“Doda, I am your mother. You have a duty—”
“Well, I won’t have a duty! Why should I have a duty? I didn’t ask to be born, did I? You chose for me to be born, didn’t you? I didn’t choose it. I’ll never forget this. Never, never, never!”
Tears rushed into her eyes and leapt from her eyes. She gave an impassioned gesture. She rushed from the room.
Strike on!
Look at her. There she is. She’s only eighteen but she’s woman now. Grown-up. “Out,” as one would have said in the old and stupid days, but out much wider than the freest budding woman then. It’s 1919. They’ve caught, the rising generation, the flag of liberty that the war flamed across the world; license, the curmudgeons call it; liberty, the young set free. It’s 1919. She’s been a year war-working in one of the huge barracks run up all over London for the multitudes of women clerks the Government departments needed and, the war over, not too quickly can give up. She loves it. She’s made a host of friends. Her friends are all the girls of wealthy parents, like herself, or of parents of position if not of means; and all, like her, are far from with complaint against the war that’s given them this priceless avenue away from home. She loves it. Of course she doesn’t love the actual work. Who would? What she loves is the constant titillation of it. The titillation of getting down there of a morning and of the greetings and the meetings and the rapt resumptions of the past day’s fun; the titillation of watching the clock for lunch and of those lunches, here to-day, to-morrow there, and of the rush to get back not too late. The titillation of watching the clock for tea, and of tea, and then, most sharpest titillation of them all, watching the clock for—time!; for—off!; for—out!; away! That is the charm of it in detail. The charm in general, as once expressed to Rosalie by one of Doda’s friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, “You see, it gets you through the day.”
That’s it. The night’s all right. There’s nearly always something doing for the night. It’s just the day would be so hopeless were there not this lively way of “getting through the day.” That’s it, for Doda.
Until she found her feet—not in her office, but at home at first emergence from her school—until she found her feet she often used to be kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she found her feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every girl of Doda’s association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda very much easier, at that, than for the generality, to establish her position in the house. By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was conducting her life as she pleased, as nineteen manifestly should. In 1921, when she was twenty, the war work was over and she was “getting through the day” much as she lived the night. It was pretty easy to get through the day in 1921. That which the curmudgeons called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921 held by charter and by right prescriptive.
Look at her. There she is. She’s lovelier yet, if that which was her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue. She’s always out somewhere, or she’s always off somewhere, or she’s always coming in from somewhere. Her eyes, in presentation more pronounced, have always got that sleepy look or got that glinting look. She never talks much at home. She seems to keep her talking for her friends and she never brings her friends home. She’s on good terms with Rosalie. That’s the expression for it. She was to have been a woman treasury into which was to be poured by Rosalie all her woman love. She was to have been a woman with her mother in the house of Harry and of Huggo. But that’s all done. She’s not a daughter to her mother. She never asked to be born to her mother, as once she told her mother, and though that never now again is said it is the basis of her stand. She owes no obligations. They just meet. They get on very pleasantly. She’s on good terms with Rosalie.
It is odd—or else it isn’t odd but only natural—that in all the pictures seen by Rosalie there scarcely is a picture that ever shows the children all together. They hardly ever, within the compass of her pictures, were together. As in their schoolhood, so much more in adolescence, they never showed a least desire for one another’s company. They had their friends, each one, and much preferred their friends. You’d not, it’s true, say that of Benji; but Benji in fraternal wish had to take what was offered him and there was nothing offered him by Doda; by Huggo less than nothing.
Benji!