"The influenza; I knew it would come! There are three cases in Seabourne."
"Well, what of it?" said Joan, yawning. "The world's very much over-populated; I'm sure Seabourne is."
"My dear, don't be callous, and it's the pneumonic kind; I believe those Germans are still spreading microbes."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Joan irritably.
Mrs. Ogden went over to her bureau and began rummaging in a drawer; at last she found what she was looking for. "These worsted vests must go to the Robinsons to-day," she declared. "That eldest girl of theirs must put one on at once; with her tendency to bronchitis, she's an absolute candidate for influenza."
Joan made a sound of impatience. "But, Mother, you know the girl hates having wool next her skin; she says it makes her itch; she'll never wear them."
"Oh, but shemust; you'll have to see her mother and tell her I sent you; it's nonsense about wool making the skin irritate."
"I don't agree with you; lots of people can't wear it. I can't myself, and, besides, the Robinsons don't want our charity."
"The poor always need charity, my dear."
"But they're not poor; they're probably better off than we are, or they ought to be, considering what that family earned during the war."
"I can't help what they earned in war-time, Joan; they're poor enough now; everyone is, with all the unemployment."
"I daresay, only they don't happen to be unemployed."
"I expect they will be soon," said Mrs. Ogden with ghoulish optimism.
Joan sighed; this task of thrusting herself on people who did not want her was one of the trials of life. For many years she had refused to be a district visitor, but lately this too had been one of the duties that her mother's increasing age imposed upon her. Mrs. Ogden worried herself ill if she thought that her share in this all-important work was being neglected, so Joan had given in.
She stretched out her hand for the vests. "How they must hate us," she said thoughtfully.
Mrs. Ogden took off her spectacles. "They? Who?"
"Only the poor Poor."
"You are a strange girl, Joan. I don't understand half the time what you're talking about, and I don't think you do yourself."
"Perhaps not!" Joan's voice was rather sharp; she wished her mother would not speak of her as a "girl," it was ridiculous and embarrassing. At times this and equally trifling irritations made her feel as though she could scream. "Give me the idiotic things!" she said angrily, snatching up the vests; "I'll take them, if you make me, but they'll only throw them away."
Mrs. Ogden appeared not to hear her; she had become slightly deaf in one ear lately, a fact which she had quickly discovered could be used to her own advantage.
"Bring in some muffins for tea, darling," she called after Joan's retreating figure.
Joan strode along the esplanade on her way to the Robinsons' cottage. Anger lent vigour to her every movement; she felt almost young again under its stimulus. This useless errand on which she had been sent! Just as though the Robinsons didn't know how to dress themselves. The eldest girl, about whom her mother was so anxious, wore far smarter clothes at church than Joan could afford, and, in any case, why should the poor thing be doomed to a perpetual rash because Mrs. Ogden wanted a peg on which to hang her charity?
She walked with head bent to the wind; it looked like rain and she had forgotten her umbrella. Suppose that storm-cloud over there should break, she'd be drenched to the skin, and that would be bad for her rheumatism. At the thought of her rheumatism her back began to ache a little. All this trouble and risk of getting wet through was being taken for people who would probably laugh at her the moment she was safely out of their house. Of course the knitted vests would either be given to the dustman or thrown away immediately. Now the gale began to absorb all her attention; it was increasing every minute. She had some ado to hold her hat on. Her anger gave place to feelings of misery and discomfort, physical discomfort which filled her whole horizon. She forgot for the moment the irritation she had felt with her mother; almost forgot the errand on which she was bent, and was conscious only that the wind was bitter and that she felt terribly tired.
She came at last to the ugly little street where the Robinson family lived. She always dreaded this street; it was so full of children. Their impudent eyes followed her as she walked, and they tittered audibly. She rang the bell. She had not meant to pull it so hard, and was appalled at the clanging that followed. After a pause she could hear steps coming down the passage.
"No need to pull the 'ouse down when you ring, I should 'ope," said a loud voice.
The door was flung open. "Now then——" Mrs. Robinson was beginning truculently, when she saw who it was and stopped.
Joan felt that she could not face it. Mrs. Robinson was composing her countenance into the sly Sunday expression.
"Some vests; they're from my mother!" she said hurriedly, and thrusting the parcel into the woman's hands, she fled down the steps.
There was no rain after all, and that was a great relief. Going home with the wind behind her she had time to remember again that she was angry. She would tell Father Cuthbert once and for all that he must find another district visitor. She was not going to trudge about all over Seabourne, ministering to people who disliked her, helping Father Cuthbert to make them more hypocritical than they were already.
By the time she arrived at Leaside, however, apathy was uppermost again; what was the good of having a row? What did it matter after all? What really mattered most at the moment was that she wanted a cup of strong tea and a fire to get warm by. She would have to invent a suitable interview with Mrs. Robinson; anything for peace!
"Did you get the muffins, darling?" came Mrs. Ogden's voice from the dining-room.
Joan stood still in the hall and pressed her hand to her head with a gesture almost tragic. She had forgotten the muffins!
THE Ogdens took their annual holiday in May, in order to avoid the high prices of the summer season. For a full month prior to their departure, a feeling of unrest always possessed them. The numbers of things, real and imaginary, that had to be settled before they could leave for Lynton, in North Devon, augmented year by year, until they had arrived at dimensions that only a prolonged visit to Kamchatka or Zanzibar could possibly excuse. Joan found that as the years went on she was beginning to subscribe more and more to her mother's fussiness; even beginning to acquire certain fussinesses of her own. Sometimes the realization of this made her pause. "I never used to care so much about trifles," she would think. But she found it almost impossible to stop caring. She would lie awake at night going over in her mind the obstacles to be overcome before they could leave Seabourne, and would go to sleep finally with a weight on her brain. In the morning she would wake wondering what unpleasant thing it was that hung over the household.
This brief visit to Lynton generally caused much worry regarding clothes. Everything seemed to be worn out at once, and the necessity for replenishing scanty wardrobes was added to the financial strain of the holiday. Mrs. Ogden had decided that rooms were both objectionable and expensive, and that unless she could go to an hotel she would rather stay at home. In some respects Joan was thankful for this decision; constant quarrels with outspoken landladies had made her dread anything in the nature of apartments. But the expense was considerable, for the Bristol Hotel was not cheap, even though they took the smallest bedrooms available, or, worse still, shared a tiny double room at the back of the house. They pinched and screwed for this longed-for holiday during all the rest of the year, and at times Joan wondered whether the respite of three weeks at an hotel away from Seabourne was worth the anxiety that it entailed; whether, when she was finally there, she was not too tired to enjoy it.
As the month of departure drew near Mrs. Ogden was wont to develop an abnormal activity of mind. All the things that might so easily have been spread out over the preceding months seemed only to be remembered a few weeks prior to going away, and what did not exist to be remembered she invented. It would also have been more natural and orderly had wreaths been taken to the cemetery on the anniversaries of her husband's and Milly's deaths, but this was never done, and their graves were always visited shortly before leaving for Lynton.
"I can't go away without seeing for myself that those cemetery people are looking after things properly," was the explanation she gave.
A purely hypothetical army of moths was another cause of anxiety. Mrs. Ogden never visualized anything less than a Biblical scourge of these pests. "We shall have the carpets and blankets eaten to shreds if we're not careful," she would prophesy. Bitter apple, naphthaline, even pepper, was showered all over the house, and every article that could by the wildest stretch of the imagination be supposed to tempt a moth's appetite was wrapped in newspaper and put away weeks before the house was left. It was not unusual for some muffler or golf-coat that might be required at Lynton to go the way of all the rest, and when this happened an irritating search would have to be made.
About this time a species of spring cleaning always took place. "You can't put the china and glass away without washing it, Joan; unless the place is left clean we shall be overrun with mice and black-beetles. I will have things done properly!" Every picture was draped in newspaper, every chair in dust sheets; curtains were taken down, rugs rolled up, photographs and knick-knacks were put away in boxes. During this process the servant occasionally gave notice at a date which would make her departure fall due shortly after the Ogdens had left for their holiday. When this happened the confusion was augmented by the necessity of finding a caretaker, or at least someone who would see that the house had been properly locked up.
It was towards the end of April that Mrs. Ogden chose to visit her dead. The day was kept as a kind of doleful festival, full of gloomy excitement. Joan would unearth decent black for herself, and repair her mother's widow's weeds, which were always resumed for the pilgrimage. Little food would be eaten; there was scant time for meals, and, besides, Mrs. Ogden had ordained a self-imposed fast. Usually the wreaths would not arrive to the minute, and would have to be fetched from the florist's. The fly was invariably late, and the servant would be sent to make inquiries at the livery stable. Perhaps it would rain, in which case waterproofs, goloshes and umbrellas were an additional burden. And to cap all this, it was obviously unseemly to display impatience at such a time, so that immense self-control was added to the strain of already taut nerves.
This April everything seemed to have gone wrong. The florist had arbitrarily raised his prices, and the wreaths were to cost half as much again as they had in previous years. Mrs. Ogden considered his excuses positively impertinent; she had not noticed the late frosts, the abnormally dry weather, or, indeed, any of the disasters to which he attributed the high price of flowers. In the end she had been obliged to give in, but the incident had very much upset her, and she blamed this upset for the cold on her chest which now kept her in bed when she should have visited the cemetery. With the infantile stubbornness of the old she had refused to abandon the idea of going until the last moment; and had even got half through her dressing before Joan could persuade her to go back to bed. This wilfulness of her mother's had delayed everything, and the meals were not ordered or the canary cleaned and fed by the time the fly arrived.
There had been a sharp shower, and Joan found to her dismay that the wreaths, all wet and dripping, had been stood against the wallpaper in the front hall. A little stain of dampness was making its appearance on the carpet as well. She went to fetch a cloth from the scullery. As usual, the window had been left open and on the sill sat a neighbour's cat.
She spoke irritably. "How many times have I told you to shut this window, Rose? That cat comes here after the canary."
She shut the window herself with a bang, and going back to the hall dabbed at the wallpaper, but it was all too evident that the wet marks meant to leave a stain. Sighing, she picked up the wreaths. The damp moss soaked through her gloves. "Oh, damn!" she muttered under her breath, forgetting in her irritation the solemnity of the occasion. She took off her gloves, thrust them into her pocket, and putting the wreaths into the cab got in after them.
"Where to, miss?" inquired the unimaginative driver.
"Cemetery!" snapped Joan.
What a fool the man must be. Did he think she was going to the skating-rink or the pier, with a large grave wreath over each arm?
The cemetery lay a little beyond Shingle Park, and as they bumped along through old Seabourne and out on to the unfinished road Joan glanced casually out of the window. Her head felt heavy and her eyes ached. "Ugly, very ugly!" she murmured absent-mindedly. The rough-cast shanties grinned back defiance. Their walls were so thin that people who had watched their erection declared that daylight had showed through the bricks before the rough cast was applied. Their foundations were non-existent, the woodwork of their front doors shamelessly unseasoned and warping already in the damp sea air. They stood for everything that was dishonest and unsound, and yet not one of them was empty.
The purchasers had begun to develop their front gardens, and several of these were already making quite a good show of spring flowers. On either side of the gritty ash paths jonquils and wall-flowers were growing courageously. A sense of the pathetic stirred Joan's heart; everyone was trying so hard to be happy, to make a place of enjoyment for themselves. People had taken their savings to buy these homes; in the evenings they worked in their tiny gardens, and in the mornings they looked out of their windows with pride on the fruits of their labours. And all the while these mean little houses were grinning in impish derision. They knew the secrets of their shoddy construction, of their faulty walls and shallow foundations; presently their owners would know them too. But in the meantime the houses grinned.
A sudden anger roused Joan from her lethargy and she shook her fist at them as she passed. "You hideous, untruthful monstrosities," she said aloud, "I hate you!"
The fly drew up at the cemetery and she got out, a wreath in either hand. She made her way to her father's grave and on it laid the wreath of palm leaves with its meagre spray of lilies. Colonel Ogden's tombstone was quite impressive. His wife had chosen it before she realized the state of her future finances; a broken column in fine Scottish granite and a flower-bed with granite kerb. Joan peered down at this flower-bed suspiciously. Yes, just as she had expected, there were weeds among the forget-me-nots; she must speak to the gardener. One had to be after everyone these days, they were all so slack and dishonest. She made a mental note of her complaint and turned to her sister's grave.
Milly's resting-place testified to the fact that by the time she died the state of the family fortunes had been all too well understood; a small white cross and a plain grass mound marked the place where Milly's fight had ended. Joan propped the wreath of narcissi against the foot of the cross, and stood staring at the inscription.
MILDRED MARY OGDEN.Died November 25th, 1900.Aged 21 years.
How long ago it seemed; Milly had been dead for twenty years. If she were alive now she would be forty-one. What would she be doing if she were alive now? Assuredly not standing near her father's grave in Seabourne; and yet, who could tell? Perhaps she, too, would have failed. It was difficult to picture a Milly of forty-one. Would she have been fat or thin? Would her hair have gone grey like her sister's? Joan lingered over her imaginings, but failed to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. Perhaps Milly would have kept her looks better than she had; a life such as her sister would have led might well have kept her young. She tried to conjure up a clear vision of Milly as she had been. Brown eyes, very soft golden hair that was inclined to curl naturally, rather a sulky mouth at times and a short, straight nose—no, not quite straight. Hadn't Milly's nose been a little tip-tilted? They had no photograph of her when she was twenty-one; that was a pity. But what had she looked like exactly? Joan went over her features one by one; it was like sorting out bits of a jig-saw puzzle; when she began to put them together there was always a slight misfit. Twenty years! it was a long time. The memory of Milly had been gradually fading, and now she could no longer be quite sure of her face, could no longer be perfectly certain what her voice had sounded like.
She turned away from the grave with a sigh. Things might have been different if her sister had lived: they might have helped each other; but would they have done so? Perhaps, after all, Milly had chosen the wiser part in dying young. Suppose she had failed to make a career? In that case there might well have been three of them at Leaside instead of two, and two people were enough to get on each other's nerves, surely. She pulled herself up. "What's the good of going back?" she thought. "If, if, if—it's all so futile! I'm not going to be morbid, in addition to everything else."
She got into the cab. "Home!" she ordered peremptorily.
JOAN stared into her half-packed trunk with a worried expression. If only she could know what the weather would be! Should she take her flannel coat and skirt? Should she take any light suits at all, or would it be enough if she only had warm things?
"Joan, I can't find my new bedroom slippers; I've looked everywhere. Where have you put them?" came Mrs. Ogden's voice from across the landing.
"Oh, do wait a minute, Mother! I'm trying to think out what to take; I can't find your slippers for a minute or two."
There ensued an offended silence. Joan straightened her aching back and sat down to consider. It might be hot at Lynton in May. It had been very hot last year, but that was in the middle of a heat wave, whereas now—still, on the whole, she had better take her grey flannel, it wasn't a bulky thing to pack. She took a piece of paper from her pocket and began to study a list. "Travel in brown tweed,old coat and skirt, brown shoes and stockings and grey overcoat." What hat should she leave out? Perhaps the old blue one; anything was good enough, it was always a dirty journey. She referred to the list again. "Pack six pairs stockings, three pairs gloves, four vests, three nightgowns, blue serge suit, two pairs shoes, one pair slippers." She ticked the articles off on her fingers one by one. Her mauve dinner dress was rather shabby, she remembered, but that couldn't be helped; she must make out with a black skirt and low-necked blouses, for a change.
"Joan, I can't lift my bag down from the top of the wardrobe; I do wish you'd come here."
"Oh, all right," sighed Joan, getting up.
They had been packing for several days and yet nothing was finished; the next morning they were to start at seven in order to catch the express in London.
"Where's the medicine bag?" Joan asked anxiously.
Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "I don't know; hasn't it been got out? I suppose it's in the cupboard under the stairs."
They routed out the bag from its dusty lair and began to sort bottles. "Joan, you mustnotgo on taking that bromo-seltzer after what Major Boyle told us."
"Of course I shall go on taking it; it's perfectly harmless."
"It's very far from harmless. Major Boyle says that he knows for a fact——"
"I don't care a rap what Major Boyle thinks he knows," Joan interrupted impatiently. "It's the only thing that does my head the least good, and I'm going to take it."
"Well, I do wish you wouldn't; I'm sure it's very dangerous."
"Oh, Mother, do leave me alone; I'm not a child, I can quite well look after myself."
They squabbled for a little while over the bromo-seltzer, while the bag grew gradually full to bursting. At last it was closed, but not without an effort.
"Good gracious, here's the bird-seed left out!" Mrs. Ogden exclaimed, producing a good-sized cocoa tin from the washstand cupboard. "And now what's to be done?"
"It must go in a trunk," said Joan firmly.
"But suppose it upsets?"
"Oh, it won't."
"Well, I don't know; it might."
"Then put it in the hold-all; it will be all right there."
"I can't understand why it can't go in the medicine bag; it always has at other times," said Mrs. Ogden discontentedly. "And it's Bobbie's special mixture; I can only get it at one place."
"Bobbie won't die, Mother, if he has to live for three weeks on Hyde's or Spratt's or something; there's lots of seed at the grocers at Lynton, I've often seen it."
But Mrs. Ogden persisted. "We must find room in the bag for it, my dear."
"I willnotunpack the whole of that bag for any bird," said Joan untruthfully; if there had been the least necessity she would not only have unpacked the bag but the entire luggage for Bobbie's sake.
They got off at last, and were actually in the Barnstaple train; bags, wraps, bird-cage and all.
Mrs. Ogden sighed contentedly. "The worst of the journey's over," she declared. "It's that change in London I always dread."
Joan leant back in her corner and tried to sleep, but a flutter from the cage at her side roused her. She bent down and half uncovered Bobbie, who hopped to the bars and nibbled her finger.
"There, there, my pet," she murmured softly.
Bobbie burst into a loud song. "He likes the noise of the train," smiled Mrs. Ogden, nodding her head.
They began to pet the bird. "Pretty Bob, pretty fellow!"
The canary loved them both, but Joan was his favourite; for her he would do almost anything. He bathed while she held his bath in her hands, and would dry himself on her short grey hair. At times Mrs. Ogden felt jealous of these marks of esteem. "I'm a perfect slave to that bird," she often complained, "and yet he won't come to me like that."
But her jealousy never got beyond an occasional grumble, the little canary managed to avoid being a bone of contention; Bobbie was a mutual tie, a veritable link of love between them.
At Barnstaple they changed again, and got into the small toy train that wanders over the moors to Lynton. The sun was setting across the wide, misty landscape, turning pools that the rain had left into molten gold, sending streams of glory earthward from behind the banked-up storm-clouds. Joan sat with Bobbie's cage on her knee; she might easily have put it down beside her, there was room on the seat, but she liked the nearness of the bird. She wished that he were big enough to take out and hug.
A great peace possessed her, one of those mysterious waves of well-being that came over her at times. "Feeling otherworldly," she described it to herself. Mrs. Ogden was dozing, so there was no one to talk; the small puffings and rumblings of the train alone broke the silence. She closed her eyes in sensuous enjoyment. The little bird shook out his feathers and cracked a seed, while the twilight deepened and the lamp flashed out in the carriage. Joan sat on in a kind of blissful quiescence. "All is as it should be," she thought dreamily, "and I know exactly why it is so, only I can't quite find the words. Somewhere at the back of my mind I know the why of everything."
On the second afternoon after their arrival, Joan sat alone in the hall of the hotel. Mrs. Ogden had gone to lie down; she had scarcely got over the fatigue of the journey. Joan picked up a paper idly; she had no wish to read the news, but since the paper was there she might as well glance through it. Two young girls with bobbed hair and well-tailored clothes had come on to the veranda from the garden.
One of them was in riding-breeches. They sat down with their backs to the open window, through which their voices drifted. "Have you seen that funny old thing with the short grey hair?"
"Yes, you mean the one at lunch? Wasn't she killing? Why moire ribbon instead of a proper necktie?"
"And why a pearl brooch across her stiff collar?"
"I believe she's what they used to call a 'New woman,'" said the girl in breeches, with a low laugh. "Honey, she's a forerunner, that's what she is, a kind of pioneer that's I got left behind. I believe she's the beginning of things like me. Oh! hang it all, I've left my gloves in the garden; come on, we must look for them." And they went down the steps again.
Joan laid down the newspaper and stared after them. Of course they had not known that she was there. "A forerunner, a kind of pioneer that's got left behind." She shoved the hair back from her forehead. Yes, they were right, that was what she had been, a kind of pioneer, and now she had got left behind. She saw the truth of this all round her, in women of the type that she had once been, that in a way she still was. Active, aggressively intelligent women, not at all self-conscious in their tailor-made clothes, not ashamed of their cropped hair; women who did things well, important things; women who counted and who would go on counting; smart, neatly put together women, looking like well-bred young men. They might still be in the minority and yet they sprang up everywhere; one saw them now even at Seabourne during the summer season. They were particular about their clothes, in their own way; the boots they wore were thick but well cut, their collars immaculate, their ties carefully chosen. But she, Joan Ogden, was the forerunner who had failed, the pioneer who had got left behind, the prophet who had feared his own prophecies. These others had gone forward, some of them released by the war, others who had always been free-lances, and if the world was not quite ready for them yet, if they had to meet criticism and ridicule and opposition, if they were not all as happy as they might be, still they were at least brave, whereas she had been a coward, conquered by circumstances. A funny old thing with grey hair, who wore moire ribbon instead of a necktie and a brooch in the wrong place; yes, that was what she had come to in twenty years.
She sprang up and hurried out of the hotel. On her way to the town she unfastened the pearl brooch and hurled it into the bushes. It was twenty minutes to six. She arrived at the shop she wanted just as they were putting up the shutters.
"I'm not too late, am I?" she inquired breathlessly.
The clerk behind the counter reassured her. "You've just ten minutes, madam."
"Then show me some stiff collars, the newest pattern." She chose half a dozen hastily. "And now some neckties, please."
She made the best selection she could from the limited stock at her disposal, and left the shop with her parcel under her arm. Half way up the drive to the hotel, she stood still and stared incredulously at her purchases; she had spent considerably over thirty shillings—she must have gone mad! She walked on slowly with bent head. A pioneer that had got left behind; what an impulsive fool she was! Pioneers that got left behind didn't count; they were lost, utterly lost in the desert. How could the young turn back for the old? In any case they didn't do it, and one could not catch up with the young when one was forty-three.
AT the end of the pleasant hotel dining-room sat a big, florid man, alone at a table. His reddish hair was sprinkled with grey and so were the small side-whiskers he affected. His large hands held a wine-card delicately, as though, used to some work that necessitated extreme fineness of touch. His jaw was perhaps a trifle too massive, his mouth a trifle too aggressive in expression, but his eyes were eager and limpid, and his smile was frank and very kind.
He put down the wine-card and looked about him. His fellow guests interested him, people always did. These people were like their prototypes in every English hotel that he had ever been to; dull men with duller wives, dreary examples of matrimonial stagnation. Dull sons with dull fathers, dull daughters with dull mothers. The two girls with bobbed hair sat together and chattered incessantly, but even they looked commonplace in their evening dresses, which did not suit them or their weather-stained necks and hands.
From his vantage-point, facing the swing doors, he could see the full length of the room. Even the way people walked had a significance for him; he was wont to say that you could read a person's whole life history in the way they moved. As he looked towards the entrance, two women came in; an old and very feeble lady wearing a white lace cap, and a middle-aged woman with short, grey hair, who supported her companion on her arm. In her disengaged hand she carried a white, fleecy shawl and a bottle of medicine, while tucked away under her elbow was a box-shaped thing that looked like a minute foot-warmer. The two women seated themselves at a window table quite near the man.
"Open the window, dear," he heard the old lady say; "this room is stuffy."
The younger woman did as she was asked, and he noticed that the window seemed too heavy for her. They drank their soup in silence, but presently the old lady shivered. "It's colder than I thought," she said plaintively. "I think we'll have it shut, after all."
Her companion rose obediently and closed the window, then she put the small box-shaped object under the other's feet.
"So it was a foot-warmer!" thought the man with some amusement.
He bent a little forward, the better to hear what they would say. "I'm eavesdropping," he thought, "but they interest me."
"Won't you have your shawl on, Mother?"
"Well, perhaps I will. It's much colder here than it was last year."
The younger woman got up once more, this time to fold the shawl around her mother's shoulders.
"Oh, Lord!" muttered the man impatiently, "will she never sit still?"
He looked attentively at the pair. "Gentle, tyrant mother," he told himself, "and virgin daughter withering on her stem." But as he looked, something in the short-haired woman's appearance arrested him. "It's a fine face, even now," he thought, "and the mouth is positively beautiful. I wonder why—I wonder how it happened. Who is it she reminds me of?"
The woman turned her head and their eyes met; he thought she started and looked more intently; at all events she turned to her mother and said something in a low voice. In a second or two the old lady glanced at him.
The man felt his heart tighten. Something in the face of this short-haired woman and a certain gruff quality in her voice were strangely familiar. Just then his attention was distracted, and when he looked again the women's faces were turned away and they were speaking in an undertone. The pair finished their dinner and left the room, while he sat on stupidly, letting the years slip backwards.
Presently he got up and walked to the door. He went out into the hall, meaning to look at the hotel register. The hall was empty except for the short-haired woman, who had apparently anticipated him, for she was turning over the pages of the book. He came up quietly and looked over her shoulder. Her finger was hovering near his own entry: "Sir Richard Benson, Harley Street, London."
She saw him out of the corner of her eye. "I was looking you up," she explained simply.
"So I see," he said and smiled. "May I look you up, too?"
She nodded and he turned back a page. "Mrs. and Miss Ogden, Seabourne," he read aloud.
They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then: "Oh, Joan!"
"Richard!"
They clasped hands and laughed, then they clasped hands all over again and laughed again too, but with tears in their eyes.
Presently he said: "After all these years, Joan, and to meet in a place like this!"
"Yes, it's a long time, isn't it!"
"It's a lifetime," he replied gravely.
They went out on to the veranda. "Mother's going to bed," she told him. "I can stay out here for twenty minutes."
"Why only twenty minutes, Joan?"
"Because I must go and read to her when she's undressed; she's still rather sleepless after the journey."
He was silent. Then he said: "Well, tell me all about it, please; I want to hear everything."
She smiled at the familiar words. "That won't take twenty minutes; I can say it in less than two."
"Then say it," he commanded.
"I was bottled, after all," she told him with mock solemnity, but her voice shook a little.
He took her hand and pressed it very gently. "I know that, my dear."
She said: "You stopped writing rather suddenly, I thought. Why was that?"
He hesitated. "Well, you know, after Elizabeth's marriage and your decision to throw up the sponge—you remember you wrote to me of your decision, don't you?—— Well, after that I did write occasionally, for a year or two, but then it all seemed so hopeless, and I realized that you didn't mean to marry me, so I thought it best to let you go. I had my work, Joan, and I tried to wipe you out; you were a disturbing element."
She nodded. She could understand his not having wanted a distraction in the days when he was making his career, she could even understand his having dropped her; what interest could he have had in so disappointing a life as hers? "And you, on the other hand, have made good?" she queried, continuing her own train of thought.
He sighed. "Oh, yes, I suppose so; I'm considered a very successful man, I believe."
It came to her as a shock that she ought to know something about this very successful man, and that the mere fact that she knew nothing showed how completely she had dropped away from all her old interests.
"Don't be angry, Richard," she said apologetically. "But please tell me what you do. Did you specialize in nerves after all?"
He shook his head. "No, Joan, I specialized in brain; I'm a surgeon, my dear."
"A great one, Richard?"
"Oh, I don't know; I'm fairly useful, I think."
His words roused a vague echo in her, something stirred feebly; the ghost of by-gone enthusiasm, called from the grave by the mere proximity of this man, so redolent of self-confidence and success. She moved uneasily, conscious that her thoughts were straying backwards. "Elizabeth——" she began, but checked herself, and at that moment a porter came up.
"Please, miss, the lady in twenty-four says will you come up at once, she's in bed."
"I must go; good-night, Richard."
"Wait a minute!" he said eagerly. "When shall I see you again?"
She hesitated. "I think I can get off for a walk at nine o'clock to-morrow morning; Mother won't be getting up until about twelve."
"I shall be waiting here in the hall," he said.
When she was gone, he lit a cigar and went out into the night to think.
THE next morning Joan awoke with a feeling of excitement; the moment she opened her eyes she knew that something unusual had happened. She got up and dressed, more carefully than she had done for many years past. She parted her hair on one side again. Why not? It certainly looked neater parted. She was glad now that she had bought those new collars and ties. She took an incredibly long time to knot the tie satisfactorily and this dashed her a little. "My hand's out," she thought, "and I used to tie a tie so well." She put on her grey flannel suit, thinking as she did so that it was less frumpish in cut than the others; then she crushed her soft felt hat into the shape affected by the young women with bobbed hair, and was pleased with the result.
Her mother was awake when she went into her room.
"My darling!" she exclaimed in a protesting voice, "what is the matter with your hat! You've done something queer to the crown. And I don't like that collar and tie, it's so mannish looking."
Joan ignored the criticism. "I'm going for a walk with Richard, Mother, I'll be back in time to help you to dress at twelve o'clock."
Mrs. Ogden looked surprised. "Is he staying long?" she inquired.
"I don't know, I haven't asked him; but it'll be all right if I'm back at twelve, won't it?"
"Well, yes, I suppose so. I was going to get up a little earlier this morning, so as to get as much benefit from the air as possible; still, never mind."
Joan hesitated; the long years of habit tugged at her, but suddenly her mind was made up.
"I'll be back at twelve, darling, you'd better stay quiet until then."
She hurried over her breakfast. Richard was waiting for her in the hall and came forward as she left the dining-room.
"Ah! That's better," he said.
She looked at him questioningly. "What's better?"
"Why, you are. You look more like yourself this morning."
"Do I? It's only the clothes, I always look odd in the evening."
He looked amused. "Well, perhaps you do, a little," he admitted.
They strolled down the drive and through the gates into the little town. The air was full of West Country softness, it smelt of brine and earth and growing things. "If we keep straight on," she said, "we shall come to the Valley of the Rocks."
"I don't care where we come to, my dear, as long as we get to a place where we can talk in peace. I've a great deal to hear, you know."
She turned to study him. He was so familiar and yet such a complete stranger. His voice was the same rather eager, imperative thing that she remembered, and she thought that his eyes had not changed at all. But for the rest he was bigger, astonishingly so; his shoulders, his face, the whole of him, seemed overpoweringly large this morning. And he looked old. In the bright light she could see that his face was deeply lined, and that little pouches had formed under his eyes. But it struck her that she had never seen a more utterly kind expression; it was a charming age that had come upon Richard, an age full of sympathy and tolerance. They passed the Convent of the Poor Clares with its white walls inset with Della Robbia plaques of the Innocents in their swaddling clothes. Richard glanced at them and smiled.
"I rather love them, don't you, Joan? They're a kind of symbol of the childhood of the world."
She followed the direction of his eyes, but the plaques did not strike her as being very interesting. Perhaps he missed some response in her, for he fell silent.
When they reached the Valley of the Rocks he stood still and looked about him. "I had no idea there was anything as beautiful as this in England," he said.
She nodded. She too had always thought this valley very lovely, but because of its loveliness it depressed her, filling her with strange regrets. They sat down on a wide boulder. Somewhere to their right the sea was talking to itself on the pebbles; on a high pinnacle of grey rock some white goats leapt and gambolled. Joan looked at the deep blue of the sky showing between the crags, and then at Richard.
His chin was resting on his hands, which were clasped over his stick, and she noticed the hard, strong line of his jaw, and the roughened texture of his neck.
Presently he turned to her. "Well, aren't you going to tell me?" he asked.
"There's nothing to tell," she said uneasily.
He laughed. "What, in twenty years, has nothing happened?"
"Nothing at all, except what you see in me."
He said gravely: "I see Joan; older certainly, and grey-haired like myself, but still Joan. What else could I see?"
She was silent, plucking at some moss with nervous fingers. It was kind of Richard to pretend that the change in her had not shocked him, as, of course, it must have done. She knew instinctively that he was kind, a man one could trust, should the need arise. But she was not interested in Richard or herself, she cared very little for the impression they were making on each other. One question, and one only, burnt to get asked, yet her diffidence was keeping her silent. At last she took courage.
"How is Elizabeth? It's a long time since I last saw her."
He looked at her quickly. "Yes, it must be a long time, now I come to think of it," he said, "I saw her last year, you know, when I was in Cape Town."
She longed to shake the information out of him, his voice sounded so dull and non-committal. "Is she happy?" she asked.
"Happy? Oh! that's a large order, Joan. Those goats over there are probably happy, at least they have a good chance of being so; but when you come to the higher animals like men and women, it's a very different thing. We poor human beings with our divine heritage, we think too much; we know too much and too little to be really happy, I fancy."
"Yes, I expect you're right," she agreed, but she did not want to hear about the psychological problems of the race in general, according to Richard; she wanted to hear about Elizabeth.
Possibly he divined her thoughts, for he went on quickly, "But you don't care at this moment for the worries and troubles of mankind, do you? You just want to know all about Elizabeth."
She touched his sleeve almost timidly. "Will it bore you to tell me, Richard?"
He smiled. "Good Lord, no, of course not; only she asked me not to."
"She asked you not to?"
"Yes, she asked me not to talk about her, if I ever met you again."
"But why? I don't understand."
"No, neither do I. I told her it was rot and I refused to promise. You want to know if Elizabeth's happy. Well, yes, I suppose that in her own way she is. My brother's a most devoted husband and seems to be as much in love with her as he ever was; he stands from under and fetches and carries, and Elizabeth likes that sort of thing."
Joan frowned. "I see you're still unjust to her, Richard; you always were a little bit, you know."
"My dear, I'm not unjust; you asked me to tell you about her, and I'm telling you the impression I received when I stayed in her house last year."
"Go on," said Joan.
"Well, then, she has a truly magnificent mansion in Cape Town. It's white and square and rather hideous, that's the outside; inside it's full of very expensive, supposedly antique furniture, all shipped out from England. They entertain a great deal; my brother's managed to grow indecently rich; helped by the war, I'm afraid. And he's generous, positively lavish. Did you know that Lawrence got a baronetcy a little while ago? Well, he did, so Elizabeth's now Lady Benson! Funny, ain't it? I'm sorry there are no children; Lawrence would have loved to found a family, poor old fellow. He deserved that baronetcy all right, though, he was extremely useful to the Government during the war. Elizabeth was pretty useful too in a humbler way. I believe she organized more charities and hospital units and whatnots than any woman in South Africa; they tell me her tact and energy were phenomenal, in fact she's a kind of social leader in Cape Town. People go out with introductions to her, and if she takes them up they're made for ever, and if she don't they sink into oblivion; you know, that sort of thing." He paused.
Joan said: "So that's Elizabeth."
He looked at her with sudden pity in his eyes. "She's changed since you knew her, Joan."
"Never mind that," she interrupted. "Tell me what she looks like."
He considered. "Rather placid, I should say—yes, decidedly placid, but you feel that's not quite a true impression when you look at her mouth; her mouth is mystifying."
"How mystifying?"
"Oh, I don't know. Full of possibilities—it always was. She's rather ample these days; not fat you know, but Junoesque, you can imagine that she would be when she began to put on flesh. Oh! And her hair's quite white, the nice silvery kind, and always wonderfully dressed. She's a fine looking woman but she's cranky in some ways; for instance, she won't come to England. She's never set foot on British soil since she left for South Africa, except to skim across iten routefor the Continent. When she comes to Europe, she goes to Paris or Rome or some other place abroad. She says that she hates England. As a matter of fact I think she dislikes leaving South Africa at all, she says she's grown roots in the bigness of things out there. Lawrence tells me that when she feels bored with the gaieties of Cape Town, she goes right away to the veld; he thinks it's original and fine of her to need so much space to stretch in and so much oxygen to expand her lungs. Perhaps it is, I don't know. In any case she was awfully kind to me when I stayed with them; I was there for three months, you know, having a rest."
"Did she ever speak about me?" Joan asked, with an eagerness she could not hide.
"Only once; let me think. It was one night after dinner. I remember we were sitting alone on the terrace, and she asked me suddenly if I ever heard from you. I told her that I hadn't done so for years, that it was partly my fault, because I'd stopped writing. Then she said: 'I don't really want to discuss Joan Ogden, she belongs to the past, and I belong to all this, to my life here. I've given up being sentimental, and I find nothing either interesting or pathetic in failures. And I want you to promise me that if you should ever meet Joan, you won't talk about me; don't discuss me with her, she has no right to know.'" He paused. "I think those were her words, my dear, at all events they were very like that."
His voice was calm and even, and he turned to look at the pale face beside him. "I think she's succeeded in forgetting her disappointment over you," he said. "And if she hasn't quite got over it, she's managed to console herself pretty well. She's not the sort of woman to cry long over spilt milk."
He knew that he was being brutal. "But it's necessary," he thought; "it's vitally necessary. And if it rouses her even to a feeling of regret, better that than this lethargy of body and mind."
Joan stared out in front of her. All the expression seemed to have been wiped out of her face and eyes. "Shall we go?" she said presently. "I think it's getting late."
He assented at once, and they turned towards Lynton; he watched her covertly as she walked beside him. All his knowledge, all his experience, were braced to their utmost to meet the necessity that he felt was hers. But while his mind worked furiously, he talked of other things. He told her about his work during the war; he had gone to France to operate, and incidentally to study shell-shock, and the effects produced thereon by hypnotic treatment. He saw that she was scarcely listening, but he talked on just the same.
"That shell-shock work would have interested you, Joan, you'd have been awfully useful out there; they wanted women of your type. The average trained nurses sometimes hindered rather than helped, they didn't seem to catch on to the new ideas." He stood still and faced her. "By the way, what did you do during the war?" he asked suddenly.
She gave a hard little laugh. "What did I do? Well, you see, I couldn't leave Mother. I wanted to go with a unit to Serbia, but she got ill just then, I think the mere idea made her ill; so I made swabs at the Town Hall at Seabourne; I must have made thousands I should think. I had a Sister Dora arrangement on my head; we all had, it made us look important. Some of the women wore aprons with large red crosses on their bibs, it was very effective! And we gossiped, we did it persistently; that Town Hall grew to be a veritable 'School for Scandal;' we took away a character with every swab we made. We quarrelled too, I assure you it was most exciting at times; why, life-long friendships went to pieces over those swabs of ours. You see we were jealous of each other, we couldn't bear to think that some of our friends were more expert than we were, the competition was terrific! Oh, yes, and I was so good at my job that they couldn't in decency avoid making me the head of our room for a short time; I wore a wide blue sash over one shoulder. I shall never forget the sense of power that I felt when I first put on that sash. I became hectoring and dictatorial at once; it was a moment worth living for, I can tell you!"
He was silent, the bitterness in her voice hurt him intensely.
"Good-bye," she said as they reached the hotel. "And thank you for telling me about Elizabeth."
RICHARD stayed on from day to day. He had come to Lynton meaning to remain a week, but now almost a fortnight had passed, and still he stayed.
He planned endless walks and motor drives, excursions to all parts of the country. There were many of these in which Mrs. Ogden could not join, and a situation arose not unlike that which had arisen years ago, owing to Elizabeth. But now the antagonists fought in grim silence, playing with carefully concealed cards, outwardly polite and affable.
While treating Mrs. Ogden quite respectfully, Richard never allowed Joan to evade him, dragging her out by sheer force of will, and keeping her out until such time as he thought she had had enough open air and exercise. He managed with no little skill to combine the authority of the doctor with the solicitude of an old friend, and Joan found herself submitting in spite of her mother's aggrieved attitude.
She began to feel better in health but sick in mind; Richard awoke so much in her that she had hoped was over and done with. He joked over the old days at Seabourne, in the hopeful, exuberant manner of a man who looks forward to the future. And all the while her heart ached intolerably for those days, the days that had held Elizabeth and her own youth. He seemed to be trying to make her talk too. "Do you remember all the medical books I used to send you, Joan?" or, "That was when you and Elizabeth were going to live together, wasn't it?" He discussed Elizabeth as a matter of course, and because of this Joan found it difficult to speak of her at all. She began to be obsessed with a craving to see her again, to talk to her and hear her voice; the thought of the miles that would always lie between them grew intolerable. This woman who had known her since she was a little child, who had fashioned her, loved her and then cast her out, lived again in her thoughts with all the old vitality. "I shall die without seeing her," was a phrase that ran constantly in her brain; "I shall die without ever seeing Elizabeth again."
Richard observed the sunburn on her cheeks and felt happier. He believed that his method was the right one, and dug assiduously among Joan's memories. He was convinced that she had been very near a nervous breakdown when he had found her, and congratulated himself on what he thought was a change for the better. Her reticence when Elizabeth was mentioned only served to make him speak of her the more. "No good letting the thing remain submerged," he thought; "she must be made to talk about it."
In spite of the mental unrest that possessed her, or perhaps because of it, Joan looked forward to the long days spent on the moors, the long drives in the car through the narrow, twisting lanes. Richard was an excellent companion, always amusing and sympathetic, and there was a painful fascination in talking over the old days. His eyes were kind when he looked at her, and his hand felt strong and protective as he helped her in and out of the car. She thought, as she had done a long time ago, what an adorable brother he would have made.
Sometimes he would tell her about his work, going into technical details as though she too were a doctor. When he spoke of a case which particularly interested him, he gesticulated, like the Richard of twenty years ago.
"How little you've changed," she said one day.
He replied: "We none of us really change, Joan, except on the surface."
"I've changed, Richard; the whole of me has."
"Oh, no, you haven't; you're all of you there, only you've pushed some of it away out of sight."
She wondered if he were right. Was it possible that all that had once made Joan Ogden, was lurking somewhere in her still? She shuddered. "I don't want to go back!" she said fiercely. "Oh, Richard, I don't want ever to go back!"
"Not back, but forward," he corrected. "Just go forward with your whole self."
The time that Richard could afford to take from his work had come to an end, it was his last day at Lynton. "Let's walk to Watersmeet this afternoon, Joan," he suggested. "It's such a perfect day."
"I oughtn't to leave Mother," she said doubtfully. "She doesn't seem very well."
"Oh, she's all right, my dear; I've been up to see her and she's only a little over-tired. After all, at her age, she's bound to feel tired sometimes."
Joan weakened. "Well, wait a minute, then, while I go and say good-bye."
They made their way down the steep hill and over the bridge to the far side of the river. The water was rushing in a noisy torrent between the rocks and boulders.
"Oh! How I love the noise of it," he exclaimed. "It's life, just life!"
She looked at his lined and ageing face and marvelled at his enthusiasms. He was so full of them still and of a great self-courage that nothing had ever had the power to break. They strolled along the narrow path under the fresh spring green, keeping the river that Richard loved beside them all the way. He took her hand and held it and she did not resist; she was feeling very grateful towards this friend who had come from the world and found her. Presently she grew tired, it was hot down there by the river.
He noticed her lagging steps: "Rest, my dear, we've walked too far."
They sat down under the trees and for a long time neither spoke. He was the first to break the silence:
"Joan, will you marry me?" he said abruptly.
It was the same old familiar phrase that she had heard so often before, and she found it hard to believe that they were two middle-aged people instead of the boy and girl of twenty years ago, but in another moment she had flushed with annoyance.
"Is that joke in very good taste, Richard?"
He stared at her. "Joke? But I mean it!" he stammered.
She sprang up and he followed her. "Richard, have you gone quite mad?"
"I was never more sane in my life; I ask you: Will you marry me?"
She looked at him incredulously, but something in the expression of his eyes told her that he did mean it. "Oh, Richard," she said with a catch in her voice, "I can't! I never could, you know."
He said: "Joan, if I weren't so ridiculously middle-aged, I'd go down on my knees, here in the grass, and beg you to take me. I want you more than anything else in the world."
She said: "You've made some awful mistake. There's nothing of me to want; I'm empty, just a husk."
"That's not true, Joan," he protested. "You're the only woman I've ever cared for. I want you in my life, in my home; I want your companionship, your help in my work."
"In your work?" she asked in genuine surprise.
"Yes, in my work, why not? Wouldn't it interest you to help me in the laboratory, sometimes? I'm rather keen on certain experiments, you know, Joan, and if you'll only come, we could work together. Oh, it would all be so utterly splendid! Just what I planned for us years ago. Don't you think you can marry me, Joan?"
She laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "Listen," she said gently, "while I try to make you understand. The woman you're thinking of is not Joan Ogden at all; she's a purely fictitious person, conceived in your own brain. Joan Ogden is forty-three, and old for her age; she's old in body, her skin is old, and she'll soon be white-haired. Her mind has been shrivelling away for years; it's not able to grasp big things as it was once; it's grown small and petty and easily tired. Give it a piece of serious work and it flags immediately, there's no spring left in it.
"Her body's a mass of small ailments; real or imaginary, they count just the same. She goes to bed feeling tired out and gets up feeling more tired, so that every little futile thing is enough to make her irritable. She exaggerates small worries and makes mountains out of molehills. Her nerves are unreliable and she dwells too much on her health. If she remembers what she used to be like, she tries to forget it, because she's afraid; long ago she was a coward and she's remained one to this day, only now she's a tamer coward and gives in without a struggle.
"It's different with you, Richard, you've got a right to marry. You want to marry, because you're successful and because at your age a man settles down. But haven't you thought that you probably want children, a son? Do you think the woman I've described would be a desirable mother, even if she could have a child at all? Would you choose to make posterity through an old, unhealthy body; to give children to the world by a woman who is utterly unfit to bear them, who never has loved you and never could?"
He covered his face with his hands. "Don't, I can't bear it, Joan!"
"But it's the truth and you know it," she went on quietly. "I'm past your saving, Richard; there's nothing left to save."
"Oh, Joan!" he said desperately. "It can't be as bad as that! Give me a chance; if anyone can save you, I can."
She turned her face away from him. "No!" she said. "Only one creature could ever have saved me and I let her go while I was still young."
"Do you mean Elizabeth?" he asked sharply.
She nodded. "Yes, she could have saved me, but I let her go."
"God!" he exclaimed almost angrily. "I ought to be jealous of her; I am jealous of her, I suppose! But why, oh, why, if you cared for her so much, didn't you break away and go with her to London? Why did you let even that go by you? I could bear anything better than to see you as you are."
She was silent. Presently she said: "There was Mother, Richard. I loved her too, and she needed me; she didn't seem able to do without me."
His face went white with passion; he shook his clenched fists in the air. "How long is it to go on," he cried, "this preying of the weak on the strong, the old on the young; this hideous, unnatural injustice that one sees all around one, this incredibly wicked thing that tradition sanctifies? You were so splendid. How fine you were! You had everything in you that was needed to put life within your grasp, and you had a right to life, to a life of your own; everyone has. You might have been a brilliant woman, a woman that counted for a great deal, and yet what are you now? I can't bear to think of it!
"If youarea mass of ills, as you say, if your splendid brain is atrophied, and you feel empty and unfulfilled, whose fault is that? Not yours, who had too much heart to save yourself. I tell you, Joan, the sin of it lies at the door of that old woman up there in Lynton; that mild, always ailing, cruelly gentle creature who's taken everything and given nothing and battened on you year by year. She's like an octopus who's drained you dry. You struggled to get free, you nearly succeeded, but as quickly as you cut through one tentacle, another shot out and fixed on to you.
"Good God! How clearly one sees it all! In your family it was your father who began it, by preying first on her, and in a kind of horrid retaliation she turned and preyed on you. Milly escaped, but only for a time; she came home in the end; then she preyed in her turn. She gripped you through her physical weakness, and then there were two of them! Two of them? Why, the whole world's full of them! Not a Seabourne anywhere but has its army of octopi; they thrive and grow fat in such places. Look at Ralph Rodney: I believe he was brilliant at college, but Uncle John devoured him, and you know what Ralph was when he died. Look at Elizabeth: do you think she's really happy? Well, I'm going to tell you now what I kept from you the other day. Elizabeth got free, but not quite soon enough; she's never been able to make up for the blood she lost in all those years at Seabourne. She's just had enough vitality left to patch her life together somehow, and make my brother think that all is very well with her. But she couldn't deceive me, and she knew it; I saw the ache in her for the thing she might have been. Elizabeth's grasped the spar; that's what she's done, and she's just, only just managed to save herself from going under. She's rich and popular and ageing with dignity, but she's not, and never can be now, the woman she once dreamt of. She's killed her dream by being busy and hard and quite unlike her real self, by taking an interest in all the things that the soul of her laughs at. And that's what life with Ralph in Seabourne has done for her. That, and you, Joan. I suppose I ought to hate Elizabeth, but I can't help knowing that when she broke away there was one tentacle more tenacious than all the rest; it clung to her until she cut it through, and thatwasyou, who were trying unconsciously to make her a victim of your own circumstances.
"Joan, the thing is infectious, I tell you; it's a pestilence that infects people one after another. Even you, who were the most generous creature that I've ever known; the disease nearly got you unawares. If Elizabeth hadn't gone away when she did, if she had stayed in Seabourne for your sake, then you would have been one of them. Thank God she went! It's horrible to know that they've victimized the thing I love, but I'd rather you were the victim than that you should have grown to be like the rest of them, a thing that preys on the finest instincts of others, and sucks the very soul out of them." His voice broke suddenly, and he let his arms drop to his sides. "And I know now that I've been loving you for all these years," he said. "I've just been loving and loving you."
She stood speechless before his anger and misery, unable to defend herself or her mother, conscious that he had spoken the bitter and brutal truth.
At last she said: "Don't be too hard on Mother, Richard; she's a very old woman now."
"I know," he answered dully. "I know she's very old; perhaps I've been too violent. If I have you must forgive me."
"No," she said, "you were right in everything, only one can't always crush people because one has right on one's side."
He stroked her arm with his strong, hard fingers, "Can't you marry me?" he reiterated stubbornly.
She said: "I shall never marry anyone. I'm not a woman who could ever have married. I've never been what you'd call in love with a man in my life; but I think if I'd been different, Richard, I should have wanted to marry you."
The next morning Richard Benson left Lynton, and in the course of a few days the Ogdens returned to Leaside.
"I don't think we'll go to Lynton again," said Mrs. Ogden fretfully. "It's not done me any good at all, this year."
Joan acquiesced; she felt that she never again wanted to see the place in which so many unwelcome memories had been aroused. She sat staring out of the window as the train neared Seabourne, and wished that Richard had never crossed her path; all she wanted was to be left in peace. She dreaded remembering and he had made her remember, she was afraid of unhappiness and he had made her unhappy.
As the familiar landmarks sped past one by one, little forgotten incidents of her youth surged through her mind in rhythm to the glide and jolt of the train. She pictured the Seabourne station as it used to be before they had enlarged it, and the flower-beds and cockle-shells that Milly had once jeered at. On the short platform stood a little army of ghosts: the red-haired porter who had limped, and had always called her Miss Hogden. He had been gone these ten years past, where, she did not know. Richard, freckled and gawky, reminding you somehow of a pleasant puppy; rather uncouth he had been in those days. Milly, small and fragile, her yellow curls always bobbing, and Elizabeth, slim as a larch tree, very upright and neat and quiet, her intent eyes scanning the incoming train for a sight of Joan's face at the window. And then herself, Joan Ogden, black-haired, grey-eyed, young; with a body all suppleness and vigour, and a mind that could grasp and hold. She would be leaning far out of the carriage, waving an ungloved hand. "Here I am!" And then the meeting; the firm clasp of friendship, respect and love; the feel of Elizabeth's signet ring cold against your fingers, and the goodly warmth of her palm as it met your own. Ghosts, all ghosts; ghosts of the living and the dead. Her eyelids felt hot and tingling; she brushed the tears away angrily. Ghosts, all ghosts, every one of them dead, to her, at all events; and she, how utterly dead she was to herself.
THAT winter Mrs. Ogden's prophecy came true, and influenza laid hold of Seabourne with unexpected virulence. Mrs. Ogden was almost the first victim. She was very ill indeed. Joan was bound to her hand and foot, for the doctor warned her that her mother's condition was likely to be critical for some time. "It's her heart I'm afraid of," he said.
Curiously enough the old lady fiercely resented her invalidism. She, who for so many years had nursed her slightest symptom, now that at last she was really ill, showed the rebellious spirit of a young athlete deprived of his normal activities, and Joan's task in nursing her grew daily more arduous. She flagged under the constant strain of trying to pacify her turbulent patient, to whom any excitement might be dangerous. All household worries must be kept from her mother; incredibly difficult when a house was as badly constructed as Leaside. The front door could not open without Mrs. Ogden hearing it and inquiring the cause, and very little could go on in the kitchen that she was not somehow aware of.
At this most inappropriate moment Joan herself got influenza, but the attack seemed so mild that she refused to go to bed. The consequences of keeping about were disastrous, and she found herself weak to the verge of tears. The veins in her legs began to trouble her seriously; she could no longer go up and down stairs without pain. This terrified her, and in a chastened mood she consulted the doctor. He examined the veins, and with all the light-hearted inconsequence of his kind prescribed long and constant periods of rest. Joan must lie down for two hours after luncheon and again after dinner; must avoid stairs and, above all, must never stand about.
One of the most pressing problems was Mrs. Ogden's digestion; always erratic, it was now submerged in a variety of gastric disturbances brought on by the influenza. There was so little that she could eat with impunity that catering became increasingly difficult, the more so as for the first time in her life she evinced a great interest in food. If the servant made her Benger's she refused to drink it, complaining of its consistency, which she described as "Billstickers' paste." In the end Joan found herself preparing everything her mother ate.