THE UNLIT LAMP

By

RADCLYFFE HALL

Author of
"Poems of the Past and Present," "Songs of Three Counties
and other Poems," "The Forgotten Island,"
"The Forge."

"And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin."

"The Statue and the Bust"
(Browning).

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

First Published 1924

CONTENTS

[BOOK I]
CHAPTER [ONE]
CHAPTER [TWO]
CHAPTER [THREE]
CHAPTER [FOUR]
CHAPTER [FIVE]
CHAPTER [SIX]
CHAPTER [SEVEN]
CHAPTER [EIGHT]
CHAPTER [NINE]
[BOOK II]
CHAPTER [TEN]
CHAPTER [ELEVEN]
CHAPTER [TWELVE]
CHAPTER [THIRTEEN]
CHAPTER [FOURTEEN]
CHAPTER [FIFTEEN]
CHAPTER [SIXTEEN]
CHAPTER [SEVENTEEN]
CHAPTER [EIGHTEEN]
[BOOK III]
CHAPTER [NINETEEN]
CHAPTER [TWENTY]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-ONE]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-TWO]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-THREE]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-FOUR]
[BOOK IV]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-FIVE]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-SIX]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-SEVEN]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-EIGHT]
CHAPTER [TWENTY-NINE]
CHAPTER [THIRTY]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-ONE]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-TWO]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-THREE]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-FOUR]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-FIVE]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-SIX]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-SEVEN]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-EIGHT]
CHAPTER [THIRTY-NINE]
CHAPTER [FORTY]
[BOOK V]
CHAPTER [FORTY-ONE]
CHAPTER [FORTY-TWO]
CHAPTER [FORTY-THREE]
CHAPTER [FORTY-FOUR]
CHAPTER [FORTY-FIVE]
CHAPTER [FORTY-SIX]
CHAPTER [FORTY-SEVEN]
CHAPTER [FORTY-EIGHT]
CHAPTER [FORTY-NINE]
CHAPTER [FIFTY]

To

MABEL VERONICA BATTEN
in deep affection, gratitude
and respect.

All the Characters represented in
this book are purely imaginary.

THE UNLIT LAMP

[BOOK I]

CHAPTER ONE
1

THE dining-room at Leaside was also Colonel Ogden's study. It contained, in addition to the mahogany sideboard with ornamental brackets at the back, the three-tier dumb waiter and the dining-table with chairs en suite, a large roll-top desk much battered and ink-stained, and bleached by the suns of many Indian summers. There was also a leather arm-chair with a depression in the seat, a pipe-rack and some tins of tobacco. All of which gave one to understand that the presence of the master of the house brooded continually over the family meals and over the room itself in the intervals between. And lest this should be doubted, there was Colonel Ogden's photograph in uniform that hung over the fireplace; an enlargement showing the colonel seated in a tent at his writing-table, his native servant at his elbow. The colonel's face looked sternly into the camera, his pen was poised for the final word, authority personified. The smell of the colonel's pipes, past and present, hung in the air, and together with the general suggestion of food and newspapers, produced an odour that became the very spirit of the room. In after years the children had only to close their eyes and think of their father to recapture the smell of the dining-room at Leaside.

Colonel Ogden looked at his watch; it was nine o'clock. He pushed back his chair from the breakfast table, a signal for the family to have done with eating.

He sank into his arm-chair with a sigh; he was fifty-five and somewhat stout. His small, twinkling eyes scanned the columns of The Times as if in search of something to pounce on. Presently he had it.

"Mary."

"Yes, dear."

"Have you seen this advertisement of the Army and Navy?"

"Which one, dear?"

"The provision department. Surely we are paying more than this for bacon?"

He extended the paper towards his wife; his hand shook a little, his face became very slightly suffused. Mrs. Ogden glanced at the paper; then she lied quickly.

"Oh, no, my love, ours is twopence cheaper."

"Oh!" said Colonel Ogden. "Kindly ring the bell."

Mrs. Ogden obeyed. She was a small woman, pale and pensive looking; her neat hair, well netted, was touched with grey, her soft brown eyes were large and appealing, but there were lines about her mouth that suggested something different, irritable lines that drew the corners of the lips down a little. The maid came in; Colonel Ogden smiled coldly. "The grocer's book, please," he said.

Mrs. Ogden quailed; it was unfortunately the one day of all the seven when the grocer's book would be in the house.

"What for, James?" she asked.

Colonel Ogden caught the nervous tremor in her voice, and his smile deepened. He did not answer, and presently the servant returned book in hand. Colonel Ogden took it, and with the precision born of long practice turned up the required entry.

"Mary! Be good enough to examine this item."

She did so and was silent.

"If," said Colonel Ogden in a bitter voice, "if you took a little more trouble, Mary, to consider my interests, if you took the trouble to ascertain what we are paying for things, there would be less for me to worry about, less waste of money, less——" He gasped a little and pressed his left side, glancing at his wife as he did so.

"Don't get excited, James, I beg; do remember your heart."

The colonel leant back in the chair. "I dislike unnecessary waste, Mary."

"Yes, dear, of course. I wonder I didn't see that notice; I shall write for some of their bacon to-day and countermand the piece from Goodridge's. I'll go and do it now—or would you like me to give you your tabloids?"

"Thanks, no," said the colonel briefly.

"Do the children disturb you? Shall they go upstairs?"

He got up heavily. "No, I'm going to the club."

Something like a sigh of relief breathed through the room; the two children eyed each other, and Milly, the younger, made a secret face. She was a slim child with her mother's brown eyes. Her long yellow hair hung in curls down her back; she looked fragile and elfish; some people thought her pretty. Colonel Ogden did; she was her father's favourite.

There were two years between the sisters; Milly was ten, Joan twelve. They were poles apart in disposition as in appearance. Everything that Milly felt she voiced instantly; almost everything that Joan felt she did not voice. She was a silent, patient child as a rule, but could, under great provocation, display a stubborn will that could not be coped with, a reasoning power that paralysed her mother and infuriated Colonel Ogden. It was not temper exactly; Joan was never tearful, never violent, only coldly logical and self-assured and firm. You might lock her in her bedroom and tell her to ask God to make her a good child, but as likely as not she would refuse to say she was sorry in the end. Once she had remarked that her prayers had gone unanswered, and after this she was never again exhorted to pray for grace.

It was what she considered injustice that roused the devil in Joan. When the cat had been turned out to fend for itself during the summer holidays, when a servant had been dismissed at a moment's notice for some trifling misdemeanour, these and such-like incidents, which were fortunately of rare occurrence, had been known to produce in Joan the mood that her mother almost feared. Then it was that Joan had spoken her mind, and had remained impenitent until finally accorded the forgiveness she had not asked for.

Joan was large-boned and tall for her age, lanky as a boy, with a pale face and short black hair. Her grey eyes were not large and not at all appealing, but they were set well apart; they were intelligent and frank. She escaped being plain by the skin of her teeth; she would have been plain had her face not been redeemed by a short, straight nose and a beautiful mouth. Somehow her mouth reassured you.

They had cut her thick hair during scarlet fever, and Joan refused to allow it to grow again. She invariably found scissors and snipped and snipped, and Mrs. Ogden's resistance broke down at the final act of defiance, when she was discovered hacking at her hair with a pen-knife.

2

As the front door slammed behind Colonel Ogden the sisters smiled at each other. Mrs. Ogden had gone to countermand the local bacon, and they were alone.

"Rot!" said Joan firmly.

"What is?" asked Milly.

"The bacon row."

"Oh, how dare you!" cried Milly in a voice of rapture. "Supposing you were heard!"

"There's no one to hear me—anyhow, it is rot!"

Milly danced. "You'll catch it if mother hears you!" Her fair curls bobbed as she skipped round the room.

"Mind that cup," warned Joan.

But it was too late; the cup fell crashing to the floor. Just then Mrs. Ogden came in.

"Who broke that cup?"

There was silence.

"Well?" she waited.

Milly caught Joan's eye. Joan saw the appeal in that look. "I—I——" Milly began.

"It was my fault," said Joan calmly.

"Then you ought to be more careful, especially when you know how your father values this breakfast set. Really it's too bad; what will he say? What possessed you, Joan?"

Mrs. Ogden put her hand up to her head wearily, glancing at Joan as she did so. Joan was so quick to respond to the appeal of illness. Mrs. Ogden would not have admitted to herself how much she longed for this quick response and sympathy. She, who for years had been the giver, she who had ministered to a man with heart disease, she who had become a veritable reservoir of soothing phrases, solicitous actions, tabloids, hot stoups and general restoratives. There were times, growing more frequent of late, when she longed, yes, longed to break down utterly, to become bedridden, to be waited upon hand and foot, to have arresting symptoms of her own, any number of them.

India, the great vampire, had not wrecked her, for she was wiry; her little frame could withstand what her husband's bulk had failed to endure. Mrs. Ogden was a strong woman. She did not look robust, however; this she knew and appreciated. Her pathetic eyes were sunken and somewhat dim, her nose, short and straight like Joan's, looked pinched, and her drooping mouth was pale. All this Mrs. Ogden knew, and she used it as her stock-in-trade with her elder daughter. There were days when the desire to produce an effect upon someone became a positive craving. She would listen for Joan's footsteps on the stairs, and then assume an attitude, head back against the couch, hand pressed to eyes. Sometimes there were silent tears hastily hidden after Joan had seen, or the short, dry cough so like her brother Henry's. Henry had died of consumption. Then, as Joan's eyes would grow troubled, and the quick: "Oh, Mother darling, aren't you well?" would burst from her lips, Mrs. Ogden's conscience would smite her. But in spite of herself she would invariably answer: "It's nothing, dearest; only my cough," or "It's only my head, Joan; it's been very painful lately."

Then Joan's strong, young arms would comfort and soothe, and her firm lips grope until they found her mother's; and Mrs. Ogden would feel mean and ashamed but guiltily happy, as if a lover held her.

And so, when in addition to the fuss about the bacon, a cup of the valued breakfast set lay shattered on the floor, Mrs. Ogden felt, on this summer morning, that life had become overpowering and that a headache, real or assumed, would be the relief she so badly needed.

"It's very hard," she began tremulously. "I'm quite tired out; I don't feel able to face things to-day. I do think, my dear, that you might have been more careful!" Tears brimmed up in her soft brown eyes and she went hastily to the window.

"Oh, darling, don't cry." Joan was beside her in an instant. "I am sorry, darling, look at me; I will be careful. How much will it cost? A new one, I mean. I've still got half of Aunt Ann's birthday money; I'll get a cup to match, only please don't cry."

The slight gruffness that was characteristic of her voice grew more pronounced in her emotion.

Mrs. Ogden drew her daughter to her; the gesture was full of soft, compelling strength.

"It's a shame!"

"What is, dear?" said Mrs. Ogden, suddenly attentive.

"Father!" cried Joan defiantly.

"Hush, hush, darling."

"But it is; he bullies you."

"No, dear, don't say such things; your father has a weak heart."

"But you're ill, too, and Father's heart isn't always as bad as he makes out. This morning——"

"Hush, Joan, you mustn't. I know I'm not strong, but we must never let him know that I sometimes feel ill."

"He ought to know it!"

"But, Joan, you were so frightened when he had that attack last Christmas."

"That was a real one," said Joan decidedly.

"Oh well, dearest—but never mind, I'm all right again now—run away, my lamb. Miss Rodney must have come; it's past lesson time."

"Are you sure you're all right?" said Joan doubtfully.

Mrs. Ogden leant back in the chair and gazed pensively out of the window. "My little Joan," she murmured.

Joan trembled, a great tenderness took hold of her. She stooped and kissed her mother's hand lingeringly.

But as the sisters stood in the hall outside, Joan looked even paler than usual, her face was a little pinched, and there was a curious expression in her eyes.

"Oh, Joan, it was jolly of you," Milly began.

Joan pushed her roughly. "You're a poor thing, Milly."

"What's that?"

"What you are, a selfish little pig!"

"But——"

"You haven't got any guts."

"What are guts?"

"What Alice's young man says a Marine ought to have."

"I don't want them then," said Milly proudly.

"Well, you ought to want them; you never do own up You are a poor thing!"

CHAPTER TWO
1

SEABOURNE-ON-SEA was small and select. The Ogdens' house in Seabourne was small but not particularly select, for it had once been let out in apartments. The landlord now accepted a reduced rent for the sake of getting the colonel and his family as tenants. He was old-fashioned and clung to the gentry.

In 1880 the Ogdens had left India hurriedly on account of Colonel Ogden's health. When Milly was a baby and Joan three years old, the family had turned their backs on the pleasant luxury of Indian life. Home they had come to England and a pension, Colonel Ogden morose and chafing at the useless years ahead; Mrs. Ogden a pretty woman, wide-eyed and melancholy after all the partings, especially after one parting which her virtue would have rendered inevitable in any case.

They had gone to rooms somewhere in Bayswater; the cooking was execrable, the house dirty. Mrs. Ogden, used to the easy Indian service and her own comfortable bungalow, found it well-nigh impossible to make the best of things; she fretted. That winter there had been bad fogs which resulted in a severe heart attack for Colonel Ogden. The doctor advised a house by the sea, and mentioned Seabourne as having a suitable climate. The result was: Leaside, The Crescent, Seabourne. There they had been for nearly nine years and there they were likely to remain, in spite of Colonel Ogden's grumbling and Mrs. Ogden's nerves. For Leaside was cheap and the air suited Colonel Ogden's heart; anyhow there was no money to move, and nowhere in particular to go if they could move.

Of course there was Blumfield. Mrs. Ogden's sister Ann had married the now Bishop of Blumfield, but the Blanes were, or so the Ogdens thought, never quite sincere when they urged them to move nearer to them. They decided not to try crumb-gathering at the rich man's table in Blumfield.

It was her children's education that now worried Mrs. Ogden most. Not that she cared very much what they learnt; her fetish was how and where they learnt it. She had been a Routledge before her marriage, a fact which haunted her day and night. "Poor as rats, and silly proud as peacocks," someone had once described them. "We Routledges"—"The Routledges never do that"—"The Routledges never do this!"

Round and round like squirrels in a cage, treading the wheel of their useless tradition, living beyond their limited means, occasionally stooping to accept a Government job, but usually finding all work infra dig. Living on their friends, which somehow was not infra dig., soothing their pride by recounting among themselves and to all who would listen the deeds of valour of one Admiral Sir William Routledge, said to have been Nelson's darling—hanging their admiral's picture with laurel wreaths on the anniversary of some bygone battle and never failing to ask their friends to tea on that occasion—such were the Routledges of Chesham, and such, in spite of many reverses, had Mary Ogden remained.

True, Chesham had been sold up, and the admiral's portrait by Romney bought by the docile Bishop of Blumfield at the request of his wife Ann. True, Ann and Mary had been left penniless when their father, Captain Routledge, died of lung hæmorrhage in India. True, Ann had been glad enough to marry her bishop, then a humble chaplain, while Mary followed suit with Major Ogden of The Buffs. True, their brother Henry had failed to distinguish himself in any way and had bequeathed nothing to his family but heavy liabilities when his haemorrhage removed him in the nick of time—true, all true, and more than true, but they were still Routledges! And Admiral Sir William still got his laurel wreaths on the anniversary of the battle. He had moved from the decaying walls of Chesham to the substantial walls of the bishop's palace, and perhaps he secretly liked the change—Ann his descendant did. In the humbler drawing-room at Leaside he received like homage; for there, in a conspicuous position, hung a print of the famous portrait, and every year when the great day came round, Mary, his other descendant, dutifully placed her smaller laurel wreath round the frame, and asked her friends to tea as tradition demanded.

"Once a Routledge always a Routledge," Mrs. Ogden was fond of saying on such occasions. And if the colonel happened to feel in a good temper he would murmur, "Fine old chap, Sir William; looks well in his laurels, Mary. Who did you say was coming in this afternoon?" But if on the other hand his heart had been troubling him, he might turn away with a scornful grunt. Then Mary, the ever tactless, would query, "Doesn't it look nice then, dear?" And once, only once, the colonel had said, "Oh, hell!"

The school at Seabourne was not for the Routledge clan, for to it went the offspring of the local tradespeople. Colonel Ogden was inclined to think that beggars couldn't be choosers, but Mary was firm. Weak in all else, she was a flint when her family pride was involved, a knight-errant bearing on high the somewhat tattered banner of Routledge. The colonel gave way; he would always have given way before a direct attack, but his wife had never guessed this. Even while she raised her spiritual battle-cry she thought of his weak heart and her conscience smote her, yet she risked even the colonel's heart on that occasion; Joan and Milly must be educated at home. The Routledges never sent their girls to school!

2

In the end, it was Colonel Ogden who solved the difficulty. He frequented the stiff little club house on the esplanade, and in this most unlikely place he heard of a governess.

Every weekday morning you could see him in the window. The Times held in front of him like a shield, his teeth clenched on his favourite pipe; a truculent figure, an imperial figure, bristling with an authority that there were now none to dispute.

Into the club would presently saunter old Admiral Bourne who lived at Glory Point, a lonely man with a passion for breeding fancy mice. He had a trick of pulling up short in the middle of the room, and peering over his spectacles with his pleasant blue eyes as if in search of someone. He was in search of someone, of some tolerant fellow member who would not be too obviously bored at the domestic vagaries of the mice, who constantly disappointed their owner by coming into the world the wrong colour. If Admiral Bourne could be said to have an ambition, then that ambition was to breed a mouse that should eclipse all previous records.

Other members would begin to collect, Sir Robert Loo of Moor Park, whose shooting provided the only alternative to golf for the male population of Seabourne. There was Major Boyle, languid and malarial, with a doleful mind, especially in politics; and Mr. Pearson, the bank manager, who had found his way into the club when its funds were alarmingly low, and had been bitterly resented ever since. Then there was Mr. Rodney the solicitor, and last but not least, General Brooke, Colonel Ogden's hated rival.

General Brooke looked like Colonel Ogden, that was the trouble; they were often mistaken for each other in the street. They were both under middle height, stout, with grey hair and small blue eyes, they both wore their moustaches clipped very short, and they both had auxiliary whiskers in their ears. Added to this they both wore red neckties and loose, light home-spuns, and they both had wives who knitted their waistcoats from wool bought at the local shop. They both wore brown boots with rubber studded soles, and, worst of all, they both wore brown Homburg hats, so that their backs looked exactly alike when they were out walking. The situation was aggravated by the fact that neither could accuse the other of imitation. To be sure General Brooke had lived in Seabourne eighteen months longer than Colonel Ogden and had never been seen in any other type of garments; but then, when Colonel Ogden had arrived in his startling replicas, his clothes had been obviously old and had certainly been worn quite as long as the general's.

It was Mr. Rodney, the solicitor, who offered Colonel Ogden a solution to his wife's educational difficulties. Mr. Rodney, it seemed, had a sister just down from Cambridge. She had come to Seabourne to keep house for him, but she wanted to get some work, and he thought she would probably be glad to teach the Ogdens' little girls for a few hours every day. The colonel engaged Elizabeth Rodney forthwith.

CHAPTER THREE
1

THE schoolroom at Leaside was dreary. You came through the front door into a narrow passage covered with brown linoleum and decorated with trophies from Indian bazaars. On one side stood a black carved wood table bearing a Benares tray used for visiting cards, beside the table stood an elephant's foot, adapted to take umbrellas. To your right was the drawing-room, to your left the dining-room, facing you were the stairs carpeted in faded green Brussels. If you continued down the passage and passed the kitchen door, you came to the schoolroom. Leaside was a sunny house, so that the schoolroom took you by surprise; it was an unpleasant room, always a little damp, as the walls testified.

It was spring and the gloom of the room was somewhat dispelled by the bright bunch of daffodils which Elizabeth had brought with her for the table. At this table she sat with her two pupils; there was silence except for the scratching of pens. Elizabeth Rodney leant back in her chair; what light there was from the window slanted on to her strong brown hair that waved persistently around her ears. Her eyes looked inattentive, or rather as if their attention were riveted on something a long way away; her fine, long hands were idly folded in her lap; she had a trick of folding her hands in her lap. She was so neat that it made you uncomfortable, so spotless that it made you feel dirty, yet there was something in the set of her calm mouth that made you doubtful. Calm it certainly was, and yet ... one could not help wondering....

Just now she looked discouraged; she sighed.

"Finished!" said Joan, passing over her copy-book. Elizabeth examined it. "That's all right."

Milly toiled, the pen blotted, tears filled her eyes, one fell and made the blot run.

"Four and ten and fifteen and seven, that makes——"

"Thirty-six," said Elizabeth. "Now we'll go out."

They got up and put away the books. Outside, the March wind blew briskly, the sea glared so that it hurt your eyes, and around the coast the white cliffs curved low and distinct.

"Let's go up there," said Elizabeth, pointing to the cliffs.

"Joan, Joan!" called Mrs. Ogden from the drawing-room window, "where is your hat?"

"Oh, not to-day, Mother. I like the feel of the wind in my hair."

"Nonsense, come in and get your hat."

Joan sighed. "I suppose I must," she said. "You two go on, I'll catch you up." She ran in and snatched a tam-o'-shanter from the hall table.

"Don't forget my knitting wool, dear."

"No, Mother, but we were going on to the downs."

"The downs to-day? Why, you'll be blown away!"

"Oh, no, Miss Rodney and I love wind."

"Well, as you come home, then."

"All right. Good-bye, Mother."

"Good-bye, darling."

2

Joan ran after the retreating figures. "Here I am," she said breathlessly. "Is it Cone Head or the Golf Course?"

"Cone Head to-day," replied Elizabeth.

There was something in her voice that attracted Joan's attention, a decision, a kind of defiance that seemed out of place. It was as if she had said: "I will go to Cone Head, I want to get out of this beastly place, to get up above it and forget it." Joan eyed her curiously. To Milly she was just the governess who gave you sums and always, except when in such a mood as to-day, saw that you did them; but to Joan she was a human being. To Milly she was "Miss Rodney," to Joan, privately at all events, "Elizabeth." They walked on in silence.

Milly began to lag. "I'm tired to-day, let's go into the arcade."

"Why?" demanded Joan.

"Because I like the shops."

"We don't," said Joan. Milly lagged more obviously.

"Come, Milly, walk properly, please," said Elizabeth.

They had passed the High Street by now and were trudging up the long white road to Cone Head. Over the point the wind raged furiously, it snatched at their skirts and undid Milly's curls.

"Oh! oh!" she gasped.

Elizabeth laughed, but her laughter was caught up and blown away before it could reach the children; Joan only knew that she was laughing by her open mouth.

"It's glorious!" shouted Joan. "I want to hit it back!"

Elizabeth battled her way towards an overhanging rock. "Sit here," she motioned; the rock sheltered them, and now they could hear themselves speak.

"This is hateful," said Milly. "When I'm famous I shall never do this sort of thing."

"Oh, Miss Rodney," exclaimed Joan, "look at that sail!"

"I have been looking at it ever since we sat down—I think I should like to be under it."

"Yes, going, going, going, you don't know and you don't care where—just anywhere, so long as it isn't here."

"Already?" Elizabeth murmured.

"Already what?"

"Nothing. Did I say already?"

"Yes."

"Then I was thinking aloud."

She looked at the child curiously; she had taught the girls now for about two years, yet she was not even beginning to understand Joan. Milly was reading made easy. Delicate, spoilt by her father and entirely self-centred; yet she was a good enough child as children go, easier far to manage than the elder girl. Milly was not stupid either. She played the violin astonishingly well for a girl of ten. Elizabeth knew that the little man who taught her thought that she had genius. Milly was easy enough, she knew exactly what she wanted, and Elizabeth suspected that she'd always get it. Milly wanted music and more music. When she played her face ceased to look fretful, it became attentive, animated, almost beautiful. This then was Milly's problem, solved already; music, applause, admiration, Elizabeth could see it all, but Joan?—Joan intrigued her.

Joan was so quiet, so reserved, so strong. Strong, yes, that was the right word, strong and protective. She loved stray cats and starving dogs and fledgelings that had tumbled out of their nests, such things made her cry; stray cats, starving dogs, fledgelings and Mrs. Ogden. Elizabeth laughed inwardly. Mrs. Ogden was so exactly like a lost fledgeling, with her hopeless look and her big eyes; she was also rather like a starving dog. Elizabeth paused just here to consider. Starving, what for? She shuddered. Had Mrs. Ogden always been so hungry? She was positively ravenous, you could feel it about her, her hunger came at you and made you feel embarrassed. Poor woman, poor woman, poor Joan—why poor Joan? She was brilliant; Elizabeth sighed; she herself had never been brilliant, only a very capable turner of sods. Joan was quietly, persistently brilliant; no flash, no sparks, just a steady, glowing light. Joan at twelve was a splendid pupil; she thought too. When you could make her talk she said things that arrested. Joan would go—where would she go? To Oxford or Cambridge probably; no matter where she went she would made her mark—Elizabeth was proud of Joan. She glanced at her pupil sideways and sighed again. Joan worried her, Mrs. Ogden worried her, they worried her separately and collectively. They were so different, so antagonistic, these two, and yet so curiously drawn together.

Elizabeth roused Joan sharply: "Come on, it's late! It's nearly tea time." They hurried down the hill.

"I must get that wool at Spink's," said Joan.

"What wool?"

"Mother's—for her knitting."

"Won't to-morrow do?"

"No."

"But it's at the other end of the town."

"Never mind, you and Milly go home. I'll just go on and fetch it."

They parted at the front door.

"Don't be long," Elizabeth called after her.

Joan waved her hand. Half an hour later she was back with the wool. In the hall Mrs. Ogden met her.

"My darling!"

"Here it is, Mother."

"But, my darling, it's not the same thickness!"

"Not the same——" Joan was tired.

"It won't do at all, dearest, you must ask for double Berlin."

"But I did!"

"Then they must change it. Oh, dear; and I wanted to get that waistcoat finished and put away to-night; it only requires such a little wee bit of wool!" Mrs. Ogden sighed.

Her face became suddenly very sad. Joan did not think that it could be the wool that had saddened her.

"What is it, Mother?"

"Nothing, Joan——"

"Oh, yes, you're unhappy, darling; I'll go and change the wool before lessons to-morrow."

"It's not the wool, dear, it's—— Never mind, run and get your tea." They kissed.

In the schoolroom Joan relapsed into silence; she looked almost morose. Her short, thick hair fell angrily over her eyes—Elizabeth watched her covertly.

CHAPTER FOUR
1

THE five months between March and August passed uneventfully, as they always did at Seabourne. Joan was a little taller, Milly a little fatter, Mrs. Ogden a little more nervous and Colonel Ogden a little more breathless; nearly everything that happened at Leaside happened "little," so Joan thought.

But on this particular August morning, the usual order was, or should have been, reversed. One was expecting confusion, hurry and triumph, for to-day was sacred to the memory of Admiral Sir William Routledge, gallant officer and Nelson's darling. To-day was the day of days; it was Mrs. Ogden's day; it was Joan's and Milly's day—a little of it might be said to be Colonel Ogden's day, but very little. For upon this glorious Anniversary Mrs. Ogden rose as a phoenix from its ashes. She rose, she grew, she asserted herself, she dictated; she was Routledge. The colonel might grunt, might sneer, might even swear; the over-worked servants might give notice, Mrs. Ogden accepted it all with the calm indifference befitting one whose ancestor had fought under Nelson. Oh, it was a wonderful day!

But this year a cloud, at first no larger than a man's hand, had floated towards Mrs. Ogden before she got up. She woke with the feeling of elation that properly belonged to the occasion, yet the elation was not quite perfect. What was it that oppressed her, that somehow took the edge off the delight? She sat up in bed and thought. Ah! She had it! Assuredly this was the longed-for Anniversary, but—it was also Book Day, Wednesday and Book Day! Could anything be more unjust, more unbearable? Here she had waited a whole year for this, her one moment of triumph, and it had come on Book Day. Ruined—spoilt—utterly spoilt and ruined—the thing she dreaded most was upon her; the household books would be waiting on her desk to be tackled directly after breakfast, to be gone over and added up, and then met somehow out of an almost vanished allowance; it was scandalous! We Routledges! She leapt out of bed.

"What the devil is it?" asked Colonel Ogden irritably.

Mrs. Ogden began to hurry. She pattered round the room like a terrier on a scent; garments fell from her nerveless fingers, the hair-brush clattered on to the floor. She eyed her husband in a scared way; her conscience smote her, she had felt too tired to use proper economy last week. The books, the books, the books, what would they come to? She began cleaning her teeth. Colonel Ogden watched her languidly from the bed. His red, puffy face looked ridiculous against the pillow; a little smile lifted his moustache. She turned and saw him, and stopped with the tooth-brush half way to her mouth. She felt suddenly disgusted and outraged and shy. In a flash her mind took in the room. There on the chair lay his loose, shabby garments, some of them natural coloured Jaeger. And then his cholera belt! It hung limply suspended over the arm of the chair, like the wraith of a concertina. On the table by his side of the bed lay a half-smoked pipe. His bath sponge was elbowing her as she washed; his masculine personality pervaded everything; the room reeked of it.

She went on cleaning her teeth mechanically, taking great care to do as her dentist bade her—up and down and then across and get the brush well back in your mouth; that was the way to preserve your teeth. Up and down and then across—disgusting! What she was doing was ugly and detestable. Why should he lie in the bed and smile? Why should he be in the bed at all—why should he be in the room at all? Why hadn't they taken a house with an extra bedroom, or at least with a room large enough for two beds? What was he doing there now? He ought not to be there now; that sort of thing was all very well for the young—but for people of their age! The repellent familiarities!

She gathered her dressing-gown more tightly around her; she felt like a virgin whose privacy has suffered a rude intrusion. Turning, she made to leave the room.

"Where are you going, Mary?" Colonel Ogden sat up.

"To have my bath."

"But I haven't shaved yet."

"You can wait until I have had my bath."

She heard herself and marvelled. Would the heavens fall? Would the ground open and swallow her up? She hurried away before her courage failed.

In the bath-room she slipped the bolt and turned the key, and sighed a sigh of relief. Alone—she was alone. She turned on the water. A reckless daring seized her; let the hot water run, let it run until the bath was full to the brim; for once she would have an injuriously hot bath; she would wallow in it, stay in it, take her time. She never got enough hot water; now she would take it all—let his bath be tepid for once, let him wait on her convenience, let him come thumping at the door, coarse, overbearing, foolish creature!

What a life—and this was marriage! She thought of Colonel Ogden, of his stertorous breathing, his habits; he had a way of lunging over on to her side of the bed in his sleep, and when he woke in the morning his face was a mass of grey stubble. Why had she never thought of all these things before? She had thought of them, but somehow she had never let the thoughts come out; now that she had ceased to sit on them they sprang up like so many jacks-in-the-box.

And yet, after all, her James was no worse than other men; better, she supposed, in many respects. She believed he had been faithful to her; there was something in that. Certainly he had loved her once—if that sort of thing was love—but that was a long time ago. As she lay luxuriously in the brimming bath her thoughts went back. Things had been different in India. Joan had been born in India. Joan was thirteen now; she would soon be growing up—there were signs already. Joan so quiet, so reserved—Joan married, a year, five years of happiness perhaps and then this, or something very like it. Never! Joan should never marry. Milly, yes, but she could not tolerate the thought of it for Joan. Joan would just go on loving her; it would be the perfect relationship, Mother and Child.

"Mary!"

"What is it?"

"Are you going to stay there all day?" The handle of the door was rattled violently.

"Please don't do that, James; I'm still in my bath."

"The devil you are!" Colonel Ogden whistled softly. Then he remembered the date and smiled. "Poor old Mary, such a damned snob, poor dear—oh well! We Routledges!"

2

Breakfast was late. How could it be otherwise? Had not Mrs. Ogden sat in the bath for at least half an hour? There had been no hot water when at last Colonel Ogden got into the bath-room, and a kettle had had to be boiled. All this had taken time. Milly and Joan watched their mother apprehensively. Joan scented a breakdown in the near offing, for Mrs. Ogden's hands were trembling.

"Your father's breakfast, Joan; for heaven's sake ring the bell!"

Joan rang it. "The master's breakfast, Alice?"

"The kidneys aren't done."

"Why not, Alice?"

"There 'asn't been time!"

"Nonsense, make haste. The colonel will be down in a minute."

Alice banged the door, and Mrs. Ogden's eyes filled. Her courage had all run away with the bath water. She had been through hell, she told herself melodramatically; she had at last seen things as they were. Thump—thump and then thump—thump—that was James putting on his boots! Oh, where was the breakfast! Where were James's special dishes, the kidneys and the curried eggs; what was Alice doing? Thump—thump—there it was again! She clasped her hands in an agony.

"Joan, Joan, do go and see about breakfast."

"It's all right, Mother, here it is."

"Put it on the hot plate quickly—now the toast. Children, make your father's toast—don't burn it whatever you do!" Thump—thump—thump—that was three thumps and there ought to be four; would James never make the fourth thump? She thought she would go mad if he left off at three. Ah! There it was, that was the fourth thump; now surely he must be coming. The toast was made; it would get cold and flabby. James hated it flabby. If they put it in the grate it would get hard; James hated it hard. Where was James?

"Children, put the toast in the grate; no, don't—wait a minute."

Now there was another sound; that was James blowing his nose. He must be coming down, then, for he always blew his nose on his soiled pocket handkerchief with just that sound, before he took his clean one. What was that—something broken!

"Joan, go and see what Alice has smashed. Oh! I hope it's not the new breakfast dish, the fire-proof one!"

Thump, thump, on the stairs this time; James was coming down at last.

"Joan, never mind about going to the kitchen; stay here and see to your father's breakfast."

The door opened and Colonel Ogden came in. He was very quiet, a bad sign; there was blood from a scratch on his chin, to which a pellet of cotton wool adhered.

"Coffee, dear?"

"Naturally. By the way, Mary, you'll oblige me by leaving a teacupful of hot water for me to shave with another time." He felt his scratch carefully.

"Joan, get your father the kidneys. Will you begin with kidneys or curried eggs?"

"Kidneys. By the way, Mary, I don't pay a servant to smear my brown boots with pea soup; I pay her to clean them—to clean them, do you hear? To clean them properly." The calm with which he had entered the room was fast disappearing; his voice rose.

"James, dear, don't excite yourself."

The colonel cut a kidney viciously; as he did so, tell-tale stains appeared on the plate.

"Damn it all, Mary! Do you think I'm a cannibal?"

"Oh, James!"

"Oh James, oh James! It's sickening, Mary. No hot water, not even to shave with, and now raw kidneys; disgusting! You know how I hate my food underdone. Damn it all, Mary, I don't run a household for this sort of thing! Give me the eggs!"

"Joan, fetch your father the eggs!"

"What's the matter with the toast, Mary? It's stone cold!"

"You came down so late, dear."

"I didn't get into the bath-room until twenty minutes past eight. I can't eat this toast."

"Joan, make your father some fresh toast; be quick, dear, and Milly, take the kidneys to Ellen and ask her to grill them a little more. Now, James, here's some nice hot coffee."

"Sit down!" thundered the colonel.

Joan and Milly sat down hastily. "Keep quiet; you get on my nerves, darting about all round the table. Upon my word, Mary, the children haven't touched their breakfast!"

"But, James——"

"That's enough I say; eat your bacon, Milly. Joan, stop shuffling your feet."

Milly, her face blotched with nervousness, attempted to spear the cold and stiffening bacon; it jumped off her fork on to the cloth as though possessed of a malicious life energy. Colonel Ogden's eyes bulged with irritation, and he thumped the table.

"Upon my word, Mary, the children have the table manners of Hottentots."

Now by all the laws of the Medes and Persians, Mrs. Ogden, on this Day of Days, should have remained calm and disdainful. But to-day had begun badly. There had been that little cloud which had grown and grown until it became the household books; it was over her now, enveloping her. She could not see through it, she could not collect her forces. "We Routledges!" It didn't ring true, it was like a blast blown on a cracked trumpet. She prayed fervently for self-control, but she knew that she prayed in vain. Her throat ached, she was going fast, slipping through her own fingers with surprising rapidity.

Colonel Ogden began again: "Well, upon my——"

"Don't, don't!" shrieked Mrs. Ogden hysterically. "Don't say it again, James. I can't bear it!"

"Well, upon my word——"

"There! You've said it! Oh, Oh, Oh!" She suddenly covered her face with her table napkin and burst into loud sobs.

Colonel Ogden was speechless. Then he turned a little pale, his heart thumped.

"Mary, for heaven's sake!"

"I can't help it, James! I can't, I can't!"

"But, Mary, my dear!"

"Don't touch me, leave me alone!"

"Oh, all right; but I say, Mary, don't do this!"

"I wish I were dead!"

"Mary!"

"Yes I do, I wish I were dead and out of it all!"

"Nonsense—rubbish!"

"You'll be sorry when I am dead!"

He stretched out a plump hand and laid it on her shoulder.

"Go away, James!"

"Oh, all right! Joan, look after your mother, she don't seem well." He left the room, and they heard the front door bang after him.

Mrs. Ogden looked over the table napkin. "Has he gone, Joan?"

"Yes, Mother. Oh, you poor darling!" They clung together.

Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes; then she poured out some coffee and drank it.

"I'm better now, dear." She smiled cheerfully.

And she was better. As she rose from the table the dark cloud lifted, she saw clearly once more; saw the Routledge banner streaming in the breeze.

"And now for those tiresome books," she said almost gaily. She went away to the drawing-room and Joan collapsed; she felt sick, scenes always upset her.

She thought: "I wish I could hide my head in a table napkin and cry like Mother did." Then she thought: "I wonder how Mother manages it. I wouldn't have cried, I'd have hit him!"

She could not eat. In the drawing-room she heard her mother humming, yes, actually humming over the books!

"That's all right," thought Joan, "they must be nice and cheap this week, that's a comfort anyhow."

Presently Mrs. Ogden looked into the dining-room.

"Joan!"

"Yes, Mother?"

"No lessons to-day, dear."

"No, Mother."

"Come and help me to place the wreath."

They fetched it, carrying it between them; a laurel wreath large enough to cover the frame of the admiral's picture.

"Tell Alice to bring the steps, Joan. Now, dear, you hold them while I get up. How does it look?"

"Lovely, Mother."

"Joan, never forget that half of you is Routledge. Never forget, my dear, that the best blood in your veins comes from my side of the family. Never forget who you are, Joan; it helps one a great deal in life to have something like that to cling to, something to hold on to when the dark days come."

3

All day long the house hummed like a beehive. There was no luncheon; the children snatched some bread and butter in the kitchen, and if Mrs. Ogden ate at all, she was not observed to do so. Colonel Ogden, wise man, had remained at the club. Alice, her mouth surreptitiously full, hastened here and there with dust-brushes and buckets; Milly begged to do the flowers, and cut her finger; Joan manfully polished the plate, while Mrs. Ogden, authoritative and dignified, reviewed her household as the colonel had once reviewed his regiment.

Presently Alice was ordered to hasten away and dress. "And," said Mrs. Ogden, "let me find your cap and apron spotless, if you please, Alice."

At last Joan and Milly went upstairs to put on their white cashmere smocks, and Mrs. Ogden, left to herself, took stock of the preparations. Yes, it was all in order, the trestle table hired from Binnings', together with the stout waiter, had both arrived, so had the coffee and tea urns and the extra cups and saucers. On the sideboard stood an array of silver. Cups won at polo by Colonel Ogden, a silver tray bearing the arms of Routledge, salvage this from the family wreck, and numerous articles in Indian silver, embossed with Buddhas and elephants' heads. The table groaned with viands, the centre piece being a large sugar cake crowned with a frigate in full sail. This speciality Binnings was able to produce every year; the cake was fresh, of course, but not the frigate.

But the drawing-room—that was what counted most. The drawing-room on what Mrs. Ogden called "Anniversary Day" was, in every sense of the word, a shrine. Within its precincts dwelt the image of the god, the trophies of his earthly career set out about him, and Mary, his handmaiden, in attendance to wreathe his effigy with garlands.

Poor old Admiral Sir William, a good fellow by all accounts, an honest sailor and a loyal friend in his day. Possibly less Routledge than his descendants, certainly, according to his biographer, a man of a retiring disposition; one wonders what he would have thought of the Ancestor Worship of which he had all unwittingly become the object.

But Mary was satisfied. The drawing-room, which always appeared to her to be a very charming room, was of a good size. The colour scheme was pink and white, broken by just a splash of yellow here and there where the white chrysanthemums had run out and had been supplemented by yellow ones. The wall-paper was white with clusters of pink roses; the curtains were pink, the furniture was upholstered in pink. The hearth, which was tiled in turquoise blue, was lavish in brass. Mrs. Ogden drew the curtains a little more closely together over the windows in order to subdue the light; then she touched up the flowers, shook out the cushions for the fifth time and stood in the door to gauge the effect.

"Now," said Mrs. Ogden mentally, "I am Lady Loo, I am entering the drawing-room, how does it strike me?"

The first thing that naturally riveted the attention was the laurel-wreathed print of Admiral Sir William. What a pity James had been too poor to buy the painting—for a moment she felt dashed, but this phase passed quickly, the room looked so nice. The colour, so clean and dainty, just sufficiently relieved by the blue tiled grate and the Oriental piano cover; this latter and the Benares vases certainly seemed to stamp the room as belonging to people who had been in the Service. On the whole she was glad she had married James and not the bishop. The flowers too—really Milly had arranged them quite nicely. But what a pity that it would be too light to light the lamp; still, the shade certainly caught the eye, she was glad she had taken the plunge and bought it at that sale. It was very effective, pleated silk with bunches of artificial iris. Still, she was not sure that a plain shade would not have looked better after all. When one has so unusually fine a stuffed python for a standard lamp, one did not wish to detract from it in any way. She considered the photographs next; there was a goodly assortment of these in silver frames; she had carefully selected them with a view to effect. The panel of herself in court dress, that showed up well; then James in his full regimentals—James looked a trifle stout in his tunic, still, it all showed that she had not married a nobody. Then that nice picture of her brother Henry taken with his polo team—poor Henry! Oh, yes, and the large photograph of the bishop—really rather imposing. And Chesham—the prints of Chesham on the walls; how dignified the dear old place looked, very much a gentleman's estate.

But there was more to come; Mrs. Ogden had purposely left the best to the last. She drew in her breath. There, on an occasional table, lay the relics of Admiral Sir William Routledge, gallant officer and Nelson's darling. In the middle of the table lay his coat and his gloves, across the coat, his sword. To right and left hung the admiral's decorations mounted on velvet plaques. In front of the coat lay the oak-framed remnants of Nelson's letter to the admiral, and in front of this again the treasured Nelson snuff-box bearing the inscription "From Nelson to Routledge."

She paused beside the table, touching the relics one by one with reverent fingers, smiling as she did so. Then she crossed the room to where a shabby leather covered arm-chair looked startlingly incongruous amid its surroundings. Very carefully she lowered herself into the chair; a small brass plate had been screwed on to the back, bearing the inscription "Admiral Viscount Nelson of Trafalgar sat in this chair when staying at Chesham Court with Admiral Sir William Routledge." Mrs. Ogden spread her thin hands along the slippery arms, and allowed her head to rest for a moment where supposedly Nelson's head had once rested. The chair was her special pride and care; perhaps because its antecedents were doubtful. Colonel Ogden had once reminded her that there never had been any proof worth mentioning that Nelson had stayed at Chesham, much less that he had sat in that infernally uncomfortable old chair, and Mrs. Ogden had retorted hotly that Routledge tradition was good enough for her. Nevertheless, from that moment the Nelson chair had, she felt, a special claim upon her. She was like a mother defending the doubtful legitimacy of a well-loved son; the Nelson chair had been threatened with a bar sinister.

She gave the arms a farewell stroke, and rising slowly left the room to dress. She trod the stairs with dignity, the aloof dignity that belonged to the occasion, which she would maintain during the rest of the day. Her lapse from Routledge in the morning but added to her calm as tea-time approached.

CHAPTER FIVE
1

ADMIRAL BOURNE was the first to arrive. He liked the children, and Milly sidled up and stood between his knees, certain of her welcome.

"Pretty hair!" he remarked thoughtfully, stroking her curls, "and how is Miss Joan getting on? You haven't let your hair grow yet, Miss Joan."

Joan laughed. "It's more comfortable short," she said.

"So it is," agreed the admiral. "Capital, capital!"

"You must come and see my cream mice, dozens of them——" he began. But at that moment Elizabeth and her brother were announced and Joan hurried to meet them. She examined Mr. Rodney with a new interest, for now he was not just father's friend at the club, but he was Elizabeth Rodney's brother. She thought: "He looks old, old, old, and yet I don't believe he is very old. His eyes are greenish like Elizabeth's, only somehow his eyes look timid like Mother's, and Elizabeth's remind me of the sea. I wonder what makes his back so humped, his coat goes all in ridges——" Then she suddenly felt very sorry for him, he looked so dreadfully humble.

Elizabeth, tall and erect, was dressed in some soft green material; she appeared a little unnatural to the children, who had grown accustomed to her tailor-made blouses and skirts. Her strong brown hair was carefully dressed as usual, but as usual a curl or two sprang away from the hair-pins, straying over her ears and in the nape of her neck. Elizabeth was always pale, but to-day she looked very vital; she was conscious of looking her best, of creating an effect. Then she suddenly wondered whether Joan liked her dress, but even as she wondered she remembered that Joan was only thirteen.

Joan was thinking: "She looks like a tree. Why haven't I noticed before how exactly like a tree she is; it must be the green dress. But her eyes are like water, all greeny and shadowy and deep looking—a tree near a pool, that's what she's like, a tall tree. A beech tree? No, that's too spready—a larch tree, that's Elizabeth; a larch tree just greening over."

The rooms began to fill, and people wandered in and out; it was really quite like a reception. There was a pleasant babble of conversation. James had come in; he had said to himself: "Must look in and share the Mem-Sahib's little triumph—poor Mary!" He really looked quite distinguished in his grey frock coat and black satin tie. Here were General and Mrs. Brooke. By common consent the two old war horses buried their feud on "Anniversary Day." It was: "How are you, Ogden?"

"Glad to see you, General!"

They would beam at each other across their black satin ties; after all—the Service, you know!

Sir Robert and Lady Loo were shown in; good, that they had arrived when the rooms were at their fullest. Lady Loo came forward with her vague toothy smile. She looked like a very old hunter, long in the face, long in the leg and knobbly, distinctly knobbly. Her dress hung on her like badly fitting horse-clothing. To her spare bosom a diamond and sapphire crescent clung with a kind of desperation as if to an insufficient foothold; you felt that somehow there was not enough to pin it to, that there never would be enough to pin anything to on Lady Loo. But for all this there was something nice about her; the kind of niceness that belongs to old dogs and old horses, and that had never been entirely absent from Lady Loo.

As she sat down by Mrs. Ogden, her bright brown eyes looked inquisitively round the room, resting for an instant on the admiral's portrait, and then on the relics upon the occasional table. Mrs. Ogden watched her, secretly triumphant.

"Dear Lady Loo. How good of you to come to our little gathering. My Day I call it—very foolish of me—but after all—— Oh, yes, how very kind of you—— But then, why rob your hothouses for poor little me? You forgot to bring them? Oh, never mind, it's the thought that counts, is it not? Your speaking of peaches makes me feel quite homesick for Chesham—we had such acres of glass at Chesham!—Yes, that is Joan—come here, Joan dear! Naughty child, she will insist on keeping her hair short. You think it suits her? Really? Clever? Well—run away, Joan darling—yes, frankly, very clever, so Miss Rodney thinks. Attractive? You think so? Now fancy, my husband always thinks Milly is the pretty one. Shall I ask Joan to recite or shall Milly play first? What do you think? Joan first, oh, all right—Joan, dear!"

The dreaded moment had arrived; Joan, shy and awkward, floundered through her recitation.

"Capital, capital!" cried Admiral Bourne, who had taken a fancy to her.

Elizabeth felt hot; why in heaven's name make a fool of Joan like that? Joan couldn't recite and never would be able to. And then the child's dress—what possessed Mrs. Ogden to make her wear white? Joan was too awful in white, it made her skin look yellow. Then the dress was too short; Joan's dresses always were; and yet she was her mother's favourite. Curious—perhaps Mrs. Ogden wanted to make her look young; well, she couldn't keep her a baby for ever. When would Joan begin to assert her individuality? When she was fifteen, seventeen, perhaps? Elizabeth felt that she could dress Joan; she ought to wear dark colours, she knew exactly what she ought to wear. At that moment Joan came over to her, she was flushed and still looked shy.

"Beastly rot, that poem!"

Elizabeth surveyed her: "Oh, Joan, you're so like a colt." And she laughed.

Joan wanted to say: "You're like a larch tree that's just greening over, a tree by the side of a pool." But she was silent.

The noise of conversation broke out afresh. Milly, longing to be asked to play, was pretending to adjust the clasp of her violin case. Elizabeth looked from one child to the other and could not help smiling. Then she said: "Joan, do you like my dress?"

"Like it?" Joan stammered; "I think it's beautiful."

Elizabeth wanted to say, "Do you think me at all beautiful, Joan?" But something inside her began to laugh at this absurdity, while she said: "I'm so glad you like it, it was new for to-day."

"Now, Milly, play for us," came Mrs. Ogden's voice. "Miss Rodney will accompany you, I'm sure."

Milly did not blush, she remained cool and pale—small and cool and pale she stood there in her white cashmere smock, making lovely sounds with as much ease and confidence as if she had been playing by herself in an empty room.

Extraordinary child. She looked almost inspired, coldly inspired—it was queer. When she had finished playing, her little violin master came out of the corner in which he had been hidden.

"Very good—excellent!" he said, patting her shoulder; and Milly smiled quite placidly. Then she grew excited all of a sudden and skipped around the room for praise.

Joan sat beside her mother; very gently she squeezed her hand, looking up into Mrs. Ogden's face. She saw that it was animated and young, and the change thrilled her with pleasure. Mrs. Ogden looked down into her daughter's eyes. She whispered: "Do you like my dress, darling; am I looking nice?"

"Lovely, Mother—so awfully pretty!" But Joan thought: "The same thing, they both wanted to know if I liked their dresses, how funny! But Mother doesn't look like a tree just greening over—what does Mother look like?" She could not find a simile and this annoyed her. Mrs. Ogden's dress was grey, it suited her admirably, falling about her still girlish figure in long, soft folds. No one could say that Mary Ogden never looked pretty these days, that was quite certain; for she looked pretty this afternoon, with the delicate somewhat faded prettiness of a flower that has been pressed between the pages of a book. Suddenly Joan thought: "I know—I've got it, Elizabeth is like a tree and Mother's like a dove, a dove that lights on a tree. No, that won't do, I don't believe somehow that Mother would like to light on Elizabeth, and I don't think Elizabeth would like to be lit on. What is she like then?"

People began to go. "Good-bye, such a charming party."

"So glad you could come."

"Good-bye—don't forget that you and Colonel Ogden are lunching with us next Saturday."

"No, of course not, so many thanks."

"Good-bye——"

"Over at last!" Mrs. Ogden leant back in her chair with a sigh that bespoke complete satisfaction. She beamed on her husband.

He smiled. "Went off jolly well, Mary!" He was anxious to make up for the morning.

"Yes, it was a great success, I think. Don't you think it went off very well, James?"

The colonel twitched; he longed to say: "Damn it all, Mary, haven't I just told you that I think it went off well!" But he restrained himself.

Mary continued: "Well, dear, the Routledges always did have a talent for entertaining. I can remember at Chesham when I was Joan's age——"

2

Sir Robert and Lady Loo were driving swiftly towards Moor Park behind their grey cobs. "Talent that youngster has for fiddle playing, Emma!"

"Yes, I suppose so. The mother's a silly fool of a woman, no more brains than a chicken, and what a snob!"

"Ugly monkey, the elder daughter."

"Joan? Oh, do you think so?"

"Awful!"

"Wait and see!" said Lady Loo with a thoughtful smile.

Elizabeth walked home between her brother and the little violin master; she was depressed without exactly knowing why. The little violin master waved his hands.

"Milly is a genius; I have got a real pupil at last, at last! You wait and see, she will go far. What tone, what composure for so young a child?"

"Joan is like a young colt!" said Elizabeth to herself. "Like a young colt that somehow isn't playful—Joan is a solemn young colt, a thoughtful colt, a colt wise beyond its months." And she sighed.

CHAPTER SIX
1

ELIZABETH sat alone in her brother's study. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling; Ralph's books and some of her own that she had brought with her from Cambridge.

This was Sunday. Ralph had gone to church. "Such a good little man," thought Elizabeth to herself; but she had not gone to church, she had pleaded a fictitious cold. Ralph Rodney was still youngish, not more than forty-five, and doing fairly well in the practice which he had inherited from his uncle. But there was nothing beyond Seabourne—just Seabourne, nothing beyond. Ralph would probably live and die neither richer nor poorer than he was at present; it was a drab outlook. Yet it was Ralph's own fault, he might have done better, there had been a time when people thought him clever; he might have started his career in London. But no, he had thought it his duty to keep on the business at Seabourne. Elizabeth mused that it must either be that Ralph was very stupid or very good, she wondered if the terms were synonymous.

Their life history was quite simple. They had been left orphans when she was a year old and he was twenty. She had been too young to know anything about it, and Ralph had never lived much with his parents in any case. He had been adopted by their father's elder brother when he was still only a child. After the death of her parents, Elizabeth had been carried off by a cousin of their mother's, a kind, pleasant woman who divided her time between Elizabeth and Rescue Work.

They had been very happy together, and when Elizabeth was twenty and her cousin had died suddenly, she had felt real regret. Her cousin's death left her with enough money to go up to Cambridge, and very little to spare, for the bulk of Miss Wharton's fortune had gone to found Recreation Homes for Prostitutes, and not having qualified to benefit by the charity, Elizabeth was obliged to study to earn her living.

Her brother Ralph she had scarcely seen, he had gone so completely away. This was only natural; and the arrangement must have suited their parents very well, for their father had not been an earner and their mother had never been strong.

Elizabeth was now twenty-six. The uncle had died eighteen months ago, leaving Ralph his small fortune and the business. Ralph was a confirmed bachelor; he had felt lonely after the old man's death, had thought of his sister and had besought her to take pity on him; there it had begun and there so far, it had ended.

Yet it need not have ended as it had done for Ralph, but Ralph was a sentimentalist. He had loved the old uncle like a son, and had always made excuses for not cutting adrift from Seabourne. Uncle John was growing old and needed him in the business; Uncle John was failing—he had been failing for years, thought Elizabeth bitterly, a selfish, cranky old man—Uncle John begged Ralph not to leave him, he had a presentiment that he would not last much longer. Ralph must keep an eye on the poor old chap. After all, he'd been very decent to him. Ralph wanted to know where he'd have been without Uncle John.

Always the same excuses. Had Ralph never wanted a change; had he never known ambition? Perhaps, but such longings die, they cannot live on a law practice in Seabourne and an ailing Uncle John; they may prick and stab for a little while, may even constitute a real torment, but withstand them long enough and you will have peace, the peace of the book whose leaves are never turned; the peace of dust and cobwebs. Ralph was like that now, a book that no one cared to open; he was covered with dust and cobwebs.

At forty-five he was old and contented, or if not exactly contented, then resigned. And he had grown timid, perhaps Uncle John had made him timid. Uncle John was said to have had a will of his own—no, Elizabeth was not sure that it was all Uncle John, though he might have contributed. It was Seabourne that had made Ralph timid; Seabourne that had nothing beyond. Seabourne was so secure, how could it be otherwise when it had nothing beyond; whence could any danger menace it? Ralph clung to Seabourne; he was afraid to go too far lest he should step off into space, for he too must feel that Seabourne had nothing beyond. Seabourne had him and Uncle John had him. It was all of a piece with Uncle John to leave a letter behind him, begging Ralph to keep the old firm together after he was dead. Sentiment, selfish sentiment. Who cared what happened to Rodney and Rodney! Even Seabourne wouldn't care much, there were other solicitors. But Ralph had thought otherwise; the old man had begged him to stick by the firm, Ralph couldn't go back on him now. Ralph was humbly grateful; Ralph felt bound. Ralph was resigned too, that was the worst of it. And yet he had been clever, Elizabeth had heard it at Cambridge; but Cambridge that should have emancipated him had only been an episode. Back he had come to Seabourne and Uncle John, Uncle John much aged by then, and needing him more than ever.

When they had met at Seabourne, her brother had been a shock to her. His hair had greyed and so had his skin, and his mind—that had greyed too. Then why had she stayed? She didn't know. There was something about the comfortable house that chained you, held you fast. They were velvet chains, they were plush chains, but they held.

Then there was Uncle John. Uncle John's portrait looked down from the dining-room wall—Uncle John young, with white stock and keen eyes. That Uncle John seemed to point to himself and say: "I was young too, and yet I never strayed; what was good enough for my father was good enough for me and ought to be good enough for my nephew and for you, Elizabeth." Then there was Uncle John's later portrait on the wall of the study—Uncle John, old, wearing a corded black tie, his eyes rather dim and appealing, like the eyes of a good old dog. That Uncle John was the worse of the two; you felt that you could throw a plate at the youthful, smug, self-assertive Uncle John in the dining-room, but you couldn't hurt this Uncle John because he seemed to expect you to hurt him. This Uncle John didn't point to himself, he had nothing to say, but you knew what he wanted. He wanted to see you living in the old house among the old things; he wanted to see Ralph at the old desk in the old office. He needed you; he depended on you, he clung to you softly, persistently; you couldn't shake him off. He had clung to Ralph like that, softly, persistently; for latterly the strong will had broken and he had become very gentle. And now Ralph clung to Elizabeth, and Uncle John clung too, through Ralph.

Elizabeth got up. She flung open the window—let the air come in, let the sea come in! Oh! If a tidal wave would come and wash it all away, sweep it away; the house, Uncle John and Elizabeth to whom he clung through Ralph! Tradition! She clenched her hands; damn their tradition; another name for slavery, an excuse for keeping slaves! What was she doing with her life? Nothing. Uncle John saw to that. Yes, she was doing something, she was allowing it to be slowly and surely strangled to death, soon it would be gone, like a drop squeezed into the reservoir of Eternity; soon it would be lost for ever and she would still be alive—and she was so young! A lump rose in her throat; her hopes had been high—not brilliant, perhaps—still she had done well at Cambridge, there were posts open to her.

She might have written, but not at Seabourne. People didn't write at Seabourne, they borrowed the books that other people had written, from Mr. Besant of the Circulating Library, and talked foolishly about them at their afternoon teas, wagging their heads and getting the foreign names all wrong, if there were any. Oh! She had heard them! And Ralph would get like that. Get? He was like that already; Ralph had prejudices, timid ones, but there was strength in their numbers. Ralph approved and disapproved. Ralph shook his head over Elizabeth's smoking and nodded it over her needlework. Ralph liked womanly women; well, Elizabeth liked manly men. If she wasn't a womanly woman, Ralph wasn't a manly man. Oh, poor little Ralph, what a beast she was!

What did she want? She had the Ogden children, they were an interest and they represented her pocket money—if only Joan were older! After all, better a home with a kind brother at Seabourne than life on a pittance in London. But something in her strove and rent: "Not better, not better!" it shouted. "I want to get out, it's I, I, I! I want to live, I want to get out, let me out I tell you, I want to come out!"

2

"Elizabeth, dear, how are you?" Her brother had come in quietly behind her.

"Better, thank you. You're not wet, are you, Ralph? It's been raining."

"No, not a bit. I wish you'd been there, Elizabeth. Such a fine sermon."

"What was the text," she inquired. One always inquired what the text had been; the question sprang to her lips mechanically.

"'Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days!' A beautiful text, I think."

"Yes, very beautiful," Elizabeth agreed. "Curious that being the text to-day."

"Why?" he asked her, but his voice lacked interest; he didn't really want to know.

She thought: "I suppose I've cast my bread upon the waters, it must be a long way out at sea by now." Then she began to visualize the bread and that made her want to laugh. A crust of bread? A fat slice? A thin slice? Or had she cast away a loaf? Perhaps there were shoals of sprats standing upright on their tails in the water under the loaf and nibbling at it, or darting round and round in a circle, snatching and quarrelling while the loaf bobbed up and down—there were plenty of sprats just off the coast. Anyhow, her bread must be dreadfully soggy if it had been in the water for more than two years. "For thou shalt find it after many days!" Yes, but how many days? And if you did find it, if the sprats left even a crumb to be washed up on the beach, how would it taste, she wondered. How many days, how many days, how many Seabourne days, how many Ralph and Uncle John days; so secure, so decent, so colourless! The text said, "Many days;" it warned you not to grow impatient, it was like young Uncle John in the dining-room, taking it for granted that time didn't count—Uncle John had never been in a hurry. And yet they were beautiful words; she knew quite well what they meant, she was only pretending to misunderstand, it was her misplaced sense of humour.

Ralph had cast his bread upon the waters, and no doubt he expected to retrieve it on the shores of a better land; if he went hungry meanwhile, she supposed that was his affair. But perhaps he was expecting a more speedy return, perhaps when Ralph looked like old Uncle John his bread would be washed back to him; perhaps that was how it was done. She paused to consider. Perhaps your bread was returned to you in kind; you gave of your spirit and body, and you got back spirit and body in your turn. Not yours, but someone else's. When Ralph was sixty she would be forty-one; there was still a little sustenance left in you when you were forty-one, she supposed, though not much. Perhaps she was going to be Ralph's return for the loaf that had floated away.

It was all so pigeon-holed and so tidy. She was tidy, she had a tidy mind, but the mind that had thought out this bread scheme was even more tidy than hers. The scheme worked in grooves like a cogwheel, clip, clip, clip, each cog in its appointed place and round and round, always in a circle. Uncle John and his forbears before him had cast away their loaves turn by turn; it was the obvious thing to do; it was the Seabourne thing to do. Father to son, uncle to nephew, brother to sister; a slight difference in consanguinity but none in spirit. Uncle John's bread had gone for his father and the firm; Ralph's bread had gone for Uncle John and the firm, and she supposed that her bread had gone for Ralph and the firm. But where was her return to come from? In what manner would she find it, "after many days?" Would the spell be broken with her? She wondered.

CHAPTER SEVEN
1

IT was a blazing July, nearly a year later. Seabourne, finding at first a new topic for conversation in the heat wave, very soon wearied of this rare phenomenon, abandoning itself to exhaustion.

Colonel Ogden wilted perceptibly but Mrs. Ogden throve. The heat agreed with her, it made her expand. She looked younger and she felt younger and said so constantly, and her family tried to feel pleased. Lessons were a torment in the airless schoolroom; Joan flagged, Milly wept, and Elizabeth grew desperate. There was nowhere to walk except in the glare. The turf on the cliffs was as slippery as glass; on the sea-front the asphalt stuck to your shoes, and the beach was a wilderness peopled by wilting parents and irritable, mosquito-bitten children. Then, when things were at their worst at Leaside, there came from out the blue a very pleasant happening; old Admiral Bourne met the Ogden children out walking and asked them to tea.

2

The admiral's house was unique. He had built it after his wife's death; it had been a hobby and a distraction. Glory Point lay back from the road that led up to Cone Head, out beyond the town. To the casual observer the house said little. From the front it looked much as other houses, a little stronger, a little whiter perhaps, but on the whole not at all distinctive except for its round windows; and as only the upper windows could be seen from the road they might easily have been mistaken for an imitation of the Georgian period. It was not until the house was skirted to the left and the shrubbery passed that the character of Glory Point became apparent.

A narrow path with tall bushes on either side wound zigzag for a little distance. With every step the sound of the sea came nearer and nearer, until, at an abrupt angle, the path ceased, and shot you out on to a cobbled court-yard, and the wide Atlantic lay before you. The path had been contrived to appear longer than it was in reality, the twists and turns assisting the illusion; the last thing you expected to find at the end was what you found; it was very ingenious.

To the left and in front this court-yard appeared to end in space, and between you and the void stood apparently nothing but some white painted posts and chains. But even as you wondered what really lay below, a sharp spray would come hurtling over the chains and land with a splash almost at your feet, trickling in and out of the cobbles. Then you realized that the court-yard was built on a rock that ran sheer down to the sea.

At the side of this court-yard stood a fully rigged flagstaff with an old figure-head nailed to its base. The figure-head gazed out across the Atlantic, it looked wistful and rather lonely; there was something pathetic about the thing. It had a grotesque kind of dignity in spite of its faded and weather-stained paint. The ample female bosoms bulged beneath the stiff drapery, the painted eyes seemed to be straining to see some distant object; where the figure ended below the waist was a roughly carved scroll showing traces of gilt, on which could be deciphered the word "Glory."

From this side the house looked bigger, and one saw that all the windows were round and that a veranda ran the length of the ground floor. This veranda was the admiral's particular pride, it was boarded with narrow planks scrubbed white and caulked like the deck of a ship; the admiral called it his "quarter-deck," and here, in fine weather or foul, he would pace up and down, his hands in his pockets, his cigar set firmly between his teeth, his rakish white beard pointing out in front.

Inside the house the walls of the passages were boarded and enamelled white, the rooms white panelled, and the steep narrow stairs covered with corrugated rubber, bound with brass treads. Instead of banisters a piece of pipe-clayed rope ran through brass stanchions on either side; and over the whole place there brooded a spirit of the most intense cleanliness. Never off a man-of-war did brass shine and twinkle like the brass at Glory Point; never was white paint as white and glossy, never was there such a fascinating smell of paint and tar and brass polish. It was an astonishing house; you expected it to roll and could hardly believe your good fortune when it kept still. Everyone in Seabourne made fun of Glory Point; the admiral knew this but cared not at all, it suited him and that was enough. If they thought him odd, he thought most of them incredibly foolish. Glory Point was his darling and his pride; he and his mice lived there in perfect contentment. The brass shone, the decks were as the driven snow, the white walls smelt of fresh paint, and away beyond the posts and chains of the cobbled court-yard stretched the Atlantic, as big and deep and wholesome as the admiral's kind heart.

3

Through the blazing sunshine of the afternoon, Joan and Milly toiled up the hill that led to Glory Point. Now, however, they did not wilt, their eyes were bright with expectation, and they quickened their steps as the gate came in sight. They pushed it open and walked down the pebbled path.

"It's all white!" Joan exclaimed. She looked at the round white stones with the white posts on either side and then at the white door. They rang; the fierce sun was producing little sham flames on the brass bell-pull and knocker. The door was opened by a manservant in white drill and beyond him the walls of the hall showed white. "More white," thought Joan. "It's like—it looks—is honest the word? No, truthful."

They were shown into a very happy room, all bright chintz and mahogany. In one of the little round windows a Hartz Mountain Roller ruffled the feathers on his throat as he trilled. The admiral came forward to meet them, shaking hands gravely as if they were grown up. He, too, was in white, and his eyes looked absurdly blue. Joan thought he matched the Delft plates on the mantelpiece at his back.

"This is capital; I'm so glad you could come." He seemed to be genuinely pleased to see them. They waited for him to speak again, their eyes astray for objects of interest.

"This is my after cabin," said the admiral, smiling. "What do you think of it?"

"It's the drawing-room," said Milly promptly. Joan kicked her.

"We call it a cabin on a ship," corrected the admiral.

"Oh, I see," said Milly. "But this isn't a ship!"

"It's the only ship I've got now," he laughed.

Joan thought: "I wish she wouldn't behave like this, what can it matter what he calls the room? I wish Milly were shy!"

But Milly, quite unconscious of having transgressed, went up and nestled beside him. He put his arm round her and patted her shoulder.

"It's a very nice ship," she conceded.

Above the mantelpiece hung an oval portrait of a girl. Joan liked her pleasant, honest eyes, blue like the admiral's, only larger; her face looked wide open like a hedge rose.

Joan had to ask. She thought, "It's cheek, I suppose, but I do want to know." Aloud she said: "Please, who is that?"

The admiral followed the direction of her gaze. "Olivia," he answered, in a voice that took it for granted that he had no need to say more.

"Olivia?"

"My wife."

"Oh!" breathed Joan, feeling horribly embarrassed. She wished that she had not asked. Poor admiral, people said that he had loved her a great deal!

"Where is she?" inquired Milly.

Joan thought: "Of all the idiotic questions! Has she forgotten that he's a widower?" She was on tenterhooks.

The admiral gave a little sigh. "She died a long time ago," he said, and stared fixedly at the portrait.

Joan pulled Milly round. "Oh, look, what a pet of a canary!" she said foolishly. She and Milly went over to the cage; the bird hopped twice and put his head on one side. He examined them out of one black bead.

The admiral came up behind them. "That's Julius Cæsar," he volunteered.

Joan turned with relief; he was smiling. He opened the door of the cage and thrust in a finger, whistling softly; the canary bobbed, then it jumped on to the back of his hand, ignoring the finger. Very slowly and gently he with drew his hand and lifted the bird up to his face. It put its beak between his lips and kissed him, then its mood changed and it nipped his thumb. He laughed, and replaced it in the cage.

"Shall we go over the ship?" he inquired.

The children agreed eagerly. He stalked along in front of them, hands in jacket pockets. He took them into the neat dining-room, opening and shutting the port-holes to show how they worked, then into the smoking-room, large, long, and book-lined with the volumes of his naval library. Then up the rubber-covered stairs and along the narrow white passage with small doors in a row on either side. A man in more white drill was polishing the brass handles, there was the clean acrid smell of brass polish; Joan wondered if they polished brass all day at Glory Point, this was such a queer time to be doing it, at four in the afternoon. The admiral threw open one of the doors while the children peered over his shoulder.

"This is my sleeping cabin," he said contentedly.

The little room was neat as a new pin; through the open port-holes came the sound and smell of the sea—thud, splash, thud, splash, and the mournful tolling of a bell buoy. The admiral's bunk was narrow and white, Joan thought that it looked too small for a man, like the bed of a little child, with its high polished mahogany side. Above it the porthole stood wide open—thud, splash, there was the sea again; the sound came with rhythmical precision at short intervals. Milly had found the washstand, it was an entrancing washstand! There was a stationary basin cased in mahogany with fascinating buttons that you pressed against to make the water flow; Milly had never seen buttons like this before, all the taps at Leaside turned on in a most uninteresting way. Above the washstand was a rack for the water bottle and glass, and the bottle and glass had each its own hole into which it fitted with the neatest precision. The walls of the cabin were white like all the others in this house of surprises, white and glossy. Thud, splash, thud, splash, and a sudden whiff of seaweed that came in with a breath of air.

Joan thought, "Oh it is a truthful house, it would never deceive you!" Aloud she said, "I like it!"

The admiral beamed. "So do I," he agreed.

"I like it all," said Joan, "the noises and the smell and the whiteness. I wish we lived in a ship-house like this, it's so reassuring."

"Reassuring?" he queried; he didn't understand what she meant, he thought her a queer old-fashioned child, but his heart went out to her.

"Yes, reassuring; safe you know; you could trust it; I mean, it wouldn't be untruthful."

"Oh, I see," he laughed. "I built it," he told her with a touch of pride; "it was entirely my own idea. The people round here think I'm a little mad, I believe; they call me 'Commodore Trunnion'; but then, dear me, everyone's a little mad on one subject or another—I'm mad on the sea. Listen, Miss Joan! Isn't that fine music? I lie here and listen to it every night, it's almost as good as being on it!"

Milly interrupted. "Tell us about your battles!" she pleaded.

"My what?" said the admiral, taken aback.

"The ones you fought in," said Milly coaxingly.

"Bless the child! I've never been in a battle in my life; what battles have there been in my time, I'd like to know!"

Milly looked crestfallen. "But you were on a battleship," she protested.

The admiral opened his mouth and guffawed. "God bless my soul, what's that got to do with it?"

They had made their way downstairs again now and were walking towards the garden door. Milly clung to her point.

"It ought to have something to do with it, I should suppose," she said rather pompously.

The admiral looked suddenly grave. "It will, some day," he said.

"When will it be?" asked Joan; she felt interested.

"When the great war comes," he replied; "though God grant it won't be in your time."

No one spoke for a minute; the children felt subdued, a little cloud seemed to have descended among them. Then the admiral cheered up, and quickened his steps. "Tea!" he remarked briskly.

4

Over the immaculate lawn that stretched to the right of the house, came the white-clad manservant carrying a tray; the tea-table was laid under a big walnut tree. This was the sheltered side of the house, where, as the admiral would say, you could grow something besides seaweed. The old clipped yews were trim and cared for; peacocks and roosters and stately spirals. Between them the borders were bright with homely flowers. The admiral had found this garden when he bought the place; he had pulled down the old house to build his ship, but the garden he had taken upon himself as a sacred trust. In it he worked to kill the green fly and the caterpillar, and dreamed to keep memory alive. They sat down to tea; from the other side of a battlemented hedge came the whirring, sleepy sound of a mowing machine, someone was mowing the bowling green. They grew silent. A wasp tumbled into the milk jug; with great care the admiral pulled it out and let it crawl up his hand.

"Silly," he said reprovingly, "silly creature!"

It paused in its painful milk-logged walk to stroke its bedraggled wings with its back legs, then it washed its face ducking its jointed head. The old man watched it placidly presently it flew away.

"It never said 'Thank you,' did it?" he laughed.

"No, but it didn't sting," said Joan.

"They never sting when you do them a good turn, and that's more than you can say of some people, Miss Joan."

Tea over, they strolled through the garden; at the far end was a small low building designed to correspond with the house.

"What's that?" they asked him.

"We're coming to that," he answered. "That's where the mice live."

"Oh, may we see them, please let us see them all!" Joan implored.

"Of course you shall see them, that's what I brought you here for; there are dozens and dozens," he said proudly.

Inside the Mousery the smell was overpowering, but it is doubtful if any of the three noticed it. Down the centre of the single long room ran a brick path on either side of which were shelves three deep, divided into roomy sections.

The admiral stopped before one of them. "Golden Agouti," he remarked.

He took hold of a rectangular box, the front of which was wired; very slyly he lifted a lid set into the top panel, and lowered the cage so that the children might look in. Inside, midway between floor and lid was a smaller box five inches long; a little hole at one end of this inner box gave access to the interior of the cage, and from it a miniature ladder slanted down to the sawdust strewn floor. In this box were a number of little heaving pink lumps, by the side of which crouched a brownish mouse. Her beady eyes peered up anxiously, while the whiskers on her muzzle trembled.

The admiral touched her gently with the tip of his little finger. "She's a splendid doe," he said affectionately; "a remarkably careful mother and not at all fussy!" He shut the door and replaced the cage. "There's a fine pair here," he remarked, passing to a new section; "what about that for colour!"

He put his hand into another cage and caught one of the occupants deftly by the tail. Holding the tail between his finger and thumb he let the mouse sprawl across the back of his other hand, slightly jerking the feet into position.

The children gazed. "What colour is that?" they inquired.

"Chocolate," replied the admiral. "I rather fancy the Self varieties, there's something so well-bred looking about them; for my part I don't think a mouse can show his figure if he's got a pied pelt on him, it detracts. Now this buck for instance, look at his great size, graceful too, very gracefully built, legs a little coarse perhaps, but an excellent tail, a perfect whipcord, no knots, no kinks, a lovely taper to the point!"

The mouse began to scramble. "Gently, gently!" murmured the admiral, shaking it back into position.

He eyed it with approbation, then dropped it back into its cage, where it scurried up the ladder and vanished into its bedroom. They passed from cage to cage; into some he would only let them peep lest the does with young should get irritable; from others he withdrew the inmates, displaying them on his hand.

"Now this," he told them, catching a grey-blue mouse. "This is worth your looking at carefully. Here we have a champion, Champion Blue Pippin. I won the Colour Cup with this fellow last year. Of course I grant you he's a good colour; very pure and rich, good deep tone too, and even, perfectly even, you notice." He turned the mouse over deftly for a moment so that they might see for themselves that its stomach matched its back. "But so clumsy," he continued. "Did you ever see such a clumsy fellow? Then his ears are too small, though their texture is all right; and I always said he lacked boldness of eye; I never really cared for his eyes, there's something timid about them, not to be compared with Cocoa Nibs, that first buck you saw. But there it is, this fellow won his championship; of course I always say that Cary can't judge a mouse!"

Champion Blue Pippin was replaced in his cage; the admiral shook his finger at him where he sat grooming his whiskers against the bars.

"A good mouse," he told Joan confidentially. "Very tame and affectionate as you see, but a champion, no never! As I told them at the National Mouse Club."

They turned to the shelves on the other side. Here were the Pied and Dutch varieties.

"I don't care for them, as you know," said Admiral Bourne. "Still I keep a few for luck, and they are rather pretty."

He showed them the queer Dutch mice, half white, half coloured. Then the Variegated mice, their pelts white with minute streaks or dots of colour evenly distributed over body and head. There were black and tan mice and a bewildering assortment of the Pied variety which the admiral declared he disliked. Last of all, in a little cubicle by itself, was a larger cage than any of the others, a kind of Mouse Palace. This cage contained a number of neat boxes, each with its ladder, and in addition to the ordinary outer compartment was a big bright wheel. Up and down the ladders ran the common little red-eyed white mice; while they watched them a couple sprang into the wheel and began turning it.

"Oh! The white mice that you buy at the Army and Navy!" said Milly in a disappointed voice.

"That's all," the admiral admitted. "I just have this cage of them, you know, nice little chaps." And then, as the children remained silent, "You see, Olivia liked them; she used to say they were such friendly people."

He spoke as though they had known Olivia intimately, as though he expected the children to say: "Yes, of course, Olivia was so fond of animals!"

Reluctantly they left the Mousery and strolled towards the gates; three tired children, one of eleven, one of thirteen and one of sixty-eight. The sun was setting over the sea, it was very cool in the garden after the mousery.

The admiral turned to Joan. "Come again," he said simply. "Come very often, there may be some more young ones to show you soon."

And so they parted on the road outside the gates. The children turned once to look back as they walked down the hill; Admiral Bourne was still standing in the road, looking after them.

CHAPTER EIGHT
1

A NEW family had come to Conway House under Cone Head. The place had stood vacant for years; now, at length, it was sold, and Elizabeth knew who the new people were. When Elizabeth, meaning to be amiable, had remarked one afternoon that the Bensons had been old friends of her cousin in London, and that she herself had known them all her life, Mrs. Ogden had drawn in her lips, very slightly raised an eyebrow and remarked: "Oh, really!" in what Joan had grown to recognize as "the Routledge voice." It was true that Mrs. Ogden was annoyed; there was no valid reason to produce against Elizabeth having known the Bensons, yet she felt aggrieved. Elizabeth appeared to Mrs. Ogden to be—well—not quite "governessy" enough. She had been thinking this for the last few months. You did not expect your governess to be an old friend of people who had just bought one of the largest places in your neighbourhood, it was almost unseemly. Elizabeth, when closely questioned, had said that the family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Benson, a son of twenty-two, another of seventeen, and one little girl of fourteen. And just at the very end, mark you at the end, and then only after a pressing cross-examination as to who they were, Elizabeth had said quite vaguely that Mr. Benson was a banker, but that his mother had been Lady Sarah Totteridge before her marriage, and that the present Mrs. Benson was a daughter of Lord Down.

Mrs. Ogden had made it clear that she could not quite understand how Elizabeth's cousin had come to know the Bensons, and Elizabeth had said in a casual voice that her cousin and Mrs. Benson had had a great mutual interest; and when Mrs. Ogden had inquired what this interest had been, Elizabeth had replied, "Prostitutes," and had laughed! Of course the children had not been in the room—still, "Prostitutes." Such a coarse way to put it. Mrs. Ogden had spoken to Colonel Ogden about it afterwards and had found him unsympathetic. All he had said was, "Well, what else would you have her call them? Don't be such a damn fool, Mary!"

However, there it was; Elizabeth did know the Bensons and would, Mrs. Ogden supposed, contrive to continue knowing them now that they had come to Conway House. She could not understand Elizabeth; it was "Elizabeth" now at Elizabeth's own request; she had said that Rodney sounded so like Ralph and not at all like her. Did anyone ever hear such nonsense! However, the children had hailed the change with delight and so far it did not appear to have undermined discipline, so that Mrs. Ogden supposed it must be all right. She had to confess that it was a most unexpected advantage for Milly and Joan to have such a woman to teach them. Cambridge women did not grow on gooseberry bushes in Seabourne.

2

Her criticisms of Elizabeth afforded Mrs. Ogden a rather tepid satisfaction for a time, but they never quite convinced her, and one day her thoughts stopped short in the very middle of them. She had a moment of clear inward vision; and in that moment she realized the exact and precise reason why, in the last few months, she had grown irritated with Elizabeth. So irritated in fact that nothing that Elizabeth said or did could possibly be right. It was not Elizabeth's familiarity, not the fact that Elizabeth knew the Bensons, not Elizabeth's rather frank English, it was none of these things—it was Joan.

Joan was fourteen now, she was growing—growing mentally out of Mrs. Ogden. There was so much these days that they could not discuss together. Joan was a student, a tremendously hard worker; Mrs. Ogden had never been that sort of girl. Even James could help Joan better than she could—James was rather well up in history, for example. But she was not well up in anything; this fact had never struck her before. "Don't be such a damn fool, Mary!" James had said that for so many years that it had ceased to mean anything to her, but now it seemed fraught with dreadful, new possibilities. Would Joan ever come to think her a fool? Would she ever come to think Elizabeth a fool? No, not Elizabeth—wait—there was the menace. Elizabeth had goods for sale that Joan could buy; how was she buying them, that was the question? Was she paying in the copper coin of mere hard work, content if she did Elizabeth credit? Or would she, being Joan, slip in a golden coin of love and admiration, a coin stolen from her almost bankrupt mother?

Elizabeth, that happy, clever young creature, with her self-assurance and her interest in Joan, what was she doing with Joan—what did she mean to do with Joan's mother? How much did she want Joan—the real Joan? And if she wanted her, could she get her? Mean, oh, mean! When Elizabeth had everything on her side—when she had youth so obviously on her side—surely she had enough without Joan, surely she need not grow fond of Joan?

She had fancied lately that Elizabeth had become ever so slightly possessive, that she took it for granted that she would have a say in Joan's future, would be consulted. Then there was the question of a university—who had put that idea into Joan's head? Who, but Elizabeth! Where would it end if Joan went to Cambridge—certainly not in Seabourne. But James would never consent, he was certain to draw the line at that; besides, there was no money—but there were scholarships; suppose Elizabeth was secretly working to enable Joan to win a scholarship? How dare she! How dare either of them have any secrets from Joan's mother! She would speak to Elizabeth—she would assert herself at once. Joan should never be allowed to waste her youth on dry bones. Elizabeth might think that women could fill men's posts, but she knew better. Yet, after all, Joan was so like a boy—one felt that she was a son sometimes. Hopeless, hopeless, she was afraid of Elizabeth! She would never be able to speak her mind to her; she was too calm, too difficult to arouse, too thick-skinned. And Joan—Joan was moving away, not very far, only a little away. Joan was becoming a spectator, and Joan as an audience might be dangerous.

Mrs. Ogden trembled; she strove desperately to scourge her mentality into some semblance of adequacy. She tried, sincerely tried, to face the situation calmly and wisely and with understanding. But her efforts failed pathetically; through the maze of her struggling thoughts nothing took shape but the desperate longing, the desperate need that was Joan. She thought wildly: "I'll tell her how I want her, I'll tell her what my life has been. I'll tell her the truth, that I can't, simply can't, live without her, and then I shall keep her, because I can make her pity me." Then she thought: "I must be mad—a child of fourteen—I must be quite mad!" But she knew that in her tormenting jealousy she might lose Joan altogether. Joan loved the little mother, the miserable, put upon, bullied mother, the mother of headaches and secret tears; she would not love the self-assertive, unjust mother—she never had. No, she must appeal to Joan, that was the only way. Joan was as responsive as ever; then of what was she afraid? Oh, Joan, Joan, so young and awkward and adorable! Did she find her mother too old? After all, she was only forty-two, not too old surely to keep Joan's love. She would try to enter into things more, she would go for walks, she would bathe, anything, anything—where should she begin? But supposing Joan suspected, supposing she saw through her, supposing she laughed at her—she must be careful, dreadfully careful. Joan was excited because Conway House was sold, and had implored her to go and call on Mrs. Benson; very well then, she would go, and take Elizabeth with her,—yes, that would be gracious, that would please Joan. And she would try not to hate Elizabeth, she would try with all the will-power she had in her to see Elizabeth justly, to be grateful for the interest she took in the child. She would try not to fear Elizabeth.

CHAPTER NINE
1

THE windows of Conway House glowed, and the winter twilight was creeping in and out among the elms in the avenue. The air was cold and dry, the clanking of the skates that Joan and Elizabeth were carrying made a pleasant, musical sound as they walked. A boy joined them; he was tall and lanky and his blunt freckled face was flushed.

"Here I am. I've caught you up!" he said.

They turned; he was a jolly boy and they liked him. Richard Benson, the younger son of the Bensons now of Conway House, was enjoying his Christmas holidays immensely; for one thing he had been delighted to find Elizabeth established at Seabourne; they were old friends, and now there was the nice Ogden girl. Then the skating was the greatest luck, so rare as to be positively exciting. Elizabeth and Joan were very good sorts. Elizabeth skated very well, and Joan was learning—he hoped the ice would hold. He was the most friendly of creatures, rather like a lolloping puppy; you expected him to jump up and put his paws on your shoulders. They walked on together towards the house, where tea would be waiting; they all felt happily tired—it was good to be young.

The house had been thoroughly restored, and was now a perfect specimen of its period. The drawing-room was long and lofty, and panelled in pale grey, the curtains of orange brocade, the furniture Chippendale—a gracious room. Beside the fire a group of people sat round the tea-table, over which their hostess presided. Mrs. Benson was an ample woman; her pleasant face, blunt and honest like that of her younger son, made you feel welcome even before she spoke, and when she spoke her voice was loud but agreeable. Joan thought: "She has the happiest voice I've ever heard." The three skaters having discarded their wraps had entered the drawing-room together. Mrs. Benson looked up.

"Elizabeth dear!" Elizabeth went to her impulsively and kissed her.

Joan wondered; Elizabeth was not given to kissing, she felt that she too would rather like to know Mrs. Benson well enough to kiss her. As they shook hands Mrs. Benson smiled.

"How did the skating go to-day, Joan?"

"Oh, not badly, only one tumble."

"She got on splendidly!" said Richard with enthusiasm.

"Elizabeth should be a good teacher," his mother replied. "She used to skate like an angel. Elizabeth, do you remember that hard winter we had when the Serpentine froze?"

Mrs. Benson laughed as though the memory amused her; she and Elizabeth exchanged a comprehending glance.

"They know each other very well," thought Joan. "They have secrets together."

She felt suddenly jealous, and wondered whether she was jealous because of Mrs. Benson or because of Elizabeth; she decided that it was because of Elizabeth; she did not want anyone to know Elizabeth better than she did. This discovery startled her. The impulse came to her to creep up to Elizabeth and take her hand, but she could visualize almost exactly what would probably happen. Very gently, oh, very gently indeed, Elizabeth would disengage her hand, she would look slightly surprised, a little amused perhaps, and would then move away on some pretext or another. Joan could see it all. No, assuredly one did not go clinging to Elizabeth's hand, she never encouraged clinging.

The group round the tea-table chattered and ate. Mrs. Ogden was among them, but Joan had not noticed her, for she was sitting in the shadow.

"Joan!"

"Oh, Mother, I didn't see you." She moved across and sat by her mother's side, but her eyes followed Elizabeth.

Mrs. Ogden watched her. She wanted to say something appropriate, something jolly, but she felt tongue-tied. There was the skating, why not discuss Joan's tumble—but Elizabeth skated "like an angel." Joan would naturally not expect her mother to be interested in skating, since she must know that she had never skated in her life. Lawrence, the eldest Benson boy, came towards them. He looked like his father, dark and romantic, and like his father he was the dullest of dull good men. He liked Mrs. Ogden, she had managed to impress him somehow and to make him feel sorry for her. He thought she looked lonely in spite of her overgrown daughter.

He pulled up a chair and made conversation. "It's ripping finding you all down here, Mrs. Ogden. I never thought that Elizabeth would settle at Seabourne."

Elizabeth, always Elizabeth! Mrs. Ogden forced herself to speak cordially. "It was the greatest good fortune for us that she did."

"Yes—I suppose so. Elizabeth's too clever for me; I always tell her so, I always chaff her."

"Do you? Do you know, I never feel that I dare chaff Elizabeth, no—I should never dare."

"Not dare—why not? I used to tease the life out of her."

"Well, you are different perhaps; you knew her before she was—well—so clever. You see I'm not clever, not in that way. I'm very ignorant really."

"I don't believe it; anyhow, I like that kind of ignorance. I mean I hate clever women. No, I don't mean I hate Elizabeth, she's a dear, but I'd like her even more if she knew less. Oh, you know what I mean!"

"But Elizabeth is so splendid, isn't she? Cambridge, and I don't know what not; still, perhaps——"

"But surely a woman doesn't need to go to Cambridge to be charming? Personally I think it's a great mistake, this education craze; I don't believe men really care for such things in women; do you, Mrs. Ogden?"

Mrs. Ogden smiled. "That depends on the man, I suppose. Perhaps a really manly man prefers the purely feminine woman——"

He was very young. At twenty-two it is gratifying to be thought a manly man; yes, decidedly he liked Mrs. Ogden.

"Oh, I don't think that——" It was Richard who spoke, he had strolled up unperceived. His brother looked annoyed.

"Don't you?" queried Mrs. Ogden. She caught Lawrence's eye and smiled.

Richard blushed to his ears, but he went on doggedly: "No, I don't, because I think it's a shame that women should be shut out of things, bottled up, cramped. Oh, I can't explain, only I think if they've got the brains to go to college, we ought not to mind their going."

"Perhaps when you're older you'll feel quite differently, most men do." Mrs. Ogden's voice was provoking.

Richard felt hot and subsided suddenly, but before he did so his eyes turned to Joan where she sat silent at her mother's side. She wondered whether he thought that the conversation could have any possible bearing on her personally, whether perhaps it had such a bearing. She glanced shyly at her mother; Mrs. Ogden looked decidedly cross.

"I hope," she said emphatically, "that neither of my girls will want to go to a university; they would never do so with my approval."

"Oh, but——" Richard began, then stopped, for he had caught the warning in Joan's eye. "I came to say," he stammered, "that if you'll come into the library, Joan, I'll show you those prints of Father's, the sporting ones I told you about." He stood looking awkward for a moment, then turned as if expecting her to follow him.

"May I go, Mother?"

But Joan was already on her feet, what was the good of saying "No" since she so obviously wanted to go? Mrs. Ogden sighed, she looked at Lawrence appealingly. "They are so much in advance of me," she said as Joan hurried away.

Sympathy welled up in him; he let it appear in his eyes, together with a look of admiration; as he did so he was thinking that the touch of grey in her hair became Mrs. Ogden.

She thought: "How funny, the boy's getting sentimental!" A little flutter of pleasure stirred her for a moment. After all she was not so immensely old and not so passée either, and it was not unpleasant to have a young male creature sympathizing with you and looking at you as though he admired and pitied you—in fact it was rather soothing. Then she thought: "I wonder where Joan is," and suddenly she felt tired of Lawrence Benson; she wished that he would go away so that she might have an excuse for moving; she felt restless.

2

In the library Joan was listening to Richard. He stood before her with his hair ruffled, his face flushed and eager.

"Joan! I don't know you awfully well, and of course you're only a kid as yet, but Elizabeth says you're clever—and don't you let yourself be bottled."

"Bottled?" she queried.

"Don't you get all cramped up and fuggy, like one does when one sits over a fire all day. I know what I mean, it sounds all rot, only it isn't rot. You look out! I have a presentiment that they mean to bottle you."

Joan laughed.

"It's no laughing matter," he said in an impressive voice. "It's no laughing matter to be bottled; they want to bottle me, only I don't mean to let them."

"Why, what do you want to do that makes them want to bottle you?"

"I'm going in for medicine—Father hates it; he hopes I'll get sick of it, but it's my line, I know it; I'm studying to be a doctor."

"Well, why not? It's rather jolly to be a doctor, I should think; someone's got to look after people when they're ill."

"That's just it. I'm keen as mustard on it, and I shan't let anyone stop me."

"But what's that got to do with me?"

"Nothing, not the doctor part, but the other part has; if you're clever, you ought to do something."

"But I'm not a boy!"

"That doesn't matter a straw. Look at Elizabeth; she's not a boy, but she didn't let her brain get fuggy; though," he added reflectively, "I'm not so sure of her now as I was before she came here."

"Why not?" said Joan; she liked talking about Elizabeth.

"Oh, just Seabourne, it's a bottling place. If Elizabeth don't look out she'll be bottled next!"

At that moment Elizabeth came in. "We were talking about you," said Joan, but Elizabeth was dreadfully incurious.

"Your mother is waiting; it's time to go," was all she said.

3

In the fly on the way home the silence was oppressive. Mrs. Ogden seemed to be suffering, she looked wilted. "What is it, darling?" Joan inquired. She had enjoyed herself, and now somehow it was spoilt. She had hoped that her mother was enjoying herself too.

Mrs. Ogden leant towards her and took her hand. "My dear little girl," she murmured, "have you been happy, Joan?"

"Yes, very; haven't you, Mother?"

There was a pause. "I'm not as young as you are, dearest."

Elizabeth, sitting beside Mrs. Ogden, smiled bitterly in the dark. "Wait a while," she said to herself. "Wait a while!" Her own emotions surprised her, she was conscious of a feeling of acute anger. As if by a simultaneous impulse the two women suddenly drew as far apart as the narrow confines of the cab permitted. To Elizabeth it seemed as if something so intense as to be almost tangible leapt out between them—a naked sword.

Sitting with her back to the driver, Joan was lost in thought; she was thinking of the utter hopelessness of making her mother really happy. But with another part of her mind she was pondering Richard's sudden outburst in the library. She liked him, she thought what a satisfactory brother he would be. Why was he so afraid of being caught and bottled? Lawrence, she felt, must be bottled already; he liked it, she was sure that Lawrence would think it the right thing to be. She wondered how Richard would manage to escape—if he did escape. A picture of him rose before her eyes; he made her laugh, he was so emphatic. She resolved to talk him over with Elizabeth. Of course it was all nonsense—still, he seemed dreadfully afraid. What was it really that he was afraid of, and why was he so afraid for her?

The cab jolted abruptly, Joan's thoughts jolting with it. The driver had pulled up to drop Elizabeth at her brother's house.

[BOOK II]

CHAPTER TEN
1

THE summer in which Joan's fifteenth birthday occurred was particularly anxious and depressing because of Colonel Ogden's health.

One morning in July he had woken up with a headache and a cough; bronchitis followed, and the strain on his already flagging heart made the doctor uneasy. Undoubtedly Colonel Ogden was very ill. Joan, working hard for her Junior Local, was put to it to know what to do; whether to throw up the examination for the sake of helping her mother or to continue to cram for the sake of not disappointing Elizabeth. In the end the doctor solved this difficulty by sending in an experienced nurse.

Just about this time a deep depression settled on Joan, a kind of heavy melancholy. She wondered what the origin of this might be; she was too honest to pretend to herself that it was caused by anxiety about her father. She wanted to grieve over him. She thought: "Poor thing, he can't breathe; he's lying in a kind of lump of pillows upstairs in bed; his face looks dreadfully ugly and he can't help it." But the picture that she drew left her cold. Then a hundred little repulsive details of the illness crowded in on her imagination; when she was with her father she would watch for them with apprehension. She forced herself to show him an exaggerated tenderness, which he, poor man, did not want; it was Milly he was always asking for—but Milly was frightened of illness.

Mrs. Ogden, who was sharing the duties of the nurse, looked worn out, an added anxiety to Joan. They would meet at meals, kiss silently and part again, Mrs. Ogden to relieve the nurse, Joan to go back to her books. She thought: "How can I sit here grinding away while she does all the beastly things upstairs? But I can't go up and help her, I simply can't!" And one day, almost imperceptibly, a new misery reared its head; she began to analyse her feelings for her mother.

She tried to be logical; she argued that because she wanted to work for an exam, there was no reason to suppose that she loved her mother less; she thought that she looked the thing squarely in the eyes, turned it round and surveyed it from all sides and then dismissed it. But a few moments later the thought would come again, this time a little more insistent, requiring a somewhat longer effort of reasoning to argue it away.

2

One evening during this period, Joan heard her own Doubt voiced by her mother. They had been sitting side by side on the little veranda at the back of the house; the night was warm and from a neighbouring garden something was smelling sweet. Neither of them had spoken for a long time; Mrs. Ogden was the first to break the silence. Quite suddenly she turned her face to Joan; the movement was almost lover-like.

"Joan, do you love me, dearest?" It had come. This was the thing Joan had been dreading for weeks, perhaps it was all her life that she had been dreading it. She felt that time had ceased to exist, there were no clear demarcations; past, present and future were all one, welded together in the furnace of her horrible doubt. Did she love her mother, did she—did she? Her mother was waiting; she had always been waiting just like this, and she always would wait, a little breathlessly, a little afraid. She stared out desperately into the darkness—the answer; it must be found quickly, but where—how?

"Joan, do you love me, dearest?" The answer must be somewhere, only it was not in her tired brain—it was somewhere else, then. In her mother's brain? Was that why her mother was a little breathless, a little afraid? She pressed her cold cheek against Mrs. Ogden's, rubbing it gently up and down, then suddenly she folded her in her arms, kissing her lips, seeking desperately to awaken her dulled emotions to the response that she knew was so painfully desired.

When at last they released each other, they sat for a long time hand in hand. To Joan there was an actual physical distaste for the hand-clasp, yet she dared not, could not let go. She was conscious in a vague way that her mother's hand felt different. Mechanically she began to finger it, slipping a ring up and down; the ring came off unexpectedly, it was loose, for the hand had grown thinner. Her mind seized on this with avidity; here was the motive she needed for love: her mother's hand, small and white, was thinner than it had been before, it was now terribly thin. There was pathos in this, there was something in this to make her feel sorry; she stooped and fondled the hand. But did she love her? No, assuredly not, for this was not love, this was a stupendous and exhausting effort of the will. When you loved you just loved, and all the rest followed as a matter of course—and yet, if she did not love her, why did she trouble to exert this effort of will at all, why did she feel so strongly the necessity for protecting her mother from the hurt of discovery? Deception; was it ever justifiable to deceive, was it justifiable now? And yet, even if she were sure that she did not love her, could she find the courage to push her away? To say: "I don't love you, I don't want to touch you, I dislike the feel of you—I dislike above all else the feel of you!" How terrible to say such a thing to any living creature, and how more than terrible to say it to her mother! The hydra had grown another head; what would her mother do if she knew that Joan loved her less?

Away out in the darkness a bell chimed ten o'clock; Mrs. Ogden got up wearily. "I must see to nurse's supper." Inside Joan's brain a voice said: "Go and help her, she's tired; go and get the supper yourself." But another and more insistent voice arose to drown it: "Do I love her, do I, do I?" Mrs. Ogden went into the house, but Joan remained sitting on the veranda.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
1

THE weeks dragged on; Colonel Ogden might recover, but his illness would of necessity be a long one, for his heart, already weak, was now disposed to stop beating on the least provocation.

Joan worked with furious energy. Elizabeth, confident of her pupil, protested that this cramming was unnecessary, but Joan, stubborn as always, took her own line. She felt that work was her only refuge, the only drug that, temporarily at all events, brought relief.

It was now the veriest torture to her to be in her mother's presence, to be forced to see the tired body going on its daily rounds, to hear the repeated appeals for sympathy, to see the reproach in the watchful eyes.

But if the days were unendurable, how much worse were the nights, the nights when she would wake with a sudden start in a cold sweat of terror. Why was she terrified? She was terrified because she feared that she did not love her mother, and one night she knew that she was terrified because, if she could not love her mother, she might grow to love someone else instead—Elizabeth for instance. The hydra grew another head that night.

Elizabeth, the ever watchful, became alarmed at her condition. Joan, haggard and pale, distressed her; she could not get at the bottom of the thing, for now Joan seemed to avoid her. Yet she felt instinctively that this avoidance did not ring true; there was something very like dumb appeal in the girl's eyes as they followed her about. What was it she wanted? There was something unnatural about Joan these days—when she talked now, she always seemed to have a motive for what she said, she seemed to hope for something from Elizabeth, from Milly even; to hang on their words. Elizabeth got the impression that she was for ever skirting some subject of which she never came to the point. She felt that something was being demanded of her, she did not know what.

There were good days sometimes, when Joan would get up in the morning feeling restored after a peaceful night. Her troubles would seem vague like a ship on a far horizon. Then the reaction would be exaggerated. Elizabeth was not reassured by a boisterously happy Joan, and was never surprised when a few hours would exhaust this blissful condition. Something, usually a mere trifle, would crop up to suggest the old Horror. Very quietly, as a rule, Joan's torments would begin, a thought—flimsy as a bit of thistledown, would light for an instant in her brain to be quickly brushed aside, but like thistledown it would alight again and cling. Gradually it would become more concrete; now it was not thistledown, it was a little stone, very cold and hard, that pressed and was not so easy to brush aside. And the stone would grow until it seemed to Joan to become a physical burden, crushing her under an unendurable load, more horrible than ever now because of those hours of respite.

Elizabeth coaxed and cajoled; she wanted at all hazards to stop Joan from working. She let down the barrier of her calm aloofness and showed a new aspect of herself to her pupil. She entreated, she begged, for it seemed to her that things were becoming desperate. At last she played her trump card, she played it suddenly without warning and without tact, in a way that was characteristic of her in moments of deep feeling. One day she closed her book, folded her hands and said:

"Joan! If you loved me you couldn't make me unhappy about you as you do. Joan, don't you love me?"

For answer Joan fled from the room as if pursued by a fiend.

"Do I love her? Do I? Do I?" There it was again—this time for Elizabeth. Did she love Elizabeth and was that why she did not love her mother? Here was a new and fruitful source of self-analysis; if she loved Elizabeth she could not love her mother, for one could not really love more than one person at a time, at least Joan was sure that she could not.

2

Alone in the schoolroom Elizabeth clasped her slim hands on her lap; she sat very upright in her chair. Suddenly she rose to her feet; she knew what was the matter with her pupil, she had had an illuminating thought and meant to lose no time in acting upon it. She went upstairs and knocked softly on the door of Colonel Ogden's bedroom. Mrs. Ogden opened it; she looked surprised.

"May I speak to you for a moment, Mrs. Ogden?"

Mrs. Ogden glanced at the bed to make certain that this intrusion had not wakened the sleeping patient, then she closed the door noiselessly behind her and the two faced each other on the landing. Something in Elizabeth's eyes startled her.

"Is anything wrong?" she faltered.

"I think we had better talk in the dining-room," was all that Elizabeth would say.

They went into the dining-room and shut the door; neither of them sat down.

"It's about Joan," Elizabeth began, "I'm worried about her."

"Why, is anything the matter?"

"I think," said Elizabeth, "that a great deal is going to be the matter unless something is done very soon."

"You frighten me, Elizabeth; for goodness' sake explain yourself."

"I don't want to frighten you, but I'm beginning to be frightened myself about Joan; she's been very queer for weeks, she looks terribly ill, and I think something is preying on her mind."

"Preying on her mind?"

"I think so—she seems unnatural—she isn't like Joan, somehow."

"But, I haven't noticed all this!" Mrs. Ogden's voice was cold. "Are you sure that you're not over-anxious, Elizabeth?"

"I'm sure I'm right. If you haven't noticed that Joan's ill, it must be because you have been so worried about Colonel Ogden."

"Really, Elizabeth, I cannot think it possible that I, the child's mother, should not have noticed what you say, were it true."

"Still, you haven't noticed it," said Elizabeth stubbornly.

"No, I have not noticed it, but I'm glad to have an opportunity of telling you what I have noticed; and that is that you systematically encourage the child to overwork."

Elizabeth stiffened. "She does overwork, though I have begged her not to, but I don't think it's that, entirely."

"Then what do you think it is?"

"Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Certainly—why not?"

"Because, when I do tell you, you'll get angry. Because it is a presumption on my part, I suppose, to say what I am going to say; because—oh! because after all I'm only the governess and you are her mother, but for all that I ought to tell you what I think."

"You bewilder me, Elizabeth, I can't imagine what all this means; I didn't know, you see, that Joan made you her confidante."

"She doesn't, and possibly that's a pity; I've never encouraged her to confide in me, and now I'm beginning to wonder whether I haven't been a fool."

"I think that I, and not you, Elizabeth, would be the person in whom Joan would confide."

"Yes, of course," said Elizabeth, but her voice lacked conviction.

"Elizabeth! I don't like all this; I should be sorry if we couldn't get on together; it would, I frankly admit, be a disadvantage for the children to lose you, but you must understand at once that I cannot, will not, allow you to usurp my prerogatives."

"I've never done so, knowingly, Mrs. Ogden."

"But you are doing it now. You appear to want to call me to book, at least your manner suggests it. I cannot understand what it is you are driving at; I wish you would speak out, I detest veiled hints."

"You don't like me, Mrs. Ogden; if I speak out you will like me even less——" Elizabeth's mind was working quickly; this might mean losing Joan—still, she must speak.

She continued: "Well, then, I think it's a mistake to play on the child's emotions as you do; Joan's not so staid and quiet as she seems. You may not realize how deeply she feels things, but she feels them horribly deeply—when you do them. I've watched you together and I know. You've done it for years, Mrs. Ogden, perhaps unconsciously, I don't know, but for years Joan has had a constant strain on her emotions. She loves you in the only way that Joan knows how to love, that is with every ounce of herself; there aren't any half tones about Joan, she sees things black or white but never grey, and I think, I feel, that she loves you too much. Oh, I know that what I'm saying must seem inexcusable, perhaps even ridiculous, but that's just it: I think Joan loves you too much. I think that underneath her quiet outside there is something very big and rather dangerous; an almost abnormally developed capacity for affection, and I think that it is this on which you play without cease, day in and day out. I feel as if you were always poking the fire, feeding it, blowing it until it's red hot, and I can't think it's right, Mrs. Ogden, that's all; I think it will be Joan's ruin."

"Elizabeth!"

"Wait, I must speak. Joan is brilliant, you know that she's brilliant, and that she ought to do something with her life. You must surely feel that she can't stay here in Seabourne for ever? She must—oh! if I could only find the right words—she must fulfil herself in some way—either marriage or work, at all events some interest outside of and beyond you. She's consuming herself even now, and what will she do later on? Yet, how can she come to fruition if she's drained dry before she begins to live at all? I don't know how I dare to speak to you like this, but I want your help. Joan is such splendid material; don't let her worry about you as she does, don't let her see that you are not a happy woman, don't let her spend herself on you!"

She paused, her knees shook a little, she felt that in another moment she would begin to cry, and emotions with her came hard.

Mrs. Ogden blanched. So it had come at last! This was what she had always known would happen; Elizabeth had dared to criticize her handling of Joan. She felt a blind rage towards her, a sudden longing to strike her. The barriers went down with a crash, primitive invectives sprang to her lips and she barely checked them in time. She choked.

"You dare to say this, Elizabeth?"

"I love Joan."

"What!"

"I love Joan, and I must save her, Mrs. Ogden."

"You? How dare you suggest that the child is more to you than she is to me; do you realize what Joan means to me?"

"Yes, it's because I do realize it——"

"Then be silent."

"I dare not."

Mrs. Ogden stamped her foot. "You shall be silent. And understand, please, that you will leave us when your notice expires; but in the meantime you will not interfere again between Joan and me, I will not tolerate it! I refuse to tolerate it!" She burst into a violent fit of weeping.

Elizabeth grew calm at the sight of her tears. "I am going to ask you to reconsider your decision to dismiss me," she said. "I want to go on teaching Joan, I shall not accept my notice to leave unless you give it me again, which I hope for my sake you will not do; what I have said, I have said from a conviction that it was my duty to speak plainly." Then she played skilfully in self-defence. "You see, Joan simply adores you."

Mrs. Ogden sobbed more quietly and became attentive. Elizabeth pressed her advantage home; she could not endure to lose Joan, and she didn't intend to lose her.

"Can't you see that Joan's love for you is no ordinary thing, that it's the biggest thing about her, that it is her, and that's why everything you do or say, however unintentional, plays on her feelings to an abnormal extent?"

Mrs. Ogden drew herself up. "I hope," she said stiffly, "that I'm quite capable of judging the depth of my child's affection. But I shall have to think over your request to remain with us, Elizabeth. I hardly think——" she paused.

"I am anxious to stay," said Elizabeth simply.

"Whether you stay or go, I consider that you owe me an apology."

"I'll give it very gladly, for a great deal that I've said must have seemed to you unwarrantable," Elizabeth replied.

Mrs. Ogden was silent. She longed to tell Elizabeth to go now at once, but her rage was subsiding. Colonel Ogden was still ill and governesses were not to be found easily or cheaply in Seabourne, at least not with Elizabeth's qualifications. There were many things to consider, so many that they rushed in upon her, submerging her mind in a tide of difficulties—perhaps, after all, she would accept the apology for the moment, and bide her time, but forgive Elizabeth? Never!

Elizabeth left the room. "She won't dismiss me," she thought, "I'm cheap, and she won't find anyone else to take my post at my salary; but I shall have to be more careful in future, it won't do to play with cards on the table. I behaved like an impetuous fool this afternoon. What is it about Joan that makes a fool of one? I shall stop on here until Joan breaks free—I must help her to break free when the time comes."

3

That night when the doctor called to see the colonel, Mrs. Ogden asked him to examine Joan.

"My governess is rather inclined to overwork the child," she told him, "but I don't think you will find much wrong with her."

Joan, dutifully stripping to the waist, was sounded and pronounced by the doctor to be in practically normal health. Too thin and a little anæmic, perhaps, and the heart action just a little nervous, but Mrs. Ogden was assured that she had no grounds for anxiety. The doctor advised less study and more open air; he patted Joan's shoulder and remarked comfortingly that he only wished all his patients were such healthy specimens. Then he gave her a mild nerve tonic, told her to eat well and go to bed early, shook hands cordially with Mrs. Ogden and departed.

CHAPTER TWELVE
1

COLONEL OGDEN was convalescent.

Every morning now when it was fine he went out in a bath chair, dragged by a very old man. The dreadful bend of the old man's shoulders as he tugged weakly with his hands behind him, struck Joan as an outrage. The old man shuffled too, he never seemed able to quite lift his feet; she wondered how many pairs of cheap boots he wore out in the year. It was the starting of the bath chair that was particularly horrible, the first strain; after that it went more easily. Muffled to the eyes and swathed in rugs, his feet planted firmly on the footstool, his hat jammed on vindictively, Colonel Ogden sat like a statue of outraged dignity, the ridiculous leather apron buttoned over his knees. Above his muffler his small blue eyes tried hard to glare in the old way, but the fire had gone out of them, and his voice coming weakly through the folds of his scarf, had already acquired the irritable whine of the invalid. Mrs. Ogden would stand, fussy and solicitous, on the steps to see him off, sometimes she would accompany him up and down the esplanade, adjusting his cushion, tucking in his rug, inquiring with forced solicitude whether he felt the wind cold, whether his chest ached, whether his heart was troublesome. The colonel endured, puffing out his cheeks from time to time as though an explosion were imminent, but it never came, or at least if it did come it was such a melancholy ghost of its former self as to be almost unrecognizable. And very deaf, a little rheumy in the eyes, and terribly bent in the back, the old bath-chair man tugged and tugged with his head shot forward at a tortoise-like angle, the dirty seams standing out on the back of his neck.

But though Colonel Ogden required a great deal of attention now that the nurse was gone, his wife's immediate anxiety regarding him was relieved, which gave her the time to brood constantly over Joan. The girl was seldom from her thoughts, she began to loom even larger than she had done before in her mother's life, to appear ten times more valuable and more desirable, now that Mrs. Ogden felt that a serious rival had declared herself. Elizabeth's words burnt and rankled; she rehearsed the scene with the governess many times a day in her mind and went to sleep with it at nights. She felt Elizabeth's personality to be well-nigh unendurable; she could never look at her now without remembering the grudge which she must always bear her, though a veneer of civility was absolutely necessary, for she did not intend to lose her just yet. She told herself that she kept her because she was still too tired to look for a successor, who must be found as soon as she recovered from the strain of the colonel's illness; but in her heart of hearts she knew that this was not her reason—she knew that she kept her because she was afraid of the stimulus to Joan's affection for Elizabeth that might result from an unconsidered action on her part. She was afraid to let Elizabeth go and afraid to let her stay, afraid of Elizabeth and mortally afraid of Joan.

She watched the girl with ever increasing suspicion, and what she saw convinced her that she was less responsive than she used to be. Joan had grown more silent and more difficult to understand. Now, the mother and daughter found very little to say to each other; when they were together their endearments were strained like those of people with a guilty secret. Yet even now there were moments when the mother thought that she recognized the old Joan in the almost exasperated flood of affection that would be poured out upon her. But she was not satisfied; these moments were of fleeting duration, spoilt by uncertainty, by lack of comprehension. There was something almost tragic about these two at this time, bound together as they were by a subtle and unrecognized tie, struggling to find each for herself and for the other some compensation, some fulfilment. But if Mrs. Ogden was deceived, even for a moment, her daughter was not. Joan knew that they never found what they sought and never would find it now, any more. She could not reason it out, she had nothing wherewith to reason, she was too young to rely on anything but instinct, but that told her the truth.

The Horror was still with her; she wanted to love Mrs. Ogden, she felt empty and disconsolate without that love. She longed to feel the old quick response when her mother bent towards her, the old perpetual romance of her vicinity. She was like a drug-taker from whom all stimulant has been suddenly removed; the craving was unendurable, dangerous alike to body and mind.

2

Now began a period of petty irritations, petty tyrannies and miseries. Mrs. Ogden watched! She was gentle and overtired and pathetic, but oh! so terribly watchful. Joan could feel her watching, watching her, watching Elizabeth. Things happened, only the merest trifles, yet they counted. One day it was a hat, another a pair of shoes or a pattern of knitting wool. Perhaps Elizabeth would say:

"Put your black hat on this afternoon, Joan; it suits you." Then Joan would look up and see Mrs. Ogden standing inside the dining-room door.

"Joan!"

"Yes, dearest?"

"I dislike you in that hat, put the blue one on, darling."

A thousand little unexpected things were always cropping up to give rise to these thinly veiled quarrels. Even Milly began to feel uncomfortable and ill at ease, but with I characteristic decision she solved the problem for herself.

"I shan't stay here when I'm bigger, Joan; I shall go away," she announced one day.

Joan was startled; the words made her uneasy, they reopened the eternal question, presenting a new facet. She began to ask herself whether she too did not long to go away, whether she would want to stay at Seabourne when she was older, and above all whether she loved her mother enough to stay for ever in Seabourne. They were sitting in the school-room, and Joan's eyes sought Elizabeth, who answered the unspoken thought. She turned to Joan with a quick, unusual gesture.

"Joan, you mustn't stay here always either."

"Not stay here, Elizabeth? Where should I go?"

"Oh, I don't know; to Cambridge perhaps, and then—oh, well, then you must work, do things with your life."

"But, Mother——"

Elizabeth was silent. Joan pressed her.

"Elizabeth, do you think Mother would ever consent?"

"I don't know; you have the brain to do it if you choose."

"But suppose it made her unhappy?"

"Why should it? She'll probably be very proud of you if you make good—in any case you'll have to leave her if you marry."

"But it might—oh! can't you see that it might make her unhappy, dreadfully unhappy?"

"What do you feel about it yourself, Joan; are you ambitious, I mean?"

Joan was silent for a moment, then she said: "I don't think I am really ambitious. I mean I don't think that I could ever push everything aside for the sake of some big idea; I hate being hurt and hurting, and I think you've got to do that if you're really ambitious; but I want to go on working, frightfully."

"Well, you'll probably get through your exam, all right."

"And if I do, what then?"

"Then your Oxford Local, I suppose."

"Yes, but then?"

"Well, then we shall have to consider. I should think Cambridge for you, Joan—though I don't know; perhaps Oxford is better in some respects." She paused and appeared to reflect.

Joan looked at her fixedly. She thought: "This is said to me in direct opposition to Mother; it's being said on purpose. Elizabeth hates her and I ought to hate Elizabeth, but I don't!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1

RICHARD BENSON came home towards the end of August after a visit to friends in Ireland. To Elizabeth's disappointment, Joan showed no pleasure at his return. However, it appeared that Richard had not forgotten her, for Mrs. Benson wrote insisting that she and Elizabeth should come to luncheon, as he had been asking after them.

They went to Conway House on the appointed day. Joan was acquiescent, she never offered much opposition to anything at this time unless it were interference with her self-imposed and ridiculous cramming. After all it was a pleasant luncheon, and Elizabeth, at all events, enjoyed it.

Joan thought: "I'm glad she looks happy and pleased, but I wish they'd asked Mother; I wonder why they didn't ask Mother?" Her mother's absence weighed upon her. Not that Mrs. Ogden had withheld a ready consent, she was glad that her girls had such nice neighbours, but Joan knew instinctively that she had felt hurt; she was beginning to know so much about her mother by instinct. She divined her every mood; it seemed to her to be like looking through a window-pane to look at Mrs. Ogden, and the view you saw beyond was usually deeply depressing. Mrs. Ogden had smiled when she kissed her good-bye, but the smile had been a little rueful, a little tremulous; it had seemed to say: "I know I'm not as young as I used to be, I expect they find me dull." Joan wondered if they did find her dull, and her heart ached.

She was thinking of her now as she tried to eat. Richard, more freckled and blunt-faced than ever, talked and joked in a kind of desperation; it seemed to him that something must be seriously wrong with Joan. Mrs. Benson's keen eyes watched the girl attentively, and what she saw mystified her. She took Elizabeth into the drawing-room after lunch, having first ordered Richard and Joan into the garden. When she and Elizabeth were alone together she began at once.

"What on earth's the matter with Joan, Elizabeth?"

"I don't know—why? Do you think she looks ill?"

"Don't you?"

"Yes."

"I was quite shocked to-day. I always feel interested in that child, and I should be dreadfully anxious if she belonged to me."

"Well, she's at a difficult age, you know."

"Oh, my dear, it's more than that; have you been letting her work too hard?"

"Oh!" said Elizabeth violently, "I'm sick to death of being asked that; of course she works too hard, but it isn't that, it's——"

"Yes?" queried Mrs. Benson.

"It's—oh! I don't know, Mrs. Benson, I can't put it into words, but it's an awful responsibility, somehow; I can't tell you how it worries me." Her voice shook.

Mrs. Benson patted her hand reassuringly. "Whatever it is, it's got on your nerves too, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth looked at her a little startled. Yes, it had got on her nerves, it was horribly on her nerves and had been for weeks. She longed to talk frankly and explain to this kind, commonplace woman the complicated situation as she saw it, to ask her advice. She began: "Joan's got something on her mind——" Then stopped.

"But of course she has," said Mrs. Benson.

"And she's growing—mentally, I mean. Oh, and physically too——"

"They all do that, Elizabeth."

"Yes, but—I don't understand it; at least, yes, I do understand it, only I can't see my way."

"Your way?"

"Yes, my way with Joan."

"Can't you try to rouse her? She seems to me to be getting very morbid."

"No, she's not—at least not in the way you mean. Don't think I'm mad, but Joan gives me such a queer feeling. I feel as though she'd been fighting, fighting, fighting to get out, to be herself, and that now she's not fighting any more, she's too tired."

"But, my dear child, what is it all about?"

"I think I know, in fact I'm sure I do, and yet I can't help her. I want her to go away from here some day, I want her to have a life of her own. Can't you see how it is? She's so much her mother's favourite—they adore each other."

Mrs. Benson did not speak for a little while, then she said: "I don't know Mrs. Ogden very well, but I think she might be a very selfish mother; but then, poor soul, she hasn't had much of a life, has she?"

Then Elizabeth let herself go, she heard her voice growing louder, but could not control it.

"I don't care, she has no right to make it up to herself with Joan. Joan's young and clever, and sensitive and dreadfully worth while. Surely she has a right to something in life beyond Seabourne and Mrs. Ogden? Joan has a right to love whom she likes, and to go where she likes and to work and be independent and happy, and if she can't be happy then she has a right to make her own unhappiness; it's a thousand times better to be unhappy in your own way than to be happy in someone else's. Joan wants something and I don't know what it is, but if it's Mrs. Ogden then it ought not to be, that's all. The child's eating her heart out and it's wrong, wrong, wrong! She dare not be herself because it might not be the self that Mrs. Ogden needs. She wants to go to Cambridge, but will she ever go? Why she's even afraid to be fond of me because Mrs. Ogden is jealous of me." She paused, breathless.

Mrs. Benson looked grave. "My dear," she said very quietly, "I sympathize, and I think I understand; but be careful."

Elizabeth thought: "No, you don't understand; you're a kind, good woman, but you don't understand in the least."

Aloud she said: "I'm afraid I seem violent, but I'm personally interested in Joan's possibilities, she's very clever and lovable."

Mrs. Benson assented. "Why not encourage her to come here more often," she suggested. "She and Violet are about the same age, and Violet's nearly always here in the holidays. Richard and Joan seemed to get on very well last year. Oh, talking of Richard; you know, I suppose, that he insists upon being a doctor?"

Elizabeth laughed. "Well, as long as he's a good doctor I suppose he won't kill anyone!" They both smiled now as they thought of Richard. "His father's furious," Mrs. Benson told her, "but it's no good being furious with Richard; you might as well get angry with an oak tree and slap it."

"Does he work well?"

"Oh, I believe so; you wouldn't think it to look at him, would you? but I hear that he's rather clever. Anyhow, he's a perfect darling, and what does it matter whether he's a doctor or a cabinet minister, so long as he's respectable!"

"Will he specialize eventually, do you think?"

"He wants to, if he can get his father to back him."

"Oh, but he will do that, of course. Does Richard say what he wants to specialize in?"

Mrs. Benson smiled again. "He does," she remarked with mock grimness. "He says he means to specialize in medical psychology—nerves, I believe is what it boils down to. Can you see Richard as a nerve specialist, Elizabeth?"

"Well, if having no nerves oneself goes to the making of a good nerve doctor, I should think he would succeed."

"He tells me he's certain to succeed, my dear; he takes it as a matter of course. If you could see the books he leaves about the house! Do you know, Elizabeth, I'm almost afraid for my Richard sometimes; it would be so awfully hard for him if he failed to make good, he's so sure of himself, you know. And it's not conceit; I don't know what it is—it's a kind of matter-of-fact self-confidence—it's almost impressive!"

2

Richard and Joan were walking up and down the path by the tennis lawn; they looked very young and lanky and pathetic, the one in his eagerness, the other in her resignation. Joan, as she listened to the enthusiastic sentences, wondered how anyone could care so much about anything.

He was saying: "It's ripping the feeling it gives you to know that you can do a thing, and to feel that you're going to do it well."

"But how can you be certain that you will do it well?" Joan inquired.

"I don't know, but one is certain—at least, I am."

"Will you live in Seabourne when you've taken your degree?"

"Good Lord, no, of course not! No one who wants to get on could do anything in a place like this!"

"It's not such a bad place," she protested. She felt an urgent need to uphold Seabourne just then.

"It's not a bad place for old people and mental deficients; no, I suppose it's not."

"But your mother isn't old and she isn't mentally deficient."

"Of course not; but she doesn't stick here. She goes up to London for months on end sometimes; besides, she's different!"

"I don't see how she's different. How is she different from my mother, for instance? And my mother never gets away from Seabourne."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say: "Oh! but she is different!" but he checked himself and said: "Well, perhaps some people can stick here and remain human; only I know I couldn't, that's all."

She longed to ask him about Cambridge, but she felt shy; his self-confidence was so overpowering, though she liked him in spite of it. It struck her that he had grown more self-confident since last Christmas; she remembered that then he had been dreadfully afraid of being "bottled "; now he didn't seem afraid of anything, of Seabourne least of all. She wondered what he would say if she told him her own trouble; it was difficult to imagine what effect her confidences would have on him; he would probably think them ridiculous and dismiss them with an abrupt comment.

"I suppose," she said drearily, "some people have to stick to Seabourne."

"There's no 'have to,'" he replied.

"Oh, yes, there is; that's where you don't know. Look at Elizabeth!"

"Elizabeth doesn't have to stay here; she's lazy, that's all that's the matter with her."

Joan flared at once: "If you think Elizabeth's lazy you can't know much about her; she's staying on here because of her brother. He's delicate, and he can't live alone, and he needs her; I think she's splendid!"

"Rot! He isn't a baby to need dry nursing. If Elizabeth had the will I expect she'd find the way. If Elizabeth stops here it's because she's taken root, it's because she likes it; I'm disappointed in Elizabeth!"

"She hates it!" said Joan with conviction.

He turned and stared at her. "Then why in heaven's name——" he began.

"Because everyone doesn't think only of themselves!" She was angry now; she had not been angry for so long that she quite enjoyed the excitement. "Because Elizabeth thinks of other people and wants to be decent to them, and doesn't talk and think only of her own career and of the things that she wants to do. She sacrifices herself, that's why she stays here, and if you can't understand that it's because you're not able to understand the kind of people that really count!"

They stopped and faced each other in the path; her eyes glowered, but his were twinkling though his mouth was grave. "If you're talking at me, Joan," he said solemnly, "then you may spare your breath, because you see I know I'm right; I know that even if Elizabeth is splendid and self-sacrificing and all the rest of it, she's dead wrong to waste it on that little dried up brother of hers. She ought to get out and do something for the world at large, or if she can't rise to that then she ought to do something for herself. I think it's a sin to let yourself get drained dry by anyone, I don't care who it is; that wasn't the sort of thing God gave us our brains for; it wasn't why He made us individuals."

Joan interrupted him: "But Elizabeth isn't drained dry; she's the cleverest woman I know."

"Yes, now, perhaps."

"She always will be," said Joan coldly.

He felt that he had gone too far; he didn't want to quarrel with her.

"I'm sorry," he said humbly. "It's my fault, I suppose. I mean I daresay I'm selfish and self-opinionated, and perhaps I'm not such great shakes, after all. Anyhow, you know I'm awfully fond of Elizabeth."

Joan was pacified. "One does get fond of her," she told him. "She's so calm and neat and masterful, so certain of herself and yet so awfully kind."

He changed the subject. "I'm swatting at Cambridge," he announced.

"Are you?"

He heard the interest in her voice and wondered why his casual remark had aroused it.

"Yes; when I've taken my science degree I shall go up to London for hospital work—and then "—he gave a sigh of contentment—"I shall get my Medical—and then Germany. You ought to go to Cambridge, Joan."

"Is it expensive? Does it cost much?" she asked him.

"Well, that depends. Why, are you really going?"

She hesitated. "Elizabeth would like me to."

"Oh, yes, she was there, wasn't she? Well, you won't be there when I am, I'm afraid; we'll just miss it by a year."

"I don't suppose I shall go at all."

"Why not?"

"Oh, lots of reasons. We're poor, you know."

"Then try for a scholarship."

"I'd probably fail if I did."

"Why on earth should you fail; you're very clever, aren't you?"

She began to laugh. "I don't know if I'm what you would call clever; you see you think yourself clever, and I'm not a bit like you. I like working, though, so perhaps I'd get through."

Elizabeth, coming towards them across the lawn, heard the laugh and blessed Richard.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1

IT is strange in this world, how events of momentous importance happen without any warning, and do not, as is commonly stated, "Cast their shadows before." Moreover, they reach us from the most unexpected quarters and at a time when we are least prepared, and such an event dropped out of space upon the Ogden household a few days later.

The concrete form which it took was simple enough—a small business envelope on Colonel Ogden's breakfast tray; he opened it, and as he read his face became suffused with excitement. He tried to get up, but the tea spilt in his efforts to remove the heavy tray from his lap.

"Mary!" he shouted, "Mary!"

Mrs. Ogden, who was presiding at the breakfast table, heard him call, and also the loud thumping of the stick which he now kept beside the bed. He used it freely to attract his family's attention to his innumerable needs. She rose hastily.

Joan and Milly heard the quick patter of her steps as she hurried upstairs, followed, in what seemed an incredibly short time, by her tread on the bedroom floor, and then the murmur of excited conversation. Joan sighed.

"Is it the butter or the bacon?" queried Milly.

Milly had come to the conclusion that her parents were unusually foolish; had she been capable of enough concentration upon members of her family, she would have cordially disliked them both; as it was they only amused her. At thirteen Milly never worried; she had a wonderful simplicity and clarity of outlook. She realized herself very completely, and did not trouble to realize anything else, except as it affected her monoideism. She was quite conscious of the strained atmosphere of her home, conscious that her father was intolerable, her mother nervous and irritating, and Joan, she thought, very queer. But these facts, while being in themselves disagreeable, in no way affected the primary issues of her life. Her music, her own personality, these were the things that would matter in the future so far as she was concerned. She had what is often known as a happy disposition; strangers admired her, for she was a bright and pretty child, and even friends occasionally deplored the fact that Joan was not more like her sister.

Upstairs in the bedroom the colonel, tousled and unshaven, was sitting very bolt upright in bed.

"It's Henrietta!" he said, extending the solicitor's letter in a hand which shook perceptibly.

"Your sister Henrietta?" inquired Mrs. Ogden.

"Naturally. Who else do you think it would be?—Well, she's dead!"

"Dead? Oh, my dear! I am sorry; why, you haven't heard from her for ages."

Colonel Ogden swallowed angrily. "Why the deuce can't you read the letter, Mary? Read the letter and you'll know all about it."

Mrs. Ogden took it obediently. It was quite brief and came from a firm of solicitors in London. It stated that Mrs. Henrietta Peabody, widow of the late Henry Clay Peabody, of Philadelphia, had died suddenly, leaving her estate, which would bring in about three hundred a year, to be equally divided between her two nieces, Joan and Mildred Ogden. The letter went on to say that Colonel and Mrs. Ogden were to act as trustees until such time as their children reached the age of twenty-one years or married, but that the will expressly stated that the income was not be accumulated or diverted in any way from the beneficiaries, it being the late Mrs. Peabody's wish that it should be spent upon the two children equally for the purpose of securing for them extra advantages. The terms of the letter were polite and tactful, but as Mrs. Ogden read she had an inkling that her sister-in-law Henrietta had probably made rather a disagreeable will. She glanced at her husband apprehensively.

"It means——" she faltered, "it means——"

"It means," shouted the colonel, "that Henrietta must have been mad to make such a will; it means that from now on my own children can snap their fingers under my nose; it means that I have ceased to have any control over members of my own family. A more outrageous state of affairs I never heard of! What have I ever done, I should like to know, to be insulted like this? Why should this money be left over my head? One would think Henrietta imagined I was the sort of man to neglect the interests of my own children; she hasn't even left the income to me for life! Did the woman wish to insult me? Upon my word, a pretty state of affairs! Think of it, I ask you; Milly thirteen and Joan fifteen, and a hundred and fifty a year to be spent at once on each of 'em. It's bedlam! And mark you, I am under orders to see that the money is spent entirely upon them; I, the father that bred them, I have no right to touch a penny of it!" He paused and leant back on his pillows exhausted.

Through the myriads of ideas that surged into her brain Mrs. Ogden was conscious of one dominating thought that beat down all the others like a sledge-hammer: "Joan—how would this affect Joan?"

She tried to calculate hastily how much she could claim for the children in her housekeeping; she supposed vaguely that Elizabeth's salary would come out of the three hundred a year; that would certainly be a relief. Then there were doctors and dentists, clothes and washing. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was conscious of a faint rejoicing that never again would she have to shed so many tears over current expenses, and a faint sense of pride in the knowledge that her daughters were now independent. But, though these thoughts should have been consoling, they could not push their way to the foreground of her consciousness, which was entirely occupied at that moment by an immense fear; the fear of independence for Joan. Colonel Ogden was looking at her; clearly he expected her to sympathize. She pulled herself together.

"After all, James," she ventured, "it's a great thing for Joan and Milly, and it will make a difference in our expenses."

He glared. "Oh, naturally, Mary, I could hardly expect you to see the situation in its true light; I could hardly expect you to realize the insult that my own sister has seen fit to put on me."

"Really, James," said Mrs. Ogden angrily, stung into retort by this childish injustice, "I understand perfectly all you're saying, but I do think you ought to be grateful to Henrietta. I certainly am, and even if you don't approve of her will, I don't see that there's anything to do but to look on the bright side of things."

"Bright side, indeed!" taunted the colonel. "A pretty bright side you'll find developing before long. Not that I begrudge my own children any advantages; I should think Henrietta ought to have known that. No, what I resent, and quite rightly too, is the public lack of confidence in me that she has been at such pains to show; that's the point."

"The point is," thought Mrs. Ogden, "whether Joan will now be in a position to go to Cambridge. This business will play directly into Elizabeth's hands." Aloud she said: "Am I to tell the children, James?"

"You can tell them any damn thing you please. If you don't tell them they'll hear about it from somebody else, I suppose; but I warn you fairly that when you do tell them, you can add that I intend to preserve absolute discipline in my household, I'll have no one living under the roof with me who don't realize that I'm the master."

"But, my dear James," his wife protested, "they're nothing but children still; I don't suppose for a moment they'll understand what it means. I don't suppose it would ever enter their heads to want to defy you."

2

She turned and left the room, going slowly downstairs. The children were still at breakfast when she reached the dining-room. As they looked up, something in their mother's expression told them of an unusual occurrence; it was an expression in which pride, apprehension and excitement were oddly mingled. Mrs. Ogden sat down at the head of the table and cleared her throat.

"I have very serious news for you, children," she began. "Your Aunt Henrietta is dead."

The children evinced no emotion; they had heard of their Aunt Henrietta in America, but she had never been more than a name. Mrs. Ogden glanced from one to the other of her daughters; she did not quite know how to explain to them the full significance of the news, and yet she did not wish to keep it back. Her maternal pride and generosity struggled with her outraged dignity. She felt the situation to be quite preposterous, and in a way she sympathized with her husband's indignation; she was of his own generation, after all. Yet knowing him as she did, she felt a guilty and secret understanding of Henrietta Peabody's motive. She told herself that if only she were perfectly certain of Joan, she could find it in her to be grateful to the departed Henrietta. She began to speak again.

"I have something very important to tell you. It's something that affects both of you. It seems that your Aunt Henrietta, apart from her pension, had an income of three hundred pounds a year, and this three hundred a year she has left equally divided between you. That means that you will have one hundred and fifty pounds a year each from now on."

Her eyes were eagerly scanning Joan's face. Joan saw their appeal, though she did not understand it; she left her place slowly and put her arm round her mother.

Milly clapped her hands. "A hundred and fifty a year and all my own!" she cried delightedly.

"Shut up!" ordered Joan. "Who cares whether you've got a hundred and fifty a year or not? Besides, anyhow, you're only a kid; you won't be allowed to spend it now."

"It isn't now," said Milly thoughtfully. "It's afterwards that I care about."

Mrs. Ogden ignored her younger daughter. What did it matter what Milly felt or thought? She groped for Joan's hand and squeezed it.

"I think I ought to tell you," she said gravely, "that your father is very much upset at this news; he's very much hurt by what your aunt has done. I can understand and sympathize with his feelings. You see he knows that he has always been a good father to you, and it would have been more seemly had this money been left to him, though, of course, your father and I have control of it until you each become twenty-one years old or get married."

Something prompted her to make the situation quite clear to her children. She had another motive for telling them, or at all events for telling Joan, exactly how things stood; she wanted to know the worst at once. She knew anything would be more endurable than uncertainty as to how this legacy would affect Joan.

The children were silent; something awkward in the situation impressed them; they longed to be alone to talk it over. Mrs. Ogden left the room to interview the cook; she had had her say, and she felt now that she could only await results.

3

As the door closed behind her they stared at each other incredulously. Joan was the first to speak.

"What an extraordinary thing!" she said.

Milly frowned. "You are queer; I don't believe you're really pleased. I believe you're almost sorry."

"I don't know quite what I am," Joan admitted. "It seems to worry Mother, though I don't see why it should; but I have a feeling that that's going to spoil it."

"Oh, you always find something to spoil everything. Why should it worry Mother? It doesn't worry me; I think we're jolly lucky. I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk to Doddsie this very day about going to the Royal College of Music."

Joan scented trouble. Would Milly's little violin master side with her when he knew of his pupil's future independence?

"You'd better look out," she warned. "You talk as though you had the money now. Father won't agree to your going up to London, and anyhow you're much too young. For goodness' sake go slow; one gets so sick of rows!"

Milly smiled quietly; she felt that it was no good arguing with Joan; Joan was always apprehensive and on the look-out for trouble. Milly knew what she wanted to do and she intended to do it; after all, she reckoned, she wouldn't remain thirteen years old for ever, and when the time came for her to go to London to London she meant to go, so there was no good fussing. A glow of satisfaction and gratitude began to creep over her; she thought almost tenderly of Aunt Henrietta.

"Poor Aunt Henrietta!" she remarked in a sympathetic voice. "I hope it didn't hurt her—the dying, I mean."

Joan looked across at her sister; she thought: "A lot you really care whether it hurt her or not!"

The front door bell rang; they knew that decided ring for Elizabeth's, and leaving the table they hurried to the schoolroom. Elizabeth was unpinning her hat; she paused with her arms raised to her head, divining some unusual excitement. She looked at Joan, waiting for her to speak. Joan read the unvoiced question in her eyes. But before she could answer, words burst from Milly's lips in a flood; Elizabeth had heard all about it in less than a minute, including all Milly's plans for the future. During this recital Elizabeth smiled a little, but her eyes were always on Joan's face. Presently she said:

"This will help you too, Joan."

Joan was silent; she understood quite well what was meant. Elizabeth had put into words a feeling against which she had been fighting ever since her mother had told her the news—a triumphant, possessive kind of feeling, the feeling that now there was no valid reason why she should not go to Cambridge or anywhere else for that matter. She looked at Elizabeth guiltily, but there was no guilt in Elizabeth's answering smile; on the contrary, there was much happiness, a triumphant happiness that made Joan feel afraid.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1

AFTER all, the novelty of the situation wore off very quickly. In a few weeks' time the children had got quite accustomed to the thought of a future hundred and fifty a year; it did not appear to make any difference to their everyday lives. To be sure an unknown man arrived from London one day and remained closeted with Colonel Ogden for several hours. The children understood that he had come from the solicitors in order to discuss the details of their inheritance, but what took place at that interview was never divulged, and they soon ceased to speculate about it.

Could they but have known it the colonel had raged at considerable length over what he considered the gross insult that his sister had put upon him. It had been revealed to him as he read the will that a direct slight had been intended, that Henrietta had not scrupled to let him know, with as much eloquence as the legal phraseology permitted, that she was sorry for her nieces, and that she knew a trick worth two of making them dependent on their father for future benefits. The lawyer from London did not appear to see any way out of the difficulty; he had been politely sympathetic, but had in the main contented himself with pointing out the excellence of the late Mrs. Peabody's investments. The estate could be settled up very quickly.

2

Joan was conscious that she had changed somehow, and was working with a new zest. She realized that whereas before her aunt's death she had worked as an antidote to her own unhappiness, she was now working for a much more invigorating purpose, working with a well-defined hope for the future. The examination for which she had slaved so long now loomed very near, but she was curiously free from apprehension, filled with a quiet confidence. Her brain was clearing; she slept better, ate better and thought of Mrs. Ogden less. She felt quite certain that she would pass, and the nearer the examination came the less she worked; it was as though some instinct of self-preservation in her had asserted itself at last. Elizabeth encouraged her new-found idleness to the full; it was a lovely autumn, warm and fine, and together they spent the best part of their days on the cliffs. Milly rejoiced in the general slackness; it gave her the time she needed for practising her violin. Sometimes she would go with them, but more often now Elizabeth let her off the detested walks, wanting to be alone with Joan.

Joan was surprised to find that she was gradually worrying less about her mother, that it seemed less important, less tragic when Mrs. Ogden complained of a headache. With this new-found normality her affection did not lessen; on the contrary, she ceased to doubt it, but together with other things it had begun to change in quality. It seemed to her as though she had acquired an invisible pair of scales, on to which she very gently lifted Mrs. Ogden's words and actions.

Sometimes, according to her ideas, Mrs. Ogden would be found wanting, but this neither shocked nor estranged her, for at other times her mother would give good measure and overflowing. But this weighing process was not romantic; it killed with one blow a vast deal of sentimentality. Joan began to realize that Mrs. Ogden's cough did not necessarily point to delicate lungs, that her headaches were largely the outcome of a worrying disposition, and occasionally a comfortable way out of a difficult situation; in fact, that Mrs. Ogden was no more tragic and no more interesting, and at the same time no less interesting, than many other people.

3

A new factor entered into Joan's life at this period, and may have been responsible for partially detaching her interest from her mother. Joan had begun to mature—she was growing up. It was impossible to study as she had done without gradually realizing that life offered many aspects which she did not understand. It would have been unlike her to dismiss a problem once she had become conscious of it. This new problem filled her with no shyness and no excitement, but she realized that certain emotional experiences played an immensely important part in the universal scheme. She had been considering this for some time, gradually realizing more and more clearly that there must be a key to the riddle, which she did not possess. It was not only her books that had begun to puzzle her—there were people—their lives—their emotions—above all their unguarded words, dropped here and there and hastily covered up with such grotesque clumsiness. She felt irritated and restless, and wanted to know things exactly as they stood in their true proportion one to the other. She shrank from questioning her mother; something told her that this ought not to be the case, but she could not bring herself to take the plunge. However, she meant to know the truth about certain things, and having dismissed the thought of questioning Mrs. Ogden she decided that Elizabeth should be her informant.

There was no lack of opportunity; the long warm afternoons of idleness on the cliffs encouraged introspection and confidences. Joan chose one of these occasions to confront Elizabeth with a series of direct questions. Elizabeth would have preferred to shirk the task that her pupil thrust upon her. Not that the facts of life had ever struck her as repulsive or indecent; on the contrary, she had always taken them as a matter of course, and had never been able to understand why free discussion of them should be forbidden. With any other pupil, she told herself, she would have felt completely at her ease, and she realized that her embarrassment was owing to the fact that it was Joan who asked. She fenced clumsily.

"I can't see that these things enter into your life at all, at the present moment," she said. "I can't see the necessity for discussing them."

But Joan was obdurate. "I see it," she replied, "and I'd like to hear the truth from you, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth knew that she must make up her mind quickly; she must either refuse to discuss these things with Joan, or lie to her, or tell her the truth, which was after all very simple, and she chose the latter course. She watched the effect of her words on her pupil a little apprehensively, but Joan did not seem disturbed, showing very little surprise and no emotion.

4

That long and intimate talk on the cliffs had not left Joan unmoved, however; underneath the morbidity and exaggerated sensitiveness of her nature flowed a strong stream of courage and common sense. The knowledge that Elizabeth had imparted acted as a stimulant and sedative in one; Joan felt herself to be in possession of the truth and thus endowed with a new dignity and new responsibility towards life. She began to put everyday things to the touchstone of her new knowledge, to try to the best of her ability to see them and people in their true proportion, and then to realize herself. Material lay near her hand for this entrancing study; there was Elizabeth, for instance, and her mother. Shyly at first, but with ever growing courage, she began to analyse Mrs. Ogden from this fresh aspect, to select a niche for her and then to put her in it, to decide the true relativity which her mother bore to life in general. Joan, although she could not have put it into words, had begun to realize cause and effect. Mrs. Ogden did not suffer by this analysis, but she stood revealed in her true importance and her true insignificance, it deprived her for ever of the power of imposing upon her daughter. If she lost in this respect she gained in another, for Joan's feelings for her now became more stable and, if anything, more protective. She saw her divested of much romance, it is true, but not divested of her claim to pity. She saw her as the creature of circumstances, as the victim of those natural laws which, while being admirably adapted for the multitude, occasionally destroyed the individual. She realized as she had never been able to realize before the place that she herself held in her mother's life; it was borne slowly in upon her that she represented a substitute for all that Mrs. Ogden had been defrauded of.

A few months ago such a realization would have tormented her, would have led to endless self-analysis, to innumerable doubts and fears lest she in return could not give enough, but Joan's mind was now too fully occupied for morbidity, it was busy with the realization of her own personality. She knew herself as an individual capable of hacking out a path in life, capable, perhaps, of leading a useful existence; and this knowledge filled her with a sense of importance and endeavour. She found herself able to face calmly the fact that her mother could never mean to her what she meant to her mother; to her mother she was a substitute, but she, Joan, was not conscious of needing a substitute. She did not formulate very clearly what she needed, did not know if she really needed anything at all except work, but one thing she did know and that was that her mental vision stretched far beyond Seabourne and away into the vistas of the great Untried.

Things were as they were, people were as they were, she was as she was and her mother was as she was. And Elizabeth? Elizabeth she supposed was as she was and that was the end of it. You could not change or alter the laws that governed individual existence, but she meant to make a success of life, if she could; her efforts might be futile, they probably would be; nevertheless they were worth making. She concluded that individual effort occasionally did succeed, though the odds were certainly against it; it had failed in Mrs. Ogden's case, and she began to realize that hitherto it had failed in Elizabeth's; but would Elizabeth always fail? She saw her now as a creature capable of seizing hold of life and using it to the full. Elizabeth, so quiet, so painfully orderly, so immaculately neat, and in her own way so interesting, suddenly became poignantly human to Joan; she speculated about her.

And meanwhile the examination drew nearer. Now it was Elizabeth who grew nervous and restless, and Joan who supported her; it was extraordinary how nervous Elizabeth did grow, she could neither control nor conceal it, at all events from her observant pupil. Joan began to understand how much it meant to Elizabeth that she should do well, and she was touched. But she herself could not feel any apprehension; she seemed at this time to have risen above all her doubts and fears. It is possible, however, that Elizabeth's perturbation might in time have reacted on her pupil had fate not interposed at the psychological moment.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1

SURELY the last place in the world where anyone would have expected to meet a tragedy was in the High Street of Seabourne. There never was a street so genteel and so lacking in emotion; it was almost an indecency to associate emotion with it, and yet it was in the High Street that a thing happened which was to make a lasting impression on Joan. She was out with Elizabeth and Milly early one afternoon; they were feeling dull, and conversation flagged; their minds were concentrated on innumerable small commissions for Mrs. Ogden. It was a bright and rather windy day, having in the keen air the first suggestion of coming winter. The High Street was very empty at that hour, and stretched in front of them ugly and shabby and painfully unimportant. Hidden from sight just round the corner, a little bell went clanging and tinkling; it was the little bell attached to the cart of the man who ground knives and scissors every Thursday. A tradesman's boy clattered down the street on a stout unclipped cob, a basket over his arm, and somewhere in a house near by a phonograph was shouting loudly.

Then someone screamed, not once but many times. It was an ungainly sound, crude with terror. The screams appeared to be coming from Mrs. Jenkins's, the draper's shop, whither Elizabeth was bent; and then before any of them realized what was happening, a woman had rushed out into the street covered in flames. The spectacle she made, horrible in itself, was still more horrible because this was the sort of thing that one heard of or read of but never expected to see. Through the fire which seemed to engulf her, her arms were waving and flapping in the air. Joan noticed that her hair, which had come down, streamed out in the wind, a mass of flame. The woman, still screaming, turned and ran towards them, and as she ran the wind fanned the flames. Then Elizabeth did a very brave thing. She tore off the long tweed coat she was wearing, and running forward managed somehow to wrap it round the terrified creature. It seemed to Joan as though she caught the woman and pressed her against herself, but it was all too sudden and too terrible for the girl to know with any certainty what happened; she was conscious only of an overwhelming fear for Elizabeth, and found herself tearing at her back, trying to pull her away; and then suddenly something, a mass of something, was lying on the pavement with Elizabeth bending over it.

Elizabeth looked over her shoulder. "Are you there, Joan?" The voice sounded very matter of fact.

Joan sprang to her side. "Oh, Elizabeth!"

"I want you to run to the chemist and tell him what's happened. Get him to come back with you at once; he'll know what to bring, and send his assistant to fetch the doctor, while I see to getting this poor soul into the house."

Joan turned to obey. A few moments ago the street had been practically empty, but now quite a throng of people were pressing forward towards Elizabeth. Joan shouldered her way through them; half unconsciously she noticed their eager eyes, and the tense, greedy look on their faces. There were faces there that she had known nearly all her life, respectable middle-class faces, the faces of Seabourne tradespeople, but now somehow they looked different; it was as though a curtain had been drawn aside and something primitive and unfamiliar revealed. She felt bewildered, but nothing seemed to matter except obeying Elizabeth. As she ran down the street she saw Milly crying in a doorway; she felt sorry for her, she looked so sick and faint, but she did not stop to speak to her.

2

When she returned with the chemist the crowd was denser than ever, but all traces of the accident had disappeared. She supposed that Elizabeth must have had the woman carried into the shop.

Inside, all was confusion; somewhere from the back premises a child wailed dismally. A mass of unrolled material was spread in disorder upon the counter, behind which stood an assistant in tears. She recognized Joan and pointed with a shaking finger to a door at the back of the shop. The door opened on to a narrow staircase, and Joan paused to look about her; the old chemist was hard on her heels, peering over her shoulders, his arms full of packages. A sound reached them from above, low moaning through which, sharp and clear, came Elizabeth's voice:

"Is that you, Joan? Hurry up, please."

They mounted the stairs and entered a little bedroom; on the bed lay the servant who had been burnt. Elizabeth was sitting beside her, and in a corner of the room stood Mrs. Jenkins, looking utterly helpless. Elizabeth looked critically at Joan; what she saw appeared to satisfy her, for she beckoned the girl to come close.

"We must try and get the burnt clothes off her," she said. "Have you brought plenty of oil, Mr. Ridgway?"

The chemist came forward, and together the three of them did what they could, pending the doctor's arrival. As they worked the smell of burnt flesh pervaded the air, and Mrs. Jenkins swayed slightly where she stood. Elizabeth saw it and sent her downstairs; then she looked at Joan, but Joan met her glance fearlessly.

"Are you equal to this?"

Joan nodded.

"Then do exactly what we tell you."

Joan nodded again. They worked quickly and silently, almost like people in a dream, Joan thought. There was something awful in what they did, something new and awful in the spectacle of a mutilated fellow-creature, helpless in their hands. Into Joan's shocked consciousness there began to creep a wondering realization of her own inadequacy. Yet she was not failing; on the contrary, her nerve had steadied itself to meet the shock. After a little while she found that her repulsion was giving way to a keen and merciful interest, but she knew that all three of them, so willing and so eager to help, were hampered by a lack of experience. Even Mr. Ridgway's medical knowledge was inadequate to this emergency. Apparently Elizabeth realized this too, for she glanced at the window from time to time and paused to listen; Joan knew that she was waiting in a fever of impatience for the doctor to arrive. The woman stirred and moaned again.

"Will she die?" Joan asked.

Elizabeth looked at the chemist; he was silent. At last he said: "I'm afraid she's burnt in the third degree."

Joan thought: "I ought to know what that means, but I don't."

Then she thought: "The poor thing's suffering horribly, she's probably going to die before the doctor comes, and not one of us really knows how to help her; how humiliating."

At that moment they heard someone hurrying upstairs. As the doctor came into the room they stood aside. He examined the patient, touching her gently, then he took dressings from his bag. He went to work with great care and deftness, and Joan was filled with admiration as she watched him. She had no idea who he was; he was not the Ogdens' doctor, this was a younger man altogether. Then into her mind flashed the thought of Richard Benson. She wondered why she had laughed at Richard when he had talked of becoming a doctor. Was it because he was so conceited? But surely it was better to be conceited than inadequate!

The doctor was unconscious of her scrutiny; from time to time he spoke to Elizabeth, issuing short, peremptory orders. Elizabeth stood beside him, capable and quiet, and Joan felt proud of her because even in this extremity she managed somehow to look tidy.

"I think I've done all that I can, for the moment," he said. "I'll come again later on."

Elizabeth nodded, her mouth was drawn down at the corners and her arms hung limply at her sides. Something in her face attracted the doctor's attention and his glance fell to her hands.

"Let me look at your hands," he said.

"It's nothing," Elizabeth assured him, but her voice sounded far away.

"I'm afraid I disagree with you; your hands are badly burnt, you must let me dress them." He turned to the dressings on the table.

She held out her hands obediently, and Joan noticed for the first time that they were injured. The realization that Elizabeth was hurt overwhelmed her; she forgot the woman on the bed, forgot everything but the burnt hands. With a great effort she pulled herself together, forcing herself to hold the dressings, watching with barely concealed apprehension, lest the doctor should inflict pain. She had thought him so deft a few minutes ago, yet now he seemed indescribably clumsy. But if he did hurt it was not reflected on Elizabeth's face; her lips tightened a little, that was all.

"Anywhere else?" the doctor demanded.

"Nowhere else," Elizabeth assured him. "I think my hands must have got burnt when I wrapped my coat round her."

The doctor stared. "It's a mystery to me," he said, "how you managed to do all you did with a pair of hands like that."

"I didn't feel them so much at first," she told him.

The doctor called Mrs. Jenkins and gave her a few instructions; then he hurried Elizabeth downstairs into the little shop, leaving her there while he went to find a cab.

Joan stood silently beside her; neither of them spoke until the fly arrived, then Joan said: "I shall come home with you, Elizabeth."

"I'll send in two nurses," said the doctor. "Your friend here will want help too."

Joan gave him Elizabeth's address.

3

During the drive they were silent again, there didn't appear to be anything to say. Joan felt lonely; something in what had happened seemed to have put Elizabeth very far away from her; perhaps it was because she could not share her pain. The fly drew up at the door; she felt in Elizabeth's coat pocket for her purse and paid the man; then she rang. There was no one in the house but the young general servant, who looked frightened when she saw the bandaged hands. Joan realized that whatever there was to do must be done by her; that Elizabeth the dominating, the practical, was now as helpless as a baby. The thought thrilled her.

They went slowly upstairs to the bedroom. Joan had been in the house before but never in that room; she paused instinctively at the door, feeling shy. Something told her that by entering this bedroom she was marking an epoch in her relations with Elizabeth, so personal must that room be; she turned the handle and they went in. As she ministered to Elizabeth she noticed the room, and a feeling of disappointment crept over her. Plain white painted furniture, white walls and a small white bed. A rack of books and on the dressing-table a few ivory brushes and boxes. The room was very austere in its cold whiteness; it was like Elizabeth and yet it was not like Elizabeth; like the outward Elizabeth perhaps, but was it like the real Elizabeth? Then her eyes fell upon a great tangle of autumn flowers, standing in a bright blue jar on the chest of drawers; something in the strength and virility of their colouring seemed to gibe and taunt the prim little room; they were there as a protest, or so the girl felt. She wondered what it was in Elizabeth that had prompted her to choose these particular flowers and the bright blue jar that they stood in. Perhaps Elizabeth divined her thoughts, for she smiled as she followed the direction of Joan's eyes.

"A part of me loves them, needs them," she said.

Very gently Joan helped her to undress; it was a painful and tedious business. Joan noticed with surprise that Elizabeth's clothes were finer than Mrs. Ogden's; it gave her a pleasure to touch them. Her nightgown was of fine lawn, simple in design but very individual. Strange, oh! strange, how little she really knew Elizabeth. She looked entirely different with her hair down. Joan felt that in this new-found intimacy something was lost and something gained. Never again could Elizabeth represent authority in her pupil's eyes; that aspect of their relationship was lost for ever; and with it a prop, a staff that she had grown to lean on. But in its place there was something else, something infinitely more intimate and interesting. As she helped her into bed, she was conscious of a curious embarrassment. Elizabeth glanced at the clock; it was long past tea-time.

"Good Heavens, Joan, you simply must go! And do see your mother at once, and tell her what's happened. Do go; the nurse will be here any moment."

Joan stood awkwardly beside the bed; she wanted to do something, to say something; a lump rose in her throat, but her eyes remained dry. She moved towards the door. Elizabeth watched her go, but at that moment she was conscious of nothing but pain and was thankful that Joan went when she did.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1

MRS. OGDEN had been waiting at the dining-room window and ran to open the front door as Joan came down the street. The girl looked worn out and dispirited; she walked slowly and her head was slightly bowed as she pushed open the gate.

Mrs. Ogden, who had heard from Milly of the accident, had not intended to remonstrate at Joan's prolonged absence. On the contrary, while she had been waiting anxiously for her daughter's return, she had been planning the manner in which she would welcome her, fold her in her arms; poor child, it was such a dreadful thing for her to have seen! As the time dragged on and Joan did not come a thousand fears had beset her. Had Joan perhaps been burnt too? Had she fainted? What had happened, and why had Elizabeth not let her know?

Milly's account had been vague and unsatisfactory; she had rushed home in a panic of fear and was now in bed. Her sudden and dramatic appearance had upset the colonel, and he too had by now retired to his room, so that Mrs. Ogden, who had longed to go and ascertain for herself the true state of affairs, had been compelled to remain in the house, a prey to anxiety.

At the sight of her daughter safe and sound, however, she temporarily lapsed from tenderness. The reaction was irresistible; she felt angry with Joan, she could have shaken her.

"Well, really!" she began irritably, "this is a nice time to come home; I must say you might have let me know where you were."

Joan sighed and pushed past her gently.

"I'm so sorry," she said, "but you see there was so much to do. Oh, I forgot, you haven't heard." She paused.

"Milly has told me; at least, she has told me something; the child's been terrified. I do think Elizabeth must be quite mad to have allowed either of you to see such a horrible thing."

"Elizabeth put out the fire," said Joan dully.

"Elizabeth put out the fire? What do you mean?"

"She wrapped the woman in her coat and her hands got burnt."

"Her hands got burnt? Where is she now, then?"

"At home in bed; I've just come from her."

"Is that where you've been all these hours? I see, you've been home with Elizabeth, and you never let me know!"

"I couldn't, Mother, there was no one to send."

"Then why didn't you come yourself? You must have known that I'd be crazy with anxiety!"

Joan collapsed on a chair and dropped her head on her hand. She felt utterly incapable of continuing the quarrel, it seemed too futile and ridiculous. How could her mother have expected her to leave Elizabeth; she felt that she should not have come home even now, she should have stayed by her friend and refused to be driven away. She looked up, and something in her tired young eyes smote her mother's heart; she knelt down beside her and folded her in her arms.

"Oh, my Joan, my darling," she whispered, pressing the girl's head down on her shoulder. "It's only because I was so anxious, my dearest—I love you too much, Joan."

Joan submitted to the embrace quietly with her eyes closed; neither of them spoke for some minutes. Mrs. Ogden stretched out her hand and stroked the short, black hair with tremulous fingers. Her heart beat very fast, she could feel it in her throat. Joan stirred; the gripping arm was pressing her painfully.

Mrs. Ogden controlled herself with an effort; there was so much that she felt she must say to Joan at that moment; the words tingled through her, longing to become articulate. She wanted to cry out like a primitive creature; to scream words of entreaty, of reproach, of tenderness. She longed to humble herself to this child, beseeching her to love her and her only, and above all not to let Elizabeth come between them. But even as the words formed themselves in her brain she crushed them down, ashamed of her folly.

"I hope Elizabeth was not much burnt," she forced herself to say.

Joan sat up. "It's her hands," she answered unsteadily.

Mrs. Ogden kissed her. "You must lie down for a little; this thing has been a great shock, of course, and I think you've been very brave."

Joan submitted readily enough; she was thankful to get away; she wanted to lie on her bed in a darkened room and think, and think and think.

2

The days that followed were colourless and flat. Joan took to wandering about the house, fidgeting obviously until the hour arrived when she could get away to Elizabeth.

On the whole Elizabeth seemed glad of her visits, Joan thought. No doubt she was dull, lying there alone with her hands on a pillow in front of her. The nurse went out every afternoon, and Joan was careful to time her visits accordingly. But it seemed to the girl that Elizabeth had changed towards her, that far from opening up new fields of intimacy Elizabeth's condition had set up a barrier. She was acutely conscious of this when they were alone together. She felt that whatever they talked about now was forced and trivial, that they might have said quite different things to each other; then whose fault was it, hers or Elizabeth's? She decided that it was Elizabeth's. Her hurried visits left her with a feeling of emptiness, of dissatisfaction; she came away without having said any of the clever and amusing things that she had so carefully prepared, with a sense of having been terribly dull, of having bored Elizabeth.

Elizabeth assured her that the burns were healing, but she still looked very ill, which the nurse attributed to shock. Joan began to dislike the nurse intensely, without any adequate reason. Once Joan had taken some flowers; she had chosen them carefully, remembering that one part of Elizabeth loved bright flowers. It had not been very easy to find what she wanted, and the purchase had exhausted her small stock of money. But when she had laid them shyly on the bed Elizabeth had not looked as radiantly pleased as she had expected; she had thanked her, of course, and admired the flowers, but something had been lacking in her reception of the offering; it was all very puzzling.

Mrs. Ogden said nothing; she bided her time and secretly recorded another grudge against Elizabeth. She was pleased with a new scheme which she had evolved, of appearing to ignore her. Acting upon this inspiration, she carefully forbore to ask after her when Joan came home, and if, as was usually the case, information was volunteered, Mrs. Ogden would change the subject. Colonel Ogden was not so well, and this fact gave her an excuse for making the daily visit to Elizabeth difficult if not impossible. The colonel needed constant attention, and a thousand little duties were easily created for Joan. Joan was not deceived, she saw through the subterfuge, but could not for the life of her find any adequate excuse for shirking the very obvious duty of helping with the invalid.

When she was not kept busy with her father, her mother would advise her to study. She had been in the habit of discouraging what she called "Elizabeth's cramming system," yet now she seemed anxious that Joan should work hard, reminding her that the examination was only two weeks distant, and expressing anxiety as to the result. Colonel Ogden made no secret of his preference for his younger daughter. It was Milly's company that he wanted, and because she managed cleverly to avoid the boredom of these daily tasks, the colonel's disappointment was vented on Joan. He sulked and would not be comforted. At this time Mrs. Ogden's headaches increased in frequency and intensity, and she would constantly summon Joan to stroke her head, which latter proceeding was supposed to dispel the pain. Joan felt no active resentment at what she recognized as a carefully laid plot. Something of nobility in her was touched and sorry. Sometimes, as she sat in her mother's darkened bedroom stroking the thin temples in silent obedience, she would be conscious of a sense of shame and pity because of the transparency of the deception practised.

In spite of Mrs. Ogden, she managed to see Elizabeth, who was getting better fast; she was down in the study now, and Joan noticed that her hands were only lightly bandaged. She asked to be allowed to see for herself how they were progressing, but Elizabeth always found some trifling excuse. However, it was cheering to know that she would soon be back at Leaside, and Joan's spirits rose. Elizabeth seemed more natural too when they were able to meet, and Joan decided that the queer restraint which she had noticed in the early days of her illness had been the outcome of the shock from which the nurse said she was suffering. She argued that this in itself would account for what she had observed as unusual in Elizabeth's manner. She had told her why the daily visits had ceased to be possible, explaining the hundred little duties that had now fallen to her share, and Elizabeth had said nothing at all. She had just looked at Joan and then looked away, and when she did speak it had been about something else. Joan would have liked to discuss the situation, but Elizabeth's manner was not encouraging.

Elizabeth had told her that the servant had died of her burns; according to the doctor it had been a hopeless case from the first, and Joan realized that, after all, Elizabeth's courage had been in a sense wasted. She looked at her lying so quietly on the sofa with her helpless hands on their supporting pillow, and wondered what it was in Elizabeth that had prompted her to do what she had done; what it was in anyone that occasionally found expression in such sudden acts of self-sacrifice. Elizabeth had tried to save a life at the possible loss of her own, and yet she was not so unusual a creature so far as Joan could judge, and the very fact that she was just an everyday person made her action all the more interesting. She herself appeared to set no store by what she had done; she took it for granted, as though she had seen no other alternative, and this seemed to Joan to be in keeping with the rest of her. Elizabeth would refuse to recognize melodrama; it did not go with her, it was a ridiculous thing to associate with her at all. There had been a long article in the local paper, extolling her behaviour, but when Joan, full of pride and gratification, had shown it to her, she had only laughed and remarked: "What nonsense!"

But Joan had her own ideas on the subject; she neither exaggerated nor minimized what Elizabeth had done. She saw the thing just as it was; a brave thing, obviously the right thing to do, and she was glad that Elizabeth should have been the person to do it. But quite apart from this, the accident had been responsible for starting a train of thought in the girl's mind. She had long ago decided that she wanted to make a career, and now she knew exactly what that career should be. She wanted to be a doctor. She knew that it was not easy and not very usual; but that made it seem all the more desirable in her eyes. She thought very often of Richard Benson, and was conscious of wishing that he were at home so that she could talk the matter over with him. She was not quite sure how Elizabeth would take her decision, and she expected opposition from her mother and father, but she felt that Richard could and would help her. She felt that something in his sublime confidence, in his sublime disregard for everything and everybody, would be useful to her in what she knew to be a crisis in her life. She scarcely glanced at her books; the examination was imminent, but she knew that she would not fail.

3

When at length the great moment arrived it found Joan calm and self-possessed; she breakfasted early and took the train for a neighbouring town in which the examination was to be held. The weather was oppressive, the atmosphere of the crowded room stifling, seeming to exude the tension and nervousness of her fellow competitors; yet, while recognizing these things, she felt that they were powerless to affect her. She glanced calmly over the examination paper that lay upon her desk; it did not seem very formidable, and she began to write her answers with complete assurance.

On her return home that evening she went in to see Elizabeth for a few moments. She found her more perturbed and nervous than she could have conceived possible. Joan reassured her as best she could and hastened on to Leaside. Her mother also seemed anxious; something of the gravity of the occasion appeared to have affected even Mrs. Ogden, for she questioned her closely. Joan wondered why they lacked confidence in her, why they seemed to take it for granted that she would have found the examination difficult; she felt irritated that Elizabeth should have entertained doubts. She had always expressed herself as being certain that Joan would pass, yet now at the last moment she was childishly nervous; perhaps her illness had something to do with it. Joan wished for their sakes that the examination could have been completed in one day and the result made known that first evening, but for herself she felt indifferent. What lay ahead of her was unlikely to be much more formidable than what she had coped with already, so why fear? She smiled a little, thinking of Richard Benson—was she, too, growing conceited—was she growing rather like him?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1

THE usual time elapsed and then Joan knew she had passed her examination with honours. There was a grudging pride in Mrs. Ogden's heart in spite of herself, and even the colonel revived from his deep depression to congratulate his elder daughter. Joan was happy, with that assured and peaceful happiness that comes only to those who have attained through personal effort; she felt now very confident about the future, capable of almost anything. It was a red-letter day with a vengeance, for Elizabeth was coming back to Leaside that same afternoon to take up her work again. She would not have heard the news, and Joan rejoiced silently at the prospect of telling her. She pictured Elizabeth's face; surely the calm of it must break up just this once, and if it did, how would she look? There were flowers on the school-room table; that was good. Mrs. Ogden had put them there to celebrate Joan's triumph, she had said. Joan wished that they had been put there to welcome Elizabeth back. The antagonism between these two had never ceased to worry and distress her, not so much on their behalf as because she herself wanted them both. At all times, the dearest wish of her heart was that they should be reconciled, lest at any time she should be asked to choose between them. But on this splendid and fulfilling morning no clouds could affect her seriously.

The hours dragged; she could not swallow her lunch; at three o'clock Elizabeth would arrive. Now it was two o'clock, now a quarter past, then half past. Joan, pale with excitement, sat in the schoolroom and waited. Upstairs, Milly was practising her violin; she was playing a queer little tune, rather melancholy, very restrained, as unlike the child who played it as a tune could well be; this struck Joan as she listened and made her speculate. How strange people were; they were always lonely and always strange; perhaps they knew themselves, but certainly no one else ever knew them. There was her mother, did she really know her? And Elizabeth—she had begun to realize that there were unexpected things about her that took you by storm and left you feeling awkward; you could never be quite certain of her these days. Was it only the shock of the illness, she wondered, or was it that she was just beginning to realize that there was an Elizabeth very different from that of the schoolroom; a creature of moods, like herself?

Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the hour, and as it did so the door-bell rang. Joan jumped up, she laughed aloud; how like Elizabeth to ring just as the clock was striking, exactly like her. The schoolroom door opened and she came in. She was a little thinner perhaps, but otherwise the great experience seemed to have made no impression on her outward appearance.

"Elizabeth, I've passed with honours!"

Elizabeth was midway between the door and the table; she opened her lips as if to speak, but paused.

"I knew you would, Joan," was all she said.

Somewhere deep down in herself, Joan smiled. "That's not what you wanted to say," she thought. "You wanted to say something very different."

But she fell in with Elizabeth's mood and tried to check her own enthusiasm. What did it matter if Elizabeth chose to play a part, she knew what this news meant to her; she could have laughed in her face.

"But what really matters is that you've come back," she said.

"Yes, I suppose that is what really matters," replied Elizabeth, her calm eyes meeting Joan's for an instant.

"Oh, Elizabeth, it's been too awful without you, dull and awful!"

"I know," she answered quietly.

"And suppose I'd failed you, Elizabeth, suppose I'd failed in the examination," Joan's voice trembled. "Suppose I had had to tell you that!"

"I should still have been coming back."

"Yes, I know, and that's all that really matters; only it's better as it is, isn't it?"

"You would never fail me, Joan. I think it's not in you to fail, somehow; in any case I don't think you'll fail me." She hesitated—then, "I don't feel that we ought to fail each other, you and I."

She took off her hat and coat and drew off her gloves with her back turned; when she came back to the table her hands were behind her. She sat down quickly and folded them in her lap. In the excitement of the good news and the reunion, Joan had forgotten to ask to see her hands.

"Where's Milly?" said Elizabeth.

Joan smiled. "Can't you hear? She's at her fiddle."

Elizabeth looked relieved. "Don't call her," she said. "Let me see your examination report." Joan fetched it and put it on the table in front of her. For a moment or two Elizabeth studied it in silence, then she looked up.

"It's perfectly excellent," she remarked.

In her enthusiasm, she picked up the paper to study it more closely, and at that moment the sun came out and fell on her hands.

Joan gasped, a little cry of horror escaped her in spite of herself. Elizabeth looked up, she blanched and hid her hands in her lap, but Joan had seen them; they were hideously seamed and puckered with large, discoloured scars.

"Oh, Elizabeth—your hands! Your beautiful hands! You were so proud of them——"

Joan laid her head down on the table and wept.

2

After supper that night Joan took the plunge. She had not intended doing it so quickly, but waiting seemed useless, and, besides, she was filled with a wild energy that rendered any action a relief. Colonel Ogden was dozing over the evening paper; from time to time he jumped awake with a stifled snort; as always the dining-room smelt of his pipe smoke and stale food. At Joan's quick movement he opened his eyes very wide; he looked like an old baby.

She began abruptly, "Mother, I want to tell you that I'm going to study to be a doctor."

It was characteristic of her to get it all out at once without any prelude. Mrs. Ogden laid down her knitting, and contrary to all expectations did not faint; she did not even press her head, but she smiled unpleasantly.

She said: "Why? Because Elizabeth has burnt her hands?"

It was the wrong thing to say—a thoroughly stupid and heartless remark, and she knew it. She would have given much for a little of the tact which she felt instinctively to be her only weapon, but for the life of her she could not subdue the smouldering anger that took hold of her at the moment. She never for an instant doubted that Elizabeth was in some way connected with this mad idea; it pleased her to think this, even while it tormented her. The mother and daughter confronted each other; their eyes were cold and hard.

"What's that?" said Colonel Ogden, leaning a little forward.

Joan turned to him. "I was telling Mother that I've decided on a career. I'm going in for medicine."

"For what?"

"For medicine. Other girls have done it."

Her father rose unsteadily to his feet; he helped himself up by the arms of his chair. Very slowly he pointed a fat, shaking finger at his wife.

"Mary, what did I tell you, what did I tell you, Mary? This is what comes of Henrietta's iniquitous will. My God! Did I ever think to hear a girl child of fifteen calmly stating what she intends to do? Does she ask my permission? No, she states that she intends to be a doctor. A doctor, my daughter! Good God! What next?" He turned on Joan: "You must be mad," he told her. "It's positively indecent—an unsexing, indecent profession for any woman, and any woman who takes it up is indecent and unsexed. I say it without hesitation—indecent, positively immodest!"

"Indecent, Father?"

"Yes, and immodest; it's an outrageous suggestion!"

Mrs. Ogden took up her knitting again; the needles clicked irritatingly. Once or twice she closed her eyes, but her hands moved incessantly.

"Joan!" She swallowed and spoke as if under a great restraint.

"Yes, Mother?"

"If you were a boy I would say this to you, and since you seem to have chosen to assume an altogether ridiculous masculine role, listen to me. There are things that a gentleman can do and things he cannot; no gentleman can enter the medical profession, no Routledge has ever been known to do such a thing. Our men have served their country; they have served it gloriously, but a Routledge does not enter a middle-class profession. I wish to keep quite calm, Joan. I can understand your having acquired these strange ideas, for you have naturally been thrown very much with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is—well, not quite one of us; but you will please remember who you are, and that I for one will never tolerate your behaving other than as a member of my family. I——"

The colonel interrupted her. "Listen to me," he thundered. In his anger he seemed to have regained some of his old vitality. "You listen to me, young woman; I'll have none of this nonsense under my roof. You think, I suppose, that your aunt has made you independent, but let me tell you that for the next six years you're nothing of the kind. Not one penny will I spend on any education that is likely to unsex a daughter of mine. I'll have none of these new-fangled woman's rights ideas in my house; you will stay at home like any other girl until such time as you get married. You will marry; do you hear me? That's a woman's profession! A sawbones indeed! Do you think you're a boy? Have you gone stark, staring mad?"

"No, I'm not mad," Joan said quietly, "but I don't think I shall marry, Father."

"Not marry, and why not, pray?"

She did not attempt to explain, for she herself did not know what had prompted her.

"I can wait," she told him. "It wouldn't be too late to begin when I'm twenty-one."

He opened his mouth to roar at her, but the words did not come; instead he fell back limply in his chair. Mrs. Ogden rushed to him. Joan stood very still; she had no impulse to help him; she felt cold and numb with anger.

"I think you've killed your father," said Mrs. Ogden unsteadily.

Joan roused herself. She looked into her mother's working face; they stared at each other across the prostrate man.

"No," she said gravely, "it's you, both of you, who are trying to kill me."

She went and fetched brandy, and together they forced some between the pallid lips. After a little he stirred.

"You see, he's not dead," said Joan mechanically. "I'll go for the doctor."

When the doctor came he shook his head.

"How did this happen?" he inquired.

"He got angry," Mrs. Ogden told him.

"But I warned you that he mustn't be excited, that you ought not to excite him under any circumstances. Really, Mrs. Ogden, if you do, I won't answer for the consequences."

"It was not I who excited him," she said, and she looked at Joan.

Joan said: "Will he die, Doctor Thomas?" She could hear herself that her voice was unnaturally indifferent.

The doctor looked at her in surprise. "Not this time, perhaps; in fact, I'm pretty sure he'll pull round this time, but it mustn't happen again."

"No," said Joan, "I understand; it mustn't happen again."

"Quite so," said the doctor dryly.

[BOOK III]

CHAPTER NINETEEN
1

IN the two years that elapsed before Joan's seventeenth birthday nothing occurred in the nature of a change. Looking back over that time she was surprised to find how little had happened; she had grown accustomed to monotony, but the past two years seemed to have been more monotonous than usual. The only outstanding event had been when she and Milly joined the tennis club. Mrs. Ogden did not encourage her daughters to take part in the more public local festivities, which were to a great extent shared with people whom she considered undesirable, but in this case she had been forced to yield to combined entreaties.

The tennis club meant less after all to Joan than she had anticipated, though she played regularly for the sake of exercise. The members were certainly not inspiring, nor was their game challenging to effort. They were divided into two classes; those who played for the sake of their livers and those who played for the sake of white flannels and flirtation. To the former class belonged General Brooke, a boisterous player, very choleric and invariably sending his balls into neighbouring gardens. His weight had increased perceptibly since the colonel's illness; perhaps because there was now no one to cause him nervous irritation. When he played tennis his paunch shook visibly under his flannel shirt. The latter class was made up principally of youths and maidens from adjacent villas. To nearly every member of this younger generation was supposed to belong some particular stroke which formed an ever fruitful topic for discussion and admiration. Mr. Thompson, the new assistant at the circulating library, sprang quickly into fame through volleying at the net. He was a mean player and had an odious trick of just tipping the ball over, and apologizing ostentatiously when he had done it. There was usually a great deal of noise, for not only was there much applause and many encouraging remarks, but the players never failed to call each score. Joan played a fairly good game, but contrary to all expectation she never became really proficient. Milly, on the other hand, developed a distinct talent for tennis, and she and young Mr. Thompson, who was considered a star player, struck up a friendship, which, however, never penetrated beyond the front door of Leaside.

At fifteen Milly was acutely conscious of her femininity. She was in all respects a very normal girl, adoring personal adornment and distinctly vain. The contrast between the two sisters was never more marked than at this period; they made an incongruous couple, the younger in her soft summer dresses, the elder in the stiff collars and ties which she affected. In spite of all Mrs. Ogden's entreaties Joan still kept her hair short. Of course it was considered utterly preposterous, and the effect in evening dress was a little grotesque, but she seemed completely to lack personal vanity. At seventeen she suggested a well set-up stripling who had borrowed his sister's clothes.

The life of the schoolroom continued much as usual. Mrs. Ogden, now two years older and with an extra two years of the colonel's heart and her own nervous headaches behind her, had almost given up trying to interfere with Joan's studies. She went in for her examinations as a matter of course, and as a matter of course was congratulated when she did well, but the subject of her career was never mentioned; it appeared to have been thrust into the background by common consent. Elizabeth looked older; at times a few new lines showed on her forehead, and the curious placidity of her mouth was disturbed. Something very like discontent had gathered about the firmly modelled lips.

But if Joan was given more freedom to study, she was to some extent expected to pay for that freedom. Seabourne could be quite gay according to its own standards; there were tennis and croquet parties in the summer and a never-ending chain of whist drives in the winter, to say nothing of tea parties all the year round. To these festivities Joan, now seventeen, was expected to go, and it was not always possible to evade them, for, as Mrs. Ogden said, it was a little hard that she should have to go everywhere alone when she had a daughter who was nearly grown up.

2

The Loos gave a garden party at Moor Park. Poor Joan! She felt horribly out of place, dressed for the occasion in a muslin frock, her cropped head, crowned by a Leghorn hat, rising incongruously from the collarless bodice. Sir Robert thought her a most unattractive young woman, but his wife still disagreed with him. She had always admired Joan, and now the fact that there was something distinctly unfeminine about the girl was an added interest in her hostess's eyes. For Lady Loo, once the best woman to hounds in a hard riding hunt, had begun to find life too restful at Moor Park. She had awakened one day filled with the consciousness of a kind of Indian summer into which she had drifted. Some stray gleam of youth had shot through her, filling her with a spurious vitality that would not for the moment be denied. And since the old physical activity was no longer available, she turned in self-defence to mental interests, and took up the Feminist Movement with all the courage, vigour and disregard of consequences that had characterized her in the hunting-field. It was a nine-days' wonder to see Lady Loo pushing her bicycle through the High Street of Seabourne, clad in bloomers and a Norfolk jacket, a boat-shaped hat set jauntily on her grey head. It is doubtful whether Lady Loo had any definite ideas regarding what it was that she hoped to attain for her sex; it certainly cannot have been equality, for in spite of her bloomers, Sir Robert, poor man, was never allowed to smoke his cigar in the drawing-room to the day of his death.

Lady Loo's shrewd eyes studied Joan with amusement; she took in at a glance the short hair and the wide, flat shoulders.

"Will you ever let it grow?" she asked abruptly.

"Never," said Joan. "It's so little trouble as it is."

"Quite right," said her hostess. "Now why on earth shouldn't women be comfortable! It's high time men realized that they ain't got the sole prerogative where comfort is concerned." She chuckled. "I suppose," she remarked reflectively, "that people think it's rather odd for a young woman of your age to have short hair. I suppose they think it's rather odd for an old woman like me to bicycle in bloomers; but the odd thing about it is that they, the women I mean, should think it odd at all. It must be that all the centuries of oppression have atrophied their brains a little, poor dears. When they get equal rights with men it'll make all the difference to their outlook; they'll be able to stretch themselves."

"Do you think so, Lady Loo?" said Mrs. Ogden. "I should never know what to do with that sort of liberty if I had it, and I'm sure Joan wouldn't."

Lady Loo was not so sure, but she said: "Well, then, she must learn."

"I think there are many other things she had better learn first," rejoined Mrs. Ogden tartly.

Lady Loo smiled. "What, for instance? How to get married?"

Mrs. Ogden winced. "Well, after all," she said, "there are worse things for a girl than marriage, but fortunately Joan need not think of that unless she wants to; she's got her——" she paused—" her home."

Lady Loo thought. "You mean she's got you, you selfish woman." Aloud she said: "Well, times are changing and mothers will have to change too, I suppose. I hear Joan's clever; isn't she going to do something?"

Joan flushed. "I want to," she broke in eagerly.

Mrs. Ogden drew her away and Lady Loo laughed to herself complacently.

"Oh! the new generation," she murmured. "They're as unlike us as chalk from cheese. That girl don't look capable of doing a quiet little job like keeping a house or having a baby; she's not built for it mentally or physically."

At that moment a young man came across the lawn. "Joan!" he called. It was Richard Benson.

Joan turned with outstretched hands in her pleasure. "I didn't know you were in England," she said.