"There's a colleague of mine down here, Doctor Jennings. I'd like to call him in, Mrs. Ogden, if you won't get a London man; but I'm afraid he can't say any more than I have."
"Is he a specialist?" inquired Mrs. Ogden suspiciously.
"No, oh no, just a general practitioner, but a very able young man."
Joan nodded. "Bring him this afternoon," she said.
The doctors arrived together about three o'clock. Joan, sitting in the dining-room, heard their peremptory ring and ran to open the door. She felt as though she were in a kind of dream; only half conscious of what was going on around her. In the dream she found herself shaking hands with Doctor Jennings, and then following him and Doctor Thomas upstairs. Doctor Jennings was young and clean and smelt a little of some disinfectant; it was not an unpleasant smell, rather the reverse, she thought. Milly looked up with wide, frightened eyes, from her pillow as they entered; Joan took her hand and kissed it. Doctor Jennings, who seemed very kind, smiled reassuringly at the patient while making his exhaustive examination, but once outside the bedroom his smile died away.
"I should like a few minutes alone with Doctor Thomas," he said.
Joan took them into the dining-room and left them. She began pacing up and down outside in the hall, listening vaguely to the murmur of their lowered voices. Presently Doctor Thomas looked out.
"Will you and your mother please come in now."
She went slowly into the drawing-room and fetched her mother; Mrs. Ogden looked up with a frightened face and clung to her arm.
"What do they say?" she demanded in a loud whisper.
The two doctors were standing by the window. "Please sit down, Mrs. Ogden," said Doctor Jennings, pushing forward a chair.
It was all over very soon and the doctors had left. They were completely agreed, it seemed; Milly's lungs were already far gone and there was practically no hope. Doctor Jennings would have liked to send her to Davos Platz, but she was not strong enough to take the journey, and in any case he seemed doubtful as to whether it was not too late.
So Milly was dying. Joan's eyes were dry while her mother sobbed quietly in her chair. Milly was dying, going away, going away from Seabourne for ever and ever. Milly was dying, Milly might very soon be dead. Her brain cleared; she began to remember little incidents in their childhood, little quarrels, little escapades. Milly had broken a breakfast-cup one day and had not owned up; Milly had cried over her sums and had sometimes been cheeky to Elizabeth. Milly was dying. WherewasElizabeth, why wasn't she here? She must find her at once and tell her that Milly was going to die, that Milly was as good as dead already. Elizabeth would be sorry; she had never really liked Milly, still, she would begin to like her now out of pity—people did that when someone was dying.
She got up. "I'm going to the Rodneys'," she said.
"Oh! don't leave me, don't leave me now, Joan," wailed Mrs. Ogden.
"I must for a little while; try to stop crying, dearest, and go up to Milly. But bathe your eyes first, though; she oughtn't to see them looking red."
Mrs. Ogden walked feebly to the door; she looked old and pinched, she looked more than her age.
"Don't be long," she implored.
In the street, Joan saw one or two people she knew, and crossed over, in order to avoid them. It was hot and the sea glared fearfully; she could feel the sun beating down on her head, and putting up her hand found that she was hatless. She quickened her steps.
Elizabeth was upstairs sorting clothes, they lay in little heaps on the bed and chairs; she looked up as Joan came in.
"I'm thinking of having a jumble sale," she said, and then stopped.
Joan sat down on a pile of nightgowns. "It's Milly—they say she's dying."
Elizabeth caught her breath. "Whatdoyou mean, Joan?"
Joan told her all there was to tell, from the blood on the handkerchief that morning to the consultation in the afternoon. Elizabeth listened in shocked silence.
At last she said: "It's awful, simply awful—and you were right all along."
"Yes, I knew it; I don't know how."
"Joan, make your mother let me help to do the nursing; I'm not a bad nurse, at least I don't think I am, and after all I'd be better than a stranger, for the child knows me."
"They say she may live for some little time yet, but they can't be sure, she may die very soon. Are you quite certain you want to help, Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth stared at her. So it had come to this: Joan was not sure that she would want to help in this extremity, was capable of supposing that she could stand aside while Joan took the whole burden on her own shoulders. Good God! how far apart they had drifted.
"I shall come to Leaside and begin to-morrow," was all she said.
Seabourne was genuinely shocked at the news. Of course they had all been saying for months past that Milly was consumptive, but somehow this was different, entirely different. People vied with each other in kindness to the Ogdens, touched by Milly's youth and Mrs. Ogden's new grief. Friends, and even mere acquaintances, inquired daily, at first; their perpetual bell-ringing jangled through the house, tearing at the nerves of the overstrained inmates. Still, all these people meant so well, one had to remember that.
The Bishop of Blumfield wrote a long letter of sympathy and encouragement, and Aunt Ann sent three woolly bed jackets that she had knitted herself. Richard wrote his usual brief epistle to Joan, but it was very kind; and Lawrence came to Leaside once a week, loaded like a pack mule with practical gifts from Mrs. Benson.
Milly, thin and flushed in her bed upstairs, was pleased at the attention she was receiving. She knew now that she was very ill and at times spoke about dying, but Joan doubted whether she ever realized how near death she was, for on her good days she would begin making elaborate plans for the future, and scheming to get back to the College as soon as possible.
She died in November after a violent hæmorrhage that came on suddenly in the middle of the night. Beyond the terror of that hæmorrhage there was nothing fearful in Milly's passing; she slept herself into the next world with her cheek against the pillow, and even after she was dead they still thought that she was sleeping.
She was buried in the local cemetery, near her father. There were countless wreaths and crosses and a big chrysanthemum cushion with "Rest in Peace" straggling across it in violets, from the students of Alexandra House. A good many people cried over Milly's death, principally because she had been so pretty and had died so young. Seabourne was shocked and depressed over it all; it seemed like a reproach to the place, the going out of this bright young creature. They remembered how talented she had been, how much they had admired her playing, and began telling each other anecdotes that they had heard about her childhood. But Joan could not cry; her heart was full of bitterness and resentment.
"She broke away," she thought. "Milly broke away, but only for a time; Seabourne got her in the end, as it gets us all!"
MILLY'S death had aged Mrs. Ogden; she did not speak of it on every occasion as she had of her widowhood, but seemed rather to shrink from any mention of the subject, even by Joan. The sudden, awful climax of an illness which she had persisted in regarding lightly; the emergence of the horrid family skeleton of disease in one of her own children, the fact that Milly had died so young and that she had never been able to love her as she loved Joan, all combined to make an indelible impression which she bore plainly on her face. People said with that uncompromising truthfulness which is apt to accompany sympathy: "Poor thing, she does look old, and she used to be such a pretty woman; she's got no trace of that now, poor soul." And it was true; her soft hair had lost its gloss and begun to thin; her eyes, once so charmingly brown and pathetic, were paler in colour and smaller by reason of the puffiness beneath them. She stooped a little and her figure was no longer so girlish; there was a vague spread about it, although she was still thin.
Her religion gripped her more firmly than ever, and Father Cuthbert was now a constant visitor at Leaside. He and his "daughter," as he called Mrs. Ogden, were often closeted together for a long time, and perhaps he was able to console her, for she seemed less unhappy after these visits. Joan watched this religious fervour with even greater misgivings than she had had before; the fasting and praying increased alarmingly, but she could not now find it in her heart to interfere. She wished that her mother would talk about Milly; about her illness and death, or even bring herself to take an interest in the selection of the tombstone. She felt that anything would be better than this stony silence. But the selection of the tombstone was left to Joan, for Mrs. Ogden cried bitterly when it was mentioned.
Joan could not pretend that Milly had formed an essential part of her life; in their childhood there had been no love lost between them, and although there had been a certain amount of affection later on, it had never been very strong. Yet for all this, she mourned her sister; the instinct of protection that had chained her to Milly in her last illness was badly shocked and outraged. That Milly's poor little fight for self-expression should have ended as it had done, in failure and death, seemed to her both cruel and unjust. She could not shake off a sense of indignation against the Power that so ruthlessly allowed these things to happen; she felt as though something had given her a rude mental shove, from which she found it difficult to regain her balance.
Prayer with Joan had always been extemporary, indulged in at irregular intervals, as the spirit moved her. But in the past she had been capable of praying fervently at times, with a childlike confidence that Someone was listening; now she did not pray at all, because she had nothing to say.
She missed Milly's presence about the house disproportionately, considering how little that presence had meant when it was there. The place felt empty when she remembered that her sister would never come home again for holidays, would never again lie chattering far into the night about the foolish trifles that had interested her. She had often been frankly bored with Milly in the past, but now she wished with all her heart that Milly were back again to bore her; back again to litter up their room with the rubbish that always collected around her, and above all back again to play so wonderfully on her inferior violin.
Their joint nursing of Milly in her last illness had gone far to draw Joan and Elizabeth closer once more. Elizabeth had been splendidly devoted, splendidly capable, as she always was; she seemed to have softened. For three months after Milly's death they forbore to discuss their plans, and when, in the end, Elizabeth broached the subject, she was gentle and reasonable, and seemed anxious not to hurry Joan.
But Joan ached to get away; to leave the house and never set foot inside it again, to leave Seabourne and try to forget that such a place existed, to blot out the memory of Milly's tragedy, in action and hard work. She began to read furiously for Cambridge. A terror possessed her that she had let herself get too rusty, and she tormented Elizabeth with nervous doubts and fears. She lost all self-confidence and worked badly in consequence, but persisted with dogged determination.
Elizabeth laughed at her. She knew that she was worrying herself needlessly, and told her so; and as they gradually resumed their hours of study Joan's panic subsided.
At the end of another three months Joan spoke to her mother.
"Dearest, I want to talk about the future."
Mrs. Ogden looked up as though she did not understand. "What future?" she asked.
"My future, your future. I want you to let me find you a tiny flat in London. I know we've discussed this before, but we never came to any conclusion, and now I think we must."
Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "Oh! no," she said. "I shall never leave here now."
"Why not? This house will be much too big for you when you're alone."
"Alone?"
"Yes; when I go to Cambridge, as I want to do in the autumn."
There was a long silence. Mrs. Ogden dropped her sewing and looked at her daughter steadily; and then:
"You really mean this, about Cambridge, Joan?"
Joan hesitated uncomfortably; she wished her mother would not adopt this quiet tone, which was belied by the expression in her eyes.
"Well, if I don't go now, I shall never go at all. I'm nearly twenty-four already," she temporized.
"So you are, nearly twenty-four. How time flies, dear."
"We're hedging," thought Joan. "I must get to the point."
"Look here, Mother," she said firmly. "I want to talk this out with you and tell you all my plans; you have a right to know, and, besides, I shall need your help. I want to take a scholarship at Cambridge in the autumn, if I can. I shall only have my twenty-five pounds a year, I know, because Milly's share you'll need for yourself, but Elizabeth has some money put by, and she's offered to let me borrow from her until I can earn something. I'm hoping that if it's not too late, I might manage to hang out for a medical degree, but even if that's impossible I ought to find some sort of work if I do well at college. And then there's another thing." She hesitated for a moment but plunged on. "If you had a tiny place of your own it would cost much less, as I've always told you. Say just two or three comfortable rooms, for, of course, there wouldn't be money enough for you to keep up a flat for the two of us; but that wouldn't matter, because Elizabeth's got a flat of her own in London, and could always put me up when I was there. If you were in London I should feel so much happier about it all; I could look after you better, don't you see? We could see so much more of each other; and then if you were ill, or anything—and another thing is that you'd have a little more money to spend. You could go and stay with people; you might even be able to go abroad in the winter sometimes. Dearest, you do understand, don't you?"
Mrs. Ogden was silent. She had turned rather pale, but when she spoke her voice was quite gentle.
"I'm trying to understand, my dear," she said. "Let's see if I've got it right. You say you mean to take your own money and go up to Cambridge in the autumn. I suppose you'll stay there the usual time, and then continue your studies at a hospital or some place; that's what they do, don't they? Some day you hope to become a doctor, or if that fails to find some other paid work, in order to be free to live away from me. You mean to break up our home, if you can, and to take me to London as a peace offering to your conscience, and when I'm there you hope to have the time to run in and see me occasionally. I'm right, aren't I; it would be only occasionally? For between your work and Elizabeth your time would be pretty well taken up."
Joan made a sound of protest.
"No, don't interrupt me," said her mother quietly; "I'm trying to show you that I understand. Well, now, what does it all mean? It seems to me that it means just this: I've lost your father, I've lost your sister, and now I'm to lose you. Well, Joan, I'm not an old woman yet, so I can't plead age as an excuse for my timidity, and what would be my awful loneliness; but Milly's death has shaken me very much, and I'm afraid, yes, afraid to live in a strange place by myself. You may think I'm a coward; well, perhaps I am, but the fact remains that what friends I have are in Seabourne, and I don't feel that I can begin all over again now. Then there's the money; if you take your money out of the home, little as it is, I shall find it difficult to make ends meet. I'm not a good manager—I never have been—and without you"—her voice trembled—"without you, my dear, I don't see how I should get on at all. But what's the good of talking; your mind's made up. Joan," she said with sudden violence, "do you know how much you are to me? What parting from you will mean?"
"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Joan desperately, "you won't be parting from me really; you'd have to let me go if I were a son, or if I married—well, that's all I'm asking, just to be treated like that."
Mrs Ogden smiled. "Yes, but you're Joan and not a son, and you're not married yet, you see, and that makes all the difference."
"Then you won't come to London?"
"No, Joan, I won't leave this house. I have very sacred memories here and I won't leave them."
"Oh, Mother, please try to see my side! I can't give up what's all the world to me; I can't go on living in Seabourne and never doing anything worth while all the rest of my life; you've no right to ask it of me!"
"I don't ask it of you; I've some pride. Take your money and go whenever you like; go to Elizabeth. I shall stay on here alone."
"Mother, I can't go while you feel like this about it, and if I take my money and I'm not here to manage you can't stay on in this house; it's impossible, when every penny counts, as it does with us. Won't you think it over, for my sake? Won't you promise to think it over for, say, three months? I needn't go to London until some time in August. Mother,please! Mother, you must know that I love you, that I've always loved you dearly ever since I was a little girl, only now I want my own life; I want work, I want——"
"You want Elizabeth," said Mrs. Ogden gently. "You want to live with Elizabeth."
Joan was silent. It was true, she did want to live with Elizabeth; she wanted her companionship, her understanding, her help in work and play; all that she stood for of freedom and endeavour. Only with Elizabeth could she hope to make good, to break once and for all the chains that bound her to the old life. If she lived with her mother she would never get free; it was good-bye to a career, even a humble one.
She knew that in her vacations she would want leisure for reading, but she could visualize what would happen when Mrs. Ogden had had time, during her absence, to store up a million trifling duties against her return. She could picture the hundred and one small impediments that would be thrown, consciously or unconsciously, in her way, if she did succeed in getting work. And above all she had a clear vision of the everlasting silent protest that would be so much more unendurable than words; the aggrieved atmosphere that would surround her.
"Mother," she said firmly, "it's true, I must live with Elizabeth if I'm ever to make good. If you won't consent to coming to London I shall have to go somehow, just the same, but I shan't go until about the middle of August, and I want you to think it over in the meantime."
Mrs. Ogden got up. "I think we've talked long enough," she said. "In any case, I have; I feel very tired." And going slowly to the door she left the room.
Joan sat and stared at the floor. It had been quite fruitless, as it had been in the past; she and her mother could never meet on the ground of mutual understanding and tolerance. Then why did they love each other? Why that added fetter?
The discussion that evening had held some new features. Her mother's calmness, for one thing; she had been nonplussed by it, not expecting it. Her mother had told her to take her money and go whenever she pleased; yes, but go how? What her mother gave with one hand she took away with the other. If she left her now it would be with the haunting knowledge of having left a woman who either would not or could not adapt herself to the changed circumstances; who would harbour a grievance to the end of her days. Her mother's very devotion was a weapon turned ruthlessly against her daughter, capable of robbing her of all peace of mind. This would be a bad beginning for strenuous work; and yet her mother had undoubtedly some right on her side. She had lost her husband, and she had lost Milly, and even supposing that neither of them had represented to her what Joan did, still death, when it came, was always terrible. And the talk, the gossip there would be! Everyone in Seabourne would pity her for having such an unnatural daughter; they would lift their eyebrows and purse their lips. "Very strange, a most peculiar young woman." Oh, yes, all Seabourne would be scandalized if she left home, especially at such a time. She would be thought utterly callous and odd; a kind of heartless freak.
Then there had been the subterfuge about her staying occasionally with Elizabeth. She had said, in a voice that she had tried to make casual: "Elizabeth has a flat of her own in London, and she could always put me up when I was there." That had been a lie, pure and simple, because she was a coward when it came to hurting people. She had tried to cloak her real purpose, and her mother had seen through her with humiliating ease. It was true enough that Mrs. Ogden would have to economize, and would find herself in a better position to cope with the changed circumstances if she took a flat just big enough for herself; but was that her only motive for not wanting her mother to have a spare bedroom? She knew that it was not. She despised herself for having descended to lies. Was she becoming a liar? The answer was not far to seek; she had lied not only to save her mother pain, but because she had not had the courage to say straight out that she intended leaving her mother's home for that of another woman. She had realized that in doing such a thing she was embarking upon the unusual; this she had felt the moment she came to putting her intention into words, and she had funked the confession.
She stopped to consider this aspect carefully. It wasunusual, and because it was unusual she had been embarrassed; a hitherto unsuspected respect for convention had assailed her. She had never heard of any girl of her acquaintance taking such a step, now that she came to think of it. It was quite a common thing for men to share rooms with a friend, and, of course, girls left home when they married. When they married. Ah! that was the point, that was what made all the difference, as her mother had pointed out. If she had been able to say: "I'm going to marry Richard in August," even although the separation would still have been there, she doubted whether, in the end, her mother would really have offered any strenuous opposition. Pain she would have felt; she remembered the scene with her mother that day long ago, when Richard had proposed to her, but it would have been quite a different sort of pain; there would have been less bitterness in the thought, because marriage had the weight of centuries of custom behind it.
Centuries of custom, centuries of precedent! They pressed, they crushed, they suffocated. If you gave in to them you might venture to hope to live somehow, but if you opposed them you broke yourself to pieces against their iron flanks. She saw it all; it was not her fault, it was not her mother's fault. They were just two poor straws being asked to swim against the current of that monster tyrant: "the usual thing!"
She got up and walked feverishly about the room. Theymustswim against the current; it was ridiculous, preposterous that because she did not marry she should be forced to live a crippled existence. What real difference could it possibly make to her mother's loneliness if her daughter shared a flat with Elizabeth instead of with a husband? No difference at all, except in precedent. Then it was only by submitting to precedent that you could be free? What she was proposing seemed cruel now, even to herself; and why? Because it was not softened and toned down by precedent, not wreathed in romance as the world understood romance. "Good God!" she thought bitterly, "can there be no development of individuality in this world without hurting oneself or someone else?" She clenched her fists. "I don't care, I don't care! I've a right to my life, and I shall go in August. I defy precedent. I'm Joan Ogden, a law unto myself, and I mean to prove it."
ELIZABETH'S attitude towards the new decision to leave Seabourne made Joan uneasy. Elizabeth said nothing at all, merely nodding her head. Joan thought that she was worried and unhappy about something, but tried in vain to find out the reason.
They worked on steadily together; but she began to miss the old enthusiasm that had made of Elizabeth the perfect teacher. Now she was dull and dispirited, even a little abstracted at times. It was clear that her mind was not in their work. Was it because she doubted their going to London in August? If Elizabeth began to weaken seriously, Joan felt that all must indeed be lost. She needed support and encouragement, as never before, now that she had taken the plunge and told her mother definitely for the last time that she meant to break away. She felt that with Elizabeth's whole-hearted support she could manage somehow to stand out against the odds, but if she was not to be believed in, if Elizabeth lost faith in her, then she doubted her own strength to carry things through.
"Elizabeth," she said, with a note of fear in her voice, "you feel quite certain that we shall go?"
Elizabeth looked up from the book she was reading. "I don't know, Joan."
"But I've told Mother definitely that I intend to go in August."
"Yes, I know you have."
"But you're doubtful? You think I shall go back on you again?"
"You won't mean to do that, but so many things happen, don't they? I think I'm getting superstitious."
"Nothing is going to happen this time," said Joan, in a voice which she tried vainly to make firm. "I'm not the weak sort of thing that you seem to think me, and in August I go to London!"
Elizabeth took her hand and held it. "I could weep over you!" she said.
The days were slipping by. It was now June and Mrs. Ogden still persisted in her refusal to leave Seabourne. On this point Joan found herself up against an opposition stronger than any she had had to meet before. Gently but firmly, her mother stuck to her decision.
"You go, my dear," she said constantly now. "You go, and God bless you and take care of you, my Joan." She seemed to be all gentleness and resignation. "After all, I'm not as young as I was, and I'm dull and tiresome, I know."
She had grown thinner in the past few weeks, and her stoop was more pronounced. Joan knew that she must be sleeping badly, for she could hear her moving about her room well into the small hours. Her appetite, always poor, appeared to fail completely.
"Oh! Mother, do try to eat something. Are you ill?"
"No, no, my dear, of course not, but I don't feel very hungry."
"Mother, I must know; is your head worrying you again?"
"I didn't say it was; what makes you ask?"
"Because you sit pressing it with your hand so often. Does it ache?"
"A little, but it's nothing at all; don't worry, darling; go on with your studying."
Joan often discovered her now crying quietly by herself, but as she came in her mother would make as though to whisk the tears away.
"Mother, you're crying!"
"No, I'm not, dearest; my eyes are a little weak, that's all."
Towards Elizabeth she appeared to have changed even more completely. Now she was always urging her to come to meals. "You'll want to talk things over with Joan," she would say. "Please stop to lunch to-day, Elizabeth; you two must have a thousand plans to discuss."
She spoke quite openly to Elizabeth about Joan's chances of taking a scholarship at Cambridge, and what their life together would be in London. She sighed very often, it is true, and sometimes her eyes would fill with tears, but when this happened she would smile bravely. "Don't take any notice of me, Elizabeth; I'm just a foolish old woman."
Joan's heart ached with misery. This new, submissive, gentle mother was like the pathetic figure of her childhood; a creature difficult to resist, and still more difficult to coerce. Something so utterly helpless that it called up all the chivalry and protectiveness of which her nature was capable.
She found a little parcel on her dressing-table one evening containing six knitted ties and a note, which said: "For my Joan to wear at Cambridge. I knitted them when I couldn't sleep." Joan laid down her head and cried bitterly.
In so many little ways her mother was showing thought for her. She found her going through her clothes one day. "Mother, what on earth are you doing?"
"Just looking over your things, dearest. I see you'll need new stockings and a new hat or two. Oh! and, Joan, do you really think these vests are warm enough? I believe Cambridge is very damp."
She began to seek out Elizabeth, and whereas, before, she had contented herself more or less with generalities regarding Cambridge and Joan's life with her friend, she now appeared to want a detailed description of everything.
"Elizabeth," she said one day, "come and sit here by me. I want you to tell me all about your flat. Describe it to me, tell me what it looks like, and then I can picture you two to myself after Joan's gone. Is it sunny? Where is the flat? Isn't it somewhere near the Edgware Road?"
"In Bloomsbury," said Elizabeth rather shortly; then she saw that Joan was listening, and added hastily: "Let me see, is it sunny? Yes, I think it is, rather; it's a very tiny affair, you know."
"Oh, but big enough for you two, I expect; I wonder if I shall ever see it."
"Of course you will, Mother," said Joan eagerly. "Why we expect you to come up and stay with us; don't we, Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth assented, but Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "No, not that, my dear, you won't want to be bothered with me; but it's a darling thought of yours all the same. And now, Elizabeth, tell me all about Cambridge. When I'm alone here in the evenings I shall want to be able to make pictures of the place where my Joan is working."
Elizabeth felt uncomfortable and suspicious; was Mrs. Ogden making a fool of her, of them both? She tried to describe the town and then the colleges, with the Backs running down to the river, but even to herself her voice sounded hard and unsympathetic.
"Oh, dear, I'm afraid I've bored you," said Mrs. Ogden apologetically.
And Elizabeth, looking across at Joan, saw an angry light in her eyes.
Mrs. Ogden gave the maid-servant notice, without consulting her daughter, who knew nothing about it until the girl came to her to protest. "The mistress has given me a month's notice, and I'm sure I do no what I've done. It's a hard place and she's awful to please, but I've done my best. I have indeed!"
Joan went in search of her mother. "Why on earth have you given Ellen notice?" she demanded. "She's the best girl we've ever had."
"I know she is," said Mrs. Ogden, who was studying her bank book.
"Then why——?"
"Well, you see, darling, I shan't be able to afford a servant when you've gone, so I thought it better to give her notice at once. Of course I couldn't very well tell her why I was sending her away, could I?"
Joan collapsed into a chair. "But, good heavens, Mother! You can't do the housework. Surely with a little management you might have kept her on; she only gets nineteen pounds a year!"
"Ah! but there's her food and washing," said Mrs. Ogden patiently.
"But what do you propose to do? You can't sweep floors and that sort of thing; this is awful!"
"Now don't begin to worry, Joan. I shall be perfectly all right; I can have a charwoman twice a week."
"But what about the cooking, Mother?"
"Oh, that will be easy, darling; you know how little I eat."
Joan began walking about the room, a trick she had acquired lately when worried. "It's impossible!" she protested. "You'll end by making yourself very ill."
Mrs. Ogden got up and kissed her. "Do you think," she said softly, "that I can't make sacrifices for my girl, when she demands them of me?"
"Oh, Mother, I do beg of you to come to London! I know I could make you comfortable there."
Mrs. Ogden drew herself away. "No, I can't do that," she said. "I've lived here since you and Milly were little children, my husband died here and so did your sister; you mustn't ask me to leave my memories, Joan."
In July the servant left. "No, darling, don't do the housework for me; I must learn to do things for myself," said her mother, as Joan was going into the kitchen as a matter of course.
A period of chaos ensued. Mrs. Ogden struggled with brooms and slop-pails as a mosquito might struggle with Cleopatra's Needle. The food she prepared came out of tins, for the most part, and what was fresh was spoilt before it reached the table. Their meals were tragedies, and when on one occasion Joan's endurance gave out over a particularly nasty stew, Mrs. Ogden burst into tears.
"Oh! and I did try so hard!" she sobbed.
Joan put her arms round her. "You poor darling," she comforted, "don't cry; it's not so bad, really; only I don't see how I'm ever to leave you."
Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes. "But you must leave me," she said steadily. "I want you to go, since you've set your heart on it."
"Well, I do believe you'll starve!" said Joan, between laughter and tears.
Every evening Mrs. Ogden was worn out. She could not read, she could not sew; whenever she tried her eyelids drooped and she had to give it up. In the end she was forced to sit quietly with closed eyes. Joan, watching her apprehensively from the other side of the lamp, would feel her heart tighten.
"Mother, go to bed; you're tired to death."
"Oh, no, darling, I'll sit up with you; I shall have plenty of evenings to go to bed early when you've gone."
Not content, apparently, with moderate hours of work, Mrs. Ogden bought an alarm clock. The first that Joan knew of this instrument of torture was when it woke her with a fearful start at six-thirty one morning. She could not exactly locate whence the sound came, but rushed instinctively into her mother's room.
"What is it? Are you ill? What was that bell?" she panted.
Mrs. Ogden, already out of bed, pointed triumphantly to the alarm. "I had to get it to wake me up," she explained.
"But, my dear mother, it's only half-past six; you can't get up at this hour!"
"There's the kitchen fire to light, darling, and I want you to have a really hot bath by half-past seven."
Joan groaned. "Go back to bed at once," she ordered, giving her a gentle push. "I'll light the kitchen fire; this is ridiculous!"
It was the middle of July; only a few weeks more and then freedom. "Freedom, freedom, freedom!" repeated Joan to herself in a kind of desperation. "I'm going to be free at last." But something in her shrank and weakened. "No, no," she thought in terror. "I will leave her; Imust."
She sought Elizabeth out for comfort. "Only a few weeks now, Elizabeth."
"Yes, only a few weeks now," repeated Elizabeth flatly. They went on with their plans with quiet stubbornness. They spent a day in London buying their furniture on the hire system; the selection was not very varied, but they could not afford to go elsewhere. They chose fumed oak for the most part, and blue-grey curtains with art carpets to match them. Their greatest extravagance was a large roomy bookcase.
Joan said: "Think of it; this is for our books, yours and mine."
Elizabeth smiled and pressed her hand. "Are you happy, my dear?" she asked doubtfully.
Joan flared up. "What a ridiculous question to ask; but perhaps you're not happy?"
"Oh, don't!" said Elizabeth, turning away.
They had tea in the restaurant of the "Furniture Emporium," tepid Indian tea and stale pound cake.
"Ugh!" said Joan disgustedly, as she tried to drink the mixture.
"Yes, it's undrinkable," Elizabeth agreed.
They paid for the meal which they had left untouched, and catching a bus, went to the station.
On their way home in the train they sat silent. They were very tired, but it was not that which made speech difficult, but rather the sense of deep disappointment oppressing them both. No, it had not been at all like they had expected, this choosing of the furniture for their home together; something intangible had spoilt it all. "It was my fault," Joan thought miserably. "It was all my fault. I meant to be happy, I wanted to be, but I wasn't a bit—and Elizabeth saw it."
When they said "Good night" at the Rodneys' house they clung to each other for a moment in silence.
"Go. Oh, do go!" said Elizabeth brokenly, and Joan went with drooping head.
IT had come. Joan lay awake and realized that this was her last night in Seabourne. She got up and lit the gas. Her eyes roved round the familiar bedroom; there was Milly's bed—they had not had it moved after her death, and there was the old white wardrobe and the dressing-table, and the crazy arm-chair off which she and Milly had torn the caster when they were children. The caster had never been replaced. "How like Seabourne," she thought, smiling ruefully. "Casters never get themselves replaced here; nothing does."
She looked at her new trunk, already locked and strapped; it had been a present from her mother, and her name, "Joan Ogden," was painted across its top in white block letters. "I thought it safer to put the full name," her mother had said.
The blind flapped and the gas flame blew sideways; it was windy, and the thud of the sea on shingles came in and seemed to fill the room. "I am happy!" she told herself; "I'm very happy."
How brave her mother had been that evening; she had smiled and talked just as though nothing unusual were about to happen, but oh! how miserably tired she had looked, and ill. Was she going to be ill? Joan's heart seemed to stop beating; suppose her mother should get ill all alone in the house! She had never thought of that before, but of course she would be alone every night, now that she had sent away the servant. What was to be done? It was dangerous, terribly dangerous for a woman of that age to sleep alone in the house. She pulled herself up sharply; oh, well, she would speak to her in the morning and tell her that she must have a maid. Of course it was all nonsense; she must afford one. But what about to-morrow night? She couldn't get a servant by that time. Never mind; nothing was likely to happen in one or two nights. No, but it might be weeks before she found a maid; what was to be done?
If her mother got ill, would she telegraph for her? Yes, of course; and yet how could she if she were alone in the house? "Oh, stop, stop!" cried Joan aloud to herself. "Stop all this, I tell you!" She had an overwhelming desire to rush into her mother's room on the instant, and wake her up, just to see that she was alive, but she controlled herself. "Perhaps she's crying," she thought, and started towards the door. "No," she said resolutely, "I will not go in and see her!"
She began to think of Elizabeth too; of her face when they had said good-bye that afternoon. "Don't be late in calling for me," she had cautioned, and Elizabeth had answered: "I shan't be late, Joan." What was it that she fancied she had seen in Elizabeth's eyes and heard in her voice? Not anger, certainly, and not actually tears; but something new, something rather dreadful, a sort of entreaty. She shuddered. Oh, why could there never be any real happiness for Joan Ogden, never any real fulfilment, never any joy that was quite without blemish? She felt that her unlucky star shed its beams over everyone with whom she came in contact, everyone she loved; those beams had touched Elizabeth and scorched her. Yet how much she loved Elizabeth; she would have laid down her life to save her pain. But she loved her mother too, not quite in the same way, but deeply, very deeply. She knew this, now that she was about to leave her; she had always known it, of course, but now that their parting was near at hand the fact seemed to blaze forth with renewed force. She began thinking about love in the abstract. Love was jealous of being divided; it did not admit of your really loving more than one creature at a time. She remembered vaguely having thought this before, years ago. Yet in her case this could not be true, for she loved them both, terribly, desperately, and yet could not serve them both. No, she could not serve them both, but she had chosen.
She lay down on her bed again and buried her face in the pillow. "Oh, Elizabeth," she whispered, "I will come, I will be faithful, I swear I will."
They breakfasted at Leaside at eight o'clock, for Joan's train left at ten-thirty. At ten o'clock Elizabeth would arrive with the fly. Joan could not swallow.
"Eat something, my darling," said Mrs. Ogden tenderly. She looked as though she had been crying all night, her eyes were red and swollen, but she smiled bravely whenever she saw her daughter's glance turned in her direction.
She refused to give in about not sleeping alone. "Nonsense," she said brusquely, when Joan implored, "I shall be all right; don't be silly, darling."
But she did not look as though she would be all right, and Joan searched her brain desperately for some new scheme, but found none. What was she to do? And in less than two hours now she would be gone. Throwing her arms round her mother's neck she dropped her head on her shoulder.
"I can't leave you like this," she said desperately.
Mrs. Ogden's tears began to fall. "But you must leave me, Joan; I want you to go."
They clung together, forlorn and miserable.
"You will write, Mother, very often?"
"Very often, my Joan, and you must too."
"Every day," Joan promised. "Every day."
She went up to her room and began to pack her bag, but, contrary to custom, Mrs. Ogden did not follow her. At a quarter to ten she came downstairs; her mother was nowhere to be seen.
"Mother!" she called anxiously, "where are you?"
"In my room, darling," came the answer from behind a closed door. "I'll be down in a minute; you wait where you are."
Joan wandered about the drawing-room. It had changed very little in all these years; the wallpaper was the same, though faded now, there were the same pink curtains and chairs, all shabby and reflecting the fallen family fortunes. The turquoise blue tiles in the grate alone remained startlingly bright and aggressive. The engraving of Admiral Sir William Routledge looked down on her as if with interest; she wondered if he were pleased or angry at the step his descendant was about to take; perhaps, as he had been a man of action, he was pleased. "'Nelson's Darling' ought at least to admire my courage!" she thought ruefully, and turned her back on him. She sat down in the Nelson arm-chair.
Nelson's chair, how her mother had treasured it, how she did still; her poor little mother. Joan patted the extended arms with tender hands, and rested her head wearily where Nelson's head was said to have rested. "Good-bye," she murmured, with a lump in her throat.
She began to feel anxious about her mother. It was five minutes to ten; what on earth was she doing? In another five minutes Elizabeth would come with the fly. Her mother had told her to wait in the drawing-room, but she could not wait much longer, she must go and find her. At that moment the door opened quietly and Mrs. Ogden came in. She was all in grey; a soft, pearly grey, the colour of doves' feathers. Her hair was carefully piled, high on her head, and blended in softness and shine with the grey of her dress; she must have bathed her eyes, for they looked bright again and almost young. She came forward, stretching out her arms.
Joan sprang up. "Mother! It's—why it's the old dress, the same dress you wore years ago on our last Anniversary Day. Oh! I remember it so well; that's the dress that made you look like a grey dove, I remember thinking that." The outstretched arms folded round her. "What made you put it on to-day?" she faltered, "it makes you look so pretty!"
Mrs. Ogden stroked her cheek. "I wanted you to remember me like this," she whispered. "And, Joan, this is Anniversary Day."
Joan started. "So it is," she stammered, "and I had forgotten."
The door-bell clanged loudly. "Let the charwoman answer it." said Mrs. Ogden, "she's here this morning."
They heard the front door open and close.
"Joan!" came Elizabeth's voice from the hall. "Joan!"
No one answered, and in a moment or two Elizabeth had come into the room. Joan and her mother were standing hand in hand, like two children.
Elizabeth said sharply: "Joan, we shall miss the train, are you ready?"
Joan let go of Mrs. Ogden's hand and stepped forward; she was deadly pale and her eyes shone feverishly. When she spoke her voice sounded dry, like autumn leaves crushed under foot.
"I'm not coming, Elizabeth; I can't leave her."
Elizabeth made a little inarticulate sound in her throat: "Joan!"
"I'm not coming, Elizabeth, I can't leave her."
"Joan, for the last time I ask you: Will you come with me?"
"No!" said Joan breathlessly. "No, I can't."
Elizabeth turned without another word and left the room and the house. Joan heard the door clang dully after her, and the sound of wheels that grew fainter and fainter as the fly lumbered away.
The queer days succeeded each other like phantoms. Looking back on the week which elapsed between Elizabeth's going and her last letter, Joan found that she could remember very little of that time, or of the days that followed. She moved about, ate her food, got up and went to bed in a kind of stupor, broken by moments of dreadful lucidity.
On the sixth day came the letter in the familiar handwriting. The paper bore no address, only the date, "August, 1901;" a London postmark was on the envelope.
Elizabeth wrote:
JOAN,I knew that you would never come to me, I think I have known it in my heart for a long time. But I must have been a proud and stubborn woman, for I would not admit my failure until the very last. I had a hundred things to keep hope alive in me; your splendid brain, your longing to free yourself from Seabourne and what it stands for, the strength of all the youth in you, and then the love I thought you had for me. Yes, I counted a great deal on that, perhaps because I judged it by my love for you. I was wrong, you see, your love did not hold, it was not strong enough to give you your liberty; or was it that you were too strong to take it? I don't know.Joan, I shall never come back, I cannot come back. I must go away from you, tear you out of me, forget you. You have had too much of me already. Oh! far too much! But now I have taken it back, all, all; for I will not go into my new life incomplete.I wonder if you have ever realized what my life at Seabourne has been? So unendurable at times that but for you I think I should have ended it. The long, long days with their dreadful monotony, three hundred and sixty-five of them in every year; and then the long, long years!I used to go home from Leaside in the evening, and sit in the study with Ralph and Uncle John's portrait, and feel as if tight fingers were squeezing my throat; as if I were being suffocated under the awful plush folds of the curtains. I used to have the horrible idea that Seabourne had somehow become a living, embodied entity, of which Ralph and Old Uncle John and the plush curtains and the smell of mildew that always hung about Ralph's books, all formed a terrifying part. Then I used to look at myself in the glass when I got up every morning, and count the lines on my face one by one, and realize that my youth was slipping past me; with every one of those three hundred and sixty-five days a little less of it remained, a little more went into the toothless jaws of Seabourne.Joan, I too have had my ambition, I too once meant to make good. When I first came to take care of Ralph's house, I never intended to stay for more than a year at most. I meant to go to London and be a journalist if they'd have me; in any case I meant to work, out in the real world, the world that has passed Seabourne by, long ago.Then I saw you, an overgrown colt of a child, all legs and arms. I began to teach you, and gradually, very gradually, you became Seabourne's ally. You never knew it, but at moments I did; you were helping the place to hold me. My interest in you, in your personality, your unusual ability; the joy it was to teach you, and later the deep love I felt for you, all chained me to Leaside. My very desire to uproot you and drag you away was only another snare that held me to the life I detested. Do you remember how I tried to break free, that time, and failed? It was you who pulled me back, through my love for you. Yes, even my love for you was used by Seabourne to secure its victim.I grew older year by year, and saw my chances slipping from me; and I often felt older than I was, life at Seabourne made me feel old. I realized that I was only half a being, that there were experiences I had never had, fulfilments I had never known, joys and sorrows which many a poor devil of a charwoman could have taught me about. I felt stunted and coerced, checked at the very roots of me, hungry for my birthright.But as time went on I managed to dam up the torrent, till it flowed away from its natural course; it flowed out to you, Joan. Then it was that my desire to help forward a brilliant pupil, grew, little by little, into an absorbing passion. I became a monoïdeist, with you as the idea. I lived for you, for your work, your success; I lived in you, in your present, in your future, which I told myself would be my future too. Oh! my dear, how I built on you; and I thought I had dug the foundations so deep that no waves or tempests could destroy them.Then, five days ago, the house fell down; it crashed about my ears, it stunned me. All I knew then was that I must escape from the ruin or let myself be crushed to death; all I know now is that I must never see that ruin again.Joan, I will not even go near enough to our disaster to ask you what you are going to do. Why should I ask? I already know the answer. You must forget me, as I must forget you. I don't understand the way of things, they seem to me to be cruelly badly managed at the source; but perhaps Someone or Something is wise, after all, as they would have us believe. No, I don't mean that, I can't feel like that—resigned; not yet.By the time this letter reaches you I shall be married to Lawrence Benson. Do I love him? No, not at all; I like him and I suppose I respect him, but he is the last person on earth that I could love. I have told him all this and he still wants to marry me. We shall leave very soon for South Africa, where his bank is opening new branches. Oh! Joan, and you will be in Seabourne; the injustice of it! You see I am hovering still in the vicinity of my ruin, but I shall get clear, never doubt it.Do not try to see me before I go, I have purposely given no address, and Ralph has been asked not to give it either 3 and do not write to me. I want to forget.ELIZABETH.
JOAN,
I knew that you would never come to me, I think I have known it in my heart for a long time. But I must have been a proud and stubborn woman, for I would not admit my failure until the very last. I had a hundred things to keep hope alive in me; your splendid brain, your longing to free yourself from Seabourne and what it stands for, the strength of all the youth in you, and then the love I thought you had for me. Yes, I counted a great deal on that, perhaps because I judged it by my love for you. I was wrong, you see, your love did not hold, it was not strong enough to give you your liberty; or was it that you were too strong to take it? I don't know.
Joan, I shall never come back, I cannot come back. I must go away from you, tear you out of me, forget you. You have had too much of me already. Oh! far too much! But now I have taken it back, all, all; for I will not go into my new life incomplete.
I wonder if you have ever realized what my life at Seabourne has been? So unendurable at times that but for you I think I should have ended it. The long, long days with their dreadful monotony, three hundred and sixty-five of them in every year; and then the long, long years!
I used to go home from Leaside in the evening, and sit in the study with Ralph and Uncle John's portrait, and feel as if tight fingers were squeezing my throat; as if I were being suffocated under the awful plush folds of the curtains. I used to have the horrible idea that Seabourne had somehow become a living, embodied entity, of which Ralph and Old Uncle John and the plush curtains and the smell of mildew that always hung about Ralph's books, all formed a terrifying part. Then I used to look at myself in the glass when I got up every morning, and count the lines on my face one by one, and realize that my youth was slipping past me; with every one of those three hundred and sixty-five days a little less of it remained, a little more went into the toothless jaws of Seabourne.
Joan, I too have had my ambition, I too once meant to make good. When I first came to take care of Ralph's house, I never intended to stay for more than a year at most. I meant to go to London and be a journalist if they'd have me; in any case I meant to work, out in the real world, the world that has passed Seabourne by, long ago.
Then I saw you, an overgrown colt of a child, all legs and arms. I began to teach you, and gradually, very gradually, you became Seabourne's ally. You never knew it, but at moments I did; you were helping the place to hold me. My interest in you, in your personality, your unusual ability; the joy it was to teach you, and later the deep love I felt for you, all chained me to Leaside. My very desire to uproot you and drag you away was only another snare that held me to the life I detested. Do you remember how I tried to break free, that time, and failed? It was you who pulled me back, through my love for you. Yes, even my love for you was used by Seabourne to secure its victim.
I grew older year by year, and saw my chances slipping from me; and I often felt older than I was, life at Seabourne made me feel old. I realized that I was only half a being, that there were experiences I had never had, fulfilments I had never known, joys and sorrows which many a poor devil of a charwoman could have taught me about. I felt stunted and coerced, checked at the very roots of me, hungry for my birthright.
But as time went on I managed to dam up the torrent, till it flowed away from its natural course; it flowed out to you, Joan. Then it was that my desire to help forward a brilliant pupil, grew, little by little, into an absorbing passion. I became a monoïdeist, with you as the idea. I lived for you, for your work, your success; I lived in you, in your present, in your future, which I told myself would be my future too. Oh! my dear, how I built on you; and I thought I had dug the foundations so deep that no waves or tempests could destroy them.
Then, five days ago, the house fell down; it crashed about my ears, it stunned me. All I knew then was that I must escape from the ruin or let myself be crushed to death; all I know now is that I must never see that ruin again.
Joan, I will not even go near enough to our disaster to ask you what you are going to do. Why should I ask? I already know the answer. You must forget me, as I must forget you. I don't understand the way of things, they seem to me to be cruelly badly managed at the source; but perhaps Someone or Something is wise, after all, as they would have us believe. No, I don't mean that, I can't feel like that—resigned; not yet.
By the time this letter reaches you I shall be married to Lawrence Benson. Do I love him? No, not at all; I like him and I suppose I respect him, but he is the last person on earth that I could love. I have told him all this and he still wants to marry me. We shall leave very soon for South Africa, where his bank is opening new branches. Oh! Joan, and you will be in Seabourne; the injustice of it! You see I am hovering still in the vicinity of my ruin, but I shall get clear, never doubt it.
Do not try to see me before I go, I have purposely given no address, and Ralph has been asked not to give it either 3 and do not write to me. I want to forget.
ELIZABETH.
THE new town band played every Thursday afternoon in the new skating-rink in the High Street. The band was not really new and neither was the skating-rink, both having come into existence about twelve months after Milly Ogden's death, which made them almost nineteen years old. But by those who remembered the days when these and similar innovations had not existed, they were always spoken of as "New."
The old residents of Seabourne, those that were left of them, mourned openly the time when the town had been really select. They looked askance at the dancing couples who gyrated round the rink with strange clingings and undulatings. But in spite of being shocked, as they genuinely were, they occasionally showed their disapproving faces at the rink on Thursday afternoons; it was a warm place to sit in and have tea during the winter and early spring months, and in addition to this they derived a sense of superiority from criticizing the unseemly behaviour of the new generation.
"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Ogden, as a couple more blatant than usual performed a sort of Nautch dance under her nose, "all I can say is, I'm glad I'm old!"
Joan smiled. "Yes, we're not so young as we were," she said.
Her mother protested irritably. "I dowishyou would stop talking as though you were a hundred, Joan, it's so ridiculous; I sometimes think you do it to aggravate me, you don't look a day over thirty."
"Well, never mind, darling, look at that girl over there, she's dancing rather prettily."
"I'm glad you think so; personally, I can't see anything pretty about it. Of course, if you like to tell everyone your age I suppose you must; only the other day I heard you expatiating on the subject to Major Boyle. But, considering you know I particularly dislike it, I think you might stop."
Joan sighed. "Here comes the tea, Mother."
"Yes, I see it. Oh, don't put the milk in first, darling! Well, never mind, as you've done it. Major Boyle doesn't go about telling His age, vain old man, but he's sure not to miss an opportunity now of telling everyone yours."
"Have you got your Saxin, Mother?"
"Yes, here it is, in my bag; no, it's not. Oh dear, I do hope I haven't lost my silver box, just see if you can find it."
Joan took the bag and thrust in her hand. "Here it is," she said.
"Good gracious!" sighed Mrs. Ogden, "I'm growing as blind as a bat; it's an awful thing to lose your eyesight. No, but seriously, darling, do stop telling people your age."
"I will if you mind so much, Mother. But everyone we know doesn't need to be told, if they think it out, and the new people aren't interested in us or our ages, so what can it matter?"
"It matters very much to me, as I've told you."
"All right, then, I'll try and remember. How old do you want me to be?"
Mrs. Ogden took offence at the levity in her daughter's tone and the rest of the meal passed in comparative silence. At last Joan paid for the tea and they got up to go. She helped her mother with her wrap.
"My fur's gone under the table," said Mrs. Ogden, looking vague.
Joan dived and retrieved the worn mink collar. "Your gloves, Mother!" she reminded.
Mrs. Ogden glanced first at the table and then at the chair, with a worried eye. "WhathaveI done with my gloves?" she said unhappily, "I really believe there's a demon who hides my things." She screwed up her eyes and peered about; her hand strayed casually into the pocket of her wrap. "Ah! here they are!" she cried, "I knew I'd put them somewhere."
Immediate problems being satisfactorily solved, Joan jerked herself into her own coat; a green freize ulster with astrachan cloth at the neck and sleeves. As she did so her soft felt hat tilted itself a little back on her head. It was the sort of hat that continually begs forgiveness for its wearer, by saying in so many words: "I'm not really odd or unusual, observe my feminine touches!" If the hat had been crushed down in the middle it might have looked more daring and been passably becoming, but Joan lacked the courage for this, and wore the crown extended to its full height. If it had been brown or black or grey it might have looked like its male prototype, and been less at variance with its wearer's no longer fresh complexion and angular face, but instead it was pastel blue. Above all, if it had not had the absurd bunch of jaunty feathers, shaped like an interrogation mark, thrust into its band, it might have presented a less abject appearance, and been less of a shouted apology for the short grey hair beneath it.
They were ready at last. Mrs. Ogden had her bag, her umbrella, her fur and two parcels, all safely disposed about her person. She took her daughter's arm for guidance as they threaded through the labyrinth of tea-tables; if she would have put on her glasses this would not have been necessary, but in one respect she refused to submit to the tyranny of old age; she would never wear spectacles in public except for reading.
A cold March wind swept round the corners of the High Street. "Put your fur over your mouth, Mother, this wind is deadly," Joan cautioned.
Mrs. Ogden obeyed, and the homeward walk was continued in silence. Joan opened the door with a latch-key and turned up the gas in the hall.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed anxiously, "who left that landing window open?"
Mrs. Ogden disengaged her mouth. "Helen!" she called loudly, "Helen!" She waited and then called again, this time at the kitchen door, but there was no reply. "She's gone out without permission again, Joan; I suppose it's that cinema!"
"Never mind, dearest, you go and sit down, I'll shut the window myself. It seems to me that one's got to put up with all their ways since the war; if you don't, they just walk out."
She shut the window, bolted it, and returning to the hall collected her mother's coat and hat, then she went upstairs.
Her head ached badly, as it did pretty often these days. She put away Mrs. Ogden's things and passed on to her own room. Taking off her heavy coat, she hung it up neatly, being careful not to shut the door of the cupboard until she was sure that the coat could not be crushed; then she took off her hat, brushed it, and put it in a cardboard box under the bed.
The room had changed very little since the time when she and Milly had shared it. There was the same white furniture, only more chipped and yellower, the same Brussels carpet, only more patternless and threadbare. The walls had been repapered once and the paint touched up, after Milly's death, but beyond this, all had remained as it was. Joan went to the dressing-table and combed her thick grey hair; she had given up parting it on one side now and wore it brushed straight back from her face.
She looked at her reflection in the glass and laughed quietly. "Poor Mother," she said under her breath. "Does she really think I don't look my age?"
To the casual observer she looked about forty-eight, in reality she was forty-three. Her grey eyes still seemed young at times, but their colour had faded and so had their expression of intelligent curiosity. The eyes that had once asked so many questions of life, now looked dull and uninterested. Her cheeks had grown somewhat angular, and the clear pallor of her skin had thickened a little; it no longer suggested good health. In all her face only the mouth remained as a memory of what Joan had been. Her mouth had neither hardened nor weakened, the lips still retained their youthful texture and remained beautiful in their modelling. And because this mouth was so startlingly young and fresh, with its strong, white teeth, it served all the more to bring into relief the deterioration of the rest of her face. Her figure was as slim as it had been at twenty-four, but now she stooped a little at times, because her back hurt her; she thought it must be rheumatism, and worried about it disproportionately.
She had taken to thinking a great deal about her health lately, not because she wanted to, but rather because she was constantly assailed by small, annoying symptoms, all different and all equally unpleasant. Her legs ached at night after she got to bed, and feeling them one evening she discovered that the veins were swollen; at times they became acutely painful. She seldom got up now refreshed by sound sleep, there was no joy in waking in the mornings; on the contrary, she had grown to dread the pulling up of the blind, because her eyes felt sensitive, especially after the night.
Her mentality was gradually changing too, and her brain was littered with little things. Trifles annoyed her, small cares preoccupied her, the getting beyond them was too much of an effort. She could no longer force her unwilling brain to action, any mental exertion tired her. She had long since ceased to care for study in any form, even serious books wearied her; if she read now it was novels of the lightest kind, and she really preferred magazines.
Her mind, when not occupied with her own health or her mother's, was beginning to find relaxation in things that she would have once utterly despised; Seabourne gossip, not always kind; local excitements, such as the opening of a new hotel or the coming of a London touring company to the theatre. Her interests were narrowing down into a small circle, she was beginning to find herself incapable of feeling much excitement over anything that took place even as far away as the next town. At moments she was startled when she remembered herself as she had once been, startled and ashamed and horribly sad; but a headache or a threatened cold, or the feeling of general unfitness that so often beset her, was enough to turn her mind from introspection and send her flying to her medicine cupboard.
Mrs. Ogden was her principal preoccupation. They quarrelled often and seldom thought alike; but the patience that had characterized Joan's youth remained with her still; she was good to her mother in spite of everything. For the first few years of their life alone together, Joan had rebelled at times like a mad thing. Those had been terrible years and she had set herself to forget them, with a fair amount of success. Mrs. Ogden had become a habit now, and quite automatically Joan fetched and carried, and rubbed her chest and gave her her medicine; it was all in the day's work, one did it, like everything else in Seabourne, because it seemed the right thing and there was nothing else to do.
If there had been people who could have formed a link with her youth, she might more easily have retained a part of her old self; but there was only her mother, who had always been the opposing force; nearly everyone else who belonged to that by-gone period had either left Seabourne or died. She seldom met a familiar face in the street, a face wherewith to conjure up some vivid memory, or even regret. Admiral Bourne had been dead for fifteen years, and Glory Point had fallen into decay; it stood empty and neglected, a prey to the winds and waves that it had once so gallantly defied. No one wanted the admiral's ship-house, neither the distant cousin who had inherited it, nor the prospective tenants who came down from London to view. It was too fanciful, too queer, and proved on closer inspection to be very inconvenient, or so people said.
General Brooke had gone to meet his old antagonist Colonel Ogden, and Ralph Rodney had died of pleurisy, during the war. The Bensons had sold Conway House to a profiteer grocer, and had moved to London. Richard, who had written at intervals for one or two years after Elizabeth's marriage, had long since ceased to write altogether. His last letter had been unhappy and resentful, and now Joan did not know where he was. Sir Robert and Lady Loo spent most of their time out of England, on account of her health, and were seldom if ever, seen by the Ogdens.
Seabourne was changing; changing, yet always the same. The war had touched it in passing, as the Memorial Cross in the market-place testified; but in spite of world-wide convulsions, dreadful deeds in Belgium and France, air raids in London and bombardments on the coast, Seabourne had remained placid and had never lost its head. Immune from bombs and shells by reason of its smug position, it had known little more of the war than it gathered from its daily papers and the advent of food tickets. Even the grip of the speculative post-war builder seemed powerless to make it gasp. He came, he went, leaving in his wake a trail of horrid toadstool growths which were known as the new suburb of "Shingle Park." But few strangers came to live in these blatant little houses; they were bought up at once by the local tradespeople, who moved from inconvenient rooms over their shops to more inconvenient villas outside the town.
Yes, any change that there was in Seabourne was more apparent than real; and yet for Joan there remained very little to remind her of her youth, beyond the same dull streets, the same dull shops and the same monotony, which she now dreaded to break. In her bedroom was one drawer which she always kept locked, it contained the books that she and Elizabeth had pored over together. She had put them away eighteen years ago, and had never had the courage to look at them since, but she wore the key of that drawer on a chain round her neck; it was the only token of her past that she permitted to intrude itself.
There was no one to be intimate with, for people like the Ogdens; Mrs. Ogden refused to admit the upstarts to her friendship. Stiff-necked and Routledge as ever, she repulsed their advances and Joan cared too little to oppose her. Father Cuthbert and a few oldish women, members of the congregation, were practically the only visitors at Leaside. Mrs. Ogden liked to talk over parish affairs with them, the more so as she was treated with deep respect, almost amounting to reverence, by the faithful Father Cuthbert, who never forgot that she had been one of his first supporters.
With time, Joan, his old antagonist, had begun to weaken, and now she too took a hand in the church work. She consented to join the Altar Society, and developed quite a talent for arranging the flowers in their stiff brass vases. The flowers in themselves gave her pleasure, appealing to what was left of her sense of the beautiful. Someone had to take Mrs. Ogden to church, she was too feeble to go alone; so the task fell to Joan, as a matter of course. She would push her mother in a light wicker bath chair which they had bought secondhand, or on very special occasions drive with her in a fly. Also as a matter of course she now took part in the services, neither impressed nor the reverse, but remaining purely neutral. She followed the easiest path these days, and did most things rather than make the necessary effort to resist. After all, what did it matter, one church was as good as another, she supposed. She was not quite dishonest in her attitude towards Ritualism, neither was she strictly honest; it was only that the combative instincts of youth had battered themselves to death in her; now she felt no very strong emotions, and did not want to.
THE poor of Seabourne were really non-existent; but since certain types of religiously-minded people are not happy unless they find some class beneath them on whom to lavish unwelcome care, the churches of each denomination, and of these there were at least four, invented deserving poor for themselves and visited them strenuously. Of all the pastors in the little town, Father Cuthbert was the most energetic.
Mrs. Ogden was particularly interested in this branch of church work. District visiting had come to her as second nature; she had found immense satisfaction and a salve to her pride in patronizing people who could not retaliate. But lately her failing health made the long walks impossible, so that she was reduced to sitting at home and thinking out schemes whereby the humbler members of the congregation might be coerced into doing something that they did not want to.
She looked up from her paper one morning with triumph in her eye. "I knew it would come!" she remarked complacently.
"What would come?" Joan inquired.
She did not feel that she cared very much just then if the Day of Judgment itself were at hand; but long experience had taught her that silence was apt to make her mother more loquacious than an assumption of interest.