1
THAT Christmas Mrs. Benson invited them to dinner, and, being cookless,
Mrs. Ogden accepted. Milly was delighted to escape from the dreaded
ordeal of Christmas dinner at home. Her holidays were becoming
increasingly distasteful. For one thing she missed the convivial student
life, the companionship of people who shared her own interests and
ambitions, their free and easy talk, their illicit sprees, their love
affairs and the combined atmosphere of animal passion and spiritual
uplift which they managed to create. She dearly loved the ceaseless
activity of the College, the hurrying figures on the stairs, the muffled
thud of the swing-doors. The intent, preoccupied faces of the students
inspired and fascinated her; their hands seemed always to be clutching
something, a violin case, a music roll. Their hands were never empty.
She felt less toleration than ever for her home, now that she had left
it; the fact that she was practically free failed to soften her judgment
of Seabourne; as she had felt about it in the past, so she felt now,
with the added irritation that it reminded her of Mr. Thompson.
Milly was not introspective and she was not morbid. A wider experience
of life had not tended to raise her standard of morality, and if she was
ashamed of the episode with Mr. Thompson, it was because of the partner
she had chosen rather than because of the episode itself. She was
humiliated that it should have been Mr. Thompson of the circulating
library, a vulgar youth without ambition, talent, or brain. The memory
of those hours spent in the sand-pit lowered her self-esteem, the more
so as the side of her that had rejoiced in them was in abeyance for the
moment, kept in subjection by her passion for her art. She watched the
students' turbulent love affairs with critical and amused eyes. Some
day, perhaps, she would have another affair of her own, but for the
present she was too busy.
In her mind she divided the two elements in her nature by a well-defined
gulf. Both were highly important, but different. Both were good in
themselves, inasmuch as they were stimulating and pleasurable, but she
felt that they could not combine in her as they so often did in her
fellow students, and of this she was glad.
Her work was the thing that really counted, as she had always known; but
if the day should come when her work needed the stimulus of her
passions, she was calmly determined that it should have it. She knew
that she would be capable of deliberately indulging all that was least
desirable in her nature, if thereby a jot or tittle could be gained for
her music.
Her opinion of her sister was becoming unstable, viewed in the light of
wider experience; she was beginning to feel that she did not understand
Joan. In London Joan had seemed free, emancipated even; but back at
Leaside she was dull, irritable and apparently quite hopeless, like
someone suffering from a strong reaction.
It was true enough that the home-coming had been a shock to Joan; why,
it is impossible to say. She had known so many similar incidents;
servants had left abruptly before, especially of late years, so that
familiarity should have softened the effect produced by her arrival at
Leaside. But a condition of spirit, a degree of physical elation or
fatigue, perhaps a mere passing mood, will sometimes predispose the mind
to receive impressions disproportionately deep to their importance, and
this was what had happened in Joan's case. She had felt suddenly
overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all, and as the days passed her
fighting spirit weakened. It was not that she longed any less to get
away with Elizabeth, but rather that the atmosphere of the house sapped
her initiative as never before. All the fine, brave plans for the
future, that had seemed so accessible with Elizabeth in London, became
nebulous and difficult to seize. The worries that flourished like
brambles around Mrs. Ogden closed in around Joan too, seeming almost
insurmountable when viewed in the perspective of Leaside.
Milly watched her sister curiously: "You look like the morning after the
night before! What's the matter, Joan?"
"Nothing," said Joan irritably. "Do let me alone!"
"Your jaunt with Elizabeth doesn't seem to have cheered you up much."
"Oh, I'm all right."
"Are you really going to Cambridge, do you think, after all?"
"_Will_ you shut up, Milly! I've told you a hundred times I don't know."
Milly laughed provokingly, but the laugh brought on a paroxysm of
coughing; and she gasped, clinging to a chair.
Joan eyed her with resentment. Milly's cough made her unaccountably
angry sometimes; it had begun to take on abnormal proportions, to loom
as a menace. Her tense nerves throbbed painfully now whenever she heard
it.
"Oh, do stop coughing!" she said, and her voice sounded exasperated.
What was the matter with her? She was growing positively brutal! She
fled from the room, leaving Milly to cough and choke alone.
2
Christmas dinner at the Bensons' was a pleasant enough festivity. Mrs.
Benson was delighted that the Ogdens had come, for Richard was at home.
His stolid determination not to seek Joan out, coupled with his evident
melancholy, had begun to alarm his mother. She tried to lead him on to
talk about the girl, but he was not to be drawn. The situation was
beyond her. If Richard was in love with Joan, why didn't he marry her?
His father couldn't very well refuse to make him a decent allowance if
he married; it was all so ridiculous, this moping about, this pandering
to Joan's fancies.
"Marry her, my son, and discuss things afterwards," had been Mrs.
Benson's advice.