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Title: The Unlit Lamp (1924) Author: Radclyffe Hall * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0701131h.html Language: English Date first posted: November 2007 Date most recently updated: November 2007 Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au
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'And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.' Browning THE STATUE AND THE BUST
CONTENTS: BOOK 1 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 BOOK 2 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 BOOK 3 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 BOOK 4 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 BOOK 5 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50
The dining-room at Leaside was also Colonel Ogden's study. It contained, in addition to the mahogany sideboard with ornamental brackets at the back, the three-tier dumb waiter and the dining-table with chairs en suite, a large roll-top desk much battered and ink-stained, and bleached by the suns of many Indian summers. There was also a leather arm-chair with a depression in the seat, a pipe-rack and some tins of tobacco. All of which gave one to understand that the presence of the master of the house brooded continually over the family meals and over the room itself in the intervals between. And lest this should be doubted, there was Colonel Ogden's photograph in uniform that hung over the fireplace; an enlargement showing the colonel seated in a tent at his writing-table, his native servant at his elbow. The colonel's face looked sternly into the camera, his pen was poised for the final word, authority personified. The smell of the colonel's pipes, past and present, hung in the air, and together with the general suggestion of food and newspapers, produced an odour that became the very spirit of the room. In after years the children had only to dose their eyes and think of their father to recapture the smell of the dining-room at Leaside.
Colonel Ogden looked at his watch; it was nine o'clock, He pushed back his chair from the breakfast table, a signal for the family to have done with eating.
He sank into his arm-chair with a sigh; he was fifty-five and somewhat stout. His small, twinkling eyes scanned the columns of The Times as if in search of something to pounce on. Presently he had it.
'Mary.'
'Yes, dear.'
'Have you seen this advertisement of the Army and Navy?'
'Which one, dear?'
'The provision department. Surely we arc paying more than this for bacon?'
He extended the paper towards his wife; his hand shook a little, his face became very slightly suffused. Mrs. Ogden glanced at the paper; then she lied quickly.
'Oh, no, my love, ours is twopence cheaper.'
'Oh!' said Colonel Ogden. 'Kindly ring the bell.'
Mrs. Ogden obeyed. She was a small woman, pale and pensive looking; her neat hair, well netted, was touched with grey, her soft brown eyes were large and appealing, but there were lines about her mouth that suggested something different, irritable lines that drew the corners of the lips down a little. The maid came in; Colonel Ogden smiled coldly. 'The grocer's book, please', he said.
Mrs. Ogden quailed; it was unfortunately the one day of all the seven when the grocer's book would be in the house.
'What for, James?' she asked.
Colonel Ogden caught the nervous tremor in her voice, and his smile deepened. He did not answer, and presently the servant returned book in hand. Colonel Ogden took it, and with the precision born of long practice turned up the required entry.
'Mary! Be good enough to examine this item.'
She did so and was silent.
'If', said Colonel Ogden in a bitter voice, 'if you took a little more trouble, Mary, to consider my interests, if you took the trouble to ascertain what we are paying for things, there would be less for me to worry about, less waste of money, less...' He gasped a little and pressed his left side, glancing at his wife as he did so.
'Don't get excited, James, I beg; do remember your heart.'
The colonel leant back in his chair. 'I dislike unnecessary waste, Mary.'
'Yes, dear, of course. I wonder I didn't see that notice; I shall write for some of their bacon to-day and countermand the piece from Goodridge's. I'll go and do it now--or would you like me to give you your tabloids?'
'Thanks, no', said the colonel briefly.
'Do the children disturb you? Shall they go upstairs?'
He got up heavily. No, I'm going to the club.'
Something like a sigh of relief breathed through the room; the two children eyed each other, and Milly, the younger, made a secret face. She was a slim child with her mother's brown eyes. Her long yellow hair hung in curls down her back; she looked fragile and elfish; some people thought her pretty. Colonel Ogden did; she was her father's favourite.
There were two years between the sisters; Milly was ten, Joan twelve. They were poles apart in disposition as in appearance. Everything that Milly felt she voiced instantly; almost everything that Joan felt she did not voice. She was a silent, patient child as a rule, but could, under great provocation, display a stubborn will that could not be coped with, a reasoning power that paralysed her mother and infuriated Colonel Ogden. It was not temper exactly; Joan was never tearful, never violent, only coldly logical and self-assured and firm. You might lock her in her bedroom and tell her to ask God to make her a good child, but as likely as not she would refuse to say she was sorry in the end. Once she had remarked that her prayers had gone unanswered, and after this she was never again exhorted to pray for grace.
It was what she considered injustice that roused the devil in Joan. When the cat had been turned out to fend for itself during the summer holidays, when a servant had been dismissed at a moment's notice for some trifling misdemeanour, these and such-like incidents, which were fortunately of rare occurrence, had been known to produce in Joan the mood that her mother almost feared. Then it was that Joan had spoken her mind, and had remained impenitent until finally accorded the forgiveness she had not asked for.
Joan was large-boned and tall for her age, lanky as a boy, with a pale face and short black hair. Her grey eyes were not large and not at all appealing, but they were set well apart; they were intelligent and frank. She escaped being plain by the skin of her teeth; she would have been plain had her face not been redeemed by a short, straight nose and a beautiful mouth. Somehow her mouth reassured you.
They had cut her thick hair during scarlet fever, and Joan refused to allow it to grow again. She invariably found scissors and snipped and snipped, and Mrs. Ogden's resistance broke down at the final act of defiance, when she was discovered hacking at her hair with a pen-knife.
As the front door slammed behind Colonel Ogden the sisters smiled at each other. Mrs. Ogden had gone to countermand the local bacon, and they were alone.
'Rot!' said Joan firmly.
'What is?' asked Milly.
'The bacon row.'
'Oh, how dare you!' cried Milly in a voice of rapture. 'Supposing you were heard!'
'There's no one to hear me--anyhow, it is rot!'
Milly danced. 'You'll catch it if mother hears you!' Her fair curls bobbed as she skipped round the room.
'Mind that cup', warned Joan.
But it was too late; the cup fell crashing to the floor. Just then Mrs. Ogden came in.
'Who broke that cup?'
There was silence.
'Well?' she waited.
Milly caught Joan's eye. Joan saw the appeal in that look. Milly began.
'It was my fault', said Joan calmly.
'Then you ought to be more careful, especially when you know how your father values this breakfast set. Really it's too bad; what will he say? What possessed you, Joan?'
Mrs. Ogden put her hand up to her head wearily, glancing at Joan as she did so. Joan was so quick to respond to the appeal of illness. Mrs. Ogden would not have admitted to herself how much she longed for this quick response and sympathy. She, who for years had been the giver, she who had ministered to a man with heart disease, she who had become a veritable reservoir of soothing phrases, solicitous actions, tabloids, hot soups and general restoratives. There were times, growing more frequent of late, when she longed, yes, longed to break down utterly, to become bedridden, to be waited upon hand and foot, to have arresting symptoms of her own, any number of them.
India, the great vampire, had not wrecked her, for she was wiry, her little frame could withstand what her husband's bulk had failed to endure. Mrs. Ogden was a strong woman. She did not look robust, however; this she knew and appreciated. Her pathetic eyes were sunken and somewhat dim, her nose, short and straight like Joan's, looked pinched, and her drooping mouth was pale. All this Mrs. Ogden knew, and she used it as her stock-in-trade with her elder daughter. There were days when the desire to produce an effect upon someone became a positive craving. She would listen for Joan's footsteps on the stairs, and then assume an attitude, head back against the couch, hand pressed to eyes. Sometimes there were silent tears hastily hidden after Joan had seen, or the short, dry cough so like her brother Henry's. Henry had died of consumption. Then as Joan's eyes would grow troubled, and the quick: 'Oh, Mother darling, aren't you well?' would burst from her lips, Mrs. Ogden's conscience would smite her. But in spite of herself she would invariably answer: 'It's nothing, dearest; only my cough', or 'It's only my head, Joan; it's been very painful lately.'
Then Joan's strong, young arms would comfort and soothe, and her firm lips grope until they found her mother's; and Mrs. Ogden would feel mean and ashamed but guiltily happy, as if a lover held her.
And so, when in addition to the fuss about the bacon, a cup of the valued breakfast set lay shattered on the floor, Mrs. Ogden felt, on this summer morning, that life had become overpowering and that a headache, real or assumed, would be the relief she so badly needed.
'It's very hard', she began tremulously. 'I'm quite tired out; I don't feel able to face things to-day. I do think, my dear, that you might have been more careful!' Tears brimmed up in her soft brown eyes and she went hastily to the window.
'Oh, darling, don't cry.' Joan was beside her in an instant. 'I am sorry, darling, look at me; I will be careful. How much will it cost? A new one, I mean. I've still got half of Aunt Ann's birthday money; I'll get a cup to match, only please don't cry.'
The slight gruffness that was characteristic of her voice grew more pronounced in her emotion.
Mrs. Ogden drew her daughter to her; the gesture was full of soft, compelling strength.
'It's a shame!'
'What is, dear?' said Mrs. Ogden, suddenly attentive.
'Father!' cried Joan defiantly.
'Hush, hush, darling.'
'But it is; he bullies you.'
'No, dear, don't say such things; your father has a weak heart.'
'But you're ill, too, and father's heart isn't always as bad as he makes out. This morning--'
'Hush, Joan, you mustn't. I know I'm not strong, but we must never let him know that I sometimes feel ill.'
'He ought to know it!'
'But, Joan, you were so frightened when he had that attack last Christmas.'
'That was a real one', said Joan decidedly.
'Oh well, dearest--but never mind, I'm all right again now--run away, my lamb. Miss Rodney must have come; it's past lesson time.'
'Are you sure you're all right?' said Joan doubtfully.
Mrs. Ogden leant back in the chair and gazed pensively out of the window. 'My little Joan', she murmured.
Joan trembled, a great tenderness took hold of her. She stooped and kissed her mother's hand lingeringly.
But as the sisters stood in the hall outside, Joan looked even paler than usual, her face was a little pinched, and there was a curious expression in her eyes.
'Oh, Joan, it was jolly of you', Milly began.
Joan pushed her roughly. 'You're a poor thing, Milly.'
'What's that?'
'What you are, a selfish little pig!'
'But--'
'You haven't got any guts.'
'What are guts?'
'What Alice's young man says a Marine ought to have.'
'I don't want them then', said Milly proudly.
'Well, you ought to want them; you never do own up. You are a poor thing!'
Seabourne-on-Sea was small and select. The Ogdens' house in Seabourne was small but not particularly select, for it had once been let out in apartments. The landlord now accepted a reduced rent for the sake of getting the colonel and his family as tenants. He was old-fashioned and clung to the gentry.
In 1880 the Ogdens had left India hurriedly on account of Colonel Ogden's health. When Milly was a baby and Joan three years old, the family had turned their backs on the pleasant luxury of Indian life. Home they had come to England and a pension, Colonel Ogden morose and chafing at the useless years ahead; Mrs. Ogden a pretty woman, wide-eyed and melancholy after all the partings, especially after one parting which her virtue would have rendered inevitable in any case.
They had gone to rooms somewhere in Bayswater; the cooking was execrable, the house dirty. Mrs. Ogden, used to the easy Indian service and her own comfortable bungalow, found it well-nigh impossible to make the best of things; she fretted. That winter there had been bad fogs which resulted in a severe heart attack for Colonel Ogden. The doctor advised a house by the sea, and mentioned Seabourne as having a suitable climate. The result was: Leaside, The Crescent, Seabourne. There they had been for nearly nine years and there they were likely to remain, in spite of Colonel Ogden's grumbling and Mrs. Ogden's nerves. For Leaside was cheap and the air suited Colonel Ogden's heart; anyhow there was no money to move, and nowhere in particular to go if they could move.
Of course there was Blumfield. Mrs. Ogden's sister Ann had married the now Bishop of Blumfield, but the Blanes were, or so the Ogdens thought, never quite sincere when they urged them to move nearer to them. They decided not to try crumb-gathering at the rich man's table in Blumfield.
It was her children's education that now worried Mrs. Ogden most. Not that she cared very much what they learnt; her fetish was how and where they learnt it. She had been a Routledge before her marriage, a fact which haunted her day and night. 'Poor as rats, and silly proud as peacocks', someone had once described them. We Roudedges'--'The Roudedges never do that'--'The Roudedges never do this'!
Round and round like squirrels in a cage, treading the wheel of their useless tradition, living beyond their limited means, occasionally stooping to accept a Government job, but usually finding all work infra dig. Living on their friends, which somehow was not infra dig., soothing their pride by recounting among themselves and to all who would listen the deeds of valour of one Admiral Sir William Routledge said to have been Nelson's darling--hanging their admiral's picture with laurel wreaths on the anniversary of some bygone battle and never failing to ask their friends to tea on that occasion--such were the Routledges of Chesham, and such, in spite of many reverses, had Mary Ogden remained.
True, Chesham had been sold up, and the admiral's portrait by Romney bought by the docile Bishop of Blumfield at the request of his wife Ann. True, Ann and Mary had been left penniless when their father, Captain Routledge, died of lung haemorrhage in India. True, Ann had been glad enough to marry her bishop, then a humble chaplain, while Mary followed suit with Major Ogden of The Buffs. True, their brother Henry had failed to distinguish himself in any way and had bequeathed nothing to his family but heavy liabilities when his haemorrhage removed him in the nick of time--true, all true, and more than true, but they were still Routledges! And Admiral Sir William still got his laurel wreaths on the anniversary of the battle. He had moved from the decaying walls of Chesham to the substantial walls of the bishop's palace, and perhaps he secretly liked the change--Ann his descendant did. In the humbler drawing-room at Leaside he received like homage; for there, in a conspicuous position, hung a print of the famous portrait, and every year when the great day came round, Mary, his other descendant, dutifully placed her smaller laurel wreath round the frame, and asked her friends to tea as tradition demanded.
'Once a Routledge always a Routledge', Mrs. Ogden was fond of saying on such occasions. And if the colonel happened to feel in a good temper he would murmur, 'Fine old chap, Sir William; looks well in his laurels, Mary. Who did you say was coming in this afternoon?' But if on the other hand his heart had been troubling him, he might turn away with a scornful grunt. Then, Mary, the ever tactless, would query, 'Doesn't it look nice then, dear?' And once, only once, the colonel had said, 'Oh, hell!'
The school at Seabourne was not for the Routledge clan, for to it went the offspring of the local tradespeople. Colonel Ogden was in-dined to think that beggars couldn't be choosers, but Mary was firm. Weak in all else, she was a flint when her family pride was involved, a knight-errant bearing on high the somewhat tattered banner of Rout-ledge. The colonel gave way; he would always have given way before a direct attack, but his wife had never guessed this. Even while she raised her spiritual battle-cry she thought of his weak heart and her conscience smote her, yet she risked even the colonel's heart on that occasion; Joan and Milly must be educated at home. The Routledges never sent their girls to school!
In the end, it was Colonel Ogden who solved the difficulty. He frequented the stiff little club house on the esplanade, and in this most unlikely place he heard of a governess.
Every weekday morning you could see him in the window. The Times held in front of him like a shield, his teeth clenched on his favourite pipe; a truculent figure, an imperial figure, bristling with an authority that there were now none to dispute.
Into the club would presently saunter old Admiral Bourne who lived at Glory Point, a lonely man with a passion for breeding fancy mice. He had a trick of pulling up short in the middle of the room, and peering over his spectacles with his pleasant blue eyes as if in search of someone. He was in search of someone, of some tolerant fellow-member who would not be too obviously bored at the domestic vagaries of the mice, who constantly disappointed their owner by coming into the world the wrong colour. If Admiral Bourne could be said to have an ambition, then that ambition was to breed a mouse that should eclipse all previous records.
Other members would begin to collect, Sir Robert Loo of Moor Park, whose shooting provided the only alternative to golf for the male population of Seabourne. There was Major Boyle, languid and malarial, with a doleful mind, especially in politics; and Mr. Pearson, the bank manager, who had found his way into the club when its funds were alarmingly low, and had been bitterly resented ever since. Then there was Mr. Rodney the solicitor, and last but not least, General Brooke, Colonel Ogden's hated rival.
General Brooke looked like Colonel Ogden, that was the trouble; they were often mistaken for each other in the street. They were both under middle height, stout, with grey hair and small blue eyes, they both wore their moustaches clipped very short, and they both had auxiliary whiskers in their ears. Added to this they both wore red neckties and loose, light home-spuns, and they both had wives who: knitted their waistcoats from wool bought at the local shop. They both wore brown boots with rubber studded soles, and worst of all, they both wore brown Homburg hats, so that their backs looked exactly alike when they were out walking. The situation was aggravated by the fact that neither could accuse the other of imitation. To be sure General Brooke had lived in Seabourne eighteen months longer than Colonel Ogden and had never been seen in any other type of garments; but then, when Colonel Ogden had arrived in his startling replicas, his clothes had been obviously old and had certainly been worn quite as long as the general's.
It was Mr. Rodney, the solicitor, who offered Colonel Ogden a solution to his wife's educational difficulties. Mr. Rodney, it seemed, had a sister just down from Cambridge. She had come to Seabourne to keep house for him, but she wanted to get some work, and he thought she would probably be glad to teach the Ogden's little girls for a few hours every day. The colonel engaged Elizabeth Rodney forthwith.
The schoolroom at Leaside was dreary. You came through the front door into a narrow passage covered with brown linoleum and decorated with trophies from Indian bazaars. On one side stood a black carved wood table bearing a Benares tray used for visiting cards, beside the table stood an elephant's foot, adapted to take umbrellas. To your right was the drawing-room, to your left the dining-room, facing you were the stairs carpeted in faded green Brussels. If you continued down the passage and passed the kitchen door, you came to the schoolroom. Leaside was a sunny house, so that the schoolroom took you by surprise; it was an unpleasant room, always a little damp, as the walls testified.
It was spring and the gloom of the room was somewhat dispelled by the bright bunch of daffodils which Elizabeth had brought with her for the table. At this table she sat with her two pupils; there was silence except for the scratching of pens. Elizabeth Rodney leant back in her chair; what light there was from the window slanted on to her strong brown hair that waved persistently around her ears. Her eyes looked inattentive, or rather as if their attention were riveted on something a long way away; her fine, long hands were idly folded in her lap; she had a trick of folding her hands in her lap. She was so neat that it made you uncomfortable, so spotless that it made you feel dirty, yet there was something in the set of her calm mouth that made you doubtful. Calm it certainly was, and yet...one could not help wondering...
Just now she looked discouraged; she sighed.
'Finished!' said Joan, passing over her copy-book.
Elizabeth examined it. 'That's all right.'
Milly toiled, the pen blotted, tears filled her eyes, one fell and made the blot run.
'Four and ten and fifteen and seven, that makes--'
'Thirty-six', said Elizabeth. 'Now we'll go out.'
They got up and put away the books. Outside, the March wind blew briskly, the sea glared so that it hurt your eyes, and around the coast the white cliffs curved low and distinct.
'Let's go up there', said Elizabeth, pointing to the cliffs.
'Joan, Joan!' called Mrs. Ogden from the drawing-room window, 'where is your hat?'
'Oh, not to-day, Mother. I like the feel of the wind in my hair.'
'Nonsense, come in and get your hat.'
Joan sighed. 'I suppose I must', she said. 'You two go on, I'll catch you up.' She ran in and snatched a tam-o'-shanter from the hall table. 'Don't forget my knitting wool, dear.'
'No, Mother, but we were going on to the downs.'
'The downs to-day? Why, you'll be blown away.'
'Oh, no, Miss Rodney and I love wind.'
'Well, as you come home, then.'
'All right. Good-bye, Mother.'
'Good-bye, darling.'
Joan ran after the retreating figures. 'Here I am', she said breathlessly. 'Is it Cone Head or the Golf Course?'
'Cone Head to-day', replied Elizabeth.
There was something in her voice that attracted Joan's attention, a decision, a kind of defiance that seemed out of place. It was as if she had said: 'I will go to Cone Head, I want to get out of this beastly place, to get up above it and forget it.' Joan eyed her curiously. To Milly she was just the governess who gave you sums and always, except when in such a mood as to-day, saw that you did them; but to Joan she was a human being. To Milly she was 'Miss Rodney', to Joan, privately at all events, 'Elizabeth'.
They walked on in silence.
Milly began to lag. I'm tired to-day, let's go into the arcade.'
'Why?' demanded Joan.
'Because I like the shops.'
'We don't', said Joan. Milly lagged more obviously.
'Come, Milly, walk properly, please', said Elizabeth.
They had passed the High Street by now and were trudging up the long white road to Cone Head. Over the point the wind raged furiously, it snatched at their skirts and undid Milly's curls.
'Oh! oh!' she gasped.
Elizabeth laughed, but her laughter was caught up and blown away before it could reach the children; Joan only knew that she was laughing by her open mouth.
'It's glorious!' shouted Joan. 'I want to hit it back!'
Elizabeth battled her way towards an overhanging rock. 'Sit here', she motioned; the rock sheltered them, and now they could hear themselves speak.
'This is hateful', said Milly. 'When I'm famous I shall never do this sort of thing.'
'Oh, Miss Rodney', exclaimed Joan, 'look at that sail!'
'I have been looking at it ever since we sat down--I think I should like to be under it.'
'Yes, going, going, going, you don't know and you don't care where--just anywhere, so long as it isn't here.'
'Already?' Elizabeth murmured.
'Already what?'
'Nothing. Did I say already?'
'Then I was thinking aloud.'
She looked at the child curiously; she had taught the girls now for about two years, yet she was not even beginning to understand Joan. Milly was reading made easy. Delicate, spoilt by her father and entirely self-centred; yet she was a good enough child as children go, easier far to manage than the elder girl. Milly was not stupid either. She played the violin astonishingly well for a girl of ten. Elizabeth knew that the little man who taught her thought that she had genius. Milly was easy enough, she knew exactly what she wanted, and Elizabeth suspected that she'd always get it. Milly wanted music and more music. When she played her face ceased to look fretful, it became attentive, animated, almost beautiful. This then was Milly's problem, solved already; music, applause, admiration, Elizabeth could see it all, but Joan?--Joan intrigued her.
Joan was so quiet, so reserved, so strong. Strong, yes, that was the right word, strong and protective. She loved stray cats and starving dogs and fledgelings that had tumbled out of their nests, such things made her cry; stray cats, starving dogs, fledgelings and Mrs. Ogden. Elizabeth laughed inwardly. Mrs. Ogden was so exactly like a lost fledgeling, with her hopeless look and her big eyes; she was also rather like a starving dog. Elizabeth paused just here to consider. Starving, what for? She shuddered. Had Mrs. Ogden always been so hungry? She was positively ravenous, you could feel it about her, her hunger came at you and-made you feel embarrassed. Poor woman, poor woman, poor Joan--why poor Joan? She was brilliant; Elizabeth sighed; she herself had never been brilliant, only a very capable turner of sods. Joan was quietly, persistently brilliant; no flash, no sparks, just a steady, glowing light. Joan at twelve was a splendid pupil; she thought too. When you could make her talk she said things that arrested. Joan would go--where would she go? To Oxford or Cambridge probably; no matter' where she went she would make her mark--Elizabeth was proud of Joan. She glanced at her pupil sideways and sighed again. Joan worried her, Mrs. Ogden worried her, they worried her separately and collectively. They were so different, so antagonistic, these two, and yet so curiously drawn together.
Elizabeth roused Joan sharply: 'Come on, it's late! It's nearly tea time.' They hurried down the hill.
'I must get that wool at Spink's', said Joan.
'What wool?'
'Mother's--for her knitting.'
Won't tomorrow do?'
'No.'
'But it's at the other end of the town.'
'Never mind, you and Milly go home. I'll just go on and fetch it.' They parted at the front door.
'Don't be long', Elizabeth called after her.
Joan waved her hand. Half an hour later she was back with the wool. In the hall Mrs. Ogden met her.
'My darling!'
'Here it is, Mother.'
'But, my darling, it's not the same thickness!'
'Not the same--' Joan was tired.
'It won't do at all, dearest, you must ask for double Berlin.'
'But I did!'
'Then they must change it. Oh, dear; and I wanted to get that waistcoat finished and put away tonight; it only requires such a little wee bit of wool!' Mrs. Ogden sighed.
Her face became suddenly very sad. Joan did not think that it could be the wool that had saddened her.
'What is it, Mother?'
'Nothing, Joan--'
'Oh, yes, you're unhappy, darling; I'll go and change the wool before lessons tomorrow.'
'It's not the wool, dear, it's--Never mind, run and get your tea.' They kissed.
In the schoolroom Joan relapsed into silence; she looked almost morose. Her short, thick hair fell angrily over her eyes--Elizabeth watched her covertly.
The five months between March and August passed uneventfully, as they always did at Seabourne. Joan was a little taller, Milly a little fatter, Mrs. Ogden a little more nervous and Colonel Ogden a little more breathless; nearly everything that happened at Leaside happened 'little', so Joan thought.
But on this particular August morning, the usual order was, or should have been, reversed. One was expecting confusion, hurry and triumph, for to-day was sacred to the memory of Admiral Sir William Routledge, gallant officer and Nelson's darling. To-day was the day of days; it was Mrs. Ogden's day; it was Joan's and Milly's day--a little of it might be said to be Colonel Ogden's day, but very little. For upon this glorious Anniversary Mrs. Ogden rose as a phoenix from its ashes. She rose, she grew, she asserted herself, she dictated; she was Routledge. The colonel might grunt, might sneer, might even swear; the overworked servants might give notice, Mrs. Ogden accepted it all with the calm indifference befitting one whose ancestor had fought under Nelson. Oh, it was a wonderful day!
But this year a cloud, at first no larger than a man's hand, had floated towards Mrs. Ogden before she got up. She woke with the feeling of elation that properly belonged to the occasion, yet the elation was not quite perfect. What was it that oppressed her; that somehow took the edge off the delight? She sat up in bed and thought. Ah! She had it! Assuredly this was the longed-for Anniversary, but--it was also Book Day, Wednesday and Book Day! Could anything be more unjust, more unbearable? Here she had waited a whole year for this, her one moment of triumph, and it had come on Book Day. Ruined--spoilt--utterly spoilt and ruined--the thing she dreaded most was upon her; the household books would be waiting on her desk to be tackled directly after breakfast, to be gone over and added up, and then met somehow out of an almost vanished allowance; it was scandalous! We Routledges! She leapt out of bed.
'What the devil is it?' asked Colonel Ogden irritably.
Mrs. Ogden began to hurry. She pattered round the room like a terrier on a scent; garments fell from her nerveless fingers, the hairbrush clattered on to the floor. She eyed her husband in a scared way; her conscience smote her, she had felt too tired to use proper economy last week. The books, the books, the books, what would they come to? She began cleaning her teeth. Colonel Ogden watched her languidly from the bed. His red, puffy face looked ridiculous against the pillow; a little smile lifted his moustache. She turned and saw him, and stopped with the tooth-brush half-way to her mouth. She felt suddenly disgusted and outraged and shy. In a flash her mind took in the room. There on the chair lay his loose, shabby garments, some of them natural coloured Jaeger. And then his cholera belt! It hung limply suspended over the arm of the chair, like the wraith of a concertina. On the table by his side of the bed lay a half-smoked pipe. His bath sponge was elbowing her as she washed; his masculine personality pervaded everything; the room reeked of it.
She went on cleaning her teeth mechanically, taking great care to do as her dentist bade her--up and down and then across and get the brush well back in your mouth; that was the way to preserve your teeth. Up and down and then across--disgusting! What she was doing was ugly and detestable. Why should he lie in the bed and smile? Why should he be in the bed at all--why should he be in the room at all? Why hadn't they taken a house with an extra bedroom, or at least with a room large enough for two beds? What was he doing there now? He ought not to be there now; that sort of thing was all very well for the young--but for people of their age! The repellent familiarities!
She gathered her dressing-gown more tightly around her; she felt like a virgin whose privacy had suffered a rude intrusion. Turning, she made to leave the room.
'Where are you going, Mary?' Colonel Ogden sat up.
'To have my bath.'
'But I haven't shaved yet.'
'You can wait until I have had my bath.'
She heard herself and marvelled. Would the heavens fall? Would the ground open and swallow her up? She hurried away before her courage failed.
In the bath-room she slipped the bolt and turned the key, and sighed a sigh of relief. Alone--she was alone. She turned on the water. A reckless daring seized her; let the hot water run, let it run until the bath was full to die brim; for once she would have an injuriously hot bath; she would wallow in it, stay in it, take her time. She never got enough hot water; now she would take it all--let his bath be tepid for once, let him wait on her convenience, let him come thumping at the door, coarse, overbearing, foolish creature!
What a life--and this was marriage! She thought of Colonel Ogden, of his stertorous breathing, his habits; he had a way of lunging over on to her side of the bed in his sleep, and when he woke in the morning his face was a mass of grey stubble. Why had she never thought of all these things before? She had thought of them, but somehow she had never let the thoughts come out; now that she had ceased to sit on them they sprang up like so many jacks-in-the-box.
And yet, after all, her James was no worse than other men; better, she supposed, in may respects. She believed he had been faithful to her; there was something in that. Certainly he had loved her once--if that sort of thing was love--but that was a long time ago. As she lay luxuriously in the brimming bath her thoughts went back. Things had been different in India. Joan had been born in India. Joan was thirteen now; she would soon be growing up--there were signs already. Joan so quiet, so reserved--Joan married, a year, five years of happiness perhaps and then this, or something very like it. Never! Joan should never marry. Milly, yes, but she could not tolerate the thought of it for Joan. Joan would just go on loving her; it would be the perfect relationship, Mother and Child.
'Mary!'
'What is it?'
'Are you going to stay there all day?' The handle of the door was; rattled violently.
'Please don't do that, James; I'm still in my bath.'
'The devil you are!' Colonel Ogden whistled softly. Then he remembered the date and smiled. 'Poor old Mary, such a damned snob poor dear--oh well! We Routledges!'
Breakfast was late. How could it be otherwise? Had not Mrs. Ogden sat in the bath for at least half an hour? There had been no hot water when at last Colonel Ogden got into the bath-room, and a kettle had had to be boiled. All this had taken time. Milly and Joan watched their mother apprehensively. Joan scented a breakdown in the near offing, for Mrs. Ogden's hands were trembling.
'Your father's breakfast, Joan; for heaven's sake ring the bell!' Joan rang it. 'The master's breakfast, Alice?'
'The kidneys aren't done.'
'Why not, Alice?'
'There 'asn't been time!'
'Nonsense, make haste. The colonel will be down in a minute.'
Alice banged the door, and Mrs. Ogden's eyes filled. Her courage had all run away with the bath water. She had been through hell, she told herself melodramatically; she had at last seen things as they were. Thump--thump and then thump--thump--that was James putting on his boots! Oh, where was the breakfast! Where were James's special dishes, the kidneys and the curried eggs; what was Alice doing? Thump--thump--there it was again! She clasped her hands in an agony.
'Joan, Joan, do go and see about breakfast.'
'It's all right, Mother, here it is.'
'Put it on the hot plate quickly--now the toast. Children make your father's toast--don't burn it whatever you do!' Thump--thump--thump--that was three thumps and there ought to be four; would James never make the fourth thump? She thought she would go mad if he left off at three. Ah! There it was, that was the fourth thump; now surely he must be coming. The toast was made; it would get cold and flabby. James hated it flabby. If they put it in the grate it would get hard; James hated it hard. Where was James?
'Children, put the toast in the grate; no, don't--wait a minute.'
Now there was another sound; that was James blowing his nose. He must be coming down, then, for he always blew his nose on his soiled pocket handkerchief with just that sound, before he took his clean one. What was that--something broken!
'Joan, go and see what Alice has smashed. Oh! I hope it's not the new breakfast dish, the fire-proof one!'
Thump, thump, on the stairs this time; James was coming down at last. 'Joan, never mind about going to the kitchen; stay here and see to your father's breakfast.'
The door opened and Colonel Ogden came in. He was very quiet, a bad sign; there was blood from a scratch on his chin to which a pellet of cotton wool adhered.
'Coffee, dear?'
'Naturally. By the way, Mary, you'll oblige me by leaving a teacupful of hot water for me to shave with another time.' He felt his scratch carefully.
'Joan, get your father the kidneys. Will you begin with kidneys or curried eggs?'
'Kidneys. By the way, Mary, I don't pay a servant to smear my brown boots with pea soup; I pay her to clean them--to clean them, do you hear? To clean them properly.' The calm with which he had entered the room was fast disappearing; his voice rose.
'James, dear, don't excite yourself'
The colonel cut a kidney viciously; as he did so, tell-tale stains appeared on the plate.
'Damn it all Mary! Do you think I'm a cannibal?'
'Oh, James!'
'Oh, James, oh, James! It's sickening, Mary. No hot water, not even to shave with, and now raw kidneys; disgusting! You know how I hate my food underdone. Damn it all Mary, I don't run a household for this sort of thing! Give me the eggs!'
'Joan, fetch your father the eggs!'
'What's the matter with the toast, Mary? It's stone cold!'
'You came down so late, dear.'
'I didn't get into the bath-room until twenty minutes past eight. I can't eat this toast.'
'Joan, make your father some fresh toast; be quick, dear, and Milly, take the kidneys to Ellen and ask her to grill them a little more. Now James here's some nice hot coffee.'
'Sit down!' thundered the colonel.
Joan and Milly sat down hastily. 'Keep quiet; you get on my nerves, darting about all round the table. Upon my word, Mary, the children haven't touched their breakfast!'
'But, James--'
'That's enough I say; eat your bacon, Milly. Joan, stop shuffling your feet.'
Milly, her face blotched with nervousness, attempted to spear the cold and stiffening bacon; it jumped off her fork on to the cloth as though possessed of a malicious life energy. Colonel Ogden's eyes bulged with irritation, and he thumped the table.
'Upon my word, Mary, the children have the table manners of Hottentots.'
Now by all the laws of the Medes and Persians, Mrs. Ogden, on this Day of Days, should have remained calm and disdainful. But to-day had begun badly. There had been that little cloud which had grown and grown until it became the household books; it was over her now, enveloping her. She could not see through it, she could not collect her forces. 'We Routledges!' It didn't ring true, it was like a blast blown on a cracked trumpet. She prayed fervently for self-control, but she knew that she prayed in vain. Her throat ached, she was going fast, slipping through her own fingers with surprising rapidity.
Colonel Ogden began again: 'Well, upon my--'
'Don't, don't!' shrieked Mrs. Ogden hysterically. 'Don't say it again, James. I can't bear it!'
'Well upon my word.'
'There! You've said it! Oh, Oh, Oh!' She suddenly covered her face with her table napkin and burst into loud sobs.
Colonel Ogden was speechless. Then he turned a little pale, his heart thumped.
'Mary, for heaven's sake!'
'I can't help it, James! I can't, I can't!'
'But, Mary, my dear!'
'Don't touch me, leave me alone!'
'Oh, all right; but I say, Mary, don't do this.'
'I wish I were dead!'
'Mary!'
'Yes I do, I wish I were dead and out of it all!'
'Nonsense--rubbish!'
'You'll be sorry when I am dead!'
He stretched out a plump hand and laid it on her shoulder. 'Go away, James!'
'Oh, all right! Joan, look after your mother, she don't seem well.'
He left the room, and they heard the front door bang after him. Mrs. Ogden looked over the table napkin. 'Has he gone, Joan?'
'Yes, Mother. Oh, you poor darling!' They clung together.
Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes; then she poured out some coffee and drank it.
'I'm better now, dear.' She smiled cheerfully.
And she was better. As she rose from the table the dark cloud lifted, she saw clearly once more; saw the Routledge banner streaming in the breeze.
And now for those tiresome books', she said almost gaily.
She went away to the drawing-room and Joan collapsed; she felt sick, scenes always upset her.
She thought: 'I wish I could hide my head in a table napkin and cry like Mother did.' Then she thought: 'I wonder how Mother manages it. I wouldn't have cried, I'd have hit him!'
She could not eat. In the drawing-room she heard her mother humming, yes, actually humming over the books!
'That's all right', thought Joan, 'they must be nice and cheap this week, that's a comfort anyhow.'
Presently Mrs. Ogden looked into the dining-room.
'Joan!'
'Yes, Mother?'
'No lessons to-day, dear.'
'No, Mother.'
'Come and help me to place the wreath.'
They fetched it, carrying it between them; a laurel wreath large enough to cover the frame of the admiral's picture.
'Tell Alice to bring the steps, Joan. Now, dear, you hold them while I get up. How does it look?'
'Lovely, Mother.'
'Joan, never forget that half of you is Routledge. Never forget my dear, that the best blood in your veins comes from my side of the family. Never forget who you are, Joan; it helps one a great deal in life to have something like that to cling to, something to hold on to when the dark days come.'
All day long the house hummed like a beehive. There was no luncheon; the children snatched some bread and butter in the kitchen, and if Mrs. Ogden ate at all, she was not observed to do so. Colonel Ogden, wise man, had remained at the club. Alice, her mouth surreptitiously full, hastened here and there with dust-brushes and buckets; Milly begged to do the flowers, and cut her finger; Joan manfully polished the plate, while Mrs. Ogden, authoritative and dignified, reviewed her household as the colonel had once reviewed his regiment.
Presently Alice was ordered to hasten away and dress. 'And', said Mrs. Ogden, let me find your cap and apron spotless, if you please, Alice.'
At last Joan and Milly went upstairs to put on their white cashmere smocks, and Mrs. Ogden, left to herself, took stock of the preparations. Yes, it was all in order, the trestle table hired from Binnings', together with the stout waiter, had both arrived, so had the coffee and tea urns and the extra cups and saucers. On the sideboard stood an array of silver. Cups won at polo by Colonel Ogden, a silver tray bearing the arms of Routledge, salvage this from the family wreck, and numerous articles in Indian silver, embossed with Buddhas and elephants' heads. The table groaned with viands, the centre piece being a large sugar cake crowned with a frigate in full sail. This speciality Binnings was able to produce every year; the cake was fresh, of course, but not the frigate.
But the drawing-room--that was what counted most. The drawing-room on what Mrs. Ogden called 'Anniversary Day' was, in every sense of the word, a shrine. Within its precincts dwelt the image of the god, the trophies of his earthly career set out about him, and Mary, his handmaiden, in attendance to wreathe his effigy with garlands.
Poor old Admiral Sir William, a good fellow by all accounts, an honest sailor and a loyal friend in his day. Possibly less Routledge than his descendants, certainly, according to his biographer, a man of a retiring disposition; one wonders what he would have thought of the Ancestor Worship of which he had all unwittingly become the object.
But Mary was satisfied. The drawing-room, which always appeared to her to be a very charming room, was of a good size. The colour scheme was pink and white, broken by just a splash of yellow here and there where the white chrysanthemums had run out and had been supplemented by yellow ones. The wall-paper was white with clusters of pink roses; the curtains were pink, the furniture was upholstered in pink. The hearth, which was tiled in turquoise blue, was lavish in brass. Mrs. Ogden drew the curtains a little more closely together over the windows in order to subdue the light; then she touched up the flowers, shook out the cushions for the fifth time and stood in the door to gauge the effect.
'Now', said Mrs. Ogden mentally, 'I am Lady Loo, I am entering the drawing-room, how does it strike me?'
The first thing that naturally riveted the attention was the laurel, wreathed print of Admiral Sir William. What a pity James had been too poor to buy the painting--for a moment she felt dashed, but this phase passed quickly, the room looked so nice. The colour, so clean and dainty, just sufficiently relieved by the blue tiled grate and the Oriental piano cover; this latter and the Benares vases certainly seemed to stamp the room as belonging to people who had been in the Service. On the whole she was glad she had married James and not the bishop. The flowers too--really Milly had arranged them quite nicely. But what a pity that it would be too light to light the lamp; still, the shade certainly caught the eye, she was glad she had taken the plunge and bought it at that sale. It was very effective, pleated silk with bunches of artificial iris. Still, she was not sure that a plain shade would not have looked better after all. When one has so unusually fine a stuffed python for a standard lamp, one did not wish to detract from it in any way. She considered the photographs next; there was a goodly assortment of these in silver frames; she had carefully selected them with a view to effect. The panel of herself in court dress, that showed up well; then James in his full regimentals--James looked a trifle stout in his tunic, still, it all showed that she had not married a nobody. Then that nice picture of her brother Henry taken with his polo team--poor Henry! Oh, yes, and the large photograph of the bishop--really rather imposing. And Chesham--the prints of Chesham on the walls; how dignified the dear old place looked, very much a gentleman's estate.
But there was more to come; Mrs. Ogden had purposely left the best to the last. She drew in her breath. There on an occasional table, lay the relics of Admiral Sir William Routledge, gallant officer and Nelson's darling. In the middle of the table lay his coat and his gloves, across the coat, his sword. To right and left hung the admiral's decorations mounted on velvet plaques. In front of the coat lay the oak-framed remnants of Nelson's letter to the admiral, and in front of this again the treasured Nelson snuff-box bearing the inscription 'From Nelson to Routledge'.
She paused beside the table, touching the relics one by one with reverent fingers, smiling as she did so. Then she crossed the room to where a shabby leather covered arm-chair looked startlingly incongruous amid its surroundings. Very carefully she lowered herself into the chair; a small brass plate had been screwed on to the back, bearing the inscription 'Admiral Viscount Nelson of Trafalgar sat in this chair when staying at Chesham Court with Admiral Sir William Routledge'. Mrs. Ogden spread her thin hands along the slippery arms, and allowed her head to rest for a moment where supposedly Nelson's head had once rested. The chair was her special pride and care; perhaps because its antecedents were doubtful. Colonel Ogden had once reminded her that there never had been any proof worth mentioning that Nelson had stayed at Chesham, much less that he had sat in that infernally uncomfortable old chair, and Mrs. Ogden had retorted hotly that Routledge tradition was good enough for her. Nevertheless, from that moment the Nelson chair had, she felt, a special claim upon her. She was like a mother defending the doubtful legitimacy of a well-loved son; the Nelson chair had been threatened with a bar sinister.
She gave the arms a farewell stroke, and rising slowly left the room to dress. She trod the stairs with dignity, the aloof dignity that belonged to the occasion, which she would maintain during the rest of the day. Her lapse from Routledge in the morning but added to her calm as tea-time approached.
Admiral Bourne was the first to arrive. He liked the children, and Milly sidled up and stood between his knees, certain of her welcome.
'Pretty hair!' he remarked thoughtfully, stroking her curls, 'and how is Miss Joan getting on? You haven't let your hair grow yet, Miss Joan.'
Joan laughed. 'It's more comfortable short', she said. 'So it is', agreed the admiral 'Capital, capital!'
'You must come and see my cream mice, dozens of them--' he began. But at that moment Elizabeth and her brother were announced and Joan hurried to meet them. She examined Mr. Rodney with a new interest, for now he was not just father's friend at the club, but he was Elizabeth Rodney's brother. She thought: 'He looks old, old, old, and yet I don't believe he is very old. His eyes are greenish like Elizabeth's, only somehow his eyes look timid like Mother's, and Elizabeth's remind me of the sea. I wonder what makes his back so humped, his coat goes all in ridges--' Then she suddenly felt very sorry for him, he looked so dreadfully humble.
Elizabeth, tall and erect, was dressed in some soft green material; she appeared a little unnatural to the children, who had grown accustomed to her tailor-made blouses and skirts. Her strong brown hair was carefully dressed as usual, but as usual a cud or two sprang away from the hair-pins, straying over her ears and in the nape of her neck. Elizabeth was always pale, but to-day she looked very vital; she was conscious of looking her best, of creating an effect. Then she suddenly wondered whether Joan liked her dress, but even as she wondered she remembered that Joan was only thirteen.
Joan was thinking: 'She looks like a tree. Why haven't I noticed before how exactly like a tree she is; it must be the green dress. But her eyes are like water, all greeny and shadowy and deep looking--a tree near a pool, that's what she's like, a tall tree. A beech tree? No, that's too spready--a larch tree, that's Elizabeth; a larch tree just greening over.'
The rooms began to fill, and people wandered in and out; it was really quite like a-reception. There was a pleasant babble of conversation. James had come in; he had said to himself: 'Must look in and share the Mem-Sahib's little triumph--poor Mary!' He really looked quite distinguished in his grey frock coat and black satin tie. Here were General and Mrs. Brooke. By common consent the two old war horses buried their feud on 'Anniversary Day'. It was: 'How are you, Ogden?'
'Glad to see you, General!'
They would beam at each other across their black satin ties; after all--the Service, you know!
Sir Robert and Lady Loo were shown in; good, that they had arrived when the rooms were at their fullest. Lady Loo came forward with her vague toothy smile. She looked like a very old hunter, long in the face, long in the leg and knobbly, distinctly knobbly. Her dress hung on her like badly fitting horse-clothing. To her spare bosom a diamond and sapphire crescent clung with a kind of desperation as if to an insufficient foothold; you felt that somehow there was not enough to pin it to, that there never would be enough to pin anything to on Lady Loo. But for all this there was something nice about her; the kind of niceness that belongs to old dogs and old horses, and that had never been entirely absent from Lady Loo.
As she sat down by Mrs. Ogden, her bright brown eyes looked inquisitively round the room, resting for an instant on the admiral's portrait, and then on the relics upon the occasional table. Mrs. Ogden watched her, secretly triumphant.
'Dear Lady Loo. How good of you to come to our little gathering. My Day I call it--very foolish of me--but after all--Oh, yes, how very kind of you--But then, why rob your hothouses for poor little me? You forgot to bring them? Oh, never mind, it's the thought that counts, is it not? Your speaking of peaches makes me feel quite homesick for Chesham--we had such acres of glass at Chesham!--Yes, that is Joan--come here, Joan dear! Naughty child, she will insist on keeping her hair short. You think it suits her? Really? Clever? Well--run away, Joan darling--yes, frankly, very clever, so Miss Rodney thinks. Attractive? You think so? Now fancy, my husband always thinks Milly is the pretty one. Shall I ask Joan to recite or shall Milly play first? What do you think? Joan first, oh, all right--Joan, dear!'
The dreaded moment had arrived; Joan, shy and awkward, floundered through her recitation.
'Capital, capital!' cried Admiral Bourne, who had taken a fancy to her.
Elizabeth felt hot; why in heaven's name make a fool of Joan like that? Joan couldn't recite and never would be able to. And then the child's dress--what possessed Mrs. Ogden to make her wear white? Joan looked too awful in white, it made her skin look yellow. Then the dress was too short; Joan's dresses always were; and yet she was her mother's favourite. Curious--perhaps Mrs. Ogden wanted to make her look young; well, she couldn't keep her a baby for ever. When would Joan begin to assert her individuality? When she was fifteen, seventeen, perhaps? Elizabeth felt that she could dress Joan; she ought to wear dark colours, she knew exactly what she ought to wear. At that moment Joan came over to her, she was flushed and still looked shy.
'Beastly rot, that poem!'
Elizabeth surveyed her: 'Oh, Joan, you're so like a colt.' And she laughed.
Joan wanted to say: 'You're like a larch tree that's just greening over, a tree by the side of a pool.' But she was silent.
The noise of conversation broke out afresh. Milly, longing to be asked to play, was pretending to adjust the clasp of her violin case. Elizabeth looked from one child to the other and could not help smiling. Then she said: 'Joan, do you like my dress?'
'Like it?' Joan stammered; 'I think it's beautiful.'
Elizabeth wanted to say, 'Do you think me at all beautiful, Joan?' But something inside her began to laugh at this absurdity, while she said: 'I'm so glad you like it, it was new for to-day.'
'Now, Milly, play for us', came Mrs. Ogden's voice. 'Miss Rodney will accompany you, I'm sure.'
Milly did not blush, she remained cool and pale--small and cool and pale she stood there in her white cashmere smock, making lovely sounds with as much ease and confidence as if she had been playing by herself in an empty room.
Extraordinary child. She looked almost inspired, coldly inspired--it was queer. When she had finished playing, her little violin master came out of the corner in which he had been hidden.
'Very good--excellent!' he said, patting her shoulder; and Milly smiled quite placidly. Then she grew excited all of a sudden and skipped around the room for praise.
Joan sat beside her mother; very gently she squeezed her hand, looking up into Mrs. Ogden's face. She saw that it was animated and young, and the change thrilled her with pleasure. Mrs. Ogden looked down into her daughter's eyes. She whispered: 'Do you like my dress, darling; am I looking nice?'
'Lovely, Mother--so awfully pretty!' But Joan thought: 'The same thing, they both wanted to know if I liked their dresses, how funny! But Mother doesn't look like a tree just greening over--what does Mother look like? She could not find a simile and this annoyed her. Mrs. Ogden's dress was grey, it suited her admirably, falling about her still girlish figure in long, soft folds. No one could say that Mary Ogden never looked pretty these days, that was quite certain; for she looked pretty this afternoon, with the delicate somewhat faded prettiness of a flower that has been pressed between the pages of a book. Suddenly Joan thought: 'I know--I've got it, Elizabeth is like a tree and Mother's like a dove, a dove that lights on a tree. No, that won't do, I don't believe somehow that Mother would like to light on Elizabeth, and I don't think Elizabeth would like to be lit on. What is she like then?'
People began to go. 'Good-bye, such a charming party.'
'So glad you could come.'
'Good-bye--don't forget that you and Colonel Ogden are lunching with us next Saturday.'
'No, of course not, so many thanks.'
'Good-bye--'
'Over at last!' Mrs. Ogden leant back in her chair with a sigh that bespoke complete satisfaction. She beamed on her husband.
He smiled. 'Went off jolly well, Mary!' He was anxious to make up for the morning.
'Yes, it was a great success, I think. Don't you think it went off very well, James?'
The colonel twitched; he longed to say: 'Damn it all, Mary, haven't I just told you that I think it went off well!' But he restrained himself.
Mary continued: 'Well, dear, the Routledges always did have a talent for entertaining. I can remember at Chesham when I was Joan's age--'
Sir Robert and Lady Loo were driving swiftly towards Moor Park behind their grey cobs. 'Talent that youngster has for fiddle playing, Emma!'
'Yes, I suppose so. The mother's a silly fool of a woman, no more brains than a chicken, and what a snob!'
'Ugly monkey, the elder daughter.'
'Joan? Oh, do you think so?'
'Awful!'
'Wait and see!' said Lady Loo with a thoughtful smile.
Elizabeth walked home between her brother and the little violin master; she was depressed without exactly knowing why. The little violin master waved his hands.
'Milly is a genius; I have got a real pupil at last, at last! You wait and see, she will go far. What tone, what composure for so young a child?'
'Joan is like a young colt!' said Elizabeth to herself. 'Like a young colt that somehow isn't playful--Joan is a solemn young colt, a thoughtful colt, a colt wise beyond its months.' And she sighed.
Elizabeth sat alone in her brother's study. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling; Ralph's books and some of her own that she had brought with her from Cambridge.
This was Sunday. Ralph had gone to church. 'Such a good little man', thought Elizabeth to herself; but she had not gone to church, she had pleaded a fictitious cold. Ralph Rodney was still youngish, not more than forty-five, and doing fairly well in the practice which he had inherited from his uncle. But there was nothing beyond Seabourne--just Seabourne, nothing beyond. Ralph would probably live and die neither richer nor poorer than he was at present; it was a drab outlook. Yet it was Ralph's own fault, he might have done better, there had been a time when people thought him clever; he might have started his career in London. But no, he had thought it his duty to keep on the business at Seabourne. Elizabeth mused that it must either be that Ralph was very stupid or very good, she wondered if the terms were synonymous.
Their life history was quite simple. They had been left orphans when she was a year old and he was twenty. She had been too young to know anything about it, and Ralph had never lived much with his parents in any case. He had been adopted by their father's elder brother when he was still only a child. After the death of her parents, Elizabeth had been carried off by a cousin of their mother's, a kind, pleasant woman who divided her time between Elizabeth and Rescue Work.
They had been very happy together, and when Elizabeth was twenty and her cousin had died suddenly, she had felt real regret. Her cousin's death left her with enough money to go up to Cambridge, and very little to spare, for the bulk of Miss Wharton's fortune had gone to found Recreation Homes for Prostitutes, and not having qualified to benefit by the charity, Elizabeth was obliged to study to earn her living.
Her brother Ralph she had scarcely seen, he had gone so completely away. This was only natural; and the arrangement must have suited their parents very well, for their father had not been an earner and their mother had never been strong.
Elizabeth was now twenty-six. The uncle had died eighteen months ago, leaving Ralph his small fortune and the business. Ralph was a confirmed bachelor; he had felt lonely after the old man's death, had thought of his sister and had besought her to take pity on him; there it had begun and there so far, it had ended.
Yet it need not have ended as it had done for Ralph, but Ralph was a sentimentalist. He had loved the old uncle like a son, and had always made excuses for not cutting adrift from Seabourne. Uncle John was growing old and needed him in the business; Uncle John was failing--he had been failing for years, thought Elizabeth bitterly, a selfish, cranky old man--Uncle John begged Ralph not to leave him, he had a presentiment that he would not last much longer. Ralph must keep an eye on the poor old chap. After all, he'd been very decent to him. Ralph wanted to know where he'd have been without Uncle John.
Always the same excuses. Had Ralph never wanted a change; had he never known ambition? Perhaps, but such longings die, they cannot live on a law practice in Seabourne and an ailing Uncle John; they may prick and stab for a little while, may even constitute a real torment, but withstand them long enough and you will have peace, the peace of the book whose leaves are never turned; the peace of dust and cobwebs. Ralph was like that now, a book that no one cared to open; he was covered with dust and cobwebs.
At forty-five he was old and contented, or if not exactly contented, then resigned. And he had grown timid, perhaps Uncle John had made him timid. Uncle John was said to have had a will of his own--no, Elizabeth was not sure that it was all Uncle John, though he might have contributed. It was Seabourne that had made Ralph timid; Seabourne that had nothing beyond. Seabourne was so secure, how could it be otherwise when it had nothing beyond; whence could any danger menace it? Ralph clung to Seabourne; he was afraid to go too far lest he should step off into space, for he too must feel that Seabourne had nothing beyond. Seabourne had him and Uncle John had him. It was all of a piece with Uncle John to leave a letter behind him, begging Ralph to keep the old firm together after he was dead. Sentiment, selfish sentiment. Who cared what happened to Rodney and Rodney! Even Seabourne wouldn't care much, there were other solicitors. But Ralph had thought otherwise; the old man had begged him to stick by the firm, Ralph couldn't go back on him now. Ralph was humbly grateful; Ralph felt bound. Ralph was resigned too, that was the worst of it. And yet he had been clever, Elizabeth had heard it at Cambridge; but Cambridge that should have emancipated him had only, been an episode. Back he had come to Seabourne and Uncle John, Uncle John much aged by then, and needing him more than ever.
When they had met at Seabourne, her brother had been a shock to her. His hair had greyed and so had his skin, and his mind--that had greyed too. Then why had she stayed? She didn't know. There was something about the comfortable house that chained you, held you fast. They were velvet chains, they were plush chains, but they held.
Then there was Uncle John. Uncle John's portrait looked down from the dining-room wall--Uncle John young, with white stock and keen eyes. That Uncle John seemed to point to himself and say: 'I was young too, and yet I never strayed; what was good enough for my father was good enough for me and ought to be good enough for my nephew and for you, Elizabeth.' Then there was Uncle John's later portrait on the wall of the study--Uncle John, old, wearing a corded black tie, his eyes rather dim and appealing, like the eyes of a good old dog. That Uncle John was the worse of the two; you felt that you could throw a plate at the youthful, smug, self-assertive Uncle John in the dining-room, but you couldn't hurt this Uncle John because he seemed to expect you to hurt him. This Uncle John didn't point to himself, he had nothing to say, but you knew what he wanted. He wanted to see you living in the old house among the old things; he wanted to see Ralph at the old desk in the old office. He needed you; he depended on you, he clung to you softly, persistently; you couldn't shake him off. He had clung to Ralph like that, softly, persistently; for latterly the strong will had broken and he had become very gentle. And now Ralph clung to Elizabeth, and Uncle John clung too, through Ralph.
Elizabeth got up. She flung open the window--let the air come in, let the sea come in! Oh! If a tidal wave would come and wash it all away, sweep it away; the house, Uncle John and Elizabeth to whom he clung through Ralph! Tradition! She clenched her hands; damn their tradition; another name for slavery, and excuse for keeping slaves! What was she doing with her life? Nothing. Uncle John saw to that. Yes, she was doing something, she was allowing it to be slowly and surely strangled to death, soon it would be gone, like a drop squeezed into the reservoir of Eternity; soon it would be lost for ever and she would still be alive--and she was so young! A lump rose in her throat; her hopes had been high--not brilliant, perhaps--still she had done well at Cambridge, there were posts open to her.
She might have written, but not at Seabourne. People didn't write at Seabourne, they borrowed the books that other people had written, from Mr. Besant of the Circulating Library, and talked foolishly about them at their afternoon teas, wagging their heads and getting the foreign names all wrong, if there were any. Oh! She had heard them! And Ralph would get like that. Get? He was like that already; Ralph had prejudices, timid ones, but there was strength in their numbers. Ralph approved and disapproved. Ralph shook his head over Elizabeth's smoking and nodded it over her needlework. Ralph liked womanly women; well, Elizabeth liked manly men. If she wasn't a womanly woman, Ralph wasn't a manly man. Oh, poor little Ralph, what a beast she was!
What did she want? She had the Ogden children, they were an interest and they represented her pocket money--if only Joan were older! After all, better a home with a kind brother at Seabourne than life on a pittance in London. But something in her strove and rent: 'Not better, not better!' it shouted. 'I want to get out, it's I, I, I! I want to live, I want to get out, let me out I tell you, I want to come out!'
'Elizabeth, dear, how are you?' Her brother had come in quietly behind her.
'Better, thank you. You're not wet, are you, Ralph? It's been raining.'
'No, not a bit. I wish you'd been there, Elizabeth. Such a fine sermon.'
'What was the text', she inquired. One always inquired what the text had been; the question sprang to her lips mechanically.
'"Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days!" A beautiful text, I think.'
'Yes, very beautiful', Elizabeth agreed. 'Curious that being the text to-day.'
'Why?' he asked her, but his voice lacked interest; he didn't really want to know.
She thought: 'I suppose I've cast my bread upon the waters, it must be a long way out at sea by now.' Then she began to visualize the bread and that made her want to laugh. A crust of bread? A fat slice? A thin slice? Or had she cast away a loaf? Perhaps there were shoals of sprats standing upright on their tails in the water under the loaf and nibbling at it, or darting round and round in a circle, snatching and quarrelling while the loaf bobbed up and down--there were plenty of sprats just off the coast. Anyhow, her bread must be dreadfully soggy if it had been in the water for more than two years. 'For thou shalt find it after many days!' Yes, but how many days? And if you did find it, if the sprats left even a crumb to be washed up on the beach, how would it taste, she wondered. How many days, how many days, how many Seabourne days, how many Ralph and Uncle John days; so secure, so decent, so colourless! The text said, 'Many days'; it warned you not to grow impatient, it was like young Uncle John in the dining-room taking it for granted that time didn't count--Uncle John had never been in a hurry. And yet they were beautiful words; she knew quite well what they meant, she was only pretending to misunderstand, it was her misplaced sense of humour.
Ralph had cast his bread upon the waters, and no doubt he expected to retrieve it on the shores of a better land; if he went hungry meanwhile, she supposed that was his affair. But perhaps he was expecting a more speedy return, perhaps when Ralph looked like old Uncle John his bread would be washed back to him; perhaps that was how it was done. She paused to consider. Perhaps your bread was returned to you in kind; you gave of your spirit and body, and you got back spirit and body in your turn. Not yours, but someone else's. When Ralph was sixty she would be forty-one; there was still a little sustenance left in you when you were forty-one, she supposed, though not much. Perhaps she was going to be Ralph's return for the loaf that had floated away.
It was all so pigeon-holed and so tidy. She was tidy, she had a tidy mind, but the mind that had thought out this bread scheme was even more tidy-than hers. The scheme worked in grooves like a cogwheel, clip, clip, clip, each cog in its appointed place and round and round, always in a circle. Uncle John and his forebears before him had cast away their loaves turn by turn; it was the obvious thing to do; it was the Seabourne thing to do, Father to son, uncle to nephew, brother to sister; a slight difference in consanguinity but none in spirit. Uncle John's bread had gone for his father and the firm; Ralph's bread had gone for Uncle John and the firm, and she supposed that her bread had gone for Ralph and the firm. But where was her return to come from? In what manner would she find it, 'after many days'? Would the spell be broken with her? She wondered.
It was a blazing July, nearly a year later. Seabourne, finding at first a new topic for conversation in the heat wave, very soon wearied of this rare phenomenon, abandoning itself to exhaustion.
Colonel Ogden wilted perceptibly but Mrs. Ogden throve. The heat agreed with her, it made her expand. She looked younger and she felt younger and said so constantly, and her family tried to feel pleased. Lessons were a torment in the airless schoolroom; Joan flagged, Milly wept, and Elizabeth grew desperate. There was nowhere to walk except in the glare. The turf on the cliffs was as slippery as glass; on the sea-front the asphalt stuck to your shoes, and the beach was a wilderness peopled by wilting parents and irritable, mosquito-bitten children. Then, when things were at their worst at Leaside, there came from out the blue a very pleasant happening; old Admiral Bourne met the Ogden children out walking and asked them to tea.
The admiral's house was unique. He had built it after his wife's death; it had been a hobby and a distraction. Glory Point lay back from the road that led up to Cone Head, out beyond the town. To the casual observer the house said little. From the front it looked much as other houses, a little stronger, a little whiter perhaps, but on the whole not at all distinctive except for its round windows; and as only the upper windows could be seen from the road they might easily have been mistaken for an imitation of the Georgian period. It was not until the house was skirted to the left and the shrubbery passed that the character of Glory Point became apparent.
A narrow path with tall bushes on either side wound zigzag for a little distance. With every step the sound of the sea came nearer and nearer, until, at an abrupt angle, the path ceased, and shot you out on to a cobbled court-yard, and the wide Atlantic lay before you. The path had been contrived to appear longer than it was in reality, the twists and turns assisting the illusion; the last thing you expected to find at the end was what you found; it was very ingenious.
To the left and in front this court-yard appeared to end in space, and between you and the void stood apparently nothing but some white painted posts and chains. But even as you wondered what really lay below, a sharp spray would come hurtling over the chains and land with a splash almost at your feet, trickling in and out of the cobbles. Then you realized that the court-yard was built on a rock that ran sheer down to the sea.
At the side of this court-yard stood a fully rigged flagstaff with an old figure-head nailed to its base. The figure-head gazed out across the Atlantic, it looked wistful and rather lonely; there was something pathetic about the thing. It had a grotesque kind of dignity in spite of its faded and weather-stained paint. The ample female bosoms bulged beneath the stiff drapery, the painted eyes seemed to be straining to see some distant object; where the figure ended below the waist was a roughly carved scroll showing traces of gilt, on which could be deciphered the word 'Glory'.
From this side the house looked bigger, and one saw that all the windows were round and that a veranda ran the length of the ground floor. This veranda was the admiral's particular pride, it was boarded with narrow planks scrubbed white and caulked like the deck of a ship; the admiral called it his 'quarter-deck', and here, in fine weather or foul, he would pace up and down, his hands in his pockets, his cigar set firmly between his teeth, his rakish white beard pointing out in front.
Inside the house the walls of the passages were boarded and enamelled white, the rooms white panelled, and the steep narrow stairs covered with corrugated rubber, bound with brass treads. Instead of banisters a piece of pipe-clayed rope ran through brass stanchions on either side; and over the whole place there brooded a spirit of the most intense cleanliness. Never off a man-of-war did brass shine and twinkle like the brass at Glory Point; never was white paint as white and glossy, never was there such a fascinating smell of paint and tar and brass polish. It was an astonishing house; you expected it to roll and could hardly believe your good fortune when it kept still. Everyone in Seabourne made fun of Glory Point; the admiral knew this but cared not at all, it suited him and that was enough. If they thought him odd, he thought most of them incredibly foolish. Glory Point was his darling and his pride; he and his mice lived there in perfect contentment. The brass shone, the decks were as the driven snow, the white walls smelt of fresh paint, and away beyond the posts and chains of the cobbled court-yard stretched the Atlantic, as big and deep and wholesome as the admiral's kind heart.
Through the blazing sunshine of the afternoon, Joan and Milly toiled up the hill that led to Glory Point. Now, however, they did not wilt, their eyes were bright with expectation, and they quickened their steps as the gate came in sight. They pushed it open and walked down the pebbled path.
'It's all white!' Joan exclaimed. She looked at the round white stones with the white posts on either side and then at the white door. They rang; the fierce sun was producing little sham flames on the brass bell-pull and knocker. The door was opened by a manservant in white drill and beyond him the walls of the hall showed white. 'More white', thought Joan. 'It's like--it looks--is honest the word? No, truthful.'
They were shown into a very happy room, all bright chintz and mahogany. In one of the little round windows a Hartz Mountain Roller ruffled the feathers on his throat as he trilled. The admiral came forward to meet them, shaking hands gravely as if they were grown up. He, too, was in white, and his eyes looked absurdly blue. Joan thought he matched the Delft plates on the mantlepiece at his back.
'This is capital; I'm so glad you could come.' He seemed to be genuinely pleased to see them. They waited for him to speak again, their eyes astray for objects of interest.
'This is my after-cabin', said the admiral, smiling. 'What do you think of it?'
'It's the drawing-room', said Milly promptly. Joan kicked her. 'We call it a cabin on a ship', corrected the admiral.
'Oh, I see', said Milly. 'But this isn't a ship!'
'It's the only ship I've got now', he laughed.
Joan thought: 'I wish she wouldn't behave like this, what can it matter what he calls the room? I wish Milly were shy!'
But Milly, quite unconscious of having transgressed, went up and nestled beside him. He put his arm round her and patted her shoulder. 'It's a very nice ship', she conceded.
Above the mantlepiece hung an oval portrait of a girl. Joan liked her pleasant, honest eyes, blue like the admiral's, only larger; her face looked wide open like a hedge rose.
Joan had to ask. She thought, 'It's cheek, I suppose, but I do want to know.' Aloud she said: 'Please, who is that?'
The admiral followed the direction of her gaze. 'Olivia', he answered, in a voice that took it for granted that he had no need to say more. 'Olivia?'
'My wife.'
'Oh!' breathed Joan, feeling horribly embarrassed. She wished that she had not asked. Poor admiral, people said that he had loved her a great deal!
'Where is she?' inquired Milly.
Joan thought: 'Of all the idiotic questions! Has she forgotten that he's a widower?' She was on tenterhooks.
The admiral gave a little sigh. 'She died a long time ago', he said, and stared fixedly at the portrait.
Joan pulled Milly round. 'Oh, look, what a pet of a canary!' she said foolishly. She and Milly went over to the cage; the bird hopped twice and put his head on one side. He examined them out of one black bead.
The admiral came up behind them. 'That's Julius Caesar', he volunteered.
Joan turned with relief; he was smiling. He opened the door of the cage and thrust in a finger, whistling softly; the canary bobbed, then it jumped on to the back of his hand, ignoring the finger. Very slowly and gently he withdrew his hand and lifted the bird up to his face. It put its beak between his lips and kissed him, then its mood changed and it nipped his thumb. He laughed, and replaced it in the cage.
'Shall we go over the ship?' he inquired.
The children agreed eagerly. He stalked along in front of them, hands in jacket pockets. He took them into the neat dining-room, opening and shutting the port-holes to show how they worked, then into the smoking-room, large, long, and book-lined with the volumes of his naval library. Then up the rubber-covered stairs and along the narrow white passage with small doors in a row on either side. A man in more white drill was polishing the brass handles, there was the clean acrid smell of brass polish; Joan wondered if they polished brass all day at Glory Point, this was such a queer time to be doing it, at four in the afternoon. The admiral threw open one of the doors while the children peered over his shoulder.
'This is my sleeping cabin', he said contentedly.
The little room was neat as a new pin; through the open port-holes came the sound and smell of the sea--thud, splash, thud, splash, and the mournful tolling of a bell buoy. The admiral's bunk was narrow and white, Joan thought that it looked too small for a man, like the bed of a little child, with its high polished mahogany side. Above it the port-hole stood wide open--thud, splash, there was the sea again; the sound came with rythmical precision at short intervals. Milly had found the washstand, it was an entrancing washstand! There was a stationary basin cased in mahogany with fascinating buttons that you pressed against to make the water flow; Milly had never seen buttons like this before, all the taps at Leaside turned on in a most uninteresting way. Above the washstand was a rack for the water bottle and glass, and the bottle and glass had each its own hole into which it fitted with the neatest precision. The walls of the cabin were white like all the others in this house of surprises, white and glossy. Thud, splash, thud, splash, and a sudden whiff of seaweed that came in with a breath of air.
Joan thought, 'Oh it is a truthful house, it would never deceive you!' Aloud she said, 'I like it!'
The admiral beamed. 'So do I', he agreed.
'I like it all', said Joan, 'the noises and the smell and the whiteness. I wish we lived in a ship-house like this, it's so reassuring.'
'Reassuring?' he queried; he didn't understand what she meant, he thought her a queer old-fashioned child, but his heart went out to her.
'Yes, reassuring; safe you know; you could trust it; I mean, it wouldn't be untruthful.'
'Oh, I see', he laughed. 'I built it', he told her with a touch of pride; 'it was entirely my own idea. The people round here think I'm a little mad, I believe; they call me "Commodore Trunnion"; but then, dear me, everyone's a little mad on one subject or another--I'm mad on the sea. Listen, Miss Joan! Isn't that fine music? I lie here and listen to it every night, it's almost as good as being on it!'
Milly interrupted. 'Tell us about your battles!' she pleaded. 'My what?' said the admiral, taken aback.
'The ones you fought in', said Milly coaxingly.
'Bless the child! I've never been in a battle in my life; what battles. have there been in my time, I'd like to know!'
Milly looked crestfallen. 'But you were on a battleship', she protested.
The admiral opened his mouth and guffawed. 'God bless my soul, what's that got to do with it?'
They had made their way downstairs again now and were walking towards the garden door. Milly clung to her point.
'It ought to have something to do with it, I should suppose', she said rather pompously.
The admiral looked suddenly grave. 'It will, some day', he said. 'When will it be?' asked Joan; she felt interested.
'When the great war comes', he replied; 'though God grant it won't be in your time.'
No one spoke for a minute; the children felt subdued, a little cloud seemed to have descended among them. Then the admiral cheered up, and quickened his steps. 'Tea!' he remarked briskly.
Over the immaculate lawn that stretched to the right of the house, came the white-clad manservant carrying a tray; the tea-table was laid under a big walnut tree. This was the sheltered side of the house, where, as the admiral would say, you could grow something besides seaweed. The old clipped yews were trim and cared for; peacocks and roosters and stately spirals. Between them the borders were bright with homely flowers. The admiral had found this garden when he bought the place; he had pulled down the old house to build his ship, but the garden he had taken upon himself as a sacred trust. In it he worked to kill the green fly and the caterpillar, and dreamed to keep memory alive. They sat down to tea; from the other side of a battlemented hedge came the whirring, sleepy sound of a mowing machine, someone was mowing the bowling green. They grew silent. A wasp tumbled into the milk jug; with great care the admiral pulled it out and let it crawl up his hand.
'Silly', he said reprovingly, 'silly creature!'
It paused in its painful milk-logged walk to stroke its bedraggled wings with its back legs, then it washed its face, ducking its jointed head. The old man watched it placidly, presently it flew away.
'It never said "Thank you", did it?' he laughed.
'No, but it didn't sting', said Joan.
'They never sting when you do them a good turn, and that's more than you can say of some people, Miss Joan.'
Tea over, they strolled through the garden; at the far end was a small low building designed to correspond with the house. 'What's that?' they asked him.
'We're coming to that', he answered. 'That's where the mice live.'
'Oh, may we see them, please let us see them all!' Joan implored. 'Of course you shall see them, that's what I brought you here for; there are dozens and dozens', he said proudly.
Inside the Mousery the smell was overpowering, but it is doubtful if any of the three noticed it. Down the centre of the single long room ran a brick path on either side of which were shelves three deep, divided into roomy sections.
The admiral stopped before one of them, 'Golden Agouti', he remarked.
He took hold of a rectangular box, the front of which was wired; very slyly he lifted a lid set into the top panel, and lowered the cage so that the children might look in. Inside, midway between floor and lid was a smaller box five inches long; a little hole at one end of this inner box gave access to the interior of the cage, and from it a miniature ladder slanted down to the sawdust strewn floor. In this box were a number of little heaving pink lumps, by the side of which crouched a brownish mouse. Her beady eyes peered up anxiously, while the whiskers on her muzzle trembled.
The admiral touched her gently with the tip of his little finger. 'She's a splendid doe', he said affectionately; 'a remarkably careful mother and not at all fussy!' He shut the door and replaced the cage. 'There's a fine pair here', he remarked, passing to a new section; 'what about that for colour!'
He put his hand into another cage and caught one of the occupants deftly by the tail. Holding the tail between his finger and thumb he let the mouse sprawl across the back of his other hand, slightly jerking the feet into position.
The children gazed. 'What colour is that?' they inquired.
'Chocolate', replied the admiral. 'I rather fancy the Self varieties, there's something so well-bred looking about them; for my part I don't think a mouse can show his figure if he's got a pied pelt on him, it detracts. Now this buck for instance, look at his great size, graceful too, very gracefully built, legs a little coarse perhaps, but an excellent tail, a perfect whipcord, no knots, no kinks, a lovely taper to the point!'
The mouse began to scramble. 'Gently, gently!' murmured the admiral, shaking it back into position.
He eyed it with approbation, then dropped it back into its cage, where it scurried up the ladder and vanished into its bedroom. They passed from cage to cage; into some he would only let them peep lest the does with young should get irritable; from others he withdrew the inmates, displaying them on his hand.
'Now this', he told them, catching a grey-blue mouse. 'This is worth your looking at carefully. Here we have a champion, Champion Blue Pippin. I won the Colour Cup with this fellow last year. Of course I grant you he's a good colour; very pure and rich, good deep tone too, and even, perfectly even, you notice.' He turned the mouse over deftly for a moment so that they might see for themselves that its stomach matched its back. 'But so clumsy', he continued. 'Did you ever see such a clumsy fellow? Then his ears are too small, though their texture is all right; and I always said he lacked boldness of eye; I never really cared for his eyes, there's something timid about them, not to be compared with Cocoa Nibs, that first buck you saw. But there it is, this fellow won his championship; of course I always say that Cary can't judge a mouse!'
Champion Blue Pippin was replaced in his cage; the admiral shook his finger at him where he sat grooming his whiskers against the bars.
'A good mouse', he told Joan confidentially. 'Very tame and affectionate as you see, but a champion, no never! As I told them at the National Mouse Club.'
They turned to the shelves on the other side. Here were the Pied and Dutch varieties.
'I don't care for them, as you know', said Admiral Bourne. 'Still I keep a few for luck, and they are rather pretty.'
He showed them the queer Dutch mice, half white, half coloured. Then the Variegated mice, their pelts white with minute streaks or dots of colour evenly distributed over body and head. There were black and tan mice and a bewildering assortment of the Pied variety which the admiral declared he disliked. Last of all, in a little cubicle by itself, was a larger cage-than any of the others, a kind of Mouse Palace. This cage contained a number of neat boxes, each with its ladder, and in addition to the ordinary outer compartment was a big bright wheel. Up and down the ladders ran the common little red-eyed white mice; while they watched them a couple sprang into the wheel and began turning it.
'Oh! The white mice that you buy at the Army and Navy!' said Milly in a disappointed voice.
'That's all', the admiral admitted. 'I just have this cage of them, you know, nice little chaps.' And then, as the children remained silent, 'You see, Olivia liked them; she used to say they were such friendly people.'
He spoke as though they had known Olivia intimately, as though he expected the children to say: 'Yes, of course, Olivia was so fond of animals!'
Reluctantly they left the Mousery and strolled towards the gates; three tired children, one of eleven, one of thirteen and one of sixty-eight. The sun was setting over the sea, it was very cool in the garden after the mousery.
The admiral turned to Joan. 'Come again', he said simply. 'Come very often, there may be some more young ones to show you soon.'
And so they parted on the road outside the gates. The children turned once to look back as they walked down the hill; Admiral Bourne was still standing in the road, looking after them.
A new family had come to Conway House under Cone Head. The place had stood vacant for years; now, at length, it was sold, and Elizabeth knew who the new people were. When Elizabeth, meaning to be amiable, had remarked one afternoon that the Bensons had been old friends of her cousin in London, and that she herself had known them all her life, Mrs. Ogden had drawn in her lips, very slightly raised an eyebrow and remarked: 'Oh, really!' in what Joan had grown to recognize as 'the Routledge voice'. It was true that Mrs. Ogden was annoyed; there was no valid reason to produce against Elizabeth having known the Bensons, yet she felt aggrieved. Elizabeth appeared to Mrs. Ogden to be--not quite 'governessy' enough. She had been thinking this for the last few months. You did not expect your governess to be an old friend of people who had just bought one of the largest places in your neighbourhood, it was almost unseemly. Elizabeth, when closely questioned, had said that the family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Benson, a son of twenty-two, another of seventeen, and one little girl of fourteen. And just at the very end, mark you at the end, and then only after a pressing cross-examination as to who they were, Elizabeth had said quite vaguely that Mr. Benson was a banker, but that his mother had been Lady Sarah Totteridge before her marriage, and that the present Mrs. Benson was a daughter of Lord Down.
Mrs. Ogden had made it clear that she could not quite understand how Elizabeth's cousin had come to know the Bensons, and Elizabeth had said in a casual voice that her cousin and Mrs. Benson had had a great mutual interest; and when Mrs. Ogden had inquired what this interest had been, Elizabeth had replied, 'Prostitutes', and had laughed! Of course the children had not been in the room--still, 'Prostitutes'. Such a coarse way to put it. Mrs. Ogden had spoken to Colonel Ogden about it afterwards and had found him unsympathetic. All he had said was, 'Well, what else would you have her call them? Tarts? Don't be such a damn fool, Mary!'
However, there it was; Elizabeth did know the Bensons and would, Mrs. Ogden supposed, contrive to continue knowing them now that they had come to Conway House. She could not understand Elizabeth; it was 'Elizabeth' now at Elizabeth's own request; she had said that Rodney sounded so like Ralph and not at all like her. Did anyone ever hear such nonsense! However, the children had hailed the change with delight and so far it did not appear to have undermined discipline, so that Mrs. Ogden supposed it must be all right. She had to confess that it was a most unexpected advantage for Milly and Joan to have such a woman to teach them. Cambridge women did not grow on gooseberry bushes in Seabourne.
Her criticisms of Elizabeth afforded Mrs. Ogden a rather tepid satisfaction for a time, but they never quite convinced her, and one day her thoughts stopped short in the very middle of them. She had a moment of clear inward vision; and in that moment she realized the exact and precise reason why, in the last few months, she had grown irritated with Elizabeth. So irritated in fact that nothing that Elizabeth said or did could possibly be right. It was not Elizabeth's familiarity, not the fact that Elizabeth knew the Bensons, not Elizabeth's rather frank English, it was none of these things--it was Joan.
Joan was fourteen now, she was growing--growing mentally out of Mrs. Ogden. There was so much these days that they could not discuss together. Joan was a student, a tremendously hard worker; Mrs. Ogden had never been that sort of girl. Even James could help Joan better than she could--James was rather well up in history, for example. But she was not well up in anything; this fact had never struck her before. 'Don't be such a damn fool, Mary!' James had said that for so many years that it had ceased to mean anything to her, but now it seemed fraught with dreadful, new possibilities. Would Joan ever come to think her a fool? Would she ever come to think Elizabeth a fool? No, not Elizabeth--wait--there was the menace. Elizabeth had goods for sale that Joan could buy; how was she buying them, that was the question? Was she paying in the copper coin of mere hard work, content if she did Elizabeth credit? Or would she, being Joan, slip in a golden coin of love and admiration, a coin stolen from her almost bankrupt mother?
Elizabeth, that happy, clever young creature, with her self-assurance and her interest in Joan, what was she doing with Joan--what did she mean to do with Joan's mother? How much did she want Joan--the real Joan? And if she wanted her, could she get her? Mean, oh, mean! When Elizabeth had everything on her side--when she had youth so obviously on her side--surely she had enough without Joan, surely she need not grow fond of Joan?
She had fancied lately that Elizabeth had become ever so slightly possessive, that she took it for granted that she would have a say in Joan's future, would be consulted. Then there was the question of a university--who had put that idea into Joan's head? Who, but Elizabeth! Where would it end if Joan went to Cambridge--certainly not in Seabourne. But James would never consent, he was certain to draw the line at that; besides, there was no money--but there were scholarships; suppose Elizabeth was secretly working to enable Joan to win a scholarship? How dare she! How dare either of them have any secrets from Joan's mother! She would speak to Elizabeth--she would assert herself at once. Joan should never be allowed to waste her youth on dry bones. Elizabeth might think that women could fill men's posts, but she knew better. Yet, after all, Joan was so like a boy--one felt that she was a son sometimes. Hopeless, hopeless, she was afraid of Elizabeth! She would never be able to speak her mind to her; she was too calm, too difficult to arouse, too thick-skinned. And Joan Joan was moving away, not very far, only a little away. Joan was becoming a spectator, and Joan as an audience might be dangerous.
Mrs. Ogden trembled; she strove desperately to scourge her mentality into some semblance of adequacy. She tried, sincerely tried, to face the situation calmly and wisely and with understanding. But her efforts failed pathetically; through the maze of her struggling thoughts nothing took shape but the desperate longing, the desperate need that was Joan. She thought wildly: 'I'll tell her how I want her, I'll tell her what my life has been. I'll tell her the truth that I can't; simply can't live without her, and then I shall keep her, because I can make her pity me.' Then she thought: 'I must be mad--a child of fourteen--I must be quite mad!' But she knew that in her tormenting jealousy she might lose Joan altogether. Joan loved the little mother, the miserable, put upon, bullied mother, the mother of headaches and secret tears; she would not love the self-assertive, unjust mother--she never had. No, she must appeal to Joan, that was the only way. Joan was as responsive as ever; then of what was she afraid? Oh, Joan, Joan, so young and awkward and adorable! Did she find her mother too old? After all, she was only forty-two, not too old surely to keep Joan's love. She would try to enter into things more, she would go for walks, she would bathe, anything, anything--where should she begin? But supposing Joan suspected, supposing she saw through her, supposing she laughed at her--she must be careful, dreadfully careful. Joan was excited because Conway House was sold, and had implored her to go and call on Mrs. Benson; very well then, she would go, and take Elizabeth with her--yes, that would be gracious, that would please Joan. And she would try not to hate Elizabeth, she would try with all the will-power she had in her to see Elizabeth justly, to be grateful for the interest she took in the child. She would try not to fear Elizabeth.
The windows of Conway House glowed, and the winter twilight was creeping in and out among the elms in the avenue. The air was cold and dry, the clanking of the skates that Joan and Elizabeth were carrying made a pleasant, musical sound as they walked. A boy joined them; he was tall and lanky and his blunt freckled face was flushed.
'Here I am. I've caught you up!' he said.
They turned; he was a jolly boy and they liked him Richard Benson, the younger son of the Bensons now of Conway House, was enjoying his Christmas holidays immensely; for one thing he had been delighted to find Elizabeth established at Seabourne; they were old friends, and now there was the nice Ogden girl. Then the skating was the greatest luck, so rare as to be positively exciting. Elizabeth and Joan were very good sorts: Elizabeth skated very well, and Joan was learning--he hoped the ice would hold. He was the most friendly of creatures, rather like a lolloping puppy; you expected him to jump up and put his paws on your shoulders. They walked on together towards the house, where tea would be waiting, they all felt happily tired--it was good to be young.
The house had been thoroughly restored, and was now a perfect specimen of its period. The drawing-room was long and lofty, and panelled in pale grey, the curtains of orange brocade, the furniture Chippendale--a gracious room. Beside the fire a group of people sat round the tea-table, over which their hostess presided. Mrs. Benson was an ample woman; her pleasant face, blunt and honest like that of her younger son, made you feel welcome even before she spoke; and when she spoke her voice was loud but agreeable. Joan thought: 'She has the happiest voice I've ever heard.' The three skaters having discarded their wraps had entered the drawing-room together. Mrs. Benson looked up.
'Elizabeth dear!' Elizabeth went to her impulsively and kissed her. Joan wondered; Elizabeth was not given to kissing, she felt that she too would rather like to know Mrs. Benson well enough to kiss her. As they shook hands Mrs. Benson smiled.
'How did the skating go to-day, Joan?'
'Oh, not badly, only one tumble.'
'She got on splendidly!' said Richard with enthusiasm.
'Elizabeth should be a good teacher', his mother replied. 'She used to skate like an angel. Elizabeth, do you remember that hard winter we had when the Serpentine froze?'
Mrs. Benson laughed as though the memory amused her; she and Elizabeth exchanged a comprehending glance.
'They know each other very well', thought Joan. 'They have secrets together.'
She felt suddenly jealous, and wondered whether she was jealous because of Mrs. Benson or because of Elizabeth; she decided that it was because of Elizabeth; she did not want anyone to know Elizabeth better than she did. This discovery startled her. The impulse came to her to creep up to Elizabeth and take her hand, but she could visualize almost exactly what would probably happen. Very gently, oh, very gently indeed, Elizabeth would disengage her hand, she would look slightly surprised, a little amused perhaps, and would then move away on some pretext or another. Joan could see it all. No, assuredly one did not go clinging to Elizabeth's hand, she never encouraged clinging.
The group round the tea-table chattered and ate. Mrs. Ogden was among them, but Joan had not noticed her, for she was sitting in the shadow.
'Joan!'
'Oh, Mother, I didn't see you.' She moved across and sat by her mother's side, but her eyes followed Elizabeth.
Mrs. Ogden watched her. She wanted to say something appropriate, something jolly, but she felt tongue-tied. There was the skating, why not discuss Joan's tumble--but Elizabeth skated 'like an angel'. Joan would naturally not expect her mother to be interested in skating, since she must know that she had never skated in her life. Lawrence, the eldest Benson boy, came towards them. He looked like his father, dark and romantic, and like his father he was the dullest of dull good men. He liked Mrs. Ogden, she had managed to impress him somehow and to make him feel sorry for her. He thought she looked lonely in spite of her overgrown daughter.
He pulled up a chair and made conversation. 'It's ripping finding you all down here, Mrs. Ogden. I never thought that Elizabeth would settle at Seabourne.'
Elizabeth, always Elizabeth! Mrs. Ogden forced herself to speak cordially. 'It was the greatest good fortune for us that she did.'
'Yes--I suppose so. Elizabeth's too clever for me; I always tell her so, I always chaff her.'
'Do you? Do you know, I never feel that I dare chaff Elizabeth, no--I should never dare.'
'Not dare--why not? I used to tease the life out of her.'
'Well, you are different perhaps; you knew her before she was well--so clever. You see I'm not clever, not in that way. I'm very ignorant really.'
'I don't believe it; anyhow, I like that kind of ignorance. I mean I hate clever women. No, I don't mean I hate Elizabeth, she's a dear, but I'd like her even more if she knew less. Oh, you know what I mean!'
'But Elizabeth is so splendid, isn't she? Cambridge, and I don't know what not; still, perhaps--'
'But surely a woman doesn't need to go to Cambridge to be charming? Personally I think it's a great mistake, this education craze; I don't believe men really care for such things in women; do you, Mrs. Ogden?' Mrs. Ogden smiled. 'That depends on the man, I suppose. Perhaps a really manly man prefers the purely feminine woman--'
He was very young. At twenty-two it is gratifying to be thought a manly man; yes, decidedly he liked Mrs. Ogden.
'Oh, I don't think that--' It was Richard who spoke, he had strolled up unperceived. His brother looked annoyed.
'Don't you?' queried Mrs. Ogden. She caught Lawrence's eye and smiled.
Richard blushed to his ears, but he went on doggedly: 'No, I don't, because I think it's a shame that women should be shut out of things, bottled up, cramped. Oh, I can't explain, only I think if they've got the brains to go to college, we ought not to mind their going.'
'Perhaps when you're older you'll feel quite differently, most men do.' Mrs. Ogden's voice was provoking.
Richard felt hot and subsided suddenly, but before he did so his eyes turned to Joan where she sat silent at her mother's side. She wondered whether he thought that the conversation could have any possible bearing on her personally, whether perhaps it had such a bearing. She glanced shyly at her mother; Mrs. Ogden looked decidedly cross.
'I hope', she said emphatically, 'that neither of my girls will want to go to a university, they would never do so with my approval.'
'Oh, but--' Richard began, then stopped, for he had caught the warning in Joan's eye. 'I came to say', he stammered, 'that if you'll come into the library, Joan, I'll show you those prints of Father's, the sporting ones I told you about.' He stood looking awkward for a moment, then turned as if expecting her to follow him.
'May I go, Mother?'
But Joan was already on her feet, what was the good of saying 'No' since she so obviously wanted to go? Mrs. Ogden sighed, she looked at Lawrence appealingly. 'They are so much in advance of me', she said as Joan hurried away.
Sympathy welled up in him; he let it appear in his eyes, together with a look of admiration; as he did so he was thinking that the touch of grey in her hair became Mrs. Ogden.
She thought: 'How funny, the boy's getting sentimental!' A little flutter of pleasure stirred her for a moment. After all she was not so immensely old and not so passer either, and it was not unpleasant to have a young male creature sympathizing with you and looking at you as though he admired and pitied you--in fact it was rather soothing. Then she thought: 'I wonder where Joan is', and suddenly she felt tired of Lawrence Benson; she wished that he would go away so that she might have an excuse for moving; she felt restless.
In the library Joan was listening to Richard. He stood before her with his hair ruffled, his face flushed and eager.
'Joan! I don't know you awfully well, and of course you're only a kid as yet, but Elizabeth says you're clever--and don't you let yourself be bottled.'
'Bottled?' she queried.
'Don't you get all cramped up and fuggy, like one does when one sits over a fire all day. I know what I mean, it sounds all rot, only it isn't rot. You look out! I have a presentiment that they mean to bottle you.'
Joan laughed.
'It's no laughing matter', he said in an impressive voice. 'It's no laughing matter to be bottled; they want to bottle me, only I don't mean to let them.'
'Why, what do you want to do that makes them want to bottle you?'
'I'm going in for medicine--Father hates it; he hopes I'll get sick of it, but it's my line, I know it; I'm studying to be a doctor.'
'Well, why not? It's rather jolly to be a doctor, I should think; someone's got to look after people when they're ill.'
'That's just it. I'm keen as mustard on it, and I shan't let anyone stop me.'
'But what's that got to do with me?'
'Nothing, not the doctor part, but the other part has; if you're clever, you ought to do something.'
'But I'm not a boy!'
'That doesn't matter a straw. Look at Elizabeth; she's not a boy, but she didn't let her brain get fuggy; though', he added reflectively, 'I'm not so sure of her now as I was before she came here.'
'Why not?' said Joan; she liked talking about Elizabeth.
'Oh, just Seabourne, it's a bottling place. If Elizabeth doesn't look out she'll be bottled next!'
At that moment Elizabeth came in. 'We were talking about you', said Joan, but Elizabeth was dreadfully incurious.
'Your mother is waiting, it's time to go', was all she said.
In the fly on the way home the silence was oppressive. Mrs. Ogden seemed to be suffering, she looked wilted. 'What is it, darling? Joan inquired. She had enjoyed herself, and now somehow it was spoilt. She had hoped that her mother was enjoying herself too.
Mrs. Ogden leant towards her and took her hand. 'My dear little girl', she murmured, 'have you been happy, Joan?'
'Yes, very; haven't you, Mother?'
There was a pause. 'I'm not as young as you are, dearest.'
Elizabeth, sitting beside Mrs. Ogden, smiled bitterly in the dark. 'Wait a while', she said to herself. 'Wait a while!' Her own emotions surprised her, she was conscious of a feeling of acute anger. As if by a simultaneous impulse the two women suddenly drew as far apart as the narrow confines of the cab permitted. To Elizabeth it seemed as something so intense as to be almost tangible leapt out between them--a naked sword.
Sitting with her back to the driver, Joan was lost in thought; she was thinking of the utter hopelessness of making her mother really happy. But with another part of her mind she was pondering Richard's sudden outburst in the library. She liked him, she thought what a satisfactory brother he would be. Why was he so afraid of being caught and bottled? Lawrence, she felt, must be bottled already; he liked it, she was sure that Lawrence would think it the right thing to be. She wondered how Richard would manage to escape--if he did escape. A picture of him rose before her eyes; he made her laugh, he was so emphatic. She resolved to talk him over with Elizabeth. Of course it was all nonsense--still, he seemed dreadfully afraid. What was it really that he was afraid of, and why was he so afraid for her?
The cab jolted abruptly, Joan's thoughts jolting with it. The driver had pulled up to drop Elizabeth at her brother's house.
The summer in which Joan's fifteenth birthday occurred was particularly anxious and depressing because of Colonel Ogden's health.
One morning in July he had woken up with a headache and a cough; bronchitis followed, and the strain on his already flagging heart made the doctor uneasy. Undoubtedly Colonel Ogden was very ill. Joan, working hard for her Junior Local, was put to it to know what to do; whether to throw up the examination for the sake of helping her mother or to continue to cram for the sake of not disappointing Elizabeth. In the end the doctor solved this difficulty by sending in an experienced nurse.
Just about this time a deep depression settled on Joan, a kind of heavy melancholy. She wondered what the origin of this might be; she was too honest to pretend to herself that it was caused by anxiety about her father. She wanted to grieve over him. She thought: 'Poor thing, he can't breathe; he's lying in a kind of lump of pillows upstairs in bed; his face looks dreadfully ugly and he can't help it.' But the picture that she drew left her cold. Then a hundred little repulsive details of the illness crowded in on her imagination; when she was with her father she would watch for them with apprehension. She forced herself to show him an exaggerated tenderness, which he, poor man, did not want; it was Milly he was always asking for--but Milly was frightened of illness.
Mrs. Ogden, who was sharing the duties of the nurse, looked worn out, an added anxiety to Joan. They would meet at meals, kiss silently and part again, Mrs. Ogden to relieve the nurse, Joan to go back to her books. She thought: 'How can I sit here grinding away while she does all the beastly things upstairs? But I can't go up and help her, I simply can't!' And one day, almost imperceptibly, a new misery reared its head; she began to analyse her feelings for her mother.
She tried to be logical; she argued that because she wanted to work for an exam there was no reason to suppose that she loved her mother less; she thought that she looked the thing squarely in the eyes, turned it round and surveyed it from all sides and then dismissed it. But a few moments later the thought would come again, this time a little more insistent, requiring a somewhat longer effort of reasoning to argue it away.
One evening during this period, Joan heard her own Doubt voiced by her mother. They had been sitting side by side on the little veranda at the back of the house; the night was warm and from a neighbouring garden something was smelling sweet. Neither of them had spoken for a long time; Mrs. Ogden was the first to break the silence. Quite suddenly she turned her face to Joan; the movement was almost lover-like.
'Joan, do you love me, dearest?' It had come. This was the thing Joan had been dreading for weeks, perhaps it was all her life that she had been dreading it. She felt that time had ceased to exist, there were no clear demarcations; past, present and future were all one, welded together in the furnace of her horrible doubt. Did she love her mother, did she--did she? Her mother was waiting; she had always been waiting just like this, and she always would wait, a little breathlessly, a little afraid. She stared out desperately into the darkness--the answer; it must be found quickly, but where--how?
'Joan, do you love me, dearest?' The answer must be somewhere, only it was not in her tired brain--it was somewhere else, then. In her mother's brain? Was that why her mother was a little breathless, a little afraid? She pressed her cold cheek against Mrs. Ogden's, rubbing it gently up and down, then suddenly she folded her in her arms, kissing her lips, seeking desperately to awaken her dulled emotions to the response that she knew was so painfully desired.
When at last they released each other, they sat for a long time hand in hand. To Joan there was an actual physical distaste for the handclasp, yet she dared not, could not let go. She was conscious in a vague way that her mother's hand felt different. Mechanically she began to finger it, slipping a ring up and down; the ring came off unexpectedly, it was loose, for the hand had grown thinner. Her mind seized on this with avidity; here was the motive she needed for love: her mother's hand, small and white, was thinner than it had been before, it was now terribly thin. There was pathos in this, there was something in this to make her feel sorry; she stooped and fondled the hand. But did she love her? No, assuredly not, for this was not love, this was a stupendous and exhausting effort of the will. When you loved you just loved, and all the rest followed as a matter of course--and yet, if she did not love her, why did she trouble to exert this effort of will at all, why did she feel so strongly the necessity for protecting her mother from the hurt of discovery? Deception; was it ever justifiable to deceive, was it justifiable now? And yet, even if she were sure that she did not love her, could she find the courage to push her away? To say: 'I don't love you, I don't want to touch you, I dislike the feel of you--I dislike above all else the feel of you!' How terrible to say such a thing to any living creature, and how more than terrible to say it to her mother! The hydra had grown another head; what would her mother do if she knew that Joan loved her less?
Away out in the darkness a bell chimed ten o'clock; Mrs. Ogden got up wearily. 'I must see to nurse's supper.' Inside Joan's brain a voice said: 'Go and help her, she's tired; go and get the supper yourself.' But another and more insistent voice arose to drown it: 'Do I love her, do I, do I?' Mrs. Ogden went into the house, but Joan remained sitting on the veranda.
THE weeks dragged on; Colonel Ogden might recover, but his illness would of necessity be a long one, for his heart, already weak, was now disposed to stop beating on the least provocation. Joan worked with furious energy. Elizabeth, confident of her pupil, protested that this cramming was unnecessary, but Joan, stubborn as always, took her own line. She felt that work was her only refuge, the only drug that, temporarily at all events, brought relief.
It was now the veriest torture to her to be in her mother's presence, to be forced to see the tired body going on its daily rounds, to hear the repeated appeals for sympathy, to see the reproach in the watchful eyes.
But if the days were unendurable, how much worse were the nights, the nights when she would wake with a sudden start in a cold sweat of terror. Why was she terrified? She was terrified because she feared that she did not love her mother, and one night she knew that she was terrified because, if she could not love her mother, she might grow to love someone else instead--Elizabeth for instance. The hydra grew another head that night.
Elizabeth, the ever watchful, became alarmed at her condition. Joan, haggard and pale, distressed her; she could not get at the bottom of the thing, for now Joan seemed to avoid her. Yet she felt instinctively that this avoidance did not ring true; there was something very like dumb appeal in the girl's eyes as they followed her about. What was it she wanted? There was something unnatural about Joan these days--when she talked now, she always seemed to have a motive for what she said, she seemed to hope for something from Elizabeth, from Milly even; to hang on their words. Elizabeth got the impression that she was for ever skirting some subject of which she never came to the point. She felt that something was being demanded of her, she did not know what.
There were good days sometimes, when Joan would get up in the morning feeling restored after a peaceful night. Her troubles would seem vague like a ship on a far horizon. Then the reaction would be exaggerated. Elizabeth was not reassured by a boisterously happy Joan, and was never surprised when a few hours would exhaust this blissful condition. Something, usually a mere trifle, would crop up to suggest the old Horror. Very quietly, as a rule, Joan's torments would begin, a thought--flimsy as a bit of thistledown, would light for an instant in her brain to be quickly brushed aside, but like thistledown it would alight again and cling. Gradually it would become more concrete; now it was not thistledown, it was a little stone, very cold and hard, that pressed and was not so easy to brush aside. And the stone would grow until it seemed to Joan to become a physical burden, crushing her under an unendurable load, more horrible than ever now because of those hours of respite.
Elizabeth coaxed and cajoled; she wanted at all hazards to stop Joan from w