Title Page
Author
The Unit Lamp
The Well of Loneliness
About the Publisher
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Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 at "Sunny Lawn", Durley Road, Bournemouth, Hampshire (now Dorset), to a wealthy philandering father, Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall, and an unstable mother, Mary Jane Diehl. Her stepfather was the professor of singing Albert Visetti, whom she did not like and who had a tempestuous relationship with her mother. Hall was a lesbian and described herself as a "congenital invert", a term taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis and other turn-of-the-century sexologists. Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties pursuing women she eventually lost to marriage.
Mabel Batten sang to John Singer Sargent as he painted her portrait, around 1897
In 1907 at the Bad Homburg spa in Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten, a well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27, and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after Batten's husband died they set up residence together. Batten gave Hall the nickname John, which she used the rest of her life.
In 1915 Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin Una Troubridge (1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, and the mother of a young daughter. When Batten died in 1916, Hall had Batten's corpse embalmed and a silver crucifix blessed by the pope laid on it. Hall, Batten and Troubridge were "undeterred by the Church's admonitions on same-sex relationships. Hall's Catholicism sat beside a life-long attachment to spiritualism and reincarnation." In 1917, Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. From 1924 to 1929 they lived at 37 Holland Street, Kensington, London.
The relationship would last until Hall's death. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigrée Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her, which Troubridge painfully tolerated. Hall became involved in affairs with other women throughout the years.
Hall lived with Troubridge in London and, during the 1930s, in the tiny town of Rye, East Sussex, noted for its many writers, including her contemporary the novelist E. F. Benson. Hall died at age 63 of colon cancer, and is interred at Highgate Cemetery in North London at the entrance of the chamber of the Batten family, where Mabel is buried as well.
In 1930, Hall received the Gold Medal of the Eichelbergher Humane Award. She was a member of the PEN club, the Council of the Society for Psychical Research and a fellow of the Zoological Society. Radclyffe Hall was listed at number sixteen in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper.
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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 his 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 today 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.
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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. 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 soups 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-intrade 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 today. 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!’
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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 haemorrhage 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!
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 Timesheld 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.
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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 today, 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 today? 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.’
Joan ran after the retreating figures. ‘Here I am’, she said breathlessly. ‘Is it Cone Head or the Golf Course?’
‘Cone Head today’, 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 today, 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 today, 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?’
‘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 make 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 tomorrow 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 tonight; 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 tomorrow.’
‘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.
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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 today 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 overworked 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 hairbrush 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 had 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-inthe-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 today 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 today, 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?’