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."