in your trail and be permitted to offer you a cup of cold water from time to time. Is that what you want? Well, then, you won't get it from me; you've had too much from me already, Joan, and what are you giving me in return?"
Joan said: "Not much, but all I have."
Elizabeth laughed. "All you have! Well, it's not enough, not nearly enough; if this is all you have, then you're too poor a thing for me. You see, I too have my ideals, and you don't fulfil them. You're the veriest self-deceiver, Joan! You think you're staying on here because you can't bring yourself to hurt your mother. It's not that at all; it's because you can't bear to hurt yourself in the process. It's yourself you love. Well, I've had enough; it's no good our trying to understand each other, it's better to make the break here and now."
Joan held out her hand. "Good-bye, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth ignored the hand. "Good-bye," she said, and turned away.
"Where'S Elizabeth?" asked Mrs. Ogden curiously. "Have you two quarrelled at last?"
Joan did not answer; she went on dusting the drawing-room mechanically; the servant had left and she and her mother were alone.
"I must go and put the meat in the oven," she said, leaving the room.
She put the joint in the oven and, turning to the sink, began peeling potatoes; then she rinsed them and put them to boil. The breakfast things were waiting to be washed up; an incredible lot of them for two people to have used, Joan thought. She hated the feeling of cold grease on her fingers; she could not find the mop and the skummed water crept up her bare wrists. But much as she detested this washing-up process, she prolonged it intentionally—it was something to do.
The potatoes boiled over; she moved the saucepan to a cooler spot and, finding a broom, swept the kitchen. Where was Elizabeth? She had left Seabourne for London; so much she had learnt from the porter at the station, but where was she now? It was a week since they had quarrelled, but it seemed like years. And Elizabeth did not write; she must be too angry, too bitterly disillusioned! She fetched the dust-pan and took up the dust; it lay in great unsightly flakes where she had swept it from corners neglected by the discontented maid. Elizabeth had sacrificed all the best years of her life for this, to be deserted, left in the end; she had offered all that she had to give, and she, Joan, had spurned it, hurled it back in her face—in Elizabeth's face!
The bell clanged. "Milk!"
Joan fetched a jug.
"How much will you have to-day, miss?"
"I don't know," said Joan vaguely.
With a look of surprise the man filled the jug. "Fine weather, miss, after the rain."
"Yes—oh, yes, very fine."
She would write to her, go to her, anything but this; she would humble herself, implore forgiveness. If only she knew where she was; she would ask Ralph. No, what was the good? Elizabeth would not have her now, she did not want a weak-kneed creature who didn't know her own mind; she liked dependable, strong people like herself.
"Joan!" came a voice.
"Yes, Mother?"
"Bring me my nerve tonic, dear."
"Yes, Mother."
"Oh, and bring me my shawl, I feel cold; you'll find it in my top right-hand drawer."
She obeyed, fetching the shawl, measuring out the tonic in a medicine glass.
"I don't feel it's doing me much good," Mrs. Ogden complained. "I slept very badly again last night."
"You must give it time," said Joan comfortingly. "This is only your third dose."
Where was Elizabeth? Had she found a new friend to share the flat?
"You might go and buy me that trimming, some time to-day, darling; it may be all sold out if we wait."
"All right, I'll go when I've tidied the house, Mother; they had plenty of it yesterday."
But Mrs. Ogden persisted: "I have a feeling that it will all be sold out and I'm short by just half a yard. Can't you finish the house when you come back?"
"I'd rather get on and finish it now, Mother; I'm quite sure it'll be all right."
Mrs. Ogden reverted to the subject of the trimming again during lunch, and several times before tea. "We shall never get it," she complained querulously. "I feel sure it'll all be sold out!"
She allowed herself to be a little monotonous these days, clinging to an idea with wearying persistence. In her husband's lifetime she would have been more careful not to irritate, but the restraint of his temper being removed, she no longer felt the necessity for keeping herself in hand.
Joan bought the trimming just before the shop closed, and this done, they settled down to their high tea. Joan cleared the table wearily, answered two advertisements of general servants, and finally took her book to the lamp. It was a new book that Richard had just sent her. Richard did not yet suspect what she had done; he probably thought she was busily making plans for her departure; how furious he would be when he knew. But Richard didn't count; he could think what he liked, for all she cared.
She could not read, the book seemed beyond her comprehension, or was it all nonsense?
Mrs. Ogden's voice broke the silence: "Joan, it's ten o'clock!"
"Is it, dear?"
"Yes, shall we go to bed?"
"You go, I'll come presently."
"Well, don't stay up too late; it makes me nervous, I can't sleep properly till I know you're in bed."
"I shan't wake you coming upstairs."
"I never go to sleep at all until I hear your door close. Have you written about those servants?"