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!"