"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."