1
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.
2
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 hand-clasp,
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.