1
IT is strange in this world, how events of momentous importance happen
without any warning, and do not, as is commonly stated, "Cast their
shadows before." Moreover, they reach us from the most unexpected
quarters and at a time when we are least prepared, and such an event
dropped out of space upon the Ogden household a few days later.
The concrete form which it took was simple enough--a small business
envelope on Colonel Ogden's breakfast tray; he opened it, and as he read
his face became suffused with excitement. He tried to get up, but the
tea spilt in his efforts to remove the heavy tray from his lap.
"Mary!" he shouted, "Mary!"
Mrs. Ogden, who was presiding at the breakfast table, heard him call,
and also the loud thumping of the stick which he now kept beside the
bed. He used it freely to attract his family's attention to his
innumerable needs. She rose hastily.
Joan and Milly heard the quick patter of her steps as she hurried
upstairs, followed, in what seemed an incredibly short time, by her
tread on the bedroom floor, and then the murmur of excited conversation.
Joan sighed.
"Is it the butter or the bacon?" queried Milly.
Milly had come to the conclusion that her parents were unusually
foolish; had she been capable of enough concentration upon members of
her family, she would have cordially disliked them both; as it was they
only amused her. At thirteen Milly never worried; she had a wonderful
simplicity and clarity of outlook. She realized herself very completely,
and did not trouble to realize anything else, except as it affected her
monoideism. She was quite conscious of the strained atmosphere of her
home, conscious that her father was intolerable, her mother nervous and
irritating, and Joan, she thought, very queer. But these facts, while
being in themselves disagreeable, in no way affected the primary issues
of her life. Her music, her own personality, these were the things that
would matter in the future so far as she was concerned. She had what is
often known as a happy disposition; strangers admired her, for she was a
bright and pretty child, and even friends occasionally deplored the fact
that Joan was not more like her sister.
Upstairs in the bedroom the colonel, tousled and unshaven, was sitting
very bolt upright in bed.
"It's Henrietta!" he said, extending the solicitor's letter in a hand
which shook perceptibly.
"Your sister Henrietta?" inquired Mrs. Ogden.
"Naturally. Who else do you think it would be?--Well, she's dead!"
"Dead? Oh, my dear! I am sorry; why, you haven't heard from her for
ages."
Colonel Ogden swallowed angrily. "Why the deuce can't you read the
letter, Mary? Read the letter and you'll know all about it."
Mrs. Ogden took it obediently. It was quite brief and came from a firm
of solicitors in London. It stated that Mrs. Henrietta Peabody, widow of
the late Henry Clay Peabody, of Philadelphia, had died suddenly, leaving
her estate, which would bring in about three hundred a year, to be
equally divided between her two nieces, Joan and Mildred Ogden. The
letter went on to say that Colonel and Mrs. Ogden were to act as
trustees until such time as their children reached the age of twenty-one
years or married, but that the will expressly stated that the income was
not be accumulated or diverted in any way from the beneficiaries, it
being the late Mrs. Peabody's wish that it should be spent upon the two
children equally for the purpose of securing for them extra advantages.
The terms of the letter were polite and tactful, but as Mrs. Ogden read
she had an inkling that her sister-in-law Henrietta had probably made
rather a disagreeable will. She glanced at her husband apprehensively.
"It means----" she faltered, "it means----"
"It means," shouted the colonel, "that Henrietta must have been mad to
make such a will; it means that from now on my own children can snap
their fingers under my nose; it means that I have ceased to have any
control over members of my own family. A more outrageous state of
affairs I never heard of! What have I ever done, I should like to know,
to be insulted like this? Why should this money be left over my head?
One would think Henrietta imagined I was the sort of man to neglect the
interests of my own children; she hasn't even left the income to me for
life! Did the woman wish to insult me? Upon my word, a pretty state of
affairs! Think of it, I ask you; Milly thirteen and Joan fifteen, and a
hundred and fifty a year to be spent at once on each of 'em. It's
bedlam! And mark you, I am under orders to see that the money is spent
entirely upon them; I, the father that bred them, I have no right to
touch a penny of it!" He paused and leant back on his pillows exhausted.
Through the myriads of ideas that surged into her brain Mrs. Ogden was
conscious of one dominating thought that beat down all the others like a
sledge-hammer: "Joan--how would this affect Joan?"
She tried to calculate hastily how much she could claim for the children
in her housekeeping; she supposed vaguely that Elizabeth's salary would
come out of the three hundred a year; that would certainly be a relief.
Then there were doctors and dentists, clothes and washing. Somewhere at
the back of her mind she was conscious of a faint rejoicing that never
again would she have to shed so many tears over current expenses, and a
faint sense of pride in the knowledge that her daughters were now
independent. But, though these thoughts should have been consoling, they
could not push their way to the foreground of her consciousness, which
was entirely occupied at that moment by an immense fear; the fear of
independence for Joan. Colonel Ogden was looking at her; clearly he
expected her to sympathize. She pulled herself together.
"After all, James," she ventured, "it's a great thing for Joan and
Milly, and it will make a difference in our expenses."
He glared. "Oh, naturally, Mary, I could hardly expect you to see the
situation in its true light; I could hardly expect you to realize the
insult that my own sister has seen fit to put on me."
"Really, James," said Mrs. Ogden angrily, stung into retort by this
childish injustice, "I understand perfectly all you're saying, but I do
think you ought to be grateful to Henrietta. I certainly am, and even if
you don't approve of her will, I don't see that there's anything to do
but to look on the bright side of things."
"Bright side, indeed!" taunted the colonel. "A pretty bright side you'll
find developing before long. Not that I begrudge my own children any
advantages; I should think Henrietta ought to have known that. No, what
I resent, and quite rightly too, is the public lack of confidence in me
that she has been at such pains to show; that's the point."
"The point is," thought Mrs. Ogden, "whether Joan will now be in a
position to go to Cambridge. This business will play directly into
Elizabeth's hands." Aloud she said: "Am I to tell the children, James?"
"You can tell them any damn thing you please. If you don't tell them
they'll hear about it from somebody else, I suppose; but I warn you
fairly that when you do tell them, you can add that I intend to preserve
absolute discipline in my household, I'll have no one living under the
roof with me who don't realize that I'm the master."
"But, my dear James," his wife protested, "they're nothing but children
still; I don't suppose for a moment they'll understand what it means. I
don't suppose it would ever enter their heads to want to defy you."
2
She turned and left the room, going slowly downstairs. The children were
still at breakfast when she reached the dining-room. As they looked up,
something in their mother's expression told them of an unusual
occurrence; it was an expression in which pride, apprehension and
excitement were oddly mingled. Mrs. Ogden sat down at the head of the
table and cleared her throat.
"I have very serious news for you, children," she began. "Your Aunt
Henrietta is dead."
The children evinced no emotion; they had heard of their Aunt Henrietta
in America, but she had never been more than a name. Mrs. Ogden glanced
from one to the other of her daughters; she did not quite know how to
explain to them the full significance of the news, and yet she did not
wish to keep it back. Her maternal pride and generosity struggled with
her outraged dignity. She felt the situation to be quite preposterous,
and in a way she sympathized with her husband's indignation; she was of
his own generation, after all. Yet knowing him as she did, she felt a
guilty and secret understanding of Henrietta Peabody's motive. She told
herself that if only she were perfectly certain of Joan, she could find
it in her to be grateful to the departed Henrietta. She began to speak
again.
"I have something very important to tell you. It's something that
affects both of you. It seems that your Aunt Henrietta, apart from her
pension, had an income of three hundred pounds a year, and this three
hundred a year she has left equally divided between you. That means that
you will have one hundred and fifty pounds a year each from now on."
Her eyes were eagerly scanning Joan's face. Joan saw their appeal,
though she did not understand it; she left her place slowly and put her
arm round her mother.
Milly clapped her hands. "A hundred and fifty a year and all my own!"
she cried delightedly.
"Shut up!" ordered Joan. "Who cares whether you've got a hundred and
fifty a year or not? Besides, anyhow, you're only a kid; you won't be
allowed to spend it now."
"It isn't now," said Milly thoughtfully. "It's afterwards that I care
about."
Mrs. Ogden ignored her younger daughter. What did it matter what Milly
felt or thought? She groped for Joan's hand and squeezed it.
"I think I ought to tell you," she said gravely, "that your father is
very much upset at this news; he's very much hurt by what your aunt has
done. I can understand and sympathize with his feelings. You see he
knows that he has always been a good father to you, and it would have
been more seemly had this money been left to him, though, of course,
your father and I have control of it until you each become twenty-one
years old or get married."
Something prompted her to make the situation quite clear to her
children. She had another motive for telling them, or at all events for
telling Joan, exactly how things stood; she wanted to know the worst at
once. She knew anything would be more endurable than uncertainty as to
how this legacy would affect Joan.
The children were silent; something awkward in the situation impressed
them; they longed to be alone to talk it over. Mrs. Ogden left the room
to interview the cook; she had had her say, and she felt now that she
could only await results.
3
As the door closed behind her they stared at each other incredulously.
Joan was the first to speak.
"What an extraordinary thing!" she said.
Milly frowned. "You are queer; I don't believe you're really pleased. I
believe you're almost sorry."
"I don't know quite what I am," Joan admitted. "It seems to worry
Mother, though I don't see why it should; but I have a feeling that
that's going to spoil it."
"Oh, you always find something to spoil everything. Why should it worry
Mother? It doesn't worry me; I think we're jolly lucky. I know what I'm
going to do, I'm going to talk to Doddsie this very day about going to
the Royal College of Music."
Joan scented trouble. Would Milly's little violin master side with her
when he knew of his pupil's future independence?
"You'd better look out," she warned. "You talk as though you had the
money now. Father won't agree to your going up to London, and anyhow
you're much too young. For goodness' sake go slow; one gets so sick of
rows!"
Milly smiled quietly; she felt that it was no good arguing with Joan;
Joan was always apprehensive and on the look-out for trouble. Milly knew
what she wanted to do and she intended to do it; after all, she
reckoned, she wouldn't remain thirteen years old for ever, and when the
time came for her to go to London to London she meant to go, so there
was no good fussing. A glow of satisfaction and gratitude began to creep
over her; she thought almost tenderly of Aunt Henrietta.
"Poor Aunt Henrietta!" she remarked in a sympathetic voice. "I hope it
didn't hurt her--the dying, I mean."
Joan looked across at her sister; she thought: "A lot you really care
whether it hurt her or not!"
The front door bell rang; they knew that decided ring for Elizabeth's,
and leaving the table they hurried to the schoolroom. Elizabeth was
unpinning her hat; she paused with her arms raised to her head, divining
some unusual excitement. She looked at Joan, waiting for her to speak.
Joan read the unvoiced question in her eyes. But before she could
answer, words burst from Milly's lips in a flood; Elizabeth had heard
all about it in less than a minute, including all Milly's plans for the
future. During this recital Elizabeth smiled a little, but her eyes were
always on Joan's face. Presently she said:
"This will help you too, Joan."
Joan was silent; she understood quite well what was meant. Elizabeth had
put into words a feeling against which she had been fighting ever since
her mother had told her the news--a triumphant, possessive kind of
feeling, the feeling that now there was no valid reason why she should
not go to Cambridge or anywhere else for that matter. She looked at
Elizabeth guiltily, but there was no guilt in Elizabeth's answering
smile; on the contrary, there was much happiness, a triumphant happiness
that made Joan feel afraid.