"Oh, do stop coughing!" she said, and her voice sounded exasperated.
What was the matter with her? She was growing positively brutal! She fled from the room, leaving Milly to cough and choke alone.
Christmas dinner at the Bensons' was a pleasant enough festivity. Mrs. Benson was delighted that the Ogdens had come, for Richard was at home. His stolid determination not to seek Joan out, coupled with his evident melancholy, had begun to alarm his mother. She tried to lead him on to talk about the girl, but he was not to be drawn. The situation was beyond her. If Richard was in love with Joan, why didn't he marry her? His father couldn't very well refuse to make him a decent allowance if he married; it was all so ridiculous, this moping about, this pandering to Joan's fancies.
"Marry her, my son, and discuss things afterwards," had been Mrs. Benson's advice.
But Richard had laughed angrily. "She won't marry me, unfortunately."
"Then make her, for of course she's in love with you."
No good; Mrs. Benson could not cope with the psychology of these two. She felt that her only hope lay in propinquity, so if Richard would not go to Joan the roles must be reversed and Joan must be brought to Richard. She watched their meeting with scarcely veiled eagerness.
They shook hands without a tremor; a short, matter-of-fact clasp. Curious creatures! Mrs. Benson felt baffled, and angry with Richard; what was he thinking about? He treated Joan like another boy. No wonder the love affair was not prospering!
Elizabeth was already there when the Ogdens arrived, and she, too, watched the little comedy with some interest. She would rather have liked to talk to Richard about Cambridge, it was so long since she herself had been there, but Lawrence Benson was for ever at her elbow, quietly obtrusive. He had taken to wearing pince-nez lately. Elizabeth wished that he had not chosen the new American rimless glasses; she felt that any effort to render pince-nez decorative only accentuated their hideousness. She found herself looking at Lawrence, comparing the shine on his evening shirt front with the disconcerting shine of his glasses. He was very immaculate, with violets in his buttonhole, but he had aged. The responsibility of partnership and riches appeared to have thinned his sleek hair. Perhaps it made you old before your time to be a member of one of the largest banking firms in England—old and prim and tidy. Elizabeth wondered.
Lawrence reminded her of an expensive mahogany filing cabinet in which reposed bundles of papers tied with red tape. Everything about him was perfectly correct, from the small, expensive pearl that clasped his stiff shirt, to his black silk socks and patent leather shoes. His cuff-links were handsome but restrained, his watch-chain was platinum and gold, not too thick, his watch was an expensive repeater in the plainest of plain gold cases.
Elizabeth felt his thin, dry fingers touch her arm as he stooped over her chair. "You look beautiful to-night," he murmured.
She believed him, for she knew that her simple black dress suited her because of its severity. The fashion that year was for a thousand little bows and ruches, but Elizabeth had not followed it; she had draped herself in long, plain folds, from which her fine neck and shoulders emerged triumphantly white. She was the statuesque type of woman, who would always look her best in the evening, for then the primness that crept into her everyday clothes was perforce absent. She smiled across at Joan, as though in some way Lawrence's compliment concerned her.
They went in to dinner formally. Mr. Benson gave his arm to Mrs. Ogden, Lawrence to Elizabeth, and Richard to Joan. Milly was provided with a Cambridge friend of Richard's, and Mrs. Benson was pompously escorted by the local vicar.
Something of Mrs. Ogden's habit of melancholy fell away during dinner. She noticed Lawrence looking in her direction, and remembered with a faint thrill of satisfaction that although now he was obviously in love with Elizabeth, some years ago he had admired her. Joan, watching her mother, was struck afresh by her elusive prettiness that almost amounted to beauty. It had been absent of late, washed away by tears and ill-health, but to-night it seemed to be born anew, a pathetic thing, like a venturesome late rosebud that colours in the frost.
Joan's mind went back to that long past Anniversary Day when her mother had worn a dress of soft grey that had made her look like a little dove. How long ago it seemed! It had been the last of many. It had ceased to exist owing to her father's failing health, and now there was no money to start it again. As she watched her mother she wished that it could be re-established, for it had given Mrs. Ogden such intense pleasure, filled her with such a harmless, if foolish, sense of importance. On Anniversary Day she had been able to rise above all her petty worries; it had beenherDay, one out of the three hundred and sixty-five. Perhaps, after all, it had done much to obliterate for the time being the humiliations of her married life. Joan had never thought of this possibility before, but now she felt that hidden away under the bushel of affectations, social ambitions and snobbishness that The Day had stood for, there might well have burnt a small and feeble candle—the flame of a lost virginity.
The same diaphanous prettiness hung about her mother now, and Joan noticed that her brown hair was scarcely greyer than it had been all those years ago. She felt a sudden, sharp tenderness, a passionate sense of regret. Regret for what? She asked herself, surprised at the violence of her own emotion; but the only answer she could find was too vague and vast to be satisfactory. "Oh, for everything! for everything," she murmured half aloud.
Richard looked at her. "Did you speak, Joan?"
"No—at least I don't know. Did I?"
Her eyes were on her mother's face, watchful, tender, admiring. Mrs. Ogden looked up and met those protecting, possessive eyes, full upon her. She flushed deeply like a young girl.
Richard touched Joan's arm. "Have you forgotten how to talk?" he demanded.
She laughed. "You never approve of anything I say, so perhaps silence is a blessing in disguise."
"Oh, rot! Joan, look at my brother making an ass of himself over Elizabeth. Shall I start looking at you like that? I'm much more in love than he is, you know."
"Richarddear, you're not going to propose again in the middle of dinner, are you?"
"No; but it's only putting off the evil day, I warn you."
He was not going to lecture her any more, he decided. Elizabeth had written him a letter which was almost triumphant in tone; Joan was making up her mind, it seemed; perhaps after all she would show some spirit. In any case he found her adorable, with her black, cropped hair, her beautiful mouth, and her queer, gruff voice. Her flanks were lean and strong like a boy's; they suggested splendid, unfettered movement. She looked all wrong in evening dress, almost grotesque; but to Richard she appeared beautiful because symbolic of some future state—a forerunner. As he looked at her he seemed to see a vast army of women like herself, fine, splendid and fiercely virginal; strong, too, capable of gripping life and holding it against odds—the women of the future. They fascinated him, these as yet unborn women, stimulating his imagination, challenging his intellect, demanding of him an explanation of themselves.
He dropped his hand on Joan's where it lay in her lap. "Have you prayed over your sword?" he asked gravely.
She knew what he meant. "No," she said. "I haven't had the courage to unsheathe it yet."
"Then unsheathe it now and put it on the altar rails, and then get down on your knees and pray over it all night."
Their eyes met, young, frank and curious, and in hers there was a faint antagonism.
IN the following February Milly was sent home They wrote from Alexandra House to say that for the present, at all events, she was too ill to continue her studies. She had had a touch of pneumonia shortly after her return, with the result that her lungs were weak. The matron wrote what was meant to be a kind and tactful letter. It was full of veiled sentences; the sort of letter that distracted Joan by reason of its merciful vagueness. The letter said that Milly was not strong, that she was losing weight and was apt to run a little temperature night and morning; according to the doctor, her lungs required care and she must be given time to recover, and plenty of open air.
Joan looked across at Mrs. Ogden as she finished reading.
"It's tubercle," she said briefly.
Her voice sounded calm and cold. "I might be saying 'It's Monday to-day,'" she thought. She felt stupid with pity for Milly and for herself.
Mrs. Ogden tightened her lips; she assumed her stubborn expression.
"What nonsense, Joan! We've never had such a thing in our family."
"But, good heavens, Mother!—your father and your brother died of galloping consumption."
"Nothing of the kind. Henry died of bronchial pneumonia; you don't know what you're talking about, my dear."
Joan thought. "She's going to refuse to face it, she's going to play ostrich; what on earth am I to do!" Aloud she said: "Well, I'd better go up and fetch her; we can't let her travel alone."
"Ah! there I agree with you; certainly go up and bring her home. But whatever you do, don't frighten the life out of the poor child with any ridiculous talk about consumption."
Joan left her gently embroidering a handkerchief. "I must see Elizabeth at once," she told herself.
It was already half-past nine in the evening, but Joan rushed round to the Rodneys' house, to find that Elizabeth had gone to bed with a headache.
"I expect she's asleep," said Ralph doubtfully.
He was wearing an old Norfolk jacket and carpet slippers; his grey hair was ruffled, and an end-of-the-day grey stubble clung like mould to his chin. His eyes looked heavy and a little pink; he had probably been asleep himself, or dozing in the arm-chair, under the picture of old Uncle John. He was certainly too sleepy to be polite, and looked reproachfully at Joan, as though she had done him some wrong.
Oh! the gloom of it all! Of this seaside house with its plush study, of old Uncle John and his ageing descendant, of the lowered gas-jet in its hideous globe, that was yet not dim enough to hide the shabby stair-carpet and the bloodthirsty Landseer engraving on the landing.
It was misty outside, and some of the mist had followed Joan into the house; it made a slight, melancholy blur over everything, including herself and Ralph. She left him abruptly, climbing the stairs two at a time.
She opened the bedroom door without knocking. The gas had been turned down to the merest speck, but by its light Joan could see that Elizabeth was asleep. She turned the gas up full, but still Elizabeth did not stir. She was lying on her side with her cheek pressed hard into the pillow; her hair was loosely plaited, thick, beautiful hair that shone as the light fell across it. One of her scarred hands lay on the white bedspread, pathetically unconscious of its blemish.
Joan stood and looked at her, looked at Elizabeth as she was now, off her guard. What she saw made her look away and then back again, as if drawn by some miserable attraction. Elizabeth's lips were closed, gently enough, but from their drooping corners a few fine lines ran down into the chin; and the closed eyelids were ever so slightly puckered. Joan bent nearer. Yes, those were grey hairs close to the forehead; Elizabeth had a good many grey hairs. Strange that she had never noticed them before. She flushed with a kind of shame. She was discovering secret things about Elizabeth; things that hid themselves by day to look up grimacing out of the night-time and Elizabeth's sleep. Elizabeth would hate it if she knew! And there lay her beautiful hand, all scarred and spoilt; a brave hand, but spoilt none the less. Was it only the scars, or had the texture of the skin changed a little too, grown a little less firm and smooth? She stared at it hopelessly.
She found that she was whispering to herself: "Elizabeth's not so young any more. Oh, God! Elizabeth is almost growing old."
She felt that her sorrow must choke her; pity, sorrow, and still more, shame. Elizabeth's youth was slipping, slipping; it would soon have slipped out of sight. Joan stooped on a sudden impulse and kissed the scarred hand.
"Joan! Are you here? You woke me; you were kissing my hand!"
"Yes, I was kissing the scars."
Elizabeth twitched her hand away. "Don't be a fool!" she said roughly.
Joan looked at her, and something, perhaps the pity in her eyes made Elizabeth recover herself.
"Tell me what's the matter," she asked quietly. "Has anything new happened?"
Joan sat down beside her on the bed. "Come here," she said.
Elizabeth moved nearer, and Joan's arm went round her with a quiet, strong movement. She kissed her on the forehead where the grey hairs showed, and then on the eyelids, one after the other. Elizabeth lay very still.
Joan said: "They're sending Milly home; I'm afraid she's in consumption."
Elizabeth freed herself with a quick twist of her body. "What?"
"Read this letter."
Elizabeth blinked at the gas-jet. "It's my eyes," she complained almost fretfully. "Light the candle, will you, Joan? Then we can put the gas out."
Joan did as she wished, and returning to the bed leant over the foot-rail, watching Elizabeth as she read. Elizabeth had gone white to the lips; she laid down the letter and they stared at each other in silence.
At last Elizabeth spoke. "She's coming home soon," she said in a flat voice.
"Yes; I must go and fetch her the day after to-morrow."
"She'll need—nursing—if she lives."
"Yes—if she lives——"
"It's February already, Joan."
"Yes, next month is March. We called it our March, didn't we, Elizabeth?"
"There are places—sanatoriums, but they cost money."
"We haven't got the money, Elizabeth. And in any case, Mother's decided that Milly can't be seriously ill."
"I have some money, as you know, Joan, but I was saving it for you; still——" Her voice shook.
Joan sat down on the bed again and took Elizabeth's hand. "It's no good," she said gently.
And then Elizabeth cried. She did it with disconcerting suddenness and complete lack of restraint. It was terrible to Joan to see her thrown right off her guard like this; to feel her shoulders shake with sobs while the tears dripped through her fingers on to the bedspread.
She said: "Don't, oh, don't!"
But Elizabeth took no notice, she was launched on a veritable torrent of self-indulgence which she had no will to stem. The pent-up unhappiness of years gushed out at this moment. All the ambitions, the longings, the tenderness sternly repressed, the maternal instinct, the lover instinct, all the frustrations, they were all there, finding despairing expression as she sobbed. She rocked herself from side to side and backwards and forwards. She lost her breath with little gasps, but found it again immediately, and went on crying. She murmured in a kind of ecstatic anguish: "Oh! oh!—Oh! oh!" And then, "Joan, Joan, Joan!" But not for an instant did her tears cease.
Ralph heard the sound of sobbing as he passed on his way to bed, and a quiet, unhappy voice speaking very low, breaking off and then speaking again. He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should go in, but shook his head, and sighing, went on to his own room, closing the door noiselessly after him.
Two days later Joan was waiting in the matron's sitting-room at Alexandra House. Someone had told her that Miss Jackson wished to speak to her before she went up to her sister. She remembered that Miss Jackson was Milly's "Old Scout," and smiled in spite of herself.
The door opened and Miss Jackson came in. She held out her hand with an exaggeratedly bright smile. "Miss Ogden?"
Joan thought: "She's terribly nervous of what she has to tell me."
"Do sit down, Miss Ogden,please. I hope you had a good journey?"
"Yes, thank you."
The matron looked at her watch. "Your train must have been unusually punctual; I always think the trains are so very bad on that line. However, you've been fortunate."
"Yes, we were only five minutes late."
"You don't find it stuffy in here, do you? I cannot persuade the maids to leave the window open."
"No, I don't feel hot—I think you wanted to speak to me about Milly."
"Milly; oh, yes—I thought—the doctor wanted me to tell you——"
"That my sister is in consumption? I was afraid it was so, from your letter."
Miss Jackson moistened her lips. "Oh, my dear, I hope my letter was not too abrupt! You mustn't run ahead of trouble; our doctor is nervous about future possibilities if great care is not used—but your sister's lungs are sound so far, hethinks."
"Then I disagree with him," said Joan.
Miss Jackson felt a little shocked. Evidently this was a very sensible young woman, not to say almost heartless; still it was better than if she had broken down. "We all hope, we all believe, that Milly will soon be quite well again," she said, "but, as you know, I expect, she's rather frail. I should think that she must always have been delicate; and yet what a student! A wonderful student; they're all heart-broken at the College." There was real feeling in her voice as she continued: "I can't tell you what an admiration I have for your sister; her pluck is phenomenal; she's worked steadily, overworked in fact, up to the last."
Joan got up; she felt a little giddy and put her hand on the back of the chair to steady herself.
"My dear, wait, I must get you some sal-volatile!"
"Oh, no, no, please not; I really don't feel ill. I should like to go to Milly now and help her to collect her luggage, if I may."
"Of course; come with me."
They mounted interminable stairs to the rooms that Milly shared with Harriet. A sound of laughing reached them through the half-open door. It was Milly's laugh.
"She's very brave and cheerful, poor child," Miss Jackson whispered.
Joan followed her into the study.
"Here's your sister, Milly dear."
Milly looked up from the strap of her violin case. "Hullo, Joan! This is jolly, isn't it?"
Joan kissed her and shook hands with Harriet.
"I'll leave you now," said Miss Jackson, obviously anxious to get away.
Harriet raised her eyebrows. "Vieille grue!" she remarked, scarcely below her breath.
Milly laughed again, she seemed easily amused, and Joan scrutinized her closely. She was painfully thin and the laugh was a little husky; otherwise she looked much as usual at that moment. Joan's heart beat more freely; supposing it were a false alarm after all? Suppose it should be only a matter of a month or two, at most, before Milly would be quite well again and she herself free?
"How do you feel?" she inquired with ill-concealed anxiety.
"Oh, pretty fit, thank you. I think it's all rot myself. I suppose Old Scout informed you that I was going into a decline, but I beg to differ. A few weeks at Seabourne will cure me all right. Good Lord! I should just think so!" and she made a grimace.
Harriet began humming a sort of vocal five-finger exercise; Joan glared at her. Damn the woman! Couldn't she keep quiet?
Harriet laughed. "Don't slay me with a glance, my dear!"
Joan forced herself to smile. "I was thinking we'd be late for the train."
"Oh, no, you weren't; but never mind. You amuse me, Joan. May I call you Joan? Well, in any case, you amuse me. Oh! But you are too funny and young and gauche, a regular boor, and your grey-green coloured eyes go quite black when you're angry. I should never be able to resist making you angry just for the pleasure of seeing your eyes change colour; do you think you could manage to get really angry with me some day?"
Joan felt hot with embarrassment. What was the matter with this woman; didn't she know that she was in the room with a perfectly awful tragedy, didn't she realize that here was something that would probably ruin three people's lives? She wondered if this was Harriet's way of keeping the situation in hand, of trying to carry the thing off lightly. Perhaps, after all, she was only making an effort to fall in with Milly's mood; that must be it, of course.
Harriet's decided voice went on persistently. "Come up and see me sometimes; don't stop away because Milly isn't here, though I expect she'll be back soon. But in the meantime come up and see me; I shall like to see you quite often, if you'll come."
"Thank you," said Joan, "but I'm never in London."
Harriet smiled complacently. "We'll see," she murmured.
Joan turned to Milly. "Come on, Milly, we ought to go; it's getting late."
In the train Milly talked incessantly; she was flushed now, and the hand that she laid on Joan's from time to time felt unnaturally hot and dry. She assured Joan eagerly that the doctor was a fool and an alarmist; that he had sent a girl home only last year for what he called "pernicious anæmia," whereas she had been back at College in less than four months as well as ever. Milly said that if they supposed she was going to waste much time, they were mistaken; a few weeks perhaps, just to get over that infernal pneumonia, but no longer at Leaside—no, thank you! If she stayed at Leaside she was sure she would die, but not of consumption, of boredom! Her lungs were all right, she never spat blood, and you always spat blood if your lungs were going. It was quite bad enough as it was though; jolly hard lines having a set-back at this critical time in her training. Never mind, she would have to work all the harder later on to make up for it.
She talked and coughed and coughed and talked all the way from London to Seabourne. She was like a thing wound up, a mechanical toy. Joan's heart sank.
Elizabeth was at the station and so was Mrs. Ogden. They had come quite independently of each other. As a rule Elizabeth kept away if she knew that Mrs. Ogden was meeting one of the girls, anxious these days not to feed the flame of the older woman's jealousy; but to-day her anxiety had outweighed her discretion.
Mrs. Ogden kissed Milly affectionately. "Why, she looks splendid!" she remarked to the world in general.
Elizabeth assumed an air of gaiety that she was very far from feeling. It seemed to her that Milly looked like death, and her eyes sought Joan's with a frightened, questioning glance. For answer, Joan shook her head ever so slightly.
They all went home to Leaside together. Elizabeth had offered to help with the unpacking. She was not going to torment herself with any unnecessary suspense, and she cared less than nothing whether Mrs. Ogden wanted her or not. She had got beyond that sort of nonsense now, she told herself. She pressed Joan's hand quite openly in the fly. Why not? Mrs. Ogden was jealous of any demonstrations of affection towards Joan other than her own; Elizabeth knew this, but pressed the hand again.
She and Joan had no opportunity of being alone together that evening. They longed to talk the situation over. They were taut with nervous anxiety; even a quarrel would have been a relief. But Mrs. Ogden was in a hovering mood, they could not get rid of her; even after Milly had gone to bed she continued to haunt them. Frail, unobtrusive, but always there. She seemed to be feeling affable, for she had pressed Elizabeth to stop to supper and had even thanked her for helping with the unpacking. It was remarkable; one would have expected tears or at least depression or irritability over this fresh disaster, for disaster it was, even though Mrs. Ogden chose to take a cheerful view of Milly's condition. It was impossible that she should contemplate with equanimity more doctor's bills, and the mounting tradesmen's accounts for luxuries. Whatever the outcome, Milly would require milk, beef-tea and other expensive things; and there was little or no money, as even Mrs. Ogden must know. And yet she was cheerful; it made Elizabeth feel afraid.
She became a prey to a horrible idea that Mrs. Ogden was happy, yes, positively happy over Milly's illness, because she saw in it a new fetter wherewith to bind Joan. Perhaps she had suspected all along that Joan had determined to break away soon. Perhaps she had begun to realize that her influence over her daughter was waning. And now came Milly's collapse, with all that it entailed of responsibility, of diminished finances, of appeal to every generous and unselfish instinct. Elizabeth shuddered. She did not accuse Mrs. Ogden of consciously visualizing the cause of her satisfaction; but she knew that no greater self-deceiver had ever lived, and that although she was probably telling herself that she was being cheerful and brave in the face of sorrow, and acting with unselfish courage, she was subconsciously rejoicing in the misfortune that must bind Joan closer to her than ever.
They could hear Milly coughing fitfully upstairs; a melancholy sound, for it was a young cough. Mrs. Ogden remarked that they must get some syrup of camphor, which in her experience never failed to clear up a chest cold. She told Joan to write to London for it next day.
Elizabeth got up; she felt that she must walk and walk, no matter where. Her legs and feet seemed terribly alive, they tormented her with their twitching.
"I must go," she said suddenly.
Joan followed her into the hall. Their eyes met for an instant in a look of sympathy and dismay; but Mrs. Ogden was standing in the open doorway of the drawing-room, watching them, and they parted with a brief good night.
TWO weeks elapsed before Mrs. Ogden would consent to any further examination of Milly's lungs. At first she refused on the ground that Milly was only in need of rest, and when Joan persisted, made other excuses, all equally futile. She seemed determined to prevent Doctor Thomas's visit, and it struck Joan that her mother was secretly afraid.
Doctor Thomas was getting old. He had attended the Ogdens as long as Joan could remember. He attended most of the residents of Seabourne, though it was said that the summer visitors preferred a younger man, who had recently made his appearance. Joan herself would have preferred the younger man, but on this point Mrs. Ogden was obdurate; she would not hear of a stranger being called in, protesting that Doctor Thomas would be deeply hurt.
Doctor Thomas came, and rubbed his cold hands briskly together; he smiled at the assembled family as he had smiled on all serious occasions throughout his career. A wooden stethoscope protruded from his tail-pocket; he took it out and balanced it playfully between finger and thumb.
"Letmeexplain," said Joan peremptorily, as Mrs. Ogden opened her lips to speak.
She had to raise her voice somewhat, for the doctor was a little hard of hearing.
"Eh, what? What was that?" he inquired from time to time.
Milly's lip curled. She shrugged her shoulders and complied with an ill grace when told to remove her blouse.
"Take a deep breath."
Doctor Thomas pressed his stethoscope to her chest and back; he pressed so hard with his large, purplish ear that the stethoscope dug into her bones.
"Ow! That hurts," she protested peevishly.
"Say 'ninety-nine'!"
"Ninety-nine."
"Again, please."
"Ninety-nine."
"Again."
"Oh! Ninety-nine, ninety-nine, ninety-nine!"
For a young woman about to be twenty-one years old, Milly was behaving in an extraordinarily childish manner. The doctor looked at her reproachfully and began tapping on her back and chest with his notched and bony fingers. Tap, tap, tap, tap: Milly glanced down at his hand distastefully.
"And now say 'ninety-nine' again," he suggested.
Milly flushed with irritation and coughed. "Ninety-nine," she exclaimed in an exasperated voice.
The old doctor straightened himself and looked round complacently. "Just as I thought, there's nothing seriously wrong here."
"Then you don't think——?" began Joan, but her mother interrupted.
"That's just what I thought you'd say, Doctor Thomas; I felt sure there could be nothing radically wrong with Milly's lungs. Thank God, she comes from very healthy stock! I suppose a good long rest is all that she needs?"
"Exactly, Mrs. Ogden. A good rest, good food, and plenty of air; and no more practising for a bit, Miss Milly. You must keep your shoulders back and your chest well out, and just take things easy."
"But for how long?" Milly asked, with a catch in her voice.
"How long? Oh, for a few months at least."
Milly looked despairingly at Joan, but, try as she would, Joan could not answer that look with the reassuring smile that it was obviously asking for. She turned away and began straightening some music on the piano.
"I must be off," said the doctor, shaking hands. "I shall come in from time to time, just to see that Miss Milly is obeying orders; oh, and I think cod liver oil would prove beneficial."
"No; that I will not!" said Milly firmly.
"Nonsense! You'll do as the doctor tells you," Mrs. Ogden retorted.
"I willnottake cod liver oil; it makes me sick!"
Joan left them arguing, and followed Doctor Thomas to the front door. "Look here," she said in a low voice, "surely you'll examine for tubercle?"
He looked at her whimsically through his spectacles. "My dear young lady, you've been stuffing your head up with a lot of half-digested medical knowledge," and he patted her shoulder as though to soften his words. "Be assured," he told her, "that I shall do everything I think necessary for your sister, and nothing that I think unnecessary."
Joan went back to the drawing-room. The argument about the cod liver oil had ceased, and Milly was crying quietly, all by herself, in the window. She looked up with tearful eyes as her sister took her hand and pressed it.
"Cheer up, old girl!" Joan whispered, her own heart heavy with forebodings.
Mrs. Ogden said nothing; her face seemed expressionless when Joan glanced at her. Ethel's successor brought in the tea and Milly dried her eyes. It was a silent meal; from time to time Milly's gaze dwelt despairingly on her violin case where it lay on the sofa, and Joan knew that she was grieving as a lover for a lost beloved.
"It's only for so short a time," she said, answering the unspoken thought.
Milly shook her head and her eyes overflowed again, the tears dripped into the tea-cup that she held tremulously to her lips.
Mrs. Ogden pretended not to notice. "More tea, Joan?" she inquired.
Joan looked at her and hated her; and before the hate had time to root, began to love her again, for the weak thing that she was. There she sat, quiet and soft and utterly incapable. She was not facing this situation, not even trying to realize what it meant to her two daughters.
"But I could crush her to pulp!" Joan thought angrily. "I could make her scream with pain if I chose, if I told her that I saw through her, despised her, hated her; if I told her that I was going to leave her and that she would never see me again. I could make her cry like Milly's crying, only worse; oh, how I could make her cry!" But her own thought hurt her somewhere very deep down, and at that moment Mrs. Ogden looked up and their eyes met.
Joan stared at her coldly. "Milly is fretting," she said. Mrs. Ogden's glance wavered. "She mustn't do that, after what the doctor has told us. Milly, dearest, there's nothing to cry about."
Milly hid her face.
"It's all my life, Mother," she sobbed.
"What is, my dear?"
"My fiddle!"
"But, my dear child, you're not giving up your violin; he only wants you to rest for a time."
Milly sobbed more loudly, she was growing hysterical. "I want to go back to the College," she wailed. "I hate, hate,hatebeing here! I hate Seabourne and all the people in it, and I hate this house! It stifles me, and I'm not ill and I shan't stop practising and I shan't take cod liver oil!" She wrenched herself free from Joan's restraining arm. "Let me go upstairs," she spluttered. "I want to go upstairs!"
Joan released her. Alone together, the mother and daughter looked at each other defiantly.
"She ought to see a specialist," Joan said; "Doctor Thomas is an old fool!"
Mrs. Ogden's soft eyes grew bright with rising temper. "Never!" she exclaimed, raising her voice. "I hate the whole brood; it was a specialist who killed your father. James would be alive now if it hadn't been for a so-called specialist!"
Joan made a sound of impatience. "Don't be ridiculous, Mother; you don't know what you're talking about. You're taking a terrible responsibility in refusing to have a first-class opinion."
"I consider Doctor Thomas first-class."
"He isnot; he's antediluvian and deaf into the bargain! I tell you, Milly is very ill."
Mrs. Ogden's remaining calm deserted her. "You tell me,youtell me! And what do you know about it? It seems that you pretend to know more than the doctor himself. You and your ridiculous medical books! You'll be asking me to consult your fellow-student Elizabeth next."
"I wish to God you would!"
"Ah! I thought so; well then, send for your clever friend, your unsexed blue-stocking, and put her opinion above that of your own mother. How many children has she borne, I'd like to know? What knowledge can she have that I as a mother haven't got by natural instinct, about my own child? How dare you put Elizabeth Rodney above me!"
Joan lost her temper suddenly and violently. "Because she is above you, because she's everything that you're not."
Mrs. Ogden gave a stifled cry and sank back in her chair.
"Oh! my head, it's swimming, I feel sinking, I feel as if I were dying. Oh! oh! my head!"
"Sit up!" commanded Joan. "You're not dying, but I think Milly is."
Mrs. Ogden began to cry weakly as Joan turned away. "Cruel, cruel!" she murmured.
Joan went up to her and shook her slightly. "Behave yourself, Mother; I've no time for this sort of thing."
"To tell me that a child of mine is dying! You say that to frighten me; I shall tell the doctor."
Joan shrugged her shoulders. "You may tell him what you please. I'm going up to Milly, now."
Richard had been gone for some weeks and Mr. and Mrs. Benson had moved back to London when Milly came home. Joan would have given much to have had Richard to talk to just now, but she could only write and tell him her fears, which his brief answers did little to dispel. He advised an immediate consultation and mentioned a first-class specialist; at the same time he managed to drop a word here and there anent Joan's own prospects, which he pointed out were becoming more gloomy with every month of delay. No, Richard was not in a consoling mood these days.
Lawrence, on the other had, was full of kindness. He had taken to coming down to Conway House for the weekends, and he seldom came without a jar of turtle soup or some other expensive luxury for the invalid. His constant visits to Leaside might have suggested an interest in one of its inmates; in fact Mrs. Ogden began to wonder whether Lawrence was falling out of love with Elizabeth and into love with Milly. But Joan was not deceived; she felt certain that he only came there in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Elizabeth if, as sometimes happened, he found her out when he called at her brother's house; she was amused and yet vaguely annoyed.
"Your admirer's in the drawing-room, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth smiled. "Well, let him stay there with your mother; we'll sneak out by the back door, for a walk."
But Lawrence invariably saw them escaping; it was uncanny how he always seemed to be standing at the window on such occasions. On a blustery day in March he hurried after them and caught them at the corner of the street, as he had already done several times. He always said the same thing:
"Ripping afternoon for a walk, you two; may I join you?" He threw out his chest and took off his hat.
"Jolly good for the hair, Elizabeth!"
Elizabeth's own hat, blown slightly askew, was causing her agony by reason of the straining hat-pins; and in any case she always suffered from neuralgia when the wind was in the east. She managed to turn her head slightly in his direction, but before she had time to snub him, a gust removed her hat altogether and blew her hair down into her eyes.
The hat bowled happily along the esplanade, and after it went Joan, with Lawrence at her heels. She could hear him pattering persistently behind her. For some reason the sound of his awkward running infuriated her; his steps were short for a man's, as though he were wearing tight boots. She felt suddenly that she must reach the hat first or die; must be the one to restore it to its owner. She strained her lanky legs to their limit; her skirts flew, her breath came fast, she was flushed with temper and endeavour. Now she had almost reached it. No, there it went again, carried along by a fresh and more spiteful gust. Several people stood still to laugh.
"Two to one on Miss Joan!" cried General Brooke, halting in his strut.
Ah! At last! Her hand flew out to capture the hat, which was poised, rocking slightly for a moment, like a seagull on a wave. She stooped forward, grabbed the air, tripped and fell flat. Lawrence, who was close behind her, nearly fell over her, but saved himself just in time. He pursued the hat a few steps farther, seized it and then returned to help Joan up; but she had already sprung to her feet with an exclamation of annoyance.
"I've won!" laughed Lawrence provokingly. "You're not hurt, are you?"
She was, having slightly twisted her ankle, but she lied sulkily.
"No, of course not."
It seemed to her that he was smiling all over, not only with his mouth, but with his eyes and his glasses and the little brass buttons on his knitted waistcoat. His very shoes twinkled with amusement all over their highly polished toe-caps. Instinctively she stretched out her hand to take the hat from him.
"Oh, no!" he taunted. "No, you don't; that's not fair!"
Elizabeth was standing still watching them, with her hands pressed against her hair. "Thank you," she said, as Lawrence restored her hat to her; but she looked at Joan and smiled.
Joan turned her face away to hide a sudden rush of tears. How ridiculous and childish she was! Fancy a woman of twenty-three wanting to cry over losing the game! They walked on in silence, Joan trying not to limp too obviously, but Elizabeth was observant.
"You're hurt," she said, and stood still. Joan denied it.
"It's nothing at all; I just twisted my ankle a bit." And she limped on.
"Hadn't you better turn back?" suggested Lawrence a little too hopefully. "Look here, Joan, I'll get you a fly."
"I don't want a fly, thank you; I'm all right."
"No, you're not; do let me call that cab for you; it's awfully unwise to walk on a strained ankle."
"Oh, for goodness' sake," snapped Joan, "do let me know for myself whether I'm hurt or not!"
She realized that she was behaving badly; she could hear the irritation in her own voice. Moreover, she knew that she was spoiling the walk by limping along and refusing to go home; but some spirit of perverseness was dominating her. She felt that she disliked Lawrence quite enormously, and at that moment she almost disliked Elizabeth. Why had Elizabeth accepted her hat from Lawrence's hand? She should have said something like this: "Give it to Joan, please; I would rather Joan gave me my hat." Ridiculous! She laughed aloud.
"What are you laughing at?" inquired Lawrence.
"Oh, nothing, only my thoughts."
"Can't we share the joke?"
"No, it wouldn't amuse you."
"Oh, do go back, Joan," said Elizabeth irritably. "You're hardly able to walk."
"Do you want me to go back, then?"
"Yes, of course I do; and put on a cold water bandage as soon as you get home."
Joan looked at her with darkening eyes, and left them abruptly.
"What on earth's upset her?" asked Lawrence, genuinely concerned.
"Nothing—why? She's not upset."
"She seemed angry about something."
"Oh, I don't think so. Probably her ankle was hurting her rather badly, only she didn't want to admit it."
"Well, I thought she was angry. But never mind, let's talk about you." And he edged a little nearer.
Elizabeth evaded the hand that hovered in the vicinity of her arm. "I'm so dull to talk about," she parried. "Let's talk about metaphysics!"
He gripped her arm now in a grasp that there was no evading. "Whywillyou always make fun of me, Elizabeth?"
She was silent, her head drooped, and he, misunderstanding the movement, tightened his fingers.
"I love you!" he said rather loudly in her ear, raising his voice to be heard through the wind. "When will you marry me, dearest?"
"Oh, Lawrence, don't," she protested. "Some day, perhaps, or never. I don't know!"
"But youdolove me a little, Elizabeth, don't you?"
"No, not a bit; I don't love you at all."
"But you would. I'd make you."
"How would you make me?"
He considered. "I don't know," he admitted lamely; "but I'd find a way, try me and see; it's not possible that I shouldn't find a way."
He was very sincere, that was the worst of it. His eyes glowed fondly at her behind his glasses.
"And, my dear, I could give you all you want," he added.
"All I want, Lawrence?"
"Yes, I mean we'd be rich."
She stopped to consider him thoughtfully. A good-looking man, too well dressed; a dull man, too conscious of worldly success; a shy man, too shy not to be over-bold at times. A youngish man still, too pompous to be youthful.
"Would you like to marry a woman who doesn't love you?" she asked him curiously.
"I'd like to marry you, Elizabeth."
"But why? I can't imagine why anyone should want to marry me."
"I want to marry you because you're everything I love. My dear Elizabeth, if you were seventy I should still love you."
"You think so now, because I'm not seventy."
"Look here;" he said suddenly. "Is it still Joan that's stopping you?"
She stiffened. "I said I didn't love you, isn't that enough?"
He continued in his train of thought. "Because if it is Joan, you know, just think how we could help her, in her career, I mean. She'll need money and I have at least got that. If you'll marry me, Elizabeth, I swear I'll do more for that girl than I'd do for my own sister. Say you'll marry me, Elizabeth——"
She pushed his hand away from her arm rather roughly. "If I married you," she said, "I should have to stop thinking of Joan's career; it would be your career then, not hers; and in any case money will never help Joan."
"Why not?"
"Because she's Joan, I suppose; she's not like anyone else in the world."
He was silent, his rejected hand hanging limply at his side. Presently he said: "You do love that child. I suppose it's because you've had the making of her."
"I suppose so; she's a very lovable creature."
"I know. Well, think it over."
"You're a patient man, Lawrence."
"There's no help for it."
"I wish you'd marry someone else, that is if you want to marry at all; it may take me such a long time to think it over."
He looked at her stubbornly. "I'll wait," he said. "I'm the waiting kind when I want a thing badly enough."
MILLY'S illness was discussed at every tea-table in Seabourne, and proved a grateful topic in the stiff little club as well. If the Ogdens did nothing else, they certainly provided food for comment. Joan's Short Hair, the Colonel's Death, Mrs. Ogden's Popish Tendencies and now Milly's Consumption were hailed in turn with discreet enthusiasm.
Major Boyle, the doleful politician, killed Milly off at least a dozen times that spring.
"Family's riddled with it!" he remarked lugubriously. "I happen to know for a fact that three of the mother's brothers died of it."
General Brooke laughed asthmatically. "That's queer," he chuckled, "for she only hadone!"
Major Boyle sighed as though this in itself were a tragedy.
"Oh, really, only one? Then it must have been a brother and two cousins—yes, that was it, two cousins—riddled with it!"
The little bank manager fidgeted in his chair, his mouth opened and shut impatiently; if only they would let him get a word in edgeways. At last he could contain himself no longer.
"Miss Joan told me——" he begun.
But Sir Robert Loo interrupted with intentional insolence. "You were saying, Boyle, that two of the cousins died of consumption; which were they, I wonder? I was at Christ Church with Peter Routledge, a cousin of the mother's, awfully nice chap he was, but a bit of a wildster."
They began tossing the ball of conversation backwards and forwards and around between themselves, keeping it the while well above the head of the bank manager. Eton, Christ Church, old days in India, the Buffs, the Guards, crack shots, shooting parties, phenomenal exploits with the rod and line, lovely women. They nodded their heads, chewing the ends of their cigars and murmured "By Gad!" and "My dear fellow!" the while they exaggerated and romanced about the past.
They emptied their glasses and sucked in their moustaches. They lolled back in the arm-chairs or straddled in front of the smoky fire. Their eyes glowed with the enthusiasms of thirty or forty years ago. They forgot that they were grey or white or bald, or mottled about the jowls, that their stomachs protruded and their legs gave a little at the knees. They forgot that their sons defied them and their wives thought them bores, that their incomes were for the most part insufficient, and that nearly all their careers had been ignominiously cut short by the age limit. They lived again in their dashing youth, in the glorious days when they had been heroes, at least in their own estimation; when a scrap with savages had taken on the dimensions of Waterloo. When fine girls and blood fillies met with about equal respect and admiration, when moonlit nights on long verandas meant something other than an attack of lumbago; and when, above all, they had classified their fellow-men as being "One of us" or "An outsider."
There sat Mr. Pearson the bank manager, with the golden ball flying around and above him, but never, oh! never within his grasp. He sighed, he cleared his throat, he smoked a really good cigar that he could ill afford; he envied. No, assuredly his youth provided no splendours. He thought distastefully of the Grammar School, he spat mentally when he remembered the Business College. He felt like a worm who is discovered in a ducal salad, and he cringed a little and respected.
He, too, was bald these days, and his waistcoats gaped sometimes where they buttoned; in seniority he was the equal of most of them, but in family, opportunity, knowledge of life and love of fair women, judging by their reminiscences, he was hopelessly their inferior.
He knew that they resented him as a blot on their club, and that time would never soften this resentment. He knew all about their almost invisible incomes, he even accorded financial accommodation to one or another from time to time. He saw their bank books and treated with as much tact as possible their minute overdrafts. Sometimes he was allowed to offer advice regarding a change of investments or the best method whereby to soften the heart of the Inland Revenue. But all this was at the bank, in his own little office. Behind his roll-top desk he was a power; in the little office it was they who hummed and hawed and found it difficult to approach the subject, while he, urbane and smiling, conscious of his strength, lent a patronizing ear to their doubts and worries.
But positions were reversed in the smoking-room of the club. Securely entrenched in their worn leather chairs, they became ungrateful, they forgot, they ignored: "Eton, Christ Church, the Buffs, the Guards!" And yet he wouldnotresign. He clung to the club like a bastard clings to the memory of an aristocratic father—desperately, resentfully, with a shamefaced sense of pride.
"My sister tells me," said Ralph Rodney, gently dragging the conversation back to its original topic. "My sister tells me that Milly's lungs are absolutely sound."
General Brooke snorted and Major Boyle shook his head mournfully. "Can't be, can't be," he murmured; "the family's riddled with it!"
"I'm sorry to hear about poor old Peter Routledge," remarked Sir Robert, pouring himself out another whisky. "I'd lost sight of him of late years. Damned hard luck popping off like that, must have been fairly young too; he was one of the best chaps on earth, you know, sound through and through, if he was a bit of a wildster."
Over in a dark corner someone stirred. It was Admiral Bourne, whom they had thought asleep; now he spoke for the first time. He sat up and, taking off his glasses, wiped them.
"She was such a pretty little girl," he said tremulously. "Such a dear little girl." And he dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief.
They pretended not to notice; he was a very old man now and almost childish, with him tears and laughter had grown to be very near the surface.
"How goes it with the mice, Admiral?" inquired someone kindly, to change the subject.
He smiled through his tears and cheered up immediately. "Capital, capital! Yes, indeed. And I think I've bred a real wonder at last, I've never seen such a colour before, it's not Roan and it's not Mauve and it's not Blue; it's a sort of—a sort of——" He hesitated, and forgot what he was going to say.
They handed him an evening paper. "Thanks, thanks," he said gratefully. "Thank you very much indeed," and subsided into his corner again.
In spite of gloomy prognostications Milly's health did nothing melodramatic or startling as the months dragged on, though her cough continued and she grew still thinner. At times she was overcome by prolonged fits of weakness, but any change there was came quietly and gradually, so that even Elizabeth was deceived. She watched Joan's anxious face with growing impatience.
"Don't let yourself get hipped over Milly," she cautioned.
Joan protested. "I'm not a bit hipped, but I'm terribly afraid."
Elizabeth flared up. "You really are overdoing it a bit, Joan; it's almost hysterical! Even Doctor Thomas must know his trade well enough to suspect tubercle if there were any."
"I know, but I can't believe in him. Surely you think Milly's looking terribly ill?"
"I think she looks very fagged, but I'm not prepared to know better than the doctor."
They argued for an hour. Elizabeth was exasperated. Why would Joan persist in taking the most gloomy view of everything?
"It's a good excuse for your staying on here," she said bitterly.
Joan looked at her.
"Yes, I mean that," said Elizabeth. "You find Milly's illness a ready-made excuse."
"I ought to get angry with you, Elizabeth, but I won't let myself. Do you seriously think that I can leave her? What about Mother?"
"Yes, what about your mother? Why can't she keep Milly company for a while; can't they look after each other? Will you never consider yourself or me?"
"Oh, what's the good; you don't understand. You know how helpless Mother is, and then there's Milly. I've promised her not to leave her."
"Oh, yes, I do understand; I understand only too well, Joan. You're twenty-three already, and we're no nearer Cambridge than we were; what I want to know is how long is this going on?"
Joan was silent.
"Oh, my dear!" said Elizabeth, stretching out her hand. "Won't you come now?"
Joan shook her head. "I can't, I can't."
A coldness grew up between them, a coldness unrelieved now by even so much as bad temper. They met less often and hardly ever worked together. At times they tried to avoid each other, so painful was this estrangement to them both. The lines deepened on Elizabeth's face and her mouth grew hard. She darned Ralph's socks with a shrinking dislike of the texture and feel of them, and ordered his meals with a sickening distaste for food. She felt that the daily round of life was growing more and more unendurable. Breakfast was the worst ordeal, heralding as it did the advent of another useless day. Ralph liked eggs and bacon, which he would have repeatedad nauseam. She could remember the time when she had shared this liking, but now the smell of the frying bacon disgusted her. Ralph did not always trouble to eat quite tidily, and he chewed with a slightly open mouth; when he wiped his lips he invariably left yellow egg-stains on his napkin. She began to watch for those stains and to listen for his noisy chewing. His face got on her nerves, too; it was growing daily more like Uncle John's, and not young Uncle John's either—old Uncle John's. His eyes were acquiring the "Don't hurt me" look of the portrait in the study. Something in the way his legs moved lately suggested approaching old age, and yet he was not so old; it must be Seabourne.
"Oh, do let's get away from here!" she burst out one morning. "Let's go to America, Australia, the Antipodes, anywhere!"
Ralph dropped his paper to stare at her, and then he laughed. He thought she was trying to be funny.
At Leaside things were little better. A dreariness more tangible than usual pervaded the house. Milly alternated between moods of exuberant hopefulness and fits of deep depression, when she would cling to Joan like a sickly child. "Don't leave me! Oh, Joan, you mustn't leave me," was her almost daily entreaty. She was difficult to manage, and insisted on practising in spite of all they could say; but these bursts of defiance generally ended in tears, for after a short half hour or so the music would begin to go tragically wrong, as her weak hand faltered on the bow.
"Oh!" she sobbed miserably, whenever this happened; "it's all gone; I shall never, never play again. I wish I were dead!"
Any emotion brought on a violent fit of coughing, which exhausted her to the verge of faintness, so that in the end she would have to be put to bed, where Joan would try to distract her by reading aloud. But Milly's attention was wont to wander, and looking up from the book Joan would find her sister's eyes turned longingly to the open window, and would think unhappily: "She's just like a thrush in a cage, poor Milly!"
Mrs. Ogden grew much more affectionate to her younger daughter, and caressed her frequently; but these caresses irritated rather than soothed, and sometimes Milly shrank perceptibly. When this happened Mrs. Ogden's eyes would fill with tears, and her working face would instinctively turn in Joan's direction for sympathy. "Oh, my God!" Joan once caught herself thinking, "will neither of them ever stop crying!" But this thought brought a swift retribution, for she was tormented for the rest of the day over what she felt to have been her heartlessness.
The maidservant left, as maids always did in moments of stress at Leaside; and once again Joan found herself submerged in housework. After her, as she swept and dusted, dragged Milly; always close at her heels, too ill to help, too unhappy to stay alone.
It took a long time to find a new servant, for Mrs. Ogden's nagging proclivities were becoming fairly well known, but at last a victim was secured and Joan breathed a sigh of relief. They scraped together enough money to hire a bath chair for Milly; it was the same bath chair that Colonel Ogden had used, only now a younger man tugged at the handle. This man was cheerful and familiar, possibly because Milly was so light a passenger and looked so young and ineffectual. He joked and spat at frequent intervals—the latter with an astounding dexterity of aim—and Milly hated him.
"I can't bear his spitting," she complained irritably to Joan. "It's simply disgusting!"
It was history repeating itself, for Mrs. Ogden accompanied the bath chair but seldom, and when she did so she managed to get on the patient's nerves. The daily task fell, therefore, to Joan, as it had to a great extent in her father's lifetime.
At this period Joan's hardest cross lay in the fact that she was never alone. She had grown accustomed to having her bedroom to herself during term time, but now there was no term time for Milly, and, moreover, Joan had moved into her mother's room. Milly complained that if Joan was there she lay awake trying not to cough, and that this choked her. She said, truthfully enough, that she had had a room to herself at Alexandra House for so long now that anyone in the next bed made her nervous, because she couldn't help listening to their breathing.
This change was not for the better so far as Joan was concerned, for Mrs. Ogden had become abnormally pervading in her bedroom since her husband's death. During his lifetime he had been the one to dominate this apartment as he had dominated the rest of the house; but now that James was corporeally absent there remained only his memory, which took up very little room; all the rest of the space was purely Mrs. Ogden, and she filled it to overflowing.
Joan did not realize to what an extent her mother had spread until they came to share a room. There was literally not an available inch for her things anywhere. The drawers were full, the cupboards were full; on the washstand was a fearsome array of medicine bottles which, together with a quantity of unneeded trifles, overflowed on to the dressing-table. And what was so disheartening was that Mrs. Ogden seemed incapable of making the necessary adjustments. She was far from resenting Joan's invasion; on the contrary, she liked having her daughter to sleep with her, and yet each new suggestion that necessitated the scrapping or the putting away of some of the odds and ends was met with resistance. "Oh! not that, darling; that was given to me when I was a girl in India"; or, "Joan, please don't move that lacquer box; I thought you knew that it came from the drawing-room at Chesham."
Her years of widowhood had developed the acquisitive instinct in Mrs. Ogden, who was fast becoming that terrible problem, the hoarder in the small house. With no husband to ridicule her or protest, she was able to indulge her mania for treasuring useless things. Joan discovered that the shelves were full of them. Little empty bottles, boxes of various size and shape, worn out hair-brushes, discarded garments, and even threadbare bedroom slippers, all neatly wrapped up and put away against some mythical day when they might be wanted, and all taking up an incredible amount of space. In the end she decided that she would have to let her own possessions remain where they were, in Milly's room.
Far more oppressive than lack of room, however, was the consciousness of a continual presence. It seemed to Joan that her mother had begun to haunt their bedroom. It was not only the exasperating performance of communal dressing and undressing, but she was never able to have the room to herself, even during the day; if she went upstairs for a few minutes' solitude, her mother was sure to follow her, on some pretext or another.
In spite of the hoarding instinct Mrs. Ogden was exaggeratedly tidy, and spent a great deal of time in straightening up after her daughter, with the result that the most necessary articles had a maddening way of disappearing. Mrs. Ogden had the acute kind of eye to which a crooked line is a torture; a picture a little out of the straight or a brush askew on the table was all that was required to set her off. Once launched, she fidgeted about the room, touching first this and then that, drawing the curtains an inch more forward, fiddling with the obdurate roller until the blind just skimmed the division in the sash window, putting a mat straight with the toe of her slipper, or running her fingers across the mantelpiece, which never failed to yield the expected harvest of dust. Sharing a bedroom, Joan found herself doing a hundred little odd jobs for her mother that she had never done before. It was not that Mrs. Ogden asked to be waited on in so many words, but she stood about and looked the request. Rather than endure this plaintive, wandering glance, Joan sewed on the skirt braid or found the lost handkerchief, or whatever else it happened to be at the moment.
But the long nights were the worst of all. Side by side, in a small double bed, lay the mother and daughter in dreadful proximity. Their bodies, tired and nervous after the day, were yet unable to avoid each other. Mrs. Ogden's circulation being very bad she could never sleep with less than four blankets and two hot-water bottles. The hot, rubbery smell of these bottles and the misery of the small double bed, became for Joan a symbol of all that Leaside stood for. She took to lying on the extreme edge of the bed, more out than in, in order to escape from the touch of her mother's flannel nightgown. But this precaution did not always save her, for Mrs. Ogden, who got a sense of comfort from another body beside her at night, would creep up close to her daughter.
"Hold my hand, darling; it's so cold." And Joan would take the groping hand and warm it between her own until her mother dropped asleep; but even then she dared not leave go, lest Mrs. Ogden should wake and begin to talk.
Lying there uncomfortably in the thick darkness, with her mother's hand held limply in her own, she would stare out in front of her with aching eyes and think. During those wakeful hours her brain worked furiously, her vision became appallingly clear and all-embracing. She reviewed her short past and her probably long future; she seemed to stand outside herself, a sympathetic spectator of Joan Ogden. When she slept she did so fitfully and the sleep was not refreshing. She must hire a camp bed she told herself over and over again, but where to put it when it came? There was not a foot of unused space in the bedroom. She thought seriously of flinging herself on Milly's mercy, and begging to be taken back into their old room, but a sense of self-preservation stopped her. She was certain, whatever the doctor said, that Milly's lungs were diseased, and she did not want to catch consumption and probably die of it. Queer that, for there was not much to live for in all conscience, and yet she was quite sure that she did not want to die.
With the morning would usually come a gleam of hope; perhaps on that day she would see Elizabeth, perhaps they would be as they had been, the dreadful barrier of coldness having somehow disappeared in the night. Sometimes she did see Elizabeth, it is true, but the barrier was still there, and these meetings were empty and unfruitful.
THAT August Joan's worst fears were justified, for Milly began to spit blood. Trying to play her violin one morning she was overtaken by a fit of coughing; she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth.
"Oh! Look, look, Joan, what is it? Oh, I'm frightened!"
They sent for Doctor Thomas, who ordered Milly to bed and examined her. His face was grey when he looked up at Joan, and they left the room together and went downstairs to Mrs. Ogden.
"It's terribly sudden and quite unexpected," Doctor Thomas said.
"But I simply can't believe it," wailed Mrs. Ogden. "She comes of such healthy stock, I simply can't believe it!"
"I'm afraid there is very little doubt, Mrs. Ogden; I myself have no doubt. Still, we had better have a consultation."
Mrs. Ogden protested: "But blood may come from all sorts of places; her stomach, her throat. She may even have bitten her tongue, poor child, when she was coughing."
The doctor shook his head. "No," he said; "I'm afraid not; but I should like to have a consultation at once, if you don't mind."
"I will not have a specialist in my house again," Mrs. Ogden repeated for about the fiftieth time in the last few months. "It was your specialist who killed my poor James!"
The doctor looked helplessly at Joan, and she saw fear in his old eyes. She felt certain that he was conscious of having made a terrible mistake, and was asking her dumbly to forgive, and to help him. His mouth worked a little as he took off his dimmed glasses to polish them.
"No one knows how this grieves me," he said unsteadily. "Why, I've known her since she was a baby."
From the depth of her heart Joan pitied him. "The lungs may have gone very suddenly," she said.
He looked at her gratefully. "And what about a consultation?" he asked with more confidence.
Joan turned to her mother. "There must be one," she told her.
"But not a specialist. Oh, please, not a specialist," implored Mrs. Ogden. "You don't know what a horror I have of them!"