BOOK III

CHAPTER NINETEEN 1

IN the two years that elapsed before Joan's seventeenth birthday nothing occurred in the nature of a change. Looking back over that time she was surprised to find how little had happened; she had grown accustomed to monotony, but the past two years seemed to have been more monotonous than usual. The only outstanding event had been when she and Milly joined the tennis club. Mrs. Ogden did not encourage her daughters to take part in the more public local festivities, which were to a great extent shared with people whom she considered undesirable, but in this case she had been forced to yield to combined entreaties.

The tennis club meant less after all to Joan than she had anticipated, though she played regularly for the sake of exercise. The members were certainly not inspiring, nor was their game challenging to effort. They were divided into two classes; those who played for the sake of their livers and those who played for the sake of white flannels and flirtation. To the former class belonged General Brooke, a boisterous player, very choleric and invariably sending his balls into neighbouring gardens. His weight had increased perceptibly since the colonel's illness; perhaps because there was now no one to cause him nervous irritation. When he played tennis his paunch shook visibly under his flannel shirt. The latter class was made up principally of youths and maidens from adjacent villas. To nearly every member of this younger generation was supposed to belong some particular stroke which formed an ever fruitful topic for discussion and admiration. Mr. Thompson, the new assistant at the circulating library, sprang quickly into fame through volleying at the net. He was a mean player and had an odious trick of just tipping the ball over, and apologizing ostentatiously when he had done it. There was usually a great deal of noise, for not only was there much applause and many encouraging remarks, but the players never failed to call each score. Joan played a fairly good game, but contrary to all expectation she never became really proficient. Milly, on the other hand, developed a distinct talent for tennis, and she and young Mr. Thompson, who was considered a star player, struck up a friendship, which, however, never penetrated beyond the front door of Leaside.

At fifteen Milly was acutely conscious of her femininity. She was in all respects a very normal girl, adoring personal adornment and distinctly vain. The contrast between the two sisters was never more marked than at this period; they made an incongruous couple, the younger in her soft summer dresses, the elder in the stiff collars and ties which she affected. In spite of all Mrs. Ogden's entreaties Joan still kept her hair short. Of course it was considered utterly preposterous, and the effect in evening dress was a little grotesque, but she seemed completely to lack personal vanity. At seventeen she suggested a well set-up stripling who had borrowed his sister's clothes.

The life of the schoolroom continued much as usual. Mrs. Ogden, now two years older and with an extra two years of the colonel's heart and her own nervous headaches behind her, had almost given up trying to interfere with Joan's studies. She went in for her examinations as a matter of course, and as a matter of course was congratulated when she did well, but the subject of her career was never mentioned; it appeared to have been thrust into the background by common consent. Elizabeth looked older; at times a few new lines showed on her forehead, and the curious placidity of her mouth was disturbed. Something very like discontent had gathered about the firmly modelled lips.

But if Joan was given more freedom to study, she was to some extent expected to pay for that freedom. Seabourne could be quite gay according to its own standards; there were tennis and croquet parties in the summer and a never-ending chain of whist drives in the winter, to say nothing of tea parties all the year round. To these festivities Joan, now seventeen, was expected to go, and it was not always possible to evade them, for, as Mrs. Ogden said, it was a little hard that she should have to go everywhere alone when she had a daughter who was nearly grown up.

2

The Loos gave a garden party at Moor Park. Poor Joan! She felt horribly out of place, dressed for the occasion in a muslin frock, her cropped head, crowned by a Leghorn hat, rising incongruously from the collarless bodice. Sir Robert thought her a most unattractive young woman, but his wife still disagreed with him. She had always admired Joan, and now the fact that there was something distinctly unfeminine about the girl was an added interest in her hostess's eyes. For Lady Loo, once the best woman to hounds in a hard riding hunt, had begun to find life too restful at Moor Park. She had awakened one day filled with the consciousness of a kind of Indian summer into which she had drifted. Some stray gleam of youth had shot through her, filling her with a spurious vitality that would not for the moment be denied. And since the old physical activity was no longer available, she turned in self-defence to mental interests, and took up the Feminist Movement with all the courage, vigour and disregard of consequences that had characterized her in the hunting-field. It was a nine-days' wonder to see Lady Loo pushing her bicycle through the High Street of Seabourne, clad in bloomers and a Norfolk jacket, a boat-shaped hat set jauntily on her grey head. It is doubtful whether Lady Loo had any definite ideas regarding what it was that she hoped to attain for her sex; it certainly cannot have been equality, for in spite of her bloomers, Sir Robert, poor man, was never allowed to smoke his cigar in the drawing-room to the day of his death.

Lady Loo's shrewd eyes studied Joan with amusement; she took in at a glance the short hair and the wide, flat shoulders.

"Will you ever let it grow?" she asked abruptly.

"Never," said Joan. "It's so little trouble as it is."

"Quite right," said her hostess. "Now why on earth shouldn't women be comfortable! It's high time men realized that they ain't got the sole prerogative where comfort is concerned." She chuckled. "I suppose," she remarked reflectively, "that people think it's rather odd for a young woman of your age to have short hair. I suppose they think it's rather odd for an old woman like me to bicycle in bloomers; but the odd thing about it is that they, the women I mean, should think it odd at all. It must be that all the centuries of oppression have atrophied their brains a little, poor dears. When they get equal rights with men it'll make all the difference to their outlook; they'll be able to stretch themselves."

"Do you think so, Lady Loo?" said Mrs. Ogden. "I should never know what to do with that sort of liberty if I had it, and I'm sure Joan wouldn't."

Lady Loo was not so sure, but she said: "Well, then, she must learn."

"I think there are many other things she had better learn first," rejoined Mrs. Ogden tartly.

Lady Loo smiled. "What, for instance? How to get married?"

Mrs. Ogden winced. "Well, after all," she said, "there are worse things for a girl than marriage, but fortunately Joan need not think of that unless she wants to; she's got her——" she paused—" her home."

Lady Loo thought. "You mean she's got you, you selfish woman." Aloud she said: "Well, times are changing and mothers will have to change too, I suppose. I hear Joan's clever; isn't she going to do something?"

Joan flushed. "I want to," she broke in eagerly.

Mrs. Ogden drew her away and Lady Loo laughed to herself complacently.

"Oh! the new generation," she murmured. "They're as unlike us as chalk from cheese. That girl don't look capable of doing a quiet little job like keeping a house or having a baby; she's not built for it mentally or physically."

At that moment a young man came across the lawn. "Joan!" he called. It was Richard Benson.

Joan turned with outstretched hands in her pleasure. "I didn't know you were in England," she said.

"I got back from Germany last week. It's ripping your being here to-day."

He shook hands politely with Mrs. Ogden and then, as if she did not exist, turned and drew Joan after him.

"Now then," he began, "I want to hear all about it."

"All about what? There's nothing to tell."

"Then there ought to be. Joan, what have you been doing with yourself?"

"Nothing," she answered dully, and then, quite suddenly, she proceeded to tell him everything. She was surprised at herself, but still she went on talking; she talked as though floodgates had been loosed, as though she had been on a desert island for the past two years and he were the man who had come to rescue her. He did not interrupt until she fell silent, and then: "It's all wrong," he said.

She stood still and faced him. "I don't know why I told you; it can't be helped, so there's no use in talking."

His keen grey eyes searched her face. "My dear, it's got to be helped; you can't be a kind of burnt sacrifice!"

She said: "I sometimes think we're all sacrifices one to the other; that's what Elizabeth says when she's unhappy."

"Then Elizabeth's growing morbid," he remarked decidedly. "It's the result of being bottled."

At the old familiar phrase she laughed, but her eyes filled with tears.

"Richard," she said, "it's utterly, utterly hopeless; they don't mean it, poor dears, but they can't help being there, and I can't help belonging to them or they to me. If I worry Mother, she gets a batch of nervous headaches that would move a stone to compassion. And her cough takes several turns for the worse. But if I worry Father, and make him really angry, the doctor says he'll die of heart disease, and I know perfectly well that he would, he's just that kind of man. What do you suggest, that I should be a parricide?" She smiled ruefully. "I ought to go up to Cambridge next year, if I'm to be any good, and then to the hospitals in London, but can you see what would happen if I were to suggest it, especially the latter part of the programme? I don't think I'd have to carry it out to kill my father, I think he'd die of fury at the mere idea."

"He'll die anyhow quite soon," said Richard quietly. "No man can go on indefinitely with a heart like his."

"That may be," she agreed, "but I can't be a contributory cause. There's one side of me that rages at the injustice of it all and just wants to grab at everything for itself; but there's another side, Richard, that simply can't inflict pain, that can't bear to hurt anything, not even a fly, because it hurts itself so much in doing it. I'm made like that; I can't bear to hurt things, especially things that seem to lean on me."

"I understand," he said. "Most of us have that side somewhere; maybe it's the better side and maybe it's only the weaker."

"Tell me about yourself," said Joan, changing the subject.

"Well, this is my last year at Cambridge, you know, and then the real work begins—Joan, life's perfectly glorious!"

She looked at him with interest; he had not changed much; he was taller and broader and blunter than ever, but the keenness in his grey eyes reminded her still of the bright inquiring look of a young animal.

"Look here," he said impetuously, "I'll send you some medical books; study as well as you can until you come of age, and then—cut loose! Ask Elizabeth to help you, she's clever enough for anything; and anyhow I won't send things that are too difficult at first, I'll just send something simple."

Her eyes brightened. "Oh, will you, Richard?"

"You bet I will. And, Joan, do come over more often, now I'm home, then we can talk."

"I will," she promised, and she meant it.

3

They had scarcely met for two years, for Richard had spent most of his vacations abroad; there was little in common between him and his father. His decision to take up medicine had shocked Mr. Benson, but he was a just man in spite of the fact that he completely failed to understand his younger son. He and Richard had thrashed things out, and it had been decided that Richard's allowance should continue until he had taken his medical degree, after which his father would make him a present of a lump sum of money to do as he liked with, but this was to be final, and Richard was well content. His self-confidence never failed. He talked Joan over with his mother that evening.

"She's an awfully jolly girl," he said.

Mrs. Benson demurred at the adjective. "Jolly is hardly the way I should express her," she replied. "I think she's a solemn young creature."

"No wonder," he said hotly. "Her life must be too awful; a mother who's an hysteric, and a father——" He paused, finding no words adequate to describe Colonel Ogden.

Mrs. Benson laughed. "Oh, Richard! You never change. Don Quixote tilting at windmills—and yet you're probably right; the girl's life must be rather hard, poor child. But there are thousands like her, my son."

"Millions," he corrected bitterly. "Millions all over England! They begin by being so young and fine, like Joan perhaps; and, Mother, how do they end?"

"But, Richard dear, I'm afraid it's the lot of women. A woman is only complete when she finds a good husband, and those who don't find one are never really happy. I don't believe work fulfils them; it takes children to do that, my dear; that's nature, and you can't get beyond nature."

"No," he said. "You're mostly right, and yet they can't all find husbands—and some of them don't want to," he added reflectively.

"Joan will marry," said Mrs. Benson. "She ought to let her hair grow."

He burst out laughing. "Bless you, you old darling," he exclaimed. "It's what's inside the head that decides those things, not what's outside it!"

She took his hand and stroked it. "I'm glad I had you," she said.

He stooped and kissed her cheek. "So am I," he told her. They wandered into the garden, arm in arm.

"It's lovely here," he said. "But it's not for me, Mother; I don't think lovely things were meant for me, so I must make the ugly ones beautiful somehow."

"My dear, you've chosen an ugly profession; and yet the healing of the sick is beautiful."

"I think so," he said simply.

Presently she said: "I want to talk to you about Lawrence."

"Fire away! You don't mean to tell me that Lawrence has been sowing anything like wild oats? Your voice sounds so serious."

"No, of course not, you goose; can you see Lawrence knee-deep in a field of anything but—well—the very best Patna rice?" They laughed. "No, it's very far from wild oats—I think he's fallen in love with Elizabeth."

"With Elizabeth? But, good Lord! Lawrence hates clever women!"

"I know; he always said he did, and that's what makes it so astounding; and yet I'm sure I'm right, I can see it in his eye."

Richard whistled. "Will she have him, do you think?"

"I don't know. Elizabeth is not an ordinary woman; sometimes I think she's rather strange. I love her, but I don't understand her—she's not very happy, I think."

"Will Lawrence make her happy, Mother?"

She paused. "Well—he'll make her comfortable," she compromised.

They laughed again.

"Poor old Lawrence," he said. "He's the best fellow in the world, but quite the very dullest; I can't think how you produced him, darling."

"I can't think how I produced you!" she retorted.

CHAPTER TWENTY 1

DURING the weeks that followed, Joan managed to visit the Bensons on every available opportunity, or so it seemed to her mother. Mrs. Benson, lavish in invitations, encouraged the intimacy between Joan and Richard, and watched with amusement the rather pathetic and clumsy efforts of her elder son to win Elizabeth. Mrs. Ogden searched her heart and found no consolation. She had very little doubt that Joan and Richard were falling in love; they were very young of course, especially Joan, but she felt that Joan had never really been young, that she was a creature with whom age did not count and could not be relied upon to minimize or intensify a situation. She became retrospective, looking back into her own dim past, recalling her own courtship and mating. The burning days of Indian sunshine, the deep, sweet-smelling Indian nights with their melodramatic stars, the garden parties, the balls, the picnics, and the thin young Englishmen who had thought her beautiful; she remembered their tanned faces, serious with new responsibilities.

She remembered the other English girls and her own sister Ann, with their constant whispers of love and lovers, their vanities, their jealousies, their triumphs and their heart-breaks. She, too, had been like that, whispering of love and lovers, dreaming queer, uneasy dreams, a little guilty, but very alluring. And then into the picture came striding James Ogden, a square young man with a red moustache and cold, twinkling blue eyes. They had danced together, and almost any man looked his best in the full dress uniform of the Buffs. They had ridden in the early mornings, and James was all of a piece with his Barb, a goodly thing to behold. He had never troubled to court her properly, she knew that now. Even then he had just been James, always James, James for all their lives; James going to bed, James getting up, James thinking of James all day long. No, he had not wasted much time on courtship; he had decided very quickly that he wanted to marry her and had done so. She remembered her wedding night; it had not been at all like her slightly guilty dreams; it had been—she shuddered. Thinking back now she knew that she herself, that part of her that was composed of spirit, had been rudely shaken free, leaving behind but a part of the whole. It had not been her night, but all James's, a blurred and horrible experience filled with astonished repugnance.

Then their married life in the comfortable bungalow; after all, that had had compensations, for Joan had come as a healer, as a reason, an explanation. She had found herself promoted to a new dignity as a young married woman and mother, the equal of the other married women, the recipient of their confidences. Ann had married her chaplain, now a bishop, but Ann neither gave nor received confidences, she had become too religious. By the death of their father the two sisters had found themselves very much alone; they were stranded in a strange, new continent with strange, new husbands, and Mary Ogden would have given much at that time could she have taken her secret troubles to her sister. But Ann had discouraged her coldly, and had recommended prayer as the only fitting preliminary to marital relations.

Then another man had come into her life, quite different from James; a tall man with white hair and a young face. Unlike James, he took nothing for granted; on the contrary, he was strangely humble, considering his brilliant career. He was James's very good friend, but he fell in love with James's wife; she knew it, and wondered whether, after all, what men called love was as gross and stupid and distasteful as James made it. She let him kiss her one night in the garden, but that kiss had broken the spell for them both; they had sprung apart filled with a sense of guilt; they were good, conventional creatures, both of them. They were not of the stuff that guilty lovers are made of. But in their way they were almost splendid, almost heroic, for having at one time bidden fair to throw their prejudices to the wind, they had made of them instead a coat of mail.

Mrs. Ogden searched her heart; it ached, but she went on prodding. What would happen to Joan if she married—did she love Richard? Did she know what it meant? What was her duty towards the girl, how much should she tell her, how much did she know? She had been afraid of Joan going to Cambridge. She laughed bitterly; what was Cambridge in comparison to this? What was anything in comparison to the utter desolation of Joan in love, Joan giving herself utterly to another creature! She felt weak and powerless to stop this thing, and yet she told herself she was not quite powerless; one thing remained to her, she could and would tell Joan the facts of her own married life, she would keep back nothing. Yet she would be careful to be just, she would point out that all men were not like James, and at the same time make it clear that James was, as men go, a good man. Was it not almost her duty to warn Joan of the sort of thing that might happen, and to implore her to think well before she took an irrevocable step? Yes, she told herself, it was a duty too long delayed, a duty that must be fulfilled at once, before it was too late.

2

As Mrs. Ogden came to her momentous decision, Richard was actually proposing to Joan. They stood together in the paddock beyond the orchard, some colts gambolled near by. He went at it with his head down, so to speak, in the way he had of charging at things.

He said, seizing her astonished hand: "Joan, I know you only come here to pick my brain about medicine and things, but I've fallen in love with you; will you marry me?"

She left her hand in his, because she was so fond of him and because his eyes looked a little frightened in spite of his usual self-confidence, but she said:

"No, I can't marry you, Richard."

He dropped her hand. "Why can't you?" he demanded.

"Because I don't feel like that," she told him. "I don't feel like that about you."

"But, Joan," his voice was eager, "we could do such splendid things together; if you won't have me for myself will you have me because of the work? I can help you to get away; I can help you to make a career. Oh, Joan, do listen! I know I could do it; I'll be a doctor and you'll be a doctor, we'll be partners—Joan, do say 'Yes.'"

She almost laughed, it struck her that it was like a nursery game of make-believe. "I'll be a doctor and you'll be a doctor!" It sounded so funny; she visualized the double plate on their door front: "Doctor Richard Benson," and underneath: "Doctor Joan Benson." But she reached again for his hand and stroked it gently as if she were soothing a little brother whose house of bricks she had inadvertently knocked down.

"I'm not the marrying sort," she said.

"God knows what you are, then!" he burst out rudely. Then his eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Richard!" she implored, "don't stop being my friend, don't refuse to help me just because I can't give you what you want."

Now it was his turn to laugh ruefully. "You may not be the marrying sort," he said, "but you're a real woman for all that; you look at things from a purely feminine point of view."

"Perhaps I do," she acquiesced. "And that means that I'm being utterly selfish, I suppose; but I need your friendship—can I have it?"

"Oh, I suppose so," he said with some bitterness. "But you won't really need it, you know, for you never mean to break away."

She flushed. "Don't say it!" she exclaimed. "I forbid you to say it!"

"Well," he told her, "if you mean to, it's time you began to get a move on. If you won't take me, then for God's sake take something, anything, only don't let Seabourne take you."

3

On the way home Joan told Elizabeth. They stopped and faced each other in the road.

"And you said——?" Elizabeth asked.

"I said 'No,'" replied Joan. "What did you think I'd say?"

"No!" said Elizabeth, and she smiled. Then, "I wonder if you'll be surprised to hear that I had a proposal too, last week?"

Joan opened her lips but did not speak. Elizabeth watched her.

"Yes," she said. "I had a proposal from Lawrence. It seems to run in the family, but mine was very impressive. I felt it carried the weight of the whole Bank of England behind it. It sounded very safe and comfortable and rich, I was almost tempted——" She paused.

"And what did you say, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth came a step nearer. "I said I was too busy just now to get married; I said I was too busy thinking of someone I cared for very much and of how they could get free and make a life of their own."

"You said that, Elizabeth?"

"Yes. Does it surprise you? That's what I said—so you see, Joan, you mustn't fail me."

Joan looked at her. She stood there, tall and neat, in the road; the dust on her shoes seemed an impertinence, as though it had no right to blemish the carefully polished leather. Her eyes were full of an inscrutable expression, her lips a little parted as though about to ask a question.

"If it's devotion you want," said Joan gruffly, "then you've got all I've got to give."

There was a little silence, and when Elizabeth spoke it was in her matter-of-fact voice. She said, "I not only want your devotion but I need it, and I want more than that; I want your work, your independence, your success. I want to take them so that I can give them back to you, so that I can look at you and say, 'I did this thing, I found Joan and I gave her the best I had to give, freedom and——'" she paused, "'and happiness.'"

They turned and clasped hands, walking silently home towards Seabourne.

4

Mrs. Ogden was watching from the dining-room window as she often watched for Joan. Her pale face, peering between the lace curtains, had grown to fill the girl with a combined sense of irritation and pity. She called Joan into the room and closed the door. Joan knew from her mother's manner that something was about to happen, it was full of a suppressed excitement. Without a word she led Joan to the sofa and made her sit beside her; she took the girl's face between her two cold hands and gazed into her eyes.

Then she began. "Joan, darling, I want to talk to you. I've wanted to have a serious talk with you for some time. You're not a child any longer, you're nearly a woman now; it seems so strange to me, for somehow I always think of you as my little Joan. That's the way of mothers, I suppose; they find it difficult to realize that their children can ever grow up, but you have grown up and it's likely that you'll fall in love some day—perhaps want to marry, and there are things that I think it my duty to tell you——" She paused. "Facts about life," she concluded awkwardly.

Her conscience stirred uneasily, she felt almost afraid of what she was about to do, but she thrust the feeling down. "It is my duty, I'm doing it for Joan's sake," she told herself. "I'm doing it for her sake and not for my own."

Joan sat very still, she wondered what was coming; her mother's eyes looked eager and shy and she was a little flushed. Mrs. Ogden began to speak again in quick jerks, she turned her face slightly aside showing the delicate line of her profile, her hands moved incessantly, plaiting and unplaiting the fringed trimming on her dress.

"When I was not very much older than you, in India," she went on, "I was like you, little more than a child. I was not clever as you are—I never have been clever, my dear, but I was beautiful, Joan, really beautiful. Do you remember, you used to think me beautiful?" The voice grew wistful and paused, then went on without waiting for a reply. "I had no mother to tell me anything, and what I learnt about things I learnt from other girls of my own age; we speculated together and came to many wrong conclusions." Another pause. "About the facts of life, I mean—about men and marriage and—what it all meant. Men made love to me, dearest, they admired your mother in those days, but their love-making was restrained and respectful, as the love-making of a man should be to a young unmarried girl, and——" she hesitated, "it told me nothing—nothing, Joan, of what was to come. Then I met your father, I met James, and he proposed to me and I married him. He was good looking then, in a way—at least I thought so—and a wonderful horseman, and that appealed to me, as you may guess, for we Routledges have always been fond of horses. Well, dear, that's what I want to tell you about—not the horses, my married life, I mean."

She went on quickly now, the words tumbled over each other, her voice gathered volume, growing sharp and resentful. As she spoke she felt overwhelmed with the relief that came with this crude recital of long hidden miseries. Joan watched her, astonished; watched the refined, worn face, the delicate, peevish lips that were uttering such incongruous things. Something of her mother's sense of outrage entered into her as she listened, filling her with resentment and pity for this handicapped and utterly self-centred creature, for whom the natural laws had worked so unpropitiously. She thought bitterly of her father, breathing heavily on his pillows upstairs, of his lack of imagination, his legally sanctified self-indulgence, his masterful yet stupid mind, but she only said:

"Why have you told me all this, dearest?"

Mrs. Ogden took her hand. "Why have I told you? Oh, Joan, because of Richard Benson, because I think you're falling in love for the first time."

Joan looked at her in amazement. "You think that?" she asked.

"Well, isn't it so? Joan, tell me quickly, isn't it so?"

"No," said Joan emphatically, "it isn't. Richard asked me to marry him to-day and I refused."

Mrs. Ogden burst into tears; her weeping was loud and unrestrained; she hid her head on the girl's shoulder. "Oh, Joan—my Joan——" she sobbed. "Oh, Joan, I am so glad!"

Now she did not care what she said, the years of unwilling restraint melted away; she clung to the girl fiercely, possessively, murmuring words of endearment. Joan took her in her arms and rocked her like a child. "There, there!" she whispered.

Presently Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes, her face was ugly from weeping. "It's the thought of losing you," she gasped. "I can't face the thought of that—and other things; you know what I mean, the thought of your being maltreated by a man, the thought that it might happen to you as it happened to me. You see, you've always seemed to make up for it all, what I missed in James I more than found in you. I know I'm tiresome, my darling, I know I'm not strong and that I often worry you, but, oh Joan, if you only knew how much I love you. I've wanted to tell you so, often, but it didn't seem right somehow, but you do understand, don't you, my darling? Joan, say you understand, say you love me."

Somewhere in the back of Joan's mind came a faint echo: did she love her? But it died almost immediately.

"You poor, poor darling," she said, "of course I understand, and love you."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 1

RICHARD was faithful to his promise. Large brown paper parcels of books began to arrive from Cambridge; Joan and Elizabeth studied them together. The weariness of the days was gone for Joan; with the advent of her medical books she grew confident once more, she felt her foot already on the first rung of the ladder.

At this time Elizabeth strove for Joan as she had never striven before. Joan did not guess how often her friend sat up into the small hours of the morning struggling to master some knotty point in their new studies. How she wrestled with anatomy, with bones and muscles and circulatory systems, with lobes and hemispheres and convolutions, until she began to wonder how it could be possible that anyone retained health and sanity, considering the delicate and complicated nature of the instrument upon which they depended. A good many of the books dealt with diseases of the nerves and brain, and Joan found them more fascinating and interesting than she had imagined possible. Poor Elizabeth had some ado to keep pace with her pupil's enthusiasm. She strained every nerve to understand and be helpful; she joined a library in London and started a line of private study, the better to fit her for the task in hand. She gloried in the difficulties to be surmounted, and felt that this work was invested with a peculiar significance, almost a sanctity. It was as though she were helping Joan towards the Holy Grail of freedom.

At the end of six months Elizabeth paused for breath, and together the two students reviewed their efforts. They were very well pleased with themselves and congratulated each other. But in spite of all this Elizabeth was dissatisfied and apprehensive at moments. She told herself that she was growing fanciful, nervy, that she was hipped about life and particularly about Joan, that she needed a change, that she had been overworking recklessly; she even consulted their text books with a view to personal application, only to throw them aside with a scornful exclamation. Theories, all theories! Those theories might conceivably apply to other people, to Mrs. Ogden for instance, but not to Elizabeth Rodney! She was not of the stuff in which neurosis thrives; she was just a plain, practical woman taking a plain, practical interest in, and having a plain, practical affection for, a brilliant pupil. But her state of mental unrest increased until it became almost physical—at last she broke——

"Joan!" she exclaimed irritably one day, flinging a text book on to a chair, "what, in Heaven's name, are we doing this for?"

Joan looked up in bewilderment. "Out of scientific interest, I suppose," she ventured.

"Interest!" Elizabeth's eyes gleamed angrily. "Interest! Scientific interest—yes, that's it! I'm sitting up half the night out of mere scientific interest in a subject that I personally don't care a button about, except inasmuch as it affects your future. I'm trying to take a scientific interest in the disgusting organs of our disgusting bodies, to learn how and why they act, or rather how and why they don't act, to read patiently and sympathetically about a lot of abnormal freaks, who as far as I can see ought all to be shut up in a lunatic asylum, to understand and condone the physical and mental impulses of hysterics, and I'm doing all this out of scientific interest! Scientific interest! That's why I'm slaving as I never slaved at Cambridge—out of pure scientific interest! Well, I tell you, you're wrong! I don't like medical books and I particularly dislike neurotic people, but it's been enough for me that you do like all this, that you feel that you want to be a doctor and make good in that way. It's not out of scientific interest that I've done it, Joan; it's because of you and your career, it's because I'm mad for you to have a future—I've been so from the first, I think—I don't care what you do if only you do something and do it well, if only you're not thrown on the ash-heap——" She paused.

Joan felt afraid. Through all the turbulent nonsense of Elizabeth's tirade she discerned an undercurrent of serious import. It was disconcerting to find that Elizabeth could rage, but it was not that which frightened her, but rather a sudden new feeling of responsibility towards Elizabeth, different in quality from anything that had gone before. She became suddenly aware that she could make or mar not only herself but Elizabeth, that Elizabeth had taken root in her and would blossom or fade according to the sustenance she could provide.

"It's you, you, Joan!" she was saying. "Are you serious, are you going to break away in the end, or is it—am I—going to be all wasted?"

"You mean, am I going to leave Seabourne?"

"Yes, that is what I mean; are you going to make good?"

"Good God!" Joan exclaimed bitterly. "How can I?"

"You can and you must. Haven't you any character? Have you no personality worthy to express itself apart from Seabourne. No will to help yourself with? Are you going to remain in this rut all the rest of your life, or at least until you're too old to care, simply because you've not got the courage to break through a few threads of ridiculous sentiment? Why it's not even sentiment, it's sentimentality!" Her voice died down and faltered: "Joan, for my sake——"

They stared at each other, wide-eyed at their own emotions. They realized that all in a moment they had turned a sharp corner and come face to face with a crisis, that there was now no going back, that they must go forward together or each one alone. For a long time neither spoke, then Joan said quietly:

"You think that I'm able to do as you wish, that I'm able to break through what you call 'the threads of sentimentality,' and you despise me in your heart for hesitating; but if you knew how these threads eat into my flesh you might despise me less for enduring them."

Elizabeth stretched out a scarred hand and touched Joan timidly; her anger had left her as suddenly as it had come, she felt humble and lonely.

"You see," she said, "I'm a woman who has made nothing of life myself and I know the bitterness that comes over one at times, the awful emptiness; but if I can see you happy it won't matter ever again. I don't want any triumphs myself, not now; I only want them for you. I want to sit in the sun and warmth of your success like a lizard on an Italian wall; I want positively to bask. It's not a very energetic programme, perhaps, and I never thought I'd live to feel that way about anything; but that's what it's come to, you see, my dear, and you can't have it in you to leave me shivering in the cold!"

Joan clung to the firm, marred hand like a drowning man to a spar; she felt at that moment that she could never let it go. In her terror lest the hand should some day not be there she grew pale and trembled. She looked into Elizabeth's troubled eyes.

"What do you want of me?" she asked.

"If I told you, would you be afraid?"

"No, I'm only afraid of your taking your hand away."

"Then listen. I want you to work as we are doing until you come of age, then I want you to go to Cambridge, as I've often told you, but after that—I want you to make a home with me."

"Elizabeth!"

"Yes, I have a little money put by, not very much, but enough, and I want you to come to London and live there with me. We could jog along somehow; I'd get a job while you studied at the hospital; we'd have a little flat together, and be free and very happy. I've wanted to say this to you for some time and to-day somehow it's all come out; it had to get said sooner or later. Joan, I can't stand Seabourne for many more years, and yet as long as you're here I can't get away. I tell you there are times when I could dash myself to bits on the respectable mud-coloured wall of our house, when I could lay a trail of gunpowder down the middle of the High Street and set light to the fuse, when I could hurl Ralph's woollen socks in his face and pull down the plush curtains and stamp on them, when I could throw all the things out of the study window, one by one, at the heads of the people on the parade, when I could—oh, Joan!—when I could swim a long way out to sea and never come back; I nearly did that once, and then I thought of you and I came back, and here I am. But how long will you make me stay here, Joan? How long shall I have to endure the sight of you growing weaker instead of stronger, as you mature, and some day perhaps the sight of you growing old and empty and utterly meaningless, with all the life and blood sucked out of you by this detestable place, when we might get free and hustle along with life, when we might be purposeful and tired and happy because we mean something."

Joan got up.

"Listen," she said. "When I'm twenty-one I will go to Cambridge and after that I shall come to you in London; we'll find a little flat and be very happy, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth looked straight into her eyes with a cold, searching scrutiny. "Is that a promise, Joan?"

"Yes, it's a promise."

2

Joan's medical studies went almost unnoticed by Mrs. Ogden, whose mind was occupied with more pressing worries. Milly had suddenly announced her intention of going to the Royal College of Music, and her master had backed her up; there had been a scene, recriminations. The colonel had put his foot down and had not on this occasion had a heart attack, so that the scene had been painfully prolonged. In the end he had said quite bluntly that there was no money for anything of the kind. This had surprised Mrs. Ogden and had made her feel vaguely uncomfortable; she began to remember certain documents that James had asked her to sign lately; he had told her that they concerned the investment of the children's money. And then, to her who knew him so well, it was all too evident that something was preying on his mind; she fancied that recently there had been more in his morose silences than could be accounted for by ill-health. He had grown very old, she thought.

Milly had not stormed, nor did she appear to have gone through much mental perturbation; in fact she had smiled pleasantly in her father's face. It never occurred to her for one moment that she would not get her own way in the end; it hardly seemed worth worrying about. She did not believe that there was no money to send her to the College; she told Joan afterwards that this sort of remark was on a par with all the rest of the lies their father told when he did not wish to be opposed.

"After all," she said, "there is my hundred and fifty a year, and of course I should take a scholarship. It's only Father's usual tactics, and it's all on a par with him to like the feeling of holding on to my money as long as he can; he thinks it gives him the whip hand. But I'm going up to the College, and I'm not going to wait until I'm twenty-one. I shall manage it, you'll see; I'm not in the least worried about it really; if necessary I shall run away."

But Mrs. Ogden was not so confident; she questioned her husband timidly.

"James, dear—of course I understand your not wishing Milly to go to the College at her age; she's only a child, that in itself is a reason against it; but to say there's no money! Surely, dear——"

He cut her short. "At the moment there is not," he said gruffly.

"James!"

"Oh, what is it, Mary?"

"I ought to understand. Am I spending too much on the household? Surely I haven't bought Milly too many new clothes, have I, dear? I thought perhaps that hundred and fifty a year of hers would have gone a long way towards helping her expenses in London; they say she'd certainly take a scholarship, and there's no doubt she has very real talent. With Joan it's different. I don't consider that she has very marked talent in any particular direction; she's an all round good student and that's all; but Milly is certainly rather remarkable in her playing, don't you think so?"

The colonel did not answer for a full minute, and when he spoke a pleading note had come into his voice, a note so unusual that his wife glanced quickly at him.

"Mary, it's these doctors and things, this damned long illness of mine has been the very deuce. If it hadn't been for that money of Henrietta's I don't know where we'd have been, but I'm not the man to spend my children's money on myself." He drew himself up painfully and his face flushed. "No, Mary, if Henrietta wished to make me feel that I'd no right to it, I wouldn't touch a penny that I couldn't pay back. If the damned unsisterly old devil is able to understand anything at all in the next world, I hope she understands that!"

"But, James, have we borrowed some of the children's money?"

"A little," he admitted. "We've had to. After all, the children would be in a bad way without their father. I consider it my duty to keep myself alive for their sakes. Where would you all be without me?" he concluded with some return of his old manner.

Mrs. Ogden looked at him; he was a very broken man. A faint pity stirred in her, a faint sense of shock as though there were something indecent in what she was now permitted to see. She had been little better than this man's slave for over twenty years, the victim of his lusts, his whims, his tempers and his delicate heart, the peg on which to hang his disappointments, the doormat for him to kick out of the way in his rages. She had lost youth and hope and love in his ungrateful service; at times she almost hated him, and yet, now that the hand was weakening on the reins, now that she realized that she could, if she would, take the bit between her teeth, she jibbed like a frightened mare; it was too late. There had been something in his almost humble half-explanation that brought his illness home to her as no fits of irritability or silence could have done.

"Never mind, my dear," she said gently; "you've done everything for the best."

He looked at her with frightened eyes and edged nearer.

"I've done what I hope was for the best," he said uncertainly. "Some of their money we had to take to keep going. I didn't want to tell you that funds were pretty low. I suppose I ought to have told you not to spend so much on clothes, but—oh, well, damn it all! A man has his pride, and I hated to have to touch a penny of Henrietta's money after the way she treated me; God knows I hated it! It must come all right, though. I've changed some of the investments and put the money into an excellent concern that I heard about quite by chance through Jack Hicks—a mine out in Rhodesia—they say there's a fortune in it. Mary, listen and do try to understand; it's a new mine and it's not paying yet, that's why we're short at the moment, but it ought to begin paying next year, and by the time the children come of age it'll be in full swing. It paid for a bit, jolly well, of course, otherwise I wouldn't have put the money into it, but I hear they're sinking a new shaft or something, and can't afford any dividends just at present. It's only a matter of time, a few months perhaps. There can't be a question about it's being all right; I realize that from what Jack told me. And then, as you know, Mary, I always fancy myself as a bit of an expert in mineralogy. From what I can see the children ought to get a fortune out of it; don't suppose they'll be grateful to me though, not likely, these days. Of course you understand, Mary, that I didn't depend entirely upon my own opinion. If it had been our own money I shouldn't have hesitated, for I've never found any one whose opinion I'd rather take than my own on financial matters; but being the children's money I went into it thoroughly with Hicks, and between us we came to the conclusion that as an investment it's as safe as the Bank of England."

"I see," said Mrs. Ogden, trying to keep all traces of doubt from her voice. She did not see in the least and, moreover, gold mines in Rhodesia reminded her unpleasantly of some of her poor brother Henry's ventures, but her head felt suddenly too tired to argue. "Shall I economize?" she asked him.

He hesitated. "Well, perhaps——" His voice shook a little, then he pulled himself together. "No, certainly not," he said loudly. "Go on just as you are, there's no reason whatever to economize in reasonable expenditure. Of course this crack-brained scheme of Milly's is quite another matter; there's no money for that sort of thing and never will be, as I told Joan pretty plainly when she began expounding her theories of a career. But in all reasonable matters go on just the same."

He reached out his hand and took hers, patting it affectionately. "I think I'll go to bed," he said. "I feel rather tired."

3

Milly had hit upon a course of action diametrically opposed to her real feelings, which were placid and a little amused. She intended to go to London, and it occurred to her that the best way to achieve this might be to make herself dispensable; at all events it was worth trying. She therefore sulked and wept to an abnormal extent, and took care that these fits of weeping should not go unobserved. Whenever possible she shut herself up with her violin, ignoring the hours of meals. Her family became alarmed and put a tray outside her door, which she mostly left untouched, having provided herself with a surreptitious supply of rolls and potted meat. Her father looked at her glumly, but through his angry eyes shone an uneasy, almost wistful expression, when forced to meet his favourite daughter face to face. At the end of a fortnight he could bear it no longer and began to make tentative efforts at reconciliation.

"That's a pretty dress you have on, Milly; going out to give the neighbours a treat?"

Milly turned away. "No," she said shortly.

"Coming out with your old father this morning, when he goes for a drive in his perambulator? It's devilish dull with no one to talk to."

She stared at him coldly. "I have my violin to practise; I'm sorry I can't come."

The colonel winced; she was more than a match for him now, this impudent daughter of his, perhaps because he loved her as deeply as he was capable of loving. Once, when she had been unusually rude, snubbing his advances with the sharp cruelty of youth, Joan had seen his bulgy eyes fill with tears. She waited until they were alone together and then she turned on her sister.

"Beast!" she said emphatically.

"I don't know what you mean," retorted Milly.

"I think you're a perfect beast to treat Father the way you do lately. Anyone can see he's terribly ill and you speak to him as though he were a dog."

"Well, he's treated me as though I were a dog—no, worse; he'd give a dog a sweet biscuit any day, but he denies me the only thing I long for, that I'm ready to work for—my music. It's my whole life!" she added melodramatically.

"Rot!" said Joan. "That's no reason for speaking to him as you do; I can't stand it, it makes me feel sick and cold; his eyes were full of tears to-day."

"Well, my eyes are almost blind from crying—I cry all night long."

"That's a whopper, you snored all last night."

"Oh!" exclaimed Milly, angrily. "How I do hate sharing a room with you, there's no privacy!"

Joan laughed rudely. "You are an ass, Milly, you try so hard to be grown up and you're nothing but a silly kid."

"Perhaps if you knew all," Milly hinted darkly, "you'd realize that some people think me grown up."

"Do they?"

"Yes, Mr. Thompson does, if you must know."

"I didn't say I wanted to know."

"Well, Mr. Thompson doesn't treat me as though I were a little girl; he's very attentive."

"Do you mean the young man at the library, who smells of hair oil?"

"I mean Mr. Thompson the tennis player."

"Oh, yes," said Joan vaguely, "I remember now, he does play tennis."

"Considering he's the best player we've got," said Milly flushing, "it's not at all likely that you didn't know who I meant."

"Oh, shut up!" Joan exclaimed, growing suddenly impatient. "I don't care what Mr. Thompson thinks of you. I think you're a beast!"

Joan tried clumsily to make it up to her father; she tore herself away from her books to walk beside his bath chair, but all to no avail, he was silent and depressed. He wanted Milly, with her fair curls and doll's eyes, not this gawky elder daughter with her shorn black locks. He fretted for Milly; they all saw how it was with him. Milly saw too, but continued to treat him with open dislike. In the midst of this welter of illness and misery Mrs. Ogden flapped like a bird with a broken wing; she reproached Milly, but not as one having authority. All day long the sounds of a violin could be heard all over the house; it was almost as though Milly played loudest when the colonel went upstairs to rest; he would doze, and start up suddenly, wide awake.

"What's that? What's that?" And then, "Oh, it's Milly; will the child never think of anyone but herself!"

The doctor came more often. "I'm not satisfied," he told Mrs. Ogden. "I think you must take him to London for the Nauheim cure. It's too late to go to the place itself, but he can do the cure in a nursing home."

Mrs. Ogden looked worried. "He'll never go," she said.

"He must, I'm afraid," the doctor replied firmly. "But before moving him we must have Sir Thomas Robinson down in consultation."

They told the colonel together. "I absolutely refuse!" he began. "There's no money for that sort of nonsense. Good God, man, do you think I'm a millionaire!"

The doctor said soothingly: "I'll speak to Sir Thomas and ask him to reduce his fee, he's a charming fellow."

"I won't have him!" thundered the colonel. "I refuse to be ordered about like a child."

Doctor Thomas motioned Mrs. Ogden to leave the room; presently he called her in again.

"He's promised to be good," he told her with an assumption of playfulness.

The colonel was sitting very upright in his chair, his face was paler than usual but his little moustache bristled angrily above his parted lips.

"Well, I must be off," said the doctor, hastily picking up his hat.

4

Mary Ogden laid her hand on her husband's arm. "I'm sorry if this annoys you," she said.

For a moment he did not speak, then he cleared his throat and swallowed. "He tells me, Mary, that it's my one chance of life, always providing that the specialist man consents to my being moved." She was silent, finding nothing to say. He had died so many times already in all but the final act, that now, if Death had moved one step nearer, she scarcely perceived that it was so. Her mind was busy with a thousand pressing problems, the money difficulty, how to manage about her girls, who to leave in charge of the house if she went to London, and where she herself would stay; it would all cost a very great deal. She thought aloud. "It will cost a lot——" she murmured.

He turned towards her. "They say it's my only chance," he repeated, and there was something pathetic in his eyes.

She pulled herself up. "Of course, my dear, we must go, no matter what it costs. And as it's certain to cure you the money will be well spent."

He looked at her doubtfully. "Not certain; there's just a chance, Thomas said. And after all, Mary, I suppose a man has a right to take his last chance? I'm not so very old, you know."

He seemed to expect her to say something; she felt his need but could not fill it.

"Not so very old," he repeated, "and I come of a good sound stock; my father lived to be eighty-five. Not that I aspire to that, my dear, but still, a few years more, just to look after you and the children? What?"

His lips were shaking. "Mary!" he broke out suddenly; "damn it all, Mary, I've got to go if my time has come, but do for God's sake show a little feeling, say something; it's positively unnatural the way you take it!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 1

JOAN took two letters from her jacket pocket; one was from Elizabeth, the other from her mother. Aunt Ann had come to the rescue in the end, and Joan and Milly had been sent to the palace during Mrs. Ogden's absence in London; they had been there now for three weeks. There was peace up here in the large, airy bedroom; peace from her dominating, patronizing aunt, peace from the kind, but talkative bishop.

She looked at the letters, undecided as to which to open first. Her fingers itched to open Elizabeth's, but she put it resolutely aside. Mrs. Ogden wrote from the family hotel in South Kensington where she had taken up her abode.

"My own darling Joan," she began. "At last I hear from you; I had begun to fear that you must be ill. Surely a postcard every day would not be too much trouble for you to send? If only you knew how I watch and wait for news, you would be more regular in writing, my darling. As for me, I write this from my bed. I am utterly worn out and suppose that my general condition is accountable for my having caught a cold which has gone down on to my chest. The doctor says I must be really careful, and my heart has been troubling me again lately, especially at night when I try to sleep on my left side. I have had the strangest sensation in my throat and all down my left arm. However, I must get up as soon as I feel able to stand, as your poor father has no one else to look after him. I do not myself think the nurses are very kind or the food at all good at the Nursing Home; I spoke to the matron about it just before I went to bed, she is an odious person and was inclined to be offensive. This hotel is very uncomfortable, my bed hard and unsympathetic in the extreme, and the servants far from attentive. I rang my bell six times yesterday before anybody came near me. I shall have to complain. I cannot attempt to eat their eggs, which is very trying as I am kept on a light diet. Your father varies from day to day. The doctor assures me that he is quite satisfied with his progress, but I think the cure altogether too severe. Oh! my Joan, how cruel it seems that there was not enough money for you to come to London with me. I feel that if only I could have you to talk things over with, I could bear it so much better. I am such a child in moments of anxiety, and my loneliness is terrible; I sit alone all the evenings and think of you and of how much I need you—as never before! I feel utterly lost; your poor, little mother in this big, big city, and her Joan so far away and probably not thinking of her mother at all, probably forgetting——"

"Oh, I can't read any more now!" Joan thought desperately. "It's always the same; she's never contented, and always sees the darkest side of things, and I know there's nothing really wrong with her heart or her chest!"

Her poor mother, so small and so inadequate! Why did her mother love her so much? She oughtn't to love her so much; it was all wrong. Or if the love was there, then it ought to be a patient, waiting, unchanging love; the kind that went with making up the fire and sitting behind the tea-tray awaiting your return. The love that wrote and told you that you were expected home for Christmas, and that when you arrived your favourite pudding would be there to greet you. Yes, that was the ideal mother-love; it never waned, but it never exacted. It was a beautiful thing, all of one restful colour. It belonged to rooms full of old furniture and bowls of potpourri; it went with gentle, blue-veined hands and a soft, old voice. It was a love that kissed you quietly on both cheeks, too sure of itself to need undue demonstration. She sighed, and thrusting the letter away, opened Elizabeth's. She smiled a little as she saw the small, neat handwriting. Elizabeth always left a margin down one side of the paper.

"Well, Joan, I have been waiting to answer your last letter until I had something of interest to write about. Will you be surprised to hear that I have been up to London? Do you remember my telling you about a friend of mine at Cambridge, Jane Carruthers? Well, I heard from her the other day after having lost sight of her for ages. She has some job or another at the Royal College of Science and lives in London permanently now, and as in her letter she asked me to look her up, I struck while the iron was hot and went straight off, via a cheap excursion.

"But it's really about her service flat that I want to tell you. She lives in a large building called 'Working Women's Flats' or 'Gentlewomen's Dwellings,' I can't remember which, but I prefer the former, in a street just off one of those dignified old squares in Bloomsbury. The street itself is not dignified, but if you walk just to the end of it you are surrounded at once by wonderful Georgian houses with spreading fanlights and link extinguishers and wide shallow front-door steps. They are the most quietly friendly houses in the world, Joan; a little reserved, but then we should like them all the better for that.

"Jane's flat is on the fourth floor, so that instead of seeing the undignified street you catch a glimpse of the trees in the square, and of course there are plenty of roofs and chimney-pots, always interesting things, or so I think. Even in London the roofs have character. It's the most delightful little flat imaginable, two bedrooms with a study in between. She has made it very homey with books and brown walls, and she tells me that it's cheap as rents go in London; only it's difficult to get in there at all.

"Oh, Joan, it's the very place for you and me. I felt it the moment I set foot inside the front door; don't think me an idiot, but I felt excited, I felt about fifteen. I could see us established in a flat like Jane's. The whole time I was trying to discuss tea and cakes I found myself planning a new arrangement of Jane's bookshelves, the better to hold your books and mine—I should have put the writing-table in the other corner of the room too. I murmured something to this effect just as Jane was expounding some new scientific theory she has hit upon; she looked a little surprised and rather pained, I thought.

"I asked her about my chances of finding a job in London. I thought I might as well, as it will be very necessary, and she says she thinks that I ought to be able to get quite a decently paid post, with my fairly good Cambridge record.

"And now for a confession. I have put my name down for one of the flats. I saw the agent and he says that there's a long waiting list, but we can afford to wait for nearly three years, you and I, and if one is available before that, we must beg, borrow or steal in order to secure it. We might buy some odds and ends of furniture on the hire system and let the place furnished until we want it for ourselves. Jane says the flats let like wildfire, but I think I should try to live there while you were at Cambridge. I'm sure I could make both ends meet, and then you could come there for part of your vacations. But if that were not possible it wouldn't matter much for I could always put up at Ralph's.

"I am beginning to laugh all by myself as I write, for I can see your astonished face. Oh, yes, I know, I have acted on impulse, but it's glorious to be reckless of consequences sometimes, and then think how un-Seabournish I have been. Can you hear Ralph's consternation if I told him?—which I shan't. I think we will keep it as a secret between us, at all events for the present. Never cross a Seabourne bridge until you come to it.

"Joan, I am missing you."

2

Joan folded the letter and sat staring in front of her. So it had really come very near; her freedom, her life with Elizabeth. The flat would have a study with shelves for their books; they would go out of it every morning to jostle with crowds, to work and grow tired; and come back to it every evening to talk, study, or perhaps to rest. They would cook their own supper, or sometimes go out to one of the little Italian restaurants that Richard had told her about, queer little restaurants with sanded floors and coarse linen tablecloths. Sometimes, when they could afford it, they would go to cheap seats at the theatre or to the gallery at Covent Garden, and afterwards find their way home in the 'bus, or the Underground, discussing what they had seen and heard. They would unlock their front door with their own latch-key and hang up their coats in their own front hall; then they would laugh and joke together over the old days in Seabourne, which, by then, would seem very far away.

"Joan!" came her aunt's voice with a note of irritation; "Joan, I asked you to do those flowers for the drawing-room. Have you forgotten?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 1

MRS. OGDEN wrote yet again: "I brought your father home yesterday; the doctor thought he would be better in his own house. God knows if the cure has helped him at all, I do not think so; but, Joan, my dearest, come back to me at once, for I am so longing to see you."

Joan looked into the fire; she did not care whether her father was better or worse, and now she did not care whether she cared or not. From Seabourne to Blumfield, from Blumfield to Seabourne! And that was just life; not a tragedy at all, only life, a simple and monotonous business.

As their train drew in to the familiar station the tall figure of Elizabeth was waiting on the platform. She was standing very still, like a statue of Fate; a porter, pushing a truck of luggage towards her, called out: "By your leave, miss!" and seemed to expect her to move; but the tall, impassive figure appeared not to notice him and he pulled up abruptly, skirting it as best he could.

Milly said: "Hallo, Elizabeth!" and then: "What a beastly station this is. I hate the bare flower-beds and the cockle-shells!"

They collected the luggage, Elizabeth unusually silent. It was not until they drove off in the fly that she began to talk.

"Joan, your father is very ill; Mrs. Ogden told me to meet you, she couldn't leave him to-day. He's no better for the cure—they say he's worse; but you'll judge for yourself when you see him."

They bumped down the High Street and on to the esplanade. A weak, watery sunshine played over the sea and the asphalt. Walking stiffly, with his hands behind his back, General Brooke was taking the air. A smell of seaweed and dried fish came in through the open windows and mingled with the pungent, musty smell of the fly. The cliffs that circled the bay looked white and spectral, and far away they could just discern the chimneys of Glory Point, sticking up in a fold of green. Joan roused herself from a deadly lethargy that had been creeping over her.

"How is Mother?" she asked.

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Just the same," she said. "Very worried about your father, of course, but just the same as usual." She was staring at Joan with hard, anxious eyes, her lips a little compressed. "I'm glad you've come back, Joan, because——" She did not finish her sentence, and the cab drew up at Leaside.

They got out, tugging at their bags. Milly rang the bell impatiently. Elizabeth pulled Joan back.

"Look here," she said in a low voice, "I'm not coming in, but, Joan—remember your promise to me." And before Joan could answer she had turned and walked quickly away.

2

Mrs. Ogden met them in the hall; her eyes were red. She flung her arms around Joan's neck and began to cry again.

"Your poor father, he's very ill. Oh, Joan, it's been so terrible all alone in London without a soul to speak to or to appeal to! You don't know what I've been through; don't leave me again, I couldn't bear it!"

Joan pushed her gently into the dining-room; it was all in confusion, with the remnants of luncheon still on the table. "Don't cry, dear," she said. "Try to tell me what has happened."

Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes, clinging to Joan's hand the while. Her soft greyish hair was untidy, escaping from the net. "The cure was too severe for him; he ought never to have gone to London; he didn't want to go and they forced him, the brutes! He got worse and they sent him home two days ago; they said he was quite fit to travel and had better get home, but he wasn't fit to travel—that's the way they get rid of their responsibilities. And the nurses at that home were inhuman devils. I told them so; he hated them all. He seemed better yesterday, but this morning he fainted, and when the doctor came he put him to bed. He's there now, and oh, Joan, he's groaning! They say he's not in pain, but of course he must be, and sometimes he knows me, and sometimes he's delirious and thinks he's back in India."

"Come upstairs," said Joan drearily. "I want to see him."

The familiar bedroom was not familiar any longer; it looked strange and austere as Joan entered. The blinds were down, flapping in the draught from the windows. A large fire blazing in the grate added to the sense of something important and portentous that hung about the place. On the bed lay a strange figure; someone whom Joan felt she had never seen before. Its face was unnaturally pale and shrunken and so were the wandering hands extended on the coverlet. This stranger moaned incessantly, and turned his head from side to side; his eyes were open and blank.

Joan took one of the wandering hands in hers: "Father!" she said softly.

He looked through her and beyond, breathing with an effort.

A quiet tap came on the door and the nurse, hastily summoned from the Cottage Hospital, came in. She was a pink-faced, competent-looking girl, and wore her cloak and bonnet. She took in the situation at a glance.

"I'll just take off my things," she said, "and be back in a minute."

Presently the doctor came again. He said very little, and pressing Mrs. Ogden's limp hand, departed. The nurse, now in charge, had rendered the bedroom still more unfamiliar, with her temperature chart, and a table covered with a clean white towel, upon which she had set out strange little appliances that they did not know the use of. When she spoke she did so in a loud whisper, glancing ever and anon towards the figure on the bed. Her cuffs creaked and so did her shoes. A smell of disinfectant was everywhere; they wondered what it was, it was unfriendly, but no one dared to question this empress ruling over the kingdom of Death.

The colonel belonged to her now; they all felt it, and submitted without a protest. He was hers to do as she pleased with, to turn in the bed or to leave in discomfort, to raise up or lay down. She it was who moistened his lips with cotton wool, soaked in a solution of her own making. Sometimes she opened his mouth and moistened his tongue as well. He lay there utterly helpless and unable to protest, while she subjected him to countless necessary indignities. Her trained hands, hard and deft, permitted of no resistance, doing their work quietly and without emotion. It seemed horrible to Joan to see him brought so low, but she, like the rest of the household, stood back respectfully, bowing to the realization that only three beings had any control over her father now: the doctor, the nurse—and Death.

Just before he died, on the afternoon of the fifth day, he knew his wife and called her: "Mary!" His voice was unexpectedly loud.

She went and put her arms round him.

"Mary!"

"Yes, James?"

"I'm going to die—it's funny my going to die—wish I knew more about it."

"Hush, dearest, don't talk."

"Mary."

"Yes, James?"

"Sorry—if I've been hard on you—but you see——"

"Hush, my dear, you mustn't try to talk."

But the colonel had ceased to try to do anything any more in this world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 1

THEY buried him in the prim cemetery which had somehow taken upon itself the likeness of Seabourne, holding as it did so many of the late occupants of Seabourne's bath chairs and shelters. Everyone attended the funeral. Admiral Bourne, General Brooke wearing a top hat, the despised bank manager, Ralph Rodney, in fact all the members of the club, and most of the local tradespeople. Sir Robert and Lady Loo sent a handsome wreath, but Mr. and Mrs. Benson came in person.

Colonel Ogden had never been really liked in his lifetime; an ignorant and over-bearing man at best. But now that he was a corpse he had for the time being attained a new importance, almost a popularity, in the eyes of Seabourne. His death had provided an excitement, something to do, something to talk about. The four days of his final illness had been more interesting than usual, in consequence of the possibility of tragedy. People would not have admitted it even to themselves, but had he recovered they would have felt flat; it would have been an anti-climax.

It was not until the funeral had been over for a week that Mrs. Ogden could be persuaded to think of ways and means. At first she had given way to a grief so uncontrollable that no one had dared to mention the family solicitor. But now there were bills to be paid and plans to be made for the future, and at last Joan persuaded her mother to write to the firm in London who had attended to Colonel Ogden's affairs.

When the quiet man in a frock coat came down to Leaside, Joan was present at the interview, which was short and to the point. The point being that there was very little left of the three hundred a year that should have been hers and Milly's. The quiet man made a deprecating gesture, explaining that, against his firm's advice, the colonel had persisted in changing the trust investments. The firm had refused to act for him in this, it seemed, whereupon he had flown into a rage and acted without them. They had inquired at the bank, on Mrs. Ogden's authority, and had discovered that the bulk of the trust moneys had been put into a mine which was paying nothing at present and seemed unlikely ever to pay again. But Mrs. Ogden must surely be aware of this, as she was the co-trustee? Had she not had papers to sign for the sale of securities and so on? Ah, yes, of course, she naturally did not like to question her husband's judgment—just signed whatever he told her to; still—she should have been more cautious, she should have insisted upon knowing what was being done. But then ladies were proverbially ignorant of such things. Well, well, it was very sad, very distressing; there would be her pension, of course, and about fifty pounds a year left of the trust moneys—No, not more, unfortunately, but that fifty pounds came from a sound investment, thank goodness. The two young ladies would have twenty-five pounds a year each; that was better than nothing, still——

They thanked him, and when he had gone sat looking at each other helplessly.

Joan said: "This is the end for Milly and me, now we shall never get away."

Her own words astonished her, they were so cruel; she had not meant to think aloud. Mrs. Ogden burst into tears. "Oh, James, James!" she sobbed hysterically; "listen to her, she wants to get away! Oh, what shall I do, now that you've left me; what shall I do, what shall I do?"

"Stop crying, Mother, I'm sorry I said that, only you see—but don't let's talk now, by this evening we shall both feel more able to decide things."

She left the room, closing the door quietly, and snatching up a hat went out of the house. A black anger was slowly surging up in her, anger and a feeling of desperation. What had they done to her and her sister, the overbearing, self-willed father and this weak, inadequate mother with her exaggerated grief? For now that the colonel was dead Mrs. Ogden elected to mourn him as though he had been the love of her life; she gave herself up to an orgy of sorrow that permitted of no interruption. It had puzzled Joan, remembering as she did the things her mother had told her. Through it all her mother could not bear to have her out of her sight for an instant, it was as though she craved her as an audience. She thought of all this as she strode along, the fine drizzle soaking her shoulders.

It was not so much for herself that she cared as for Milly, and above all for Elizabeth; how could she ever tell Elizabeth the truth, that now there would be no money for Cambridge or for their little flat in London? But, yes, it was for herself that she cared too. Oh, horribly, desperately she cared for herself. She clenched her hands in her pockets, a pain almost physical possessed her; she could not give it up like this, all in a moment. She realized as never before how much that future with Elizabeth had meant to her, and now it had been snatched away. What would she do, what could she do? Nothing, if her mother would not help her to get free—and of course she would not; she could not even if she would; she was poor, poor, poor, they all were, poorer than they had ever been. What would Milly do now? What would Elizabeth do? Milly would rage, she would metaphorically stamp on their father's grave. And Elizabeth?

2

Elizabeth was alone in the schoolroom when Joan got back. As she came in, pale and drenched with rain, Elizabeth held out her hand.

"I've been waiting for you; come here, Joan."

Joan took the proffered hand and pressed it.

"Joan, I know what it is you want to tell me, I've known for some time."

"You know—but how?"

"My dear, all Seabourne knows that your father had been speculating before he died. Do you think there's ever anything that all Seabourne doesn't know? I heard something about it from Ralph; he told me."

Joan snatched her hand away, she spoke bitterly: "All Seabourne knew and you knew, it seems; I see—only Milly and I were kept in the dark!"

"Don't be angry. What was the good of making you unhappy before it was absolutely necessary; surely you know soon enough as it is?"

"But I don't understand, Elizabeth; do you realize what this means to you and me?"

"You mean that now you have no money you can't go to Cambridge?"

"Yes, Cambridge, but above all the flat. I was thinking of our plans for our life together."

"Go up and change and then we'll talk," said Elizabeth quietly. "You're wet through."

Joan obeyed.

3

"And now," Elizabeth began, when Joan, wrapped in a dressing-gown, had sunk into a chair. "Let's thrash this thing out from clue to earring. How much has he left you?"

"Twenty-five pounds a year each."

Elizabeth considered. "It might be done," she said. "With care and scraping, I think it might be done, providing of course you take a scholarship, which you can do. You remember I told you that I could get a job in London? Well, I'm more sure of that now than I was when I wrote, I'm practically certain it can be managed. Don't interrupt, please. This is my plan: you will go to Cambridge when you're twenty-one and I shall take the flat. If it's available sooner we'll let it. While you're at Cambridge I shall find a P.G. That oughtn't to be difficult, and the little money that I've saved will go to help with Cambridge. Oh, don't argue, you can pay me back when you get into harness. And there's another thing I never told you; I have a relation from whom I must inherit something, a most disagreeable relation of my father's who can't help leaving me his little all, because it's entailed. Well, I propose to raise a loan on my expectations, 'borrowing on reversion' is what they call it, I think, and with that loan we're going to make a doctor of you, so you see it's all arranged."

Joan stared at her, bewildered. "But, Elizabeth, I could never pay you back, perhaps."

"Oh, well," said Elizabeth laughing; "then you'll have to work for me, you may even have to keep me in my old age."

Joan began to cry, with the suddenness of a child; she cried openly, not troubling to hide her face.

"Oh, for God's sake, Joan, don't do that!"

"It's you," sobbed Joan, choking. "It's you—just you."

Elizabeth got up, she hesitated and then went to the door, she did not look at Joan.

"Think it over," she said.

4

Mrs. Ogden's hands fluttered helplessly over the litter of papers that lay among the plates on the half-cleared supper table; the eyes that she raised to Joan were vague.

"Can you make all this out?" she said drearily. "I shall never be able to understand legal terms."

Joan picked up a letter and read it through. "There's your small life interest under grandpapa Ogden's will, and then there'll be your pension, Mother, but it's very little, I'm afraid; we shall obviously have to leave this house."

Mrs. Ogden shook her head. "I can't do that," she said, with an unexpected note of firmness in her voice. "Where could I go and pay less rent than I do here? Only thirty-five pounds a year."

"But you see, dear, there are other expenses, servants and light and coal." Joan spoke patiently. "And then the rates and taxes; a tiny flat in London would cost so much less to run."

"How can you suggest London to me now, after all I went through there with my James's illness?" Her lips began to tremble. "I should never be able to face the noise and the dirt and the fearful climate, with my heart as it is. You're cruel, Joan."

"But, Mother, we have to face things as they are."

"I can't," said Mrs. Ogden faintly. "I'm too ill."

Joan sighed. "You must, darling; you can't stay here, you haven't got the money, we none of us have now. It'll be all right, truly it will, if you'll let me help to straighten things out."

A sly, stubborn expression came over Mrs. Ogden's face; she wiped the tears from her eyes and tucked away her handkerchief. "Tell me exactly what I have got," she asked quietly.

Joan told her.

"And then there's the fifty pounds a year, dearest, that your poor father saved from the wreck; surely with that as well we can get on here quite comfortably."

Joan dropped the letter, something seemed to turn very cold inside her. Even that, then! She meant to take even that from them. "But, Mother, there's Milly's future and—and mine," she finished lamely.

Mrs. Ogden flushed. "I don't understand you," she said.

"Oh, Mother, don't make it all so terribly difficult, you know what I mean; you know quite well that Milly and I want to work for our living. We shall need the little he's left us if we're ever to make good; it's bad enough, God knows, but we might manage somehow. Oh, Mother, dear! won't you be reasonable?"

Mrs. Ogden's mouth tightened. "I see," she said; "you and Milly wish to leave home, to leave me now that I have no one else to care for me. You want to hide me away in a tenement house, while you two lead the life that seems amusing to you. This home is to be broken up and I am to go to London—my health doesn't matter. Well, I suppose I'd be better dead and then you'd be rid of the trouble of me. Your father must be turning in his grave, I should think, feeling as he did about your ridiculous notions. And what a father he was, devoted to you both; he killed himself working and striving to make money for you, and this is the gratitude he gets." She began to sob convulsively. "Oh, James!" she wailed, "James, James, why did you ever leave me!"

Joan got up. "Stop it!" she said harshly. "Stop it at once, Mother. You know you're unjust and that you're not telling the truth, and as for my father, he had—— Oh, never mind, I won't say it, but stop crying and listen to me. Milly and I are young, we've got all our lives before us and we're unhappy here, don't you understand? We are not happy, we want to go out into the world and do something; we must, I tell you, we can't stay here and rot. It's our right to go and no one has any business to stop us; you least of all, who brought us into the world. Did we ask to be born? No, you and father had us for your own pleasure. Very well, then, now you must let us go for ours; it's your duty to help us because you are our mother and we need your help. If you won't help us we shall go just the same, because we must, because this thing is stronger than we are, but——"

Mrs. Ogden clutched at Joan's hand, she dragged her to her, kissing her again and again. "You fool!" she said passionately. "Can't you understand that it's not Milly I care about, or the money, but you; will you never see that I love you more than anything else in the world?"