1
THE Ogdens took their annual holiday in May, in order to avoid the high
prices of the summer season. For a full month prior to their departure,
a feeling of unrest always possessed them. The numbers of things, real
and imaginary, that had to be settled before they could leave for
Lynton, in North Devon, augmented year by year, until they had arrived
at dimensions that only a prolonged visit to Kamchatka or Zanzibar could
possibly excuse. Joan found that as the years went on she was beginning
to subscribe more and more to her mother's fussiness; even beginning to
acquire certain fussinesses of her own. Sometimes the realization of
this made her pause. "I never used to care so much about trifles," she
would think. But she found it almost impossible to stop caring. She
would lie awake at night going over in her mind the obstacles to be
overcome before they could leave Seabourne, and would go to sleep
finally with a weight on her brain. In the morning she would wake
wondering what unpleasant thing it was that hung over the household.
This brief visit to Lynton generally caused much worry regarding
clothes. Everything seemed to be worn out at once, and the necessity for
replenishing scanty wardrobes was added to the financial strain of the
holiday. Mrs. Ogden had decided that rooms were both objectionable and
expensive, and that unless she could go to an hotel she would rather
stay at home. In some respects Joan was thankful for this decision;
constant quarrels with outspoken landladies had made her dread anything
in the nature of apartments. But the expense was considerable, for the
Bristol Hotel was not cheap, even though they took the smallest bedrooms
available, or, worse still, shared a tiny double room at the back of the
house. They pinched and screwed for this longed-for holiday during all
the rest of the year, and at times Joan wondered whether the respite of
three weeks at an hotel away from Seabourne was worth the anxiety that
it entailed; whether, when she was finally there, she was not too tired
to enjoy it.
As the month of departure drew near Mrs. Ogden was wont to develop an
abnormal activity of mind. All the things that might so easily have been
spread out over the preceding months seemed only to be remembered a few
weeks prior to going away, and what did not exist to be remembered she
invented. It would also have been more natural and orderly had wreaths
been taken to the cemetery on the anniversaries of her husband's and
Milly's deaths, but this was never done, and their graves were always
visited shortly before leaving for Lynton.
"I can't go away without seeing for myself that those cemetery people
are looking after things properly," was the explanation she gave.
A purely hypothetical army of moths was another cause of anxiety. Mrs.
Ogden never visualized anything less than a Biblical scourge of these
pests. "We shall have the carpets and blankets eaten to shreds if we're
not careful," she would prophesy. Bitter apple, naphthaline, even
pepper, was showered all over the house, and every article that could by
the wildest stretch of the imagination be supposed to tempt a moth's
appetite was wrapped in newspaper and put away weeks before the house
was left. It was not unusual for some muffler or golf-coat that might be
required at Lynton to go the way of all the rest, and when this happened
an irritating search would have to be made.
About this time a species of spring cleaning always took place. "You
can't put the china and glass away without washing it, Joan; unless the
place is left clean we shall be overrun with mice and black-beetles. I
will have things done properly!" Every picture was draped in newspaper,
every chair in dust sheets; curtains were taken down, rugs rolled up,
photographs and knick-knacks were put away in boxes. During this process
the servant occasionally gave notice at a date which would make her
departure fall due shortly after the Ogdens had left for their holiday.
When this happened the confusion was augmented by the necessity of
finding a caretaker, or at least someone who would see that the house
had been properly locked up.
2
It was towards the end of April that Mrs. Ogden chose to visit her dead.
The day was kept as a kind of doleful festival, full of gloomy
excitement. Joan would unearth decent black for herself, and repair her
mother's widow's weeds, which were always resumed for the pilgrimage.
Little food would be eaten; there was scant time for meals, and,
besides, Mrs. Ogden had ordained a self-imposed fast. Usually the
wreaths would not arrive to the minute, and would have to be fetched
from the florist's. The fly was invariably late, and the servant would
be sent to make inquiries at the livery stable. Perhaps it would rain,
in which case waterproofs, goloshes and umbrellas were an additional
burden. And to cap all this, it was obviously unseemly to display
impatience at such a time, so that immense self-control was added to the
strain of already taut nerves.
This April everything seemed to have gone wrong. The florist had
arbitrarily raised his prices, and the wreaths were to cost half as much
again as they had in previous years. Mrs. Ogden considered his excuses
positively impertinent; she had not noticed the late frosts, the
abnormally dry weather, or, indeed, any of the disasters to which he
attributed the high price of flowers. In the end she had been obliged to
give in, but the incident had very much upset her, and she blamed this
upset for the cold on her chest which now kept her in bed when she
should have visited the cemetery. With the infantile stubbornness of the
old she had refused to abandon the idea of going until the last moment;
and had even got half through her dressing before Joan could persuade
her to go back to bed. This wilfulness of her mother's had delayed
everything, and the meals were not ordered or the canary cleaned and fed
by the time the fly arrived.
There had been a sharp shower, and Joan found to her dismay that the
wreaths, all wet and dripping, had been stood against the wallpaper in
the front hall. A little stain of dampness was making its appearance on
the carpet as well. She went to fetch a cloth from the scullery. As
usual, the window had been left open and on the sill sat a neighbour's
cat.
She spoke irritably. "How many times have I told you to shut this
window, Rose? That cat comes here after the canary."
She shut the window herself with a bang, and going back to the hall
dabbed at the wallpaper, but it was all too evident that the wet marks
meant to leave a stain. Sighing, she picked up the wreaths. The damp
moss soaked through her gloves. "Oh, damn!" she muttered under her
breath, forgetting in her irritation the solemnity of the occasion. She
took off her gloves, thrust them into her pocket, and putting the
wreaths into the cab got in after them.
"Where to, miss?" inquired the unimaginative driver.
"Cemetery!" snapped Joan.
What a fool the man must be. Did he think she was going to the
skating-rink or the pier, with a large grave wreath over each arm?
The cemetery lay a little beyond Shingle Park, and as they bumped along
through old Seabourne and out on to the unfinished road Joan glanced
casually out of the window. Her head felt heavy and her eyes ached.
"Ugly, very ugly!" she murmured absent-mindedly. The rough-cast shanties
grinned back defiance. Their walls were so thin that people who had
watched their erection declared that daylight had showed through the
bricks before the rough cast was applied. Their foundations were
non-existent, the woodwork of their front doors shamelessly unseasoned
and warping already in the damp sea air. They stood for everything that
was dishonest and unsound, and yet not one of them was empty.
The purchasers had begun to develop their front gardens, and several of
these were already making quite a good show of spring flowers. On either
side of the gritty ash paths jonquils and wall-flowers were growing
courageously. A sense of the pathetic stirred Joan's heart; everyone was
trying so hard to be happy, to make a place of enjoyment for themselves.
People had taken their savings to buy these homes; in the evenings they
worked in their tiny gardens, and in the mornings they looked out of
their windows with pride on the fruits of their labours. And all the
while these mean little houses were grinning in impish derision. They
knew the secrets of their shoddy construction, of their faulty walls and
shallow foundations; presently their owners would know them too. But in
the meantime the houses grinned.
A sudden anger roused Joan from her lethargy and she shook her fist at
them as she passed. "You hideous, untruthful monstrosities," she said
aloud, "I hate you!"
The fly drew up at the cemetery and she got out, a wreath in either
hand. She made her way to her father's grave and on it laid the wreath
of palm leaves with its meagre spray of lilies. Colonel Ogden's
tombstone was quite impressive. His wife had chosen it before she
realized the state of her future finances; a broken column in fine
Scottish granite and a flower-bed with granite kerb. Joan peered down at
this flower-bed suspiciously. Yes, just as she had expected, there were
weeds among the forget-me-nots; she must speak to the gardener. One had
to be after everyone these days, they were all so slack and dishonest.
She made a mental note of her complaint and turned to her sister's
grave.
Milly's resting-place testified to the fact that by the time she died
the state of the family fortunes had been all too well understood; a
small white cross and a plain grass mound marked the place where Milly's
fight had ended. Joan propped the wreath of narcissi against the foot of
the cross, and stood staring at the inscription.
MILDRED MARY OGDEN.
Died November 25th, 1900.
Aged 21 years.
How long ago it seemed; Milly had been dead for twenty years. If she
were alive now she would be forty-one. What would she be doing if she
were alive now? Assuredly not standing near her father's grave in
Seabourne; and yet, who could tell? Perhaps she, too, would have failed.
It was difficult to picture a Milly of forty-one. Would she have been
fat or thin? Would her hair have gone grey like her sister's? Joan
lingered over her imaginings, but failed to arrive at any satisfactory
conclusion. Perhaps Milly would have kept her looks better than she had;
a life such as her sister would have led might well have kept her young.
She tried to conjure up a clear vision of Milly as she had been. Brown
eyes, very soft golden hair that was inclined to curl naturally, rather
a sulky mouth at times and a short, straight nose--no, not quite
straight. Hadn't Milly's nose been a little tip-tilted? They had no
photograph of her when she was twenty-one; that was a pity. But what had
she looked like exactly? Joan went over her features one by one; it was
like sorting out bits of a jig-saw puzzle; when she began to put them
together there was always a slight misfit. Twenty years! it was a long
time. The memory of Milly had been gradually fading, and now she could
no longer be quite sure of her face, could no longer be perfectly
certain what her voice had sounded like.
She turned away from the grave with a sigh. Things might have been
different if her sister had lived: they might have helped each other;
but would they have done so? Perhaps, after all, Milly had chosen the
wiser part in dying young. Suppose she had failed to make a career? In
that case there might well have been three of them at Leaside instead of
two, and two people were enough to get on each other's nerves, surely.
She pulled herself up. "What's the good of going back?" she thought.
"If, if, if--it's all so futile! I'm not going to be morbid, in addition
to everything else."
She got into the cab. "Home!" she ordered peremptorily.