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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joanna Godden, by Sheila Kaye-Smith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Joanna Godden
+
+Author: Sheila Kaye-Smith
+
+Release Date: May 7, 2005 [EBook #15779]
+[Last updated: November 4, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOANNA GODDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Louise Pryor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+JOANNA GODDEN
+
+
+by
+
+Sheila Kaye-Smith
+
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+W.L. GEORGE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I    SHEPHERD'S HEY
+
+PART II   FIRST LOVE
+
+PART III  THE LITTLE SISTER
+
+PART IV   LAST LOVE
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+_Though local names, both of places and people, have been used in this
+story, the author states that no reference is intended to any living
+person._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JOANNA GODDEN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PART I_
+
+SHEPHERD'S HEY
+
+
+
+
+§1
+
+Three marshes spread across the triangle made by the Royal Military
+Canal and the coasts of Sussex and Kent. The Military Canal runs from
+Hythe to Rye, beside the Military Road; between it and the flat, white
+beaches of the Channel lie Romney Marsh, Dunge Marsh and Walland Marsh,
+from east to west. Walland Marsh is sectored by the Kent Ditch, which
+draws huge, straggling diagrams here, to preserve ancient rights of
+parishes and the monks of Canterbury. Dunge Marsh runs up into the apex
+of the triangle at Dunge Ness, and adds to itself twenty feet of shingle
+every year. Romney Marsh is the sixth continent and the eighth wonder of
+the world.
+
+The three marshes are much alike; indeed to the foreigner they are all a
+single spread of green, slatted with watercourses. No river crosses
+them, for the Rother curves close under Rye Hill, though these marshes
+were made by its ancient mouth, when it was the River Limine and ran
+into the Channel at Old Romney. There are a few big watercourses--the
+New Sewer, the Yokes Sewer, the White Kemp Sewer--there are a few white
+roads, and a great many marsh villages--Brenzett, Ivychurch, Fairfield,
+Snargate, Snave--each little more than a church with a farmhouse or two.
+Here and there little deserted chapels lie out on the marsh, officeless
+since the days of the monks of Canterbury; and everywhere there are
+farms, with hundreds of sheep grazing on the thick pastures.
+
+Little Ansdore Farm was on Walland Marsh, three miles from Rye, and
+about midway between the villages of Brodnyx and Pedlinge. It was a sea
+farm. There were no hop-gardens, as on the farms inland, no white-cowled
+oasts, and scarcely more than twelve acres under the plough. Three
+hundred acres of pasture spread round Ansdore, dappled over with the big
+Kent sheep--the road from Pedlinge to Brodnyx went through them, curling
+and looping and doubling to the demands of the dykes. Just beyond
+Pedlinge it turned northward and crossed the South Eastern Railway under
+the hills that used to be the coast of England, long ago when the sea
+flowed up over the marsh to the walls of Lympne and Rye; then in less
+than a mile it had crossed the line again, turning south; for some time
+it ran seawards, parallel with the Kent Ditch, then suddenly went off at
+right angles and ran straight to the throws where the Woolpack Inn
+watches the roads to Lydd and Appledore.
+
+On a dim afternoon towards the middle of October in the year 1897, a
+funeral procession was turning off this road into the drive of Little
+Ansdore. The drive was thick with shingle, and the mourning coaches
+lurched and rolled in it, spoiling no doubt the decorum of their
+occupants. Anyhow, the first two to get out at the farmhouse door had
+lost a little of that dignity proper to funerals. A fine young woman of
+about twenty-three, dressed handsomely but without much fashion in black
+crape and silk, jumped out with a violence that sent her overplumed
+black hat to a rakish angle. In one black kid-gloved hand she grasped a
+handkerchief with a huge black border, in the other a Prayer Book, so
+could not give any help to the little girl of ten who stumbled out after
+her, with the result that the child fell flat on the doorstep and cut
+her chin. She immediately began to cry.
+
+"Now be quiet, Ellen," said the elder roughly but not unkindly, as she
+helped her up, and stuffing the black-bordered handkerchief into her
+pocket, took out the everyday one which she kept for use. "There, wipe
+your eyes, and be a stout gal. Don't let all the company see you
+crying."
+
+The last injunction evidently impressed Ellen, for she stopped at once.
+Her sister had wiped the grit and the little smear of blood off her
+chin, and stood in the doorway holding her hand while one by one the
+other carriages drew up and the occupants alighted. Not a word was
+spoken till they had all assembled, then the young woman said: "Please
+come in and have a cup of tea," and turning on her heel led the way to
+the dining-room.
+
+"Joanna," said little Ellen in a loud whisper, "may I take off my hat?"
+
+"No, that you mayn't."
+
+"But the elastic's so tight--it's cutting my chin. Why mayn't I?"
+
+"You can't till the funeral's over."
+
+"It is over. They've put father in the ground."
+
+"It isn't over till we've had tea, and you keep your hat on till it's
+over."
+
+For answer Ellen tore off her pork-pie hat and threw it on the floor.
+Immediately Joanna had boxed her unprotected ears, and the head of the
+procession was involved in an ignominious scuffle. "You pick up that hat
+and put it on," said Joanna, "or you shan't have any nice tea." "You're
+a beast! You're a brute," cried Ellen, weeping loudly. Behind them stood
+two rows of respectable marsh-dwellers, gazing solemnly ahead as if the
+funeral service were still in progress. In their hearts they were
+thinking that it was just like Joanna Godden to have a terrification
+like this when folk were expected to be serious. In the end Joanna
+picked up Ellen's hat, crammed it down ruthlessly on her head, hind part
+before, and heaving her up under her arm carried her into the
+dining-room. The rest of the company followed, and were ushered into
+their places to the accompaniment of Ellen's shrieks, which they
+pretended not to hear.
+
+"Mr. Pratt, will you take the end of the table?" said Joanna to the
+scared little clergyman, who would almost have preferred to sit under it
+rather than receive the honour which Miss Godden's respect for his cloth
+dictated. "Mr. Huxtable, will you sit by me?" Having thus settled her
+aristocracy she turned to her equals and allotted places to Vine of
+Birdskitchen, Furnese of Misleham, Southland of Yokes Court, and their
+wives. "Arthur Alce, you take my left," and a tall young man with red
+hair, red whiskers, and a face covered with freckles and tan, came
+sidling to her elbow.
+
+In front of Joanna a servant-girl had just set down a huge black teapot,
+which had been stewing on the hob ever since the funeral party had been
+sighted crossing the railway line half a mile off. Round it were two
+concentric rings of teacups--good old Worcester china, except for a
+common three which had been added for number's sake, and which Joanna
+carefully bestowed upon herself, Ellen, and Arthur Alce. Ellen had
+stopped crying at the sight of the cakes and jam and pots of "relish"
+which stretched down the table in orderly lines, so the meal proceeded
+according to the decent conventions of silence. Nobody spoke, except to
+offer some eatable to somebody else. Joanna saw that no cup or plate was
+empty. She ought really to have delegated this duty to another, being
+presumably too closely wrapped in grief to think of anybody's appetite
+but her own, but Joanna never delegated anything, and her "A little more
+tea, Mrs. Vine?"--"Another of these cakes, Mr. Huxtable?"--"Just a
+little dash of relish, Mr. Pratt?" were constantly breaking the
+stillness, and calling attention to her as she sat behind the teapot,
+with her plumed hat still a little on one side.
+
+She was emphatically what men call a "fine woman," with her firm, white
+neck, her broad shoulders, her deep bosom and strong waist; she was
+tall, too, with large, useful hands and feet. Her face was brown and
+slightly freckled, with a warm colour on the cheeks; the features were
+strong, but any impression of heaviness was at once dispelled by a pair
+of eager, living blue eyes. Big jet earrings dangled from her ears,
+being matched by the double chain of beads that hung over her
+crape-frilled bodice. Indeed, with her plumes, her earrings, her
+necklace, her frills, though all were of the decent and respectable
+black, she faintly shocked the opinion of Walland Marsh, otherwise
+disposed in pity to be lenient to Joanna Godden and her ways.
+
+Owing to the absence of conversation, tea was not as long drawn-out as
+might have been expected from the appetites. Besides, everyone was in a
+hurry to be finished and hear the reading of old Thomas Godden's will.
+Already several interesting rumours were afloat, notably one that he
+had left Ansdore to Joanna only on condition that she married Arthur
+Alce within the year. "She's a mare that's never been präaperly broken
+in, and she wants a strong hand to do it." Thus unchoicely Furnese of
+Misleham had expressed the wish that fathered such a thought.
+
+So at the first possible moment after the last munch and loud swallow
+with which old Grandfather Vine, who was unfortunately the slowest as
+well as the largest eater, announced repletion, all the chairs were
+pushed back on the drugget and a row of properly impassive faces
+confronted Mr. Huxtable the lawyer as he took his stand by the window.
+Only Joanna remained sitting at the table, her warm blue eyes seeming to
+reflect the evening's light, her arm round little Ellen, who leaned
+against her lap.
+
+The will was, after all, not so sensational as had been hoped. It opened
+piously, as might have been expected of Thomas Godden, who was as good
+an old man as ever met death walking in a cornfield unafraid. It went on
+to leave various small tokens of remembrance to those who had known
+him--a mourning ring to Mr. Vine, Mr. Furnese and Mr. Southland, his two
+volumes of Robertson's Sermons, and a book called "The Horse in Sickness
+and in Health," to Arthur Alce, which was a disappointment to those who
+had expected the bequest to be his daughter Joanna. There was fifty
+pounds for Mr. Samuel Huxtable of Huxtable, Vidler and Huxtable,
+Solicitors, Watchbell Street, Rye, five pounds each for those farm hands
+in his employment at the time of his death, with an extra ten pounds to
+"Nathan Stuppeny, my carter, on account of his faithful services both to
+me and to my father. And I give, devise and bequeath the residue of my
+property, comprising the freehold farm of Little Ansdore, in the parish
+of Pedlinge, Sussex, with all lands and live and dead stock pertaining
+thereto to my daughter Joanna Mary Godden. And I appoint the said Joanna
+Mary Godden sole executrix of this my will."
+
+When the reading was over the company remained staring for a minute as
+decency required, then the door burst open and a big servant-girl
+brought in a tray set with glasses of whisky and water for the men and
+spiced wine for the women. These drink-offerings were received with a
+subdued hum of conversation--it was impossible to hear what was said or
+even to distinguish who was saying it, but a vague buzzing filled the
+room, as of imprisoned bees. In the midst of it Ellen's voice rose
+suddenly strident.
+
+"Joanna, may I take off my hat now?"
+
+Her sister looked doubtful. The funeral was not ceremonially complete
+till Grandfather Vine had done choking over his heel-taps, but Ellen had
+undoubtedly endured a good deal with remarkable patience--her virtue
+ought in justice to be rewarded. Also Joanna noticed for the first time
+that she was looking grotesque as well as uncomfortable, owing perhaps
+to the hat being still on hind part before. So the necessary
+dispensation was granted, and Ellen further refreshed by a sip of her
+sister's wine.
+
+The guests now took their departure, each being given a memorial card of
+the deceased, with a fine black edge and the picture of an urn upon it.
+Ellen also was given one, at her urgent request, and ran off in
+excitement with the treasure. Joanna remained with Mr. Huxtable for a
+final interview.
+
+
+
+
+§2
+
+"Well," he said, "I expect you'll want me to help you a bit, Miss
+Joanna."
+
+Joanna had sat down again at the end of the table--big, tousled,
+over-dressed, alive. Huxtable surveyed her approvingly. "A damn fine
+woman," he said to himself, "she'll marry before long."
+
+"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Huxtable," said Joanna, "there's
+many a little thing I'd like to talk over with you."
+
+"Well, now's your time, young lady. I shan't have to be home for an hour
+or two yet. The first thing is, I suppose, for me to find you a bailiff
+for this farm."
+
+"No, thank you kindly. I'll manage that."
+
+"What! Do you know of a man?"
+
+"No--I mean I'll manage the farm."
+
+"You! My dear Miss Joanna ..."
+
+"Well, why not? I've been bred up to it from a child. I used to do
+everything with poor father."
+
+As she said the last word her brightness became for a moment dimmed, and
+tears swam into her eyes for the first time since she had taken the
+ceremonial handkerchief away from them. But the next minute she lighted
+up again.
+
+"He showed me a lot--he showed me everything. I could do it much better
+than a man who doesn't know our ways."
+
+"But--" the lawyer hesitated, "but it isn't just a question of
+knowledge, Miss Joanna; it's a question of--how shall I put it?--well,
+of authority. A woman is always at a disadvantage when she has to
+command men."
+
+"I'd like to see the man I couldn't make mind me."
+
+Huxtable grinned. "Oh, I've no doubt whatever that you could get
+yourself obeyed; but the position--the whole thing--you'd find it a
+great strain, and people aren't as a rule particularly helpful to a
+woman they see doing what they call a man's job."
+
+"I don't want anyone's help. I know my own business and my poor father's
+ways. That's enough for me."
+
+"Did your father ever say anything to you about this?"
+
+"Oh no--he being only fifty-one and never thinking he'd be took for a
+long while yet. But I know it's what he'd have wanted, or why did he
+trouble to show me everything? And always talked to me about things as
+free as he did to Fuller and Stuppeny."
+
+"He would want you to do the best for yourself--he wouldn't want you to
+take up a heavy burden just for his sake."
+
+"Oh, it ain't just for his sake, it's for my own. I don't want a strange
+man messing around, and Ansdore's mine, and I'm proud of it."
+
+Huxtable rubbed his large nose, from either side of which his sharp eyes
+looked disapprovingly at Joanna. He admired her, but she maddened him by
+refusing to see the obvious side of her femininity.
+
+"Most young women of your age have other things to think of besides
+farming. There's your sister, and then--don't tell me that you won't
+soon be thinking of getting married."
+
+"Well, and if I do, it'll be time enough then to settle about the farm.
+As for Ellen, I don't see what difference she makes, except that I must
+see to things for her sake as well as mine. It wouldn't help her much if
+I handed over this place to a man who'd muddle it all up and maybe bring
+us to the Auctioneer's. I've known ... I've seen ... they had a bailiff
+in at Becket's House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first
+season, and got the fluke into their sheep. Why, even Sir Harry Trevor's
+taken to managing things himself at North Farthing after the way he saw
+they were doing with, that old Lambarde, and what he can do I can do,
+seeing I wasn't brought up in a London square."
+
+As Joanna's volubility grew, her voice rose, not shrilly as with most
+women, but taking on a warm, hoarse note--her words seemed to be flung
+out hot as coals from a fire. Mr. Huxtable grimaced. "She's a virago,"
+he thought to himself. He put up his hand suavely to induce silence, but
+the eruption went on.
+
+"I know all the men, too. They'd do for me what they wouldn't do for a
+stranger. And if they won't, I know how to settle 'em. I've been
+bursting with ideas about farming all my life. Poor Father said only a
+week before he was taken 'Pity you ain't a man, Joanna, with some of the
+notions you've got.' Well, maybe it's a pity and maybe it isn't, but
+what I've got to do now is to act up proper and manage what is mine, and
+what you and other folks have got to do is not to meddle with me."
+
+"Come, come, my dear young lady, nobody's going to meddle with you. You
+surely don't call it 'meddling' for your father's lawyer, an old man
+who's known you all your life, to offer you a few words of advice. You
+must go your own way, and if it doesn't turn out as satisfactorily as
+you expect, you can always change it."
+
+"Reckon I can," said Joanna, "but I shan't have to. Won't you take
+another whisky, Mr. Huxtable?"
+
+The lawyer accepted. Joanna Godden's temper might be bad, but her
+whisky was good. He wondered if the one would make up for the other to
+Arthur Alce or whoever had married her by this time next year.
+
+
+
+
+§3
+
+Mr. Huxtable was not alone in his condemnation of Joanna's choice. The
+whole neighbourhood disapproved of it. The joint parishes of Brodnyx and
+Pedlinge had made up their minds that Joanna Godden would now be
+compelled to marry Arthur Alce and settle down to mind her own business
+instead of what was obviously a man's; and here she was, still at large
+and her business more a man's than ever.
+
+"She's a mare that's never been präaperly broken in, and she wants a
+strong man to do it," said Furnese at the Woolpack. He had repeated this
+celebrated remark so often that it had almost acquired the status of a
+proverb. For three nights Joanna had been the chief topic of
+conversation in the Woolpack bar. If Arthur Alce appeared a silence
+would fall on the company, to be broken at last by some remark on the
+price of wool or the Rye United's last match. Everybody was sorry for
+Alce, everybody thought that Thomas Godden had treated him badly by not
+making his daughter marry him as a condition of her inheritance.
+
+"Three times he's asked her, as I know for certain," said Vennal, the
+tenant of Beggar's Bush.
+
+"No, it's four," said Prickett, Joanna's neighbour at Great Ansdore,
+"there was that time coming back from the Wild Beast Show."
+
+"I was counting that," said Vennal; "that and the one that Mr. Vine's
+looker heard at Lydd market, and then that time in the house."
+
+"How do you know he asked her in the house?--that makes five."
+
+"I don't get that--once indoors and twice out, that's three."
+
+"Well, anyways, whether it's three or four or five, he's asked her quite
+enough. It's time he had her now."
+
+"He won't get her. She'll fly higher'n him now she's got Ansdore.
+She'll be after young Edward Huxtable, or maybe Parson himself, him
+having neglected to keep himself married."
+
+"Ha! Ha! It ud be valiant to see her married to liddle Parson--she'd
+forget herself and pick him up under her arm, same as she picks up her
+sister. But anyways I don't think she'll get much by flying high. It's
+all fine enough to talk of her having Ansdore, but whosumdever wants
+Ansdore ull have to take Joanna Godden with it, and it isn't every man
+who'd care to do that."
+
+"Surelye. She's a mare that's never bin präaperly broken in. D'you
+remember the time she came prancing into church with a bustle stuck on
+behind, and everyone staring and fidgeting so as pore Mus' Pratt lost
+his place in the Prayers and jumped all the way from the Belief to the
+Royal Family?"
+
+"And that time as she hit Job Piper over the head wud a bunch of osiers
+just because he'd told her he knew more about thatching than she did."
+
+"Surelye, and knocked his hat off into the dyke, and then bought him a
+new one, with a lining to it."
+
+"And there was that time when--"
+
+Several more anecdotes to the point were contributed by the various
+patrons of the bar, before the conversation, having described a full
+circle, returned to its original starting point, and then set off again
+with its vitality apparently undiminished. It was more than a week
+before the summons of Mr. Gain, of Botolph's Bridge, for driving his gig
+without a light ousted Joanna from her central glory in the Woolpack's
+discussions.
+
+At Ansdore itself the interest naturally lasted longer. Joanna's
+dependents whether in yard or kitchen were resentfully engrossed in the
+new conditions.
+
+"So Joanna's going to run our farm for us, is she?" said the head man,
+old Stuppeny, "that'll be valiant, wud some of the notions she has.
+She'll have our pläace sold up in a twelve-month, surelye. Well, well,
+it's time maybe as I went elsewheres--I've bin long enough at this job."
+
+Old Stuppeny had made this remark at intervals for the last sixty
+years, indeed ever since the day he had first come as a tow-headed boy
+to scare sparrows from the fields of Joanna's grandfather; so no one
+gave it the attention that should have been its due. Other people aired
+their grievances instead.
+
+"I wöan't stand her meddling wud me and my sheep," said Fuller, the
+shepherd.
+
+"It's her sheep, come to that," said Martha Tilden the chicken-girl.
+
+Fuller dealt her a consuming glance out of his eyes, which the long
+distances of the marsh had made keen as the sea wind.
+
+"She döan't know nothing about sheep, and I've been a looker after sheep
+since times when you and her was in your cradles, so I wöan't täake sass
+from neither of you."
+
+"She'll meddle wud you, Martha, just as she'll meddle wud the rest of
+us," said Broadhurst, the cowman.
+
+"She's meddled wud me for years--I'm used to it. It's you men what's
+going to have your time now. Ha! Ha! I'll be pleased watching it."
+
+Martha's short, brightly-coloured face seemed ready to break in two as
+she laughed with her mouth wide open.
+
+"When she's had a terrification wud me and said things as she's sorry
+for, she'll give me a gownd of hers or a fine hat. Sometimes I think as
+I make more out of her tempers than I do out of my good work what she
+pays me wages for."
+
+"Well, if I wur a decent maid I'd be ashamed to wear any of her
+outlandish gowns or hats. The colours she chooses! Sometimes when I see
+her walking through a field near the lambing time, I'm scared for my
+ewes, thinking they'll drop their lambs out of fright. I can't help
+being thankful as she's in black now for this season, though maybe I
+shudn't ought to say it, seeing as we've lost a good mäaster, and one as
+we'll all be tediously regretting in a week or two if we äun't now. You
+take my word, Martha--next time she gives you a gownd, you give it back
+to her and say as you don't wear such things, being a respectable woman.
+It äun't right, starting you like that on bad ways."
+
+
+
+
+§4
+
+There was only one house in the joint parishes where Joanna had any
+honourable mention, and that was North Farthing House on the other side
+of the Kent Ditch. Here lived Sir Harry Trevor, the second holder of a
+title won in banking enterprises, and lately fallen to low estate. The
+reason could perhaps be seen on his good-looking face, with its sensual,
+humorous mouth, roving eyes, and lurking air of unfulfilled, undefeated
+youth. The taverns of the Three Marshes had combined to give him a
+sensational past, and further said that his two sons had forced him to
+settle at Brodnyx with a view to preserving what was left of his morals
+and their inheritance. The elder was in Holy Orders, and belonged to a
+small community working in the East End of London; he seldom came to
+North Farthing House. The younger, Martin, who had some definite job in
+the city, was home for a few days that October. It was to him his father
+said:
+
+"I can't help admiring that girl Joanna Godden for her pluck. Old Godden
+died suddenly two weeks ago, and now she's given out that she'll run the
+farm herself, instead of putting in a bailiff. Of course the neighbours
+disapprove, they've got very strict notions round here as to woman's
+sphere and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Godden? Which farm's that?"
+
+"Little Ansdore--just across the Ditch, in Pedlinge parish. It's a big
+place, and I like her for taking it on."
+
+"And for any other reason?"
+
+"Lord, no! She isn't at all the sort of woman I admire--a great big
+strapping wench, the kind this marsh breeds twelve to the acre, like the
+sheep. Has it ever struck you, Martin, that the women on Romney Marsh,
+in comparison with the women one's used to and likes, are the same as
+the Kent sheep in comparison with Southdowns--admirably hardy and suited
+to the district and all that, but a bit tough and coarse-flavoured?"
+
+"I see that farming has already enlarged and refined your stock of
+similes. I hope you aren't getting tired of it."
+
+"No, not exactly. I'm interested in the place now I manage it without
+that dolt Lambarde, and Hythe isn't too far for the phaeton if I want
+to See Life. Besides, I haven't quite got over the thrill of not being
+in debt and disgrace"--he threw Martin a glance which might have come
+from a rebellious son to a censorious father. "But sometimes I wish
+there was less Moated Grange about it all. Damn it, I'm always alone
+here! Except when you or your reverend brother come down to see how I'm
+behaving."
+
+"Why don't you marry again?"
+
+"I don't want to marry. Besides, whom the devil should I marry round
+here? There's mighty few people of our own class about, and those there
+are seem to have no daughters under forty."
+
+Martin looked at him quizzically.
+
+"Oh yes, you young beast--I know what you're thinking. You're thinking
+that forty's just the right age for me. You're reminding me that I'm a
+trifle _passé_ myself and ought to marry something sere and yellow. But
+I tell you I don't feel any older than twenty-five--never have, it's my
+affliction--while you've never been younger than forty in all your life.
+It's you who ought to marry middle-age"--and he grimaced at Martin.
+
+
+
+
+§5
+
+Joanna rather enjoyed being the centre of discussion. She had none of
+the modest shrinking from being talked about which might have affected
+some young women. She was glad when Martha Tilden or another of the
+girls brought her any overheard scraps. "Oh, that's what they say, is
+it?" and she would laugh a big jolly laugh like a boy's.
+
+So far she had enjoyed being "Mäaster" of Little Ansdore. It meant a lot
+of work and a lot of thought and a lot of talking and interference, but
+Joanna shrank from none of these things. She was healthy and vigorous
+and intelligent, and was, moreover, quite unhampered by any diffidence
+about teaching their work to people who had been busy at it before she
+was born.
+
+Still it was scarcely more than a fortnight since she had taken on the
+government, and time had probably much to show her yet. She had a
+moment of depression one morning, rising early as she always must, and
+pulling aside the flowered curtain that covered her window. The prospect
+was certainly not one to cheer; even in sunshine the horizons of the
+marsh were discouraging with their gospel of universal flatness, and
+this morning the sun was not yet up, and a pale mist was drifting
+through the willows, thick and congealed above the watercourses, thinner
+on the grazing lands between them, so that one could see the dim shapes
+of the sheep moving through it. Even in clear weather only one other
+dwelling was visible from Little Ansdore, and that was its fellow of
+Great Ansdore, about half a mile away seawards. The sight of it never
+failed to make Joanna contemptuous--for Great Ansdore had but fifty
+acres of land compared with the three hundred of its Little neighbour.
+Its Greatness was merely a matter of name and tradition, and had only
+one material aspect in the presentation to the living of
+Brodnyx-with-Pedlinge, which had been with Great Ansdore since the
+passing of the monks of Canterbury.
+
+To-day Great Ansdore was only a patch of grey rather denser than its
+surroundings, and failed to inspire Joanna with her usual sense of
+gloating. Her eyes were almost sad as she stared out at it, her chin
+propped on her hands. The window was shut, as every window in every farm
+and cottage on the marsh was shut at night, though the ague was now
+little more than a name on the lips of grandfathers. Therefore the room
+in which two people had slept was rather stuffy, though this in itself
+would hardly account for Joanna's heaviness, since it was what she
+naturally expected a bedroom to be in the morning. Such vague sorrow was
+perplexing and disturbing to her practical emotions; she hurriedly
+attributed it to "poor father," and the propriety of the sentiment
+allowed her the relief of a few tears.
+
+Turning back into the room she unbuttoned her turkey-red dressing-gown,
+preparatory to the business of washing and dressing. Then her eye fell
+on Ellen still asleep in her little iron bedstead in the corner, and a
+glow of tenderness passed like a lamp over her face. She went across to
+where her sister slept, and laid her face for a moment beside hers on
+the pillow. Ellen's breath came regularly from parted lips--she looked
+adorable cuddled there, with her red cheeks, like an apple in snow.
+Joanna, unable to resist the temptation, kissed her and woke her.
+
+"Hullo, Jo--what time is it?" mumbled Ellen sleepily.
+
+"Not time to get up yet. I'm not dressed."
+
+She sat on the edge of the bed, stooping over her sister, and her big
+rough plaits dangled in the child's face.
+
+"Hullo, Jo--hullo, old Jo," continued the drowsy murmur.
+
+"Go to sleep, you bad girl," said Joanna, forgetting that she herself
+had roused her.
+
+Ellen was not wide enough awake to have any conflicting views on the
+subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten
+minutes the room was full of small sounds--the splashing of cold water
+in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays,
+the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while
+Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled
+bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years
+ago--word for word as she had said them when she was five, even to the
+"make me a good girl" at the end. Then she jumped up briskly and tore
+the sheet off the bed, throwing it with the pillows on the floor, so
+that Grace Wickens the servant should have no chance of making the bed
+without stripping it, as was the way of her kind.
+
+Grace was not up yet, of course. Joanna hit her door a resounding thump
+as she passed it on her way to the kitchen. Here the dead ashes had been
+raked out overnight, and the fire laid according to custom. She lit the
+fire and put the kettle on to boil; she did not consider it beneath her
+to perform these menial offices. She knew that every hand was needed for
+the early morning work of a farm. By the time she had finished both
+Grace and Martha were in the room, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
+
+"That'll burn up nicely now," said Joanna, surveying the fire. "You'd
+better put the fish-kettle on too, in case Broadhurst wants hot water
+for a mash. Bring me out a cup of tea as soon as you can get it
+ready--I'll be somewhere in the yard."
+
+She put on an old coat of her father's over her black dress, and went
+out, her nailed boots clattering on the cobble-stones. The men were
+up--they should have been up an hour now--but no sounds of activity came
+from the barns. The yard was in stillness, a little mist floating
+against the walls, and the pervading greyness of the morning seemed to
+be lit up by the huge blotches of yellow lichen that covered the slated
+roofs of barns and dwelling--the roofs were all new, having only for a
+year or two superseded the old roofs of osier thatch, but that queer
+golden rust had almost hidden their substance, covering them as it
+covered everything that was left exposed to the salt-thick marsh air.
+
+Joanna stood in the middle of the yard looking keenly round her like a
+cat, then like a cat she pounced. The interior of the latest built barn
+was dimly lit by a couple of windows under the roof--the light was just
+enough to show inside the doorway five motionless figures, seated about
+on the root-pile and the root-slicing machine. They were Joanna's five
+farm-men, apparently wrapped in a trance, from which her voice
+unpleasantly awoke them.
+
+"Here, you--what d'you think you're doing?"
+
+The five figures stiffened with perceptible indignation, but they did
+not rise from their sitting posture as their mistress advanced--or
+rather swooped--into their midst. Joanna did not expect this. She paid a
+man fifteen shillings a week for his labour and made no impossible
+demands of his prejudices and private habits.
+
+"I've been up an hour," she said, looking round on them, "and here I
+find all of you sitting like a lot of sacks."
+
+"It's two hours since I've bin out o' my warm bed," said old Stuppeny
+reproachfully.
+
+"You'd be as much use in it as out, if this is how you spend your time.
+No one's been to the pigs yet, and it wants but half an hour to
+milking."
+
+"We wur setting around for Grace Wickens to bring us out our tea," said
+Broadhurst.
+
+"You thought maybe she wouldn't know her way across the yard if you was
+on the other side of it? The tea ain't ready yet--I tell you I haven't
+had any. It's a fine sight to see a lot of strong, upstanding men
+lolling around waiting for a cup of tea."
+
+The scorn in Joanna's voice was withering, and a resentful grumble
+arose, amidst which old Stuppeny's dedication of himself to a new sphere
+was hoarsely discernible. However the men scrambled to their feet and
+tramped off in various directions; Joanna stopped Fuller, the shepherd,
+as he went by.
+
+"You'll be taking the wethers to Lydd this morning?"
+
+"Surelye."
+
+"How many are you taking?"
+
+"Maybe two score."
+
+"You can take the lot. It'll save us their grazing money this winter,
+and we can start fattening the tegs in the spring."
+
+"There's but two score wethers fit for market."
+
+"How d'you mean?"
+
+"The others äun't fatted präaperly."
+
+"Nonsense--you know we never give 'em cake or turnips, so what does it
+matter?"
+
+"They äun't fit."
+
+"I tell you they'll do well enough. I don't expect to get such prices
+for them as for that lot you've kept down in the New Innings, but they
+won't fetch much under, for I declare they're good meat. If we keep them
+over the winter we'll have to send them inland and pay no end for their
+grazing--and then maybe the price of mutton ull go down in the Spring."
+
+"It ud be a fool's job to täake them."
+
+"You say that because you don't want to have to fetch them up from the
+Salt Innings. I tell you you're getting lazy, Fuller."
+
+"My old mäaster never called me that."
+
+"Well, you work as well for me as you did for him, and I won't call you
+lazy, neither."
+
+She gave him a conciliatory grin, but Fuller had been too deeply wounded
+for such easy balm. He turned and walked away, a whole speech written in
+the rebellious hunch of his shoulders.
+
+"You'll get them beasts," she called after him.
+
+"Surelye"--came in a protesting drawl. Then "Yup!--Yup!" to the two
+sheep dogs couched on the doorstep.
+
+
+
+
+§6
+
+What with supervising the work and herding slackers, getting her
+breakfast and packing off Ellen to the little school she went to at Rye,
+Joanna found all too soon that the market hour was upon her. It did not
+strike her to shirk this part of a farmer's duty--she would drive into
+Rye and into Lydd and into Romney as her father had always driven,
+inspecting beasts and watching prices. Soon after ten o'clock she ran
+upstairs to make herself splendid, as the occasion required.
+
+By this time the morning had lifted itself out of the mist. Great sheets
+of blue covered the sky and were mirrored in the dykes--there was a soft
+golden glow about the marsh, for the vivid green of the pastures was
+filmed over with the brown of the withering seed-grasses, and the big
+clumps of trees that protected every dwelling were richly toned to rust
+through scales of flame. Already there were signs that the day would be
+hot, and Joanna sighed to think that approaching winter had demanded
+that her new best black should be made of thick materials. She hated
+black, too, and grimaced at her sombre frills, which the mourning brooch
+and chain of jet beads could only embellish, never lighten. But she
+would as soon have thought of jumping out of the window as of discarding
+her mourning a day before the traditions of the Marsh decreed. She
+decided not to wear her brooch and chain--the chain might swing and
+catch in the beasts' horns as she inspected them, besides her values
+demanded that she should be slightly more splendid in church than at
+market, so her ornaments were reserved as a crowning decoration, all
+except her mourning ring made of a lock of her father's hair.
+
+It was the first time she had been to market since his death, and she
+knew that folks would stare, so she might as well give them something to
+stare at. Outside the front door, in the drive, old Stuppeny was
+holding the head of Foxy, her mare, harnessed to the neat trap that
+Thomas Godden had bought early the same year.
+
+"Hullo, Stuppeny--you ain't coming along like that!" and Joanna's eye
+swept fiercely up and down his manure-caked trousers.
+
+"I never knew as I wur coming along anywheres, Miss Joanna."
+
+"You're coming along of me to the market. Surely you don't expect a lady
+to drive by herself?"
+
+Old Stuppeny muttered something unintelligible.
+
+"You go and put on your black coat," continued Joanna.
+
+"My Sunday coat!" shrieked Stuppeny.
+
+"Yes--quick! I can't wait here all day."
+
+"But I can't put on my good coat wudout cleaning myself, and it'll täake
+me the best part o' the marnun to do that."
+
+Joanna saw the reasonableness of his objection.
+
+"Oh, well, you can leave it this once, but another time you remember and
+look decent. To-day it'll do if you go into the kitchen and ask Grace to
+take a brush to your trousers--and listen here!" she called after him as
+he shambled off--"if she's making cocoa you can ask her to give you a
+cup."
+
+Grace evidently was making cocoa--a habit she had whenever her
+mistress's back was turned--for Stuppeny did not return for nearly a
+quarter of an hour. He looked slightly more presentable as he climbed
+into the back of the trap. It struck Joanna that she might be able to
+get him a suit of livery secondhand.
+
+"There isn't much he's good for on the farm now at his age, so he may as
+well be the one to come along of me. Broadhurst or Luck ud look a bit
+smarter, but it ud be hard to spare them.... Stuppeny ud look different
+in a livery coat with brass buttons.... I'll look around for one if I've
+time this afternoon."
+
+It was nearly seven miles from Ansdore to Lydd, passing the Woolpack,
+and the ragged gable of Midley Chapel--a reproachful ruin among the
+reeds of the Wheelsgate Sewer. Foxy went smartly, but every now and then
+they had to slow down as they overtook and passed flocks of sheep and
+cattle being herded along the road by drovers and shepherds in dusty
+boots, and dogs with red, lolling tongues. It was after midday when the
+big elm wood which had been their horizon for the last two miles
+suddenly turned, as if by an enchanter's wand, into a fair-sized town of
+red roofs and walls, with a great church tower raking above the trees.
+
+Joanna drove straight to the Crown, where Thomas Godden had "put up"
+every market day for twenty years. She ordered her dinner--boiled beef
+and carrots, and jam roll--and walked into the crowded coffee room,
+where farmers from every corner of the three marshes were already at
+work with knife and fork. Some of them knew her by sight and stared,
+others knew her by acquaintance and greeted her, while Arthur Alce
+jumped out of his chair, dropping his knife and sweeping his neighbour's
+bread off the table. He was a little shocked and alarmed to see Joanna
+the only woman in the room; he suggested that she should have her dinner
+in the landlady's parlour--"you'd be quieter like, in there."
+
+"I don't want to be quiet, thank you," said Joanna.
+
+She felt thankful that none of the few empty chairs was next Alce's--she
+could never abide his fussing. She sat down between Cobb of Slinches and
+a farmer from Snargate way, and opened the conversation pleasantly on
+the subject of liver fluke in sheep.
+
+When she had brought her meal to a close with a cup of tea, she found
+Alce waiting for her in the hotel entrance.
+
+"I never thought you'd come to market, Joanna."
+
+"And why not, pray?"
+
+The correct answer was--"Because you don't know enough about beasts,"
+but Alce had the sense to find a substitute.
+
+"Because it ain't safe or seemly for a woman to come alone and deal with
+men."
+
+"And why not, again? Are all you men going to swindle me if you get the
+chance?"
+
+Joanna's laugh always had a disintegrating effect on Alce, with its loud
+warm tones and its revelation of her pretty teeth--which were so white
+and even, except the small pointed canines. When she laughed she opened
+her mouth wide and threw back her head on her short white neck. Alce
+gropingly put out a hairy hand towards her, which was his nearest
+approach to a caress. Joanna flicked it away.
+
+"Now a-done do, Arthur Alce"--dropping in her merriment into the lower
+idiom of the Marsh--"a-done do with your croaking and your stroking
+both. Let me go my own ways, for I know 'em better than you can."
+
+"But these chaps--I don't like it--maybe, seeing you like this amongst
+them, they'll get bold with you."
+
+"Not they! How can you mention such a thing? There was Mr. Cobb and Mr.
+Godfrey at dinner, talking to me as respectful as churchwardens, all
+about liver fluke and then by way of rot in the oats, passing on natural
+and civil to the Isle of Wight disease in potatoes--if you see anything
+bold in _that_ ... well then you're an old woman as sure as I ain't."
+
+A repetition of her laugh completed his disruption, and he found himself
+there on the steps of the Crown begging her to let him take over her
+market day discussions as her husband and deputy.
+
+"Why should you go talking to farmers about Isle of Wight disease and
+liver fluke, when you might be talking to their wives about making
+puddings and stuffing mattresses and such-like women's subjects."
+
+"I talk about them too," said Joanna, "and I can't see as I'd be any
+better for talking of nothing else."
+
+What Alce had meant to convey to her was that he would much rather hear
+her discussing the ailments of her children than of her potatoes, but he
+was far too delicate-minded to state this. He only looked at her sadly.
+
+Joanna had not even troubled to refuse his proposal--any more than a
+mother troubles to give a definite and reasoned refusal to the child who
+asks for the moon. Finding him silent, and feeling rather sorry for him,
+she suggested that he should come round with her to the shops and carry
+some of her parcels.
+
+
+
+
+§7
+
+She went first of all to a firm of house-painters, for she meant to
+brighten up Ansdore. She disliked seeing the place with no colour or
+ornament save that which the marsh wind gave it of gold and rust. She
+would have the eaves and the pipes painted a nice green, such as would
+show up well at a distance. There was plenty of money, so why should
+everything be drab? Alce discouraged her as well as he was able--it was
+the wrong time of year for painting, and the old paint was still quite
+good. Joanna treated his objections as she had treated his
+proposal--with good-humoured, almost tender, indifference. She let him
+make his moan at the house-painter's, then carelessly bore him on to the
+furnishers', where she bought brightly-flowered stuff for new curtains.
+Then he stood by while at an outfitter's she inspected coats for
+Stuppeny, and finally bought one of a fine mulberry colour with brass
+buttons all down the front.
+
+She now returned to the market-place, and sought out two farmers from
+the Iden district, with whom she made arrangements for the winter keep
+of her lambs. Owing to the scanty and salt pastures of winter, it had
+always been the custom on the marsh to send the young sheep for grazing
+on upland farms, and fetch them back in the spring as tegs. Joanna
+disposed of her young flock between Relf of Baron's Grange and Noakes of
+Mockbeggar, then, still accompanied by Alce, strolled down to inspect
+the wethers she had brought to the market.
+
+On her way she met the farmer of Picknye Bush.
+
+"Good day, Miss Godden--I've just come from buying some tegs of yourn."
+
+"My looker's settled with you, has he?"
+
+"He said he had the power to sell as he thought proper--otherways I was
+going to ask for you."
+
+An angry flush drowned the freckles on Joanna's cheek.
+
+"That's Fuller, the obstinate, thick-headed old man...."
+
+Bates's round face fell a little.
+
+"I'm sorry if there's bin any mistäake. After all, I äun't got the
+beasts yet--thirty shillings a head is the price he asked and I paid. I
+call it a fair price, seeing the time of year and the state of the meat
+market But if your looker's bin presuming and you äun't pleased, then I
+wöan't call it a deal."
+
+"I'm pleased enough to sell you my beasts, and thirty shillings is a
+fairish price. But I won't have Fuller fixing things up over my head
+like this, and I'll tell him so. How many of 'em did you buy, Mr.
+Bates?"
+
+"I bought the lot--two score."
+
+Joanna made a choking sound. Without another word, she turned and walked
+off in the direction of the hurdles where her sheep were penned, Bates
+and Alce following her after one disconcerted look at each other. Fuller
+stood beside the wethers, his two shaggy dogs couched at his feet--he
+started when he suddenly saw his mistress burst through the crowd, her
+black feathers nodding above her angry face.
+
+"Fuller!" she shouted, so loud that those who were standing near turned
+round to see--"How many wether-tegs have you brought to Lydd?"
+
+"Two score."
+
+"How many did I tell you to bring?"
+
+"The others wurn't fit, surelye."
+
+"But didn't I tell you to bring them?"
+
+"You did, but they wurn't fit."
+
+"I said you were to bring them, no matter if you thought 'em fit or
+not."
+
+"They wurn't fit to be sold as meat."
+
+"I tell you they were."
+
+"No one shall say as Tom Fuller döan't bring fit meat to market."
+
+"You're an obstinate old fool. I tell you they were first-class meat."
+
+Men were pressing round, farmers and graziers and butchers, drawn by the
+spectacle of Joanna Godden at war with her looker in the middle of Lydd
+market. Alce touched her arm appealingly--
+
+"Come away, Joanna," he murmured.
+
+She flung round at him.
+
+"Keep dear--leave me to settle my own man."
+
+There was a titter in the crowd.
+
+"I know bad meat from good, surelye," continued Fuller, feeling that
+popular sentiment was on his side--"I should ought to, seeing as I wur
+your father's looker before you wur your father's daughter."
+
+"You were my father's looker, but after this you shan't be looker of
+mine. Since you won't mind what I say or take orders from me, you can
+leave my service this day month."
+
+There was a horror-stricken silence in the crowd--even the lowest
+journeyman butcher realized the solemnity of the occasion.
+
+"You understand me?" said Joanna.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," came from Fuller in a crushed voice.
+
+
+
+
+§8
+
+By the same evening the news was all over Lydd market, by the next it
+was all over the Three Marshes. Everyone was repeating to everyone else
+how Joanna Godden of Little Ansdore had got shut of her looker after
+twenty-eight years' service, and her father not been dead a month.
+"Enough to make him rise out of his grave," said the Marsh.
+
+The actual reasons for the turning away were variously given--"Just
+because he spuck up and told her as her pore father wudn't hold wud her
+goings on," was the doctrine promulgated by the Woolpack; but the
+general council sitting in the bar of the Crown decreed that the trouble
+had arisen out of Fuller's spirited refusal to sell some lambs that had
+tic. Other pronouncements were that she had sassed Fuller because he
+knew more about sheep than she did--or that Fuller had sassed her for
+the same reason--that it wasn't Joanna who had dismissed him, but he who
+had been regretfully obliged to give notice, owing to her meddling--that
+all the hands at Ansdore were leaving on account of her temper.
+
+"He'll never get another pläace agäun, will pore old Fuller--he'll end
+in the Union and be an everlasting shame to her."
+
+There was almost a feeling of disappointment when it became known that
+Fuller--who was only forty-two, having started his career at an early
+age--had been given a most satisfactory job at Arpinge Farm inland, and
+something like consternation when it was further said and confirmed by
+Fuller himself that Joanna had given him an excellent character.
+
+"She'll never get another looker," became the changed burden of the
+Marsh.
+
+But here again prophecy failed, for hardly had Joanna's advertisement
+appeared simultaneously in the _Rye Observer_ and the _Kentish Express_
+than she had half a dozen applications from likely men. Martha Tilden
+brought the news to Godfrey's Stores, the general shop in Brodnyx.
+
+"There she is, setting in her chair, talking to a young chap what's come
+from Botolph's Bridge, and there's three more waiting in the
+passage--she told Grace to give them each a cup of cocoa when she was
+making it. And what d'you think? Their looker's come over from Old
+Honeychild, asking for the place, though he was sitting in the Crown at
+Lydd only yesterday, as Sam Broadhurst told me, saying as it was a shame
+to get shut of Fuller like that, and as how Joanna deserved never to see
+another looker again in her life."
+
+"Which of the lot d'you think she'll take?" asked Godfrey.
+
+"I dunno. How should I say? Peter Relf from Old Honeychild is a stout
+feller, and one of the other men told me he'd got a character that made
+him blush, it was that fine and flowery. But you never know with Joanna
+Godden--maybe she'd sooner have a looker as knew nothing, and then she
+could teach him. Ha! Ha!"
+
+Meanwhile Joanna sat very erect in her kitchen chair, interviewing the
+young chap from Botolph's Bridge.
+
+"You've only got a year's character from Mr. Gain?"
+
+"Yes, missus ..." a long pause during which some mental process took
+place clumsily behind this low, sunburnt forehead ... "but I've got
+these."
+
+He handed Joanna one or two dirty scraps of paper on which were written
+"characters" from earlier employers.
+
+Joanna read them. None was for longer than two years, but they all spoke
+well of the young man before her.
+
+"Then you've never been on the Marsh before you came to Botolph's
+Bridge?"
+
+"No, missus."
+
+"Sheep on the Marsh is very different from sheep inland."
+
+"I know, missus."
+
+"But you think you're up to the job."
+
+"Yes, missus."
+
+Joanna stared at him critically. He was a fine young fellow--slightly
+bowed already though he had given his age as twenty-five, for the earth
+begins her work early in a man's frame, and has power over the green
+tree as well as the dry. But this stoop did not conceal his height and
+strength and breadth, and somehow his bigness, combined with his
+simplicity, his slow thought and slow tongue, appealed to Joanna,
+stirred something within her that was almost tender. She handed him back
+his dirty "characters."
+
+"Well, I must think it over. I've some other men to see, but I'll write
+you a line to Botolph's Bridge and tell you how I fix. You go now and
+ask Grace Wickens, my gal, to give you a cup of hot cocoa."
+
+Young Socknersh went, stooping his shock-head still lower as he passed
+under the worn oak lintel of the kitchen door. Joanna interviewed the
+shepherd from Honeychild, a man from Slinches, another from Anvil Green
+inland, and one from Chilleye, on Pevensey marsh beyond Marlingate. She
+settled with none, but told each that she would write. She spent the
+evening thinking them over.
+
+No doubt Peter Relf from Honeychild was the best man--the oldest and
+most experienced--but on the other hand he wanted the most money, and
+probably also his own way. After the disastrous precedent of Fuller,
+Joanna wasn't going to have another looker who thought he knew better
+than she did. Now, Dick Socknersh, he would mind her properly, she felt
+sure.... Day from Slinches had the longest "character"--fifteen years
+man and boy; but that would only mean that he was set in their ways and
+wouldn't take to hers--she wasn't going to start fattening her sheep
+with turnips, coarsening the meat, not to please anyone.... Now,
+Socknersh, having never been longer than two years in a place wouldn't
+have got fixed in any bad habits.... As for Jenkins and Taylor, they
+weren't any good--just common Southdown men--she might as well write off
+to them at once. Her choice lay between Relf and Day and Socknersh. She
+knew that she meant to have Socknersh--he was not the best shepherd, but
+she liked him the best, and he would mind her properly and take to her
+ways ... for a moment he seemed to stand before her, with his head
+stooping among the rafters, his great shoulders shutting out the window,
+his curious, brown, childlike eyes fixed upon her face. Day was a
+scrubby little fellow, and Relf had warts all over his hands.... But she
+wasn't choosing Socknersh for his looks; she was choosing him because he
+would work for her the best, not being set up with "notions." Of course
+she liked him the best, too, but it would be more satisfactory from
+every practical point of view to work with a man she liked than with a
+man she did not like--Joanna liked a man to look a man, and she did not
+mind if he was a bit of a child too.... Yes, she would engage Socknersh;
+his "characters," though short, were most satisfactory--he was "good
+with sheep and lambs," she could remember--"hard-working"--"patient"....
+She wrote to Botolph's Bridge that evening, and engaged him to come to
+her at the end of the week.
+
+
+
+
+§9
+
+Nothing happened to make her regret her choice. Socknersh proved, as she
+had expected, a humble, hard-working creature, who never disputed her
+orders, indeed who sometimes turned to her for direction and advice.
+Stimulated by his deference, she became even more of an oracle than she
+had hitherto professed. She looked up "The Sheep" in her father's
+"Farmer's Encyclopædia" of the year 1861, and also read one or two more
+books upon his shelves. From these she discovered that there was more in
+sheep breeding than was covered by the lore of the Three Marshes, and
+her mind began to plunge adventurously among Southdowns and Leicesters,
+Black-faced, Blue-faced, and Cumberland sheep. She saw Ansdore famous as
+a great sheep-breeding centre, with many thousands of pounds coming
+annually to its mistress from meat and wool.
+
+She confided some of these ideas to Arthur Alce and a few neighbouring
+farmers. One and all discouraged her, and she told herself angrily that
+the yeomen were jealous--as for Alce, it was just his usual silliness.
+She found that she had a more appreciative listener in Dick Socknersh.
+He received all her plans with deep respect, and sometimes an admiring
+"Surelye, missus," would come from his lips that parted more readily for
+food than for speech. Joanna found that she enjoyed seeking him out in
+the barn, or turning off the road to where he stood leaning on his crook
+with his dog against his legs.
+
+"You'd never believe the lot there is in sheep-keeping, Socknersh; and
+the wonders you can do if you have knowledge and information. Now the
+folks around here, they're middling sensible, but they ain't what you'd
+call clever. They're stuck in their ways, as you might say. Now if you
+open your mind properly, you can learn a lot of things out of books. My
+poor father had some wonderful books upon his shelves, that are mine to
+read now, and you'd be surprised at the lot I've learned out of 'em,
+even though I've been sheep-raising all my life."
+
+"Surelye, missus."
+
+"Now I'll tell you something about sheep-raising that has never been
+done here, all the hundreds of years there's been sheep on the Marsh.
+And that's the proper crossing of sheep. My book tells me that there's
+been useful new breeds started that way and lots of money made. Now,
+would you believe it, they've never tried crossing down here on the
+Marsh, except just once or twice with Southdowns?--And that's silly,
+seeing as the Southdown is a smaller sheep than ours, and I don't see
+any sense in bringing down our fine big sheep that can stand all waters
+and weathers. If I was to cross 'em, I'd sooner cross 'em with rams
+bigger than themselves. I know they say that small joints of mutton are
+all the style nowadays, but I like a fine big animal--besides, think of
+the fleeces."
+
+Socknersh apparently thought of them so profoundly that he was choked of
+utterance, but Joanna could tell that he was going to speak by the
+restless moving of his eyes under their strangely long dark lashes, and
+by the little husky sounds he made in his throat. She stood watching him
+with a smile on her face.
+
+"Well, Socknersh--you were going to say ..."
+
+"I wur going to say, missus, as my mäaster up at Garlinge Green, whur I
+wur afore I took to the Marsh at Botolph's Bridge--my mäaster, Mus'
+Pebsham, had a valiant set of Spanish ship, as big as liddle cattle; you
+shud ought to have seen them."
+
+"Did he do any crossing with 'em?"
+
+"No, missus--leastways not whiles I wur up at the Green."
+
+Joanna stared through the thick red sunset to the horizon. Marvellous
+plans were forming in her head--part, they seemed, of the fiery shapes
+that the clouds had raised in the west beyond Rye hill. Those clouds
+walked forth as flocks of sheep--huge sheep under mountainous fleeces,
+the wonder of the Marsh and the glory of Ansdore....
+
+"Socknersh ..."
+
+"Yes, missus."
+
+She hesitated whether she should share with him her new inspiration. It
+would be good to hear him say "Surelye, missus" in that admiring, husky
+voice. He was the only one of her farm-hands who, she felt, had any
+deference towards her--any real loyalty, though he was the last come.
+
+"Socknersh, d'you think your master up at Garlinge would let me hire one
+or two rams to cross with my ewes?--I might go up and have a look at
+them. I don't know as I've ever seen a Spanish sheep.... Garlinge is up
+by Court-at-Street, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes, missus. 'Tis an unaccountable way from here."
+
+"I'd write first. What d'you think of the notion, Socknersh? Don't you
+think that a cross between a Spanish sheep and a Kent sheep ud be an
+uncommon fine animal?"
+
+"Surelye, missus."
+
+That night Joanna dreamed that giant sheep as big as bullocks were being
+herded on the Marsh by a giant shepherd.
+
+
+
+
+§10
+
+Spring brought a blooming to Ansdore as well as to the Marsh. Joanna had
+postponed, after all, her house-painting till the winter months of
+rotting sea mists were over. But in April the ladders striped her
+house-front, and soon her windows and doors began to start luridly out
+of their surroundings of mellowed tiles and brick. After much
+deliberation she had chosen yellow for her colour, tastefully picked out
+with green. She had always been partial to yellow--it was a colour that
+"showed up" well, and she was also influenced by the fact that there was
+no other yellow-piped dwelling on the Marsh.
+
+Her neighbours disapproved of her choice for the same reasons that had
+induced her to make it. They were shocked by the fact that you could see
+her front door from half a mile off on the Brodnyx Road; it was just
+like Joanna Godden to choose a colour that shrieked across the landscape
+instead of merging itself unobtrusively into it. But there was a still
+worse shock in store for public opinion, and that was when she decided
+to repaint her waggons as well as her house.
+
+Hitherto there had been only one shape and colour of waggon on the
+Marsh--a plain low-sided trough of deep sea-blue. The name was always
+painted in white on a small black wooden square attached to the side.
+Thomas Godden's waggons had been no departure from this rule. It was
+left to his daughter to flout tradition, and by some obscure process of
+local reasoning, bring discredit to her dead father by painting her
+waggons yellow instead of blue. The evil went deeper than mere colour.
+Joanna was a travelled woman, having once been to the Isle of Wight, and
+it suddenly struck her that, since she was repainting, she might give
+her three waggons the high gondola-shaped fronts that she had admired in
+the neighbourhood of Shanklin and Ventnor. These she further beautified
+with a rich, scrolled design, and her name in large, ornate
+lettering--"Joanna Godden. Little Ansdore. Walland Marsh"--so that her
+waggons went forth upon the roads very much as the old men o' war of
+King Edward's fleet had sailed over that same country when it was
+fathoms deep under the seas of Rye Bay.... With their towering,
+decorated poops they were more like mad galleys of a bygone age than
+sober waggons of a nineteenth century farm.
+
+Her improvements gave her a sense of adventurous satisfaction--her house
+with its yellow window frames and doors, with its new curtains of
+swaggering design--her high-pooped waggons--the coat with the brass
+buttons that old Stuppeny wore when he drove behind her to market--her
+dreams of giant sheep upon her innings--all appealed to something
+fundamental in her which was big and boastful. She even liked the gossip
+with which she was surrounded, the looks that were turned upon her when
+she drove into Rye or Lydd or New Romney--the "there goes Joanna Godden"
+of folk she passed. She had no acute sense of their disapproval; if she
+became aware of it she would only repeat to herself that she would "show
+'em the style"--which she certainly did.
+
+
+
+
+§11
+
+Arthur Alce was very much upset by the gossip about Joanna.
+
+"All you've done since you started running Ansdore is to get yourself
+talked about," he said sadly.
+
+"Well, I don't mind that."
+
+"No, but you should ought to. A woman should ought to be modest and
+timid and not paint her house so's it shows up five mile off--first your
+house, and then your waggons--it'll be your face next."
+
+"Arthur Alce, you're very rude, and till you learn to be civil you can
+keep out of my house--the same as you can see five mile off."
+
+Alce, who really felt bitter and miserable, took her at her word and
+kept away for nearly a fortnight. Joanna was not sorry, for he had been
+highly disapproving on the matter of the Spanish sheep, and she was
+anxious to carry out her plan in his absence. A letter to Garlinge Green
+had revealed the fact that Socknersh's late master had removed to a farm
+near Northampton; he still bred Spanish sheep, but the risk of Joanna's
+venture was increased by the high price she would have to pay for
+railway transport as well as in fees. However, once she had set her
+heart on anything, she would let nothing stand in her way. Socknersh was
+inclined to be aghast at all the money the affair would cost, but Joanna
+soon talked him into an agreeable "Surelye."
+
+"We'll get it all back," she told him. "Our lambs ull be the biggest at
+market, and ull fetch the biggest prices too."
+
+It pleased Joanna to talk of Socknersh and herself as "we," though she
+would bitterly have resented any idea of joint responsibility in the
+days of Fuller. The rites of lambing and shearing had not dimmed her
+faith in the high priest she had chosen for Ansdore's most sacred
+mysteries. Socknersh was a man who was automatically "good with sheep."
+The scared and trembling ewes seemed to see in him a kind of affinity
+with themselves, and lay still under his big, brown, quiet hands. He had
+not much "head," but he had that queer inward kinship with animals which
+is sometimes found in intensely simple natures, and Joanna felt equal to
+managing the "head" part of the business for both. It pleased her to
+think that the looker--who is always the principal man on a farm such as
+Ansdore, where sheep-rearing is the main business--deferred to her
+openly, before the other hands, spoke to her with drawling respect, and
+for ever followed her with his humble eyes.
+
+She liked to feel those eyes upon her. All his strength and bigness, all
+his manhood, huge and unaware, seemed to lie deep in them like a monster
+coiled up under the sea. When he looked at her he seemed to lose that
+heavy dumbness, that inarticulate stupidity which occasionally stirred
+and vexed even her good disposition; his mouth might still be shut, but
+his eyes were fluent--they told her not only of his manhood but of her
+womanhood besides.
+
+Socknersh lived alone in the looker's cottage which had always belonged
+to Ansdore. It stood away on the Kent Innings, on the very brink of the
+Ditch, which here gave a great loop, to allow a peninsula of Sussex to
+claim its rights against the Kentish monks. It was a lonely little
+cottage, all rusted over with lichen, and sometimes Joanna felt sorry
+for Socknersh away there by himself beside the Ditch. She sent him over
+a flock mattress and a woollen blanket, in case the old ague-spectre of
+the Marsh still haunted that desolate corner of water and reeds.
+
+
+
+
+§12
+
+Towards the end of that autumn, Joanna and Ellen Godden came out of
+their mourning. As was usual on such occasions, they chose a Sunday for
+their first appearance in colours. Half mourning was not worn on the
+Marsh, so there was no interval of grey and violet between Joanna's
+hearse-like costume of crape and nodding feathers and the tan-coloured
+gown in which she astonished the twin parishes of Brodnyx and Pedlinge
+on the first Sunday in November. Her hat was of sage green and contained
+a bird unknown to natural history. From her ears swung huge jade
+earrings, in succession to the jet ones that had dangled against her
+neck on Sundays for a year--she must have bought them, for everyone knew
+that her mother, Mary Godden, had left but one pair.
+
+Altogether the sight of Joanna was so breathless, that a great many
+people never noticed Ellen, or at best only saw her hat as it went past
+the tops of their pews. Joanna realized this, and being anxious that no
+one should miss the sight of Ellen's new magenta pelisse with facings of
+silver braid, she made her stand on the seat while the psalms were sung.
+
+The morning service was in Brodnyx church--in the evening it would be at
+Pedlinge. Brodnyx had so far escaped the restorer, and the pews were
+huge wooden boxes, sometimes fitted with a table in the middle, while
+Sir Harry Trevor's, which he never occupied, except when his sons were
+at home, was further provided with a stove--all the heating there was in
+the three aisles. There was also a two-decker pulpit at the east end and
+over the dim little altar hung an escutcheon of Royal George--the lion
+and the unicorn fighting for the crown amid much scroll-work.
+
+Like most churches on the Marsh it was much too big for its parish, and
+if the entire population of Brodnyx and Pedlinge had flocked into it,
+it would not have been full. This made Joanna and Ellen all the more
+conspicuous--they were alone in their great horse-box of a pew, except
+for many prayer books and hassocks--There were as many hassocks in
+Brodnyx church as there were sheep on the Brodnyx innings. Joanna, as
+usual, behaved very devoutly, and did not look about her. She had an
+immense respect for the Church, and always followed the service word for
+word in her huge calf-bound prayer book, expecting Ellen to do the
+same--an expectation which involved an immense amount of scuffling and
+angry whispering in their pew.
+
+However, though her eyes were on her book, she was proudly conscious
+that everyone else's eyes were on her. Even the rector must have seen
+her--as indeed from his elevated position on the bottom deck of the
+pulpit he could scarcely help doing--and his distraction was marked by
+occasional stutters and the intrusion of an evening Collect. He was a
+nervous, deprecating little man, terribly scared of his flock, and
+ruefully conscious of his own shortcomings and the shortcomings of his
+church. Visiting priests had told him that Brodnyx church was a
+disgrace, with its false stresses of pew and pulpit and the lion and the
+unicorn dancing above the throne of the King of kings. They said he
+ought to have it restored. They did not trouble about where the money
+was to come from, but Mr. Pratt knew he could not get it out of his
+congregation, who did not like to have things changed from the manner of
+their fathers--indeed there had been complaints when he had dislodged
+the owls that had nested under the gallery from an immemorial rector's
+day.
+
+The service came to an end with the singing of a hymn to an
+accompaniment of grunts and wheezes from an ancient harmonium and the
+dropping of pennies and threepenny bits into a wooden plate. Then the
+congregation hurried out to the civilities of the churchyard.
+
+From outside, Brodnyx Church looked still more Georgian and abandoned.
+Its three aisles were without ornament or architecture; there was no
+tower, but beside it stood a peculiar and unexplained erection, shaped
+like a pagoda, in three tiers of black and battered tar-boarding. It
+had a slight cant towards the church, and suggested nothing so much as a
+disreputable Victorian widow, in tippet, mantle and crinoline, seeking
+the support of a stone wall after a carouse.
+
+In the churchyard, among the graves, the congregation assembled and
+talked of or to Joanna. It was noticeable that the women judged her more
+kindly than the men.
+
+"She can't help her taste," said Mrs. Vine, "and she's a kind-hearted
+thing."
+
+"If you ask me," said Mrs. Prickett, "her taste ain't so bad, if only
+she'd have things a bit quieter. But she's like a child with her yallers
+and greens."
+
+"She's more like an organist's monkey," said her husband. "What ud I do
+if I ever saw you tricked out like that, Mrs. Prickett?"
+
+"Oh, I'd never wear such clothes, master, as you know well. But then I'm
+a different looking sort of woman. I wouldn't go so far as to say them
+bright colours don't suit Joanna Godden."
+
+"I never thought much of her looks."
+
+"Nor of her looker--he! he!" joined in Furnese with a glance in Joanna's
+direction.
+
+She was talking to Dick Socknersh, who had been to church with the other
+hands that could be spared from the farm. She asked him if he had liked
+the sermon, and then told him to get off home quickly and give the tegs
+their swill.
+
+"Reckon he don't know a teg from a tup," said Furnese.
+
+"Oh, surelye, Mr. Furnese, he äun't a bad looker. Jim Harmer said he wur
+just about wonderful with the ewes at the shearing."
+
+"Maybe--but he'd three sway-backed lambs at Rye market on Thursday."
+
+"Sway-backs!"
+
+"Three. 'Twas a shame."
+
+"But Joanna told me he was such a fine, wonderful man with the sheep--as
+he got 'em to market about half as tired and twice as quick as Fuller
+used to in his day."
+
+"Ah, but then she's unaccountable set on young Socknersh. He lets her
+do what she likes with her sheep, and he's a stout figure of a man, too.
+Joanna Godden always was partial to stout-looking men."
+
+"But she'd never be such a fool as to git sweet on her looker."
+
+"Well, that's wot they're saying at the Woolpack."
+
+"The Woolpack! Did you ever hear of such a talk-hole as you men get into
+when you're away from us! They say some unaccountable fine things at the
+Woolpack. I tell you, Joanna ain't such a fool as to get sweet on Dick
+Socknersh."
+
+"She's been fool enough to cross Spanish sheep with her own. Three rams
+she had sent all the way from furrin parts by Northampton. I tell you,
+after that, she'd be fool enough for anything."
+
+"Maybe she'll do well by it."
+
+"Maybe she'll do well by marrying Dick Socknersh. I tell you, you döan't
+know näun about it, missus. Whosumdever heard of such an outlandish,
+heathen, foolish notion?"
+
+On the whole Joanna was delighted with the success of her appearance.
+She walked home with Mrs. Southland and Maggie Furnese, bridling a
+little under their glances, while she discussed servants, and
+food-prices, and a new way of pickling eggs.
+
+She parted from them at Ansdore, and she and Ellen went in to their
+Sunday's dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. After this the day
+would proceed according to the well-laid ceremonial that Joanna loved.
+Little Ellen, with a pinafore tied over her Sabbath splendours, would go
+into the kitchen to sit with the maids--get into their laps, turn over
+their picture Bibles, examine their one or two trinkets and strings of
+beads which they always brought into the kitchen on Sunday. Meanwhile
+Joanna would sit in state in the parlour, her feet on a footstool, on
+her lap a volume of Spurgeon's sermons. In the old days it had always
+been her father who read sermons, but now he was dead she had taken over
+this part of his duties with the rest, and if the afternoon generally
+ended in sleep, sleep was a necessary part of a well-kept Sabbath day.
+
+
+
+
+§13
+
+When Christmas came that year, Joanna was inspired to celebrate it with
+a party. The Christmas before she had been in mourning, but in her
+father's day it had been usual to invite a few respectable farmers to a
+respectable revel, beginning with high tea, then proceeding through
+whist to a hot supper. Joanna would have failed in her duty to "poor
+father" if she had not maintained this custom, and she would have failed
+in consistency with herself if she had not improved upon it--embellished
+it with one or two ornate touches, which lifted it out of its prosaic
+rut of similarity to a dozen entertainments given at a dozen farms, and
+made it a rather wonderful and terrible occasion to most dwellers on the
+Marsh.
+
+To begin with, the invitations were not delivered, according to custom,
+verbally in the churchyard after Morning Prayer on Sunday--they were
+written on cards, as Mrs. Saville of Dungemarsh Court wrote them, and
+distributed through the unwonted and expensive medium of the post. When
+their recipients had done exclaiming over the waste of a penny stamp,
+they were further astonished to see the word "Music" written in the
+corner--Joanna had stuck very closely to her Dungemarsh Court model.
+What could the music be? Was the Brodnyx Brass Band going to play? Or
+had Joanna hired Miss Patty Southland, who gave music lessons on the
+Marsh?
+
+She had done neither of these things. When her visitors assembled,
+stuffed into her two parlours, while the eatables were spread in a
+kitchen metamorphosed with decorations of crinkled paper, they found,
+buttressed into a corner by the freshly tuned piano, the Rye Quartet,
+consisting of the piano-tuner himself, his wife, who played the 'cello,
+and his two daughters with fiddles and white piqué frocks. At first the
+music was rather an embarrassment, for while it played eating and
+conversation were alike suspended, and the guests stood with open mouths
+and cooling cups of tea till Mr. Plummer's final chords released their
+tongues and filled their mouths with awkward simultaneousness. However,
+after a time the general awe abated, and soon the Rye Quartet was
+swamped in a terrific noise of tongues and mastication.
+
+Everyone was staring at Joanna's dress, for it was Low--quite four
+inches of her skin must have shown between its top most frill and the
+base of her sturdy throat. The sleeves stopped short at the elbow,
+showing a very soft, white forearm, in contrast with brown, roughened
+hands. Altogether it was a daring display, and one or two of the Miss
+Vines and Southlands and Furneses wondered "how Joanna could do it."
+
+Proudly conscious of the eyes fixed upon her, she moved--or rather, it
+must be confessed, squeezed--about among her guests. She had put on new
+manners with her new clothes, and was full of a rather mincing civility.
+
+"Pray, Mrs. Cobb, may I get you another cup of tea?"--"Just one more
+piece of cake, Mr. Alce?"--"Oh, please, Miss Prickett--just a leetle bit
+of ham."
+
+Ellen followed her sister about, pulling at her skirt. She was dressed
+in white, and her hair was crimped, and tied with pink ribbons. At eight
+o'clock she was ordered up to bed and there was a great uproar, before,
+striking out in all directions, she was carried upstairs under Joanna's
+stalwart arm. The Rye Quartet tactfully started playing to drown her
+screams, which continued for some time in the room overhead.
+
+The party did not break up till eleven, having spent five hours standing
+squeezed like herrings under the Ansdore beams, eating and drinking and
+talking, to the strains of "The Blue Danube" and "See Me Dance the
+Polka." Local opinion was a little bewildered by the entertainment--it
+had been splendid, no doubt, and high-class to an overwhelming degree,
+but it had been distinctly uncomfortable, even tiresome, and a great
+many people were upset by eating too much, since the refreshments had
+been served untiringly from six to eleven, while others had not had
+enough, being nervous of eating their food so far from a table, and
+clinging throughout the evening to their first helpings.
+
+To Joanna, however, the evening was an uncriticized success, and she was
+inspired to repeat it on a humbler scale for the benefit of her
+servants. She knew that at big houses there was often a servants' ball
+at Christmas, and though she had at present no definite ambition to push
+herself into the Manor Class, she was anxious that Ansdore should have
+every pomp and that things should be "done proper." The mere solid
+comfort of prosperity was not enough for her--she wanted the glitter and
+glamour of it as well, she wanted her neighbours not only to realize it
+but to exclaim about it.
+
+Thus inspired she asked Prickett, Vine, Furnese and other yeomen and
+tenants of the Marsh to send their hands, men and maids, to Ansdore, for
+dancing and supper on New Year's Eve. She found this celebration even
+more thrilling than the earlier one. Somehow these humbler preparations
+filled more of her time and thought than when she had prepared to
+entertain her peers. She would not wear her low dress, of course, but
+she would have her pink one "done up"--a fall of lace and some beads
+sewn on, for she must look her best. She saw herself opening the ball
+with Dick Socknersh, her hand in his, his clumsy arm round her waist....
+Of course old Stuppeny was technically the head man at Ansdore, but he
+was too old to dance--she would see he had plenty to eat and drink
+instead--she would take the floor with Dick Socknersh, and all eyes
+would be fixed upon her.
+
+They certainly were, except when they dropped for a wink at a neighbour.
+Joanna waltzing with Socknersh to the trills of Mr. Elphick, the Brodnyx
+schoolmaster, seated at the tinkling, ancient Collard, Joanna in her
+pink gown, close fitting to her waist and then abnormally bunchy, with
+her hair piled high and twisted with a strand of ribbon, with her face
+flushed, her lips parted and her eyes bright, was a sight from which no
+man and few women could turn their eyes. Her vitality and happiness
+seemed to shine from her skin, almost to light up the dark and heavy
+figure of Socknersh in his Sunday blacks, as he staggered and stumbled,
+for he could not dance. His big hand pawed at her silken waist, while
+the other held hers crumpled in it--his hair was greased with butter,
+and his skin with the sweat of his endeavour as he turned her round.
+
+That was the only time Joanna danced that night. For the rest of the
+evening she went about among her guests, seeing that all were well fed
+and had partners. As time went on, gradually her brightness dimmed, and
+her eyes became almost anxious as she searched among the dancers. Each
+time she looked she seemed to see the same thing, and each time she saw
+it, it was as if a fresh veil dropped over her eyes.
+
+At last, towards the end of the evening, she went up again to Socknersh.
+
+"Would you like me to dance this polka with you that's coming?"
+
+"Thank you, missus--I'd be honoured, missus--but I'm promised to Martha
+Tilden."
+
+"Martha!--You've danced with her nearly all the evening."
+
+"She's bin middling kind to me, missus, showing me the steps and hops."
+
+"Oh, well, since you've promised you must pay."
+
+She turned her back on him, then suddenly smarted at her own
+pettishness.
+
+"You've the makings of a good dancer in you, if you'll learn," she said
+over her shoulder. "I'm glad Martha's teaching you."
+
+
+
+
+§14
+
+Lambing was always late upon the Marsh. The wan film of the winter
+grasses had faded off the April green before the innings became noisy
+with bleating, and the new-born lambs could match their whiteness with
+the first flowering of the blackthorn.
+
+It was always an anxious time--though the Marsh ewes were hardy--and
+sleepless for shepherds, who from the windows of their lonely lambing
+huts watched the yellow spring-dazzle of the stars grow pale night after
+night. They were bad hours to be awake, those hours of the April dawn,
+for in them, the shepherds said, a strange call came down from the
+country inland, straying scents of moss and primroses reaching out
+towards the salt sea, calling men away from the wind-stung levels and
+the tides and watercourses, to where the little inland farms sleep in
+the sheltered hollows among the hop-bines, and the sunrise is warm with
+the scent of hidden flowers.
+
+Dick Socknersh began to look wan and large-eyed under the strain--he
+looked more haggard than the shepherd of Yokes Court or the shepherd of
+Birdskitchen, though they kept fast and vigil as long as he. His
+mistress, too, had a fagged, sorrowful air, and soon it became known all
+over the Three Marshes that Ansdore's lambing that year had been a
+gigantic failure.
+
+"It's her own fault," said Prickett at the Woolpack, "and serve her
+right for getting shut of old Fuller, and then getting stuck on this
+furrin heathen notion of Spanish sheep. Anyone could have told her as
+the lambs ud be too big and the ewes could never drop them safe--she
+might have known it herself, surelye."
+
+"It's her looker that should ought to have known better," said Furnese.
+"Joanna Godden's a woman, fur all her man's ways, and you can't expéct
+her to have präaper know wud sheep."
+
+"I wonder if she'll get shut of him after this," said Vine.
+
+"Not she! She don't see through him yet."
+
+"She'll never see through him," said Prickett solemnly. "The only kind
+of man a woman ever sees through is the kind she don't like to look at."
+
+Joanna certainly did not "see through" Dick Socknersh. She knew that she
+was chiefly to blame for the tragedy of her lambing, and when her reason
+told her that her looker should have discouraged instead of obeyed and
+abetted her, she rather angrily tossed the thought aside. Socknersh had
+the sense to realize that she knew more about sheep than he, and he had
+not understood that in this matter she was walking out of her knowledge
+into experiment. No one could have known that the scheme would turn out
+so badly--the Spanish rams had not been so big after all, only a little
+bigger than her ewes ... if anyone should have foreseen trouble it was
+the Northampton farmer who knew the size of Spanish lambs at birth, and
+from his Kentish experience must also have some knowledge of Romney
+Marsh sheep.
+
+But though she succeeded in getting all the guilt off her looker and
+some of it off herself, she was nevertheless stricken by the greatness
+of the tragedy. It was not only the financial losses in which she was
+involved, or the derision of her neighbours, or the fulfilment of their
+prophecy--or even the fall of her own pride and the shattering of that
+dream in which the giant sheep walked--there was also an element of
+almost savage pity for the animals whom her daring had betrayed. Those
+dead ewes, too stupid to mate themselves profitably and now the victims
+of the farm-socialism that had experimented with them.... At first she
+ordered Socknersh to save the ewes even at the cost of the lambs, then
+when in the little looker's hut she saw a ewe despairingly lick the
+fleece of its dead lamb, an even deeper grief and pity smote her, and
+she burst suddenly and stormily into tears.
+
+Sinking on her knees on the dirty floor, she covered her face, and
+rocked herself to and fro. Socknersh sat on his three-legged stool,
+staring at her in silence. His forehead crumpled slightly and his mouth
+twitched, as the slow processes of his thought shook him. The air was
+thick with the fumes of his brazier, from which an angry red glow fell
+on Joanna as she knelt and wept.
+
+
+
+
+§15
+
+When the first sharpness of death had passed from Ansdore, Joanna's
+sanguine nature, her hopeful bumptiousness, revived. Her pity for the
+dead lambs and her fellow-feeling of compassion for the ewes would
+prevent her ever dreaming of a new experiment, but already she was
+dreaming of a partial justification of the old one--her cross-bred lambs
+would grow so big both in size and price that they would, even in their
+diminished numbers pay for her daring and proclaim its success to those
+who jeered and doubted.
+
+Certainly those lambs which had survived their birth now promised well.
+They were bigger than the purebred Kent lambs, and seemed hardy enough.
+Joanna watched them grow, and broke away from Marsh tradition to the
+extent of giving them cake--she was afraid they might turn bony.
+
+As the summer advanced she pointed them out triumphantly to one or two
+farmers. They were fine animals, she said, and justified her experiment,
+though she would never repeat it on account of the cost; she did not
+expect to do more than cover her expenses.
+
+"You'll be lucky if you do that," said Prickett rather brutally, "they
+look middling poor in wool."
+
+Joanna was not discouraged, nor even offended, for she interpreted all
+Prickett's remarks in the light of Great Ansdore's jealousy of Little
+Ansdore.
+
+Later on Martha Tilden told her that they were saying much the same at
+the Woolpack.
+
+"I don't care what they say at the Woolpack," cried Joanna, "and what
+business have you to know what they say there? I don't like my gals
+hanging around pubs."
+
+"I didn't hang aräound, ma'am. 'Twas Socknersh töald me."
+
+"Socknersh had no business to tell you--it's no concern of yours."
+
+Martha put her hand over her mouth to hide a grin, but Joanna could see
+it in her eyes and the dimples of her cheeks.
+
+A sudden anger seized her.
+
+"I won't have you gossiping with Socknersh, neither--you keep away from
+my men. I've often wondered why the place looks in proper need of
+scrubbing, and now I know. You can do your work or you can pack off. I
+won't have you fooling around with my men."
+
+"I döan't fool aräound wud your men," cried Martha indignantly. She was
+going to add "I leave that to you," but she thought better of it,
+because for several reasons she wanted to keep her place.
+
+Joanna flounced off, and went to find Socknersh at the shearing. In the
+shelter of some hurdles he and one or two travelling shearers were busy
+with the ewes' fleeces. She noticed that the animal Socknersh was
+working on lay quiet between his feet, while the other men held theirs
+with difficulty and many struggles. The July sunshine seemed to hold the
+scene as it held the Marsh in a steep of shining stillness. The silence
+was broken by many small sounds--the clip of the shears, the panting of
+the waiting sheep and of the dogs that guarded them, and every now and
+then the sudden scraping scuttle of the released victim as it sprang up
+from the shearer's feet and dashed off to where the shorn sheep huddled
+naked and ashamed together. Joanna watched for a moment without
+speaking; then suddenly she broke out:
+
+"Socknersh, I hear it's said that the new lambs ull be poor in wool."
+
+"They're saying it, missus, but it äun't true."
+
+"I don't care if it's true or not. You shouldn't ought to tell my gal
+Martha such things before you tell me."
+
+Socknersh's eyes opened wide, and the other men looked up from their
+work.
+
+"Seemingly," continued Joanna, "everyone on this farm hears everything
+before I do, and it ain't right. Next time you hear a lot of tedious
+gossip, Dick Socknersh, you come and tell me, and don't waste it on the
+gals, making them idle."
+
+She went away, her eyes bright with anger, and then suddenly her heart
+smote her. Suppose Socknersh took offence and gave notice. She had
+rebuked him publicly before the hired shearers--it was enough to make
+any man turn. But what should she do if he went?--He must not go. She
+would never get anyone like him. She almost turned and went back, but
+had enough sense to stop--a public apology would only make a worse
+scandal of a public rebuke. She must wait and see him alone ... the next
+minute she knew further that she must not apologize, and the minute
+after she knew further still--almost further than she could bear--that
+in denying herself an apology she was denying herself a luxury, that she
+wanted to apologize, to kneel at Socknersh's clay-caked feet and beg his
+forgiveness, to humble herself before him by her penitence so that he
+could exalt her by his pardon....
+
+"Good sakes! Whatever's the matter with me?" thought Joanna.
+
+
+
+
+§16
+
+Her apology took the discreet form of a side of bacon, and Socknersh did
+not give notice--had evidently never thought of it. Of course the
+shearers spread the story of Joanna's outburst when they went on to
+Slinches and Birdskitchen and other farms, but no one was surprised that
+the shepherd stayed on.
+
+"He'd never be such a fool as to give up being looker a day before she
+makes him master," said Cobb of Slinches.
+
+"And when he's master," said Mrs. Cobb, "he'll get his own back for her
+sassing him before Harmer and his men."
+
+A few weeks later Socknersh brought the first of the cross-bred lambs to
+market at Rye, and Joanna's wonderful sheep-breeding scheme was finally
+sealed a failure. The lambs were not only poor in wool, but coarse in
+meat, and the butchers would not deal, small mutton being the fashion.
+Altogether they fetched lower prices than the Kent lambs, and the rumour
+of Ansdore's losses mounted to over four hundred pounds.
+
+Rumour was not very wide of the fact--what with hiring fees, railway
+expenses, the loss of ewes and lambs at the lambing, and the extra diet
+and care which panic had undertaken for the survivors, the venture had
+put about two hundred and sixty pounds on the debit side of Joanna's
+accounts. She was able to meet her losses--her father had died with a
+comfortable balance in Lewes Old Bank, and she had always paid ready
+money, so was without any encumbrance of debt--but Ansdore was bound to
+feel the blow, which had shorn it of its fleece of pleasant profits.
+Joanna was for the first time confronted by the need for economy, and
+she hated economy with all the lavish, colour-loving powers of her
+nature. Even now she would not bend herself to retrenchment--not a man
+less in the yard, not a girl less in the kitchen, as her neighbours had
+expected.
+
+But the failure of the cross-bred lambs did not end the tale of
+Ansdore's misadventures. There was a lot of dipping for sheep-scab on
+the Marsh that August, and it soon became known that several of Joanna
+Godden's sheep and lambs had died after the second dip.
+
+"That's her valiant Socknersh again," said Prickett--"guv 'em a double
+arsenic dip. Good sakes! That woman had better be quick and marry him
+before he does any more harm as her looker."
+
+"There's more than he gives a double arsenic dip, surelye."
+
+"Surelye--but they mixes the can a bit. Broadhurst says as Socknersh's
+second dip was as strong as his first."
+
+The feeling about Socknersh's incapacity reached such a point that more
+than one warning was given Joanna for her father's sake, and one at
+least for her own, from Arthur Alce.
+
+"I shouldn't say it, Joanna, if it wasn't true, but a man who puts a
+sheep into poison-wash twice in a fortnight isn't fit to be anyone's
+looker."
+
+"But we were dipping for sheep-scab--that takes something stronger than
+Keatings."
+
+"Yes, but the point is, d'you see, that you give 'em the first dip in
+arsenic stuff, and the next shouldn't ought to be poison at all--there's
+a lot of good safe dips on the market, that ull do very well for a
+second wash."
+
+"Socknersh knows his business."
+
+"He don't--that's why I'm speaking. Fuller ud never have done what he's
+done. He's lost you a dozen prime sheep on the top of all your other
+losses."
+
+The reference was unfortunate. Joanna's cheekbones darkened ominously.
+
+"It's all very well for you to talk, Arthur Alce, for you think no one
+can run Ansdore except yourself who'll never get the chance. It's well
+known around, in spite of what you say, that Socknersh is valiant with
+sheep--no one can handle 'em as he can; at the shearing Harmer and his
+men were full of it--how the ewes ud keep quiet for him as for nobody
+else--and 'twas the same at the lambing. It wasn't his fault that the
+lambs died, but because that chap at Northampton never told us what he
+should ought.... I tell you, I've never had anyone like him for handling
+sheep--they're quite different with him from what they were with that
+rude old Fuller, barking after 'em like a dog along the Brodnyx road and
+bringing 'em up to Rye all raggled and draggled and dusty as mops ... he
+knows how to manage sheep--he's like one of themselves."
+
+"That's just about it--he's like another sheep, so they ain't scared of
+him, but he can do no more for 'em than another sheep could, neither.
+He's ignorant--he's got no sense nor know, or he'd never have let you
+breed with them Spanishes, or given 'em a poisonous double-dip--and he's
+always having sway-backs up at market, too, and tic and hoose and
+fluke.... Oh, Joanna, if you're any bit wise you'll get shut of him
+before he messes you all up. And you know what folks say--they say you'd
+have got shut of him months agone if you hadn't been so unaccountable
+set on him, so as they say--yes, they say one day you'll marry him and
+make him master of Ansdore."
+
+Alce's face flamed as red as his whiskers and nearly as red as Joanna's
+cheeks. For a moment she faced him speechless, her mouth open.
+
+"Oh, that's what they say, is it!" she broke out at last. "They say I'd
+marry Dick Socknersh, who looks after my sheep, and who's like a sheep
+himself. They think I'd marry a man who's got no more'n two words on his
+tongue and half that number of ideas in his head--who can't think
+without its giving him a headache--who comes of no class of people--his
+father and mother were hedge people up at Anvil Green--who gets eighteen
+bob a week as my looker--who--"
+
+"Don't get so vrothered, Joanna. I'm only telling you what folk say, and
+if you'll stop and think you'll see they've got some reason. Your
+looker's done things that no farmer on this Marsh ud put up with a
+month, and yet you keep him on, you with all your fine ideas about
+farming and running Ansdore as your poor father ud have had it ... and
+then he's a well set-up young man too, nice-looking and stout as I won't
+deny, and you're a young woman that I'd say was nice-looking too, and
+it's only natural folks should talk when they see a pretty woman hanging
+on to a handsome chap in spite of his having half bust her."
+
+"He hasn't half bust me, nor a quarter, neither--and I ain't hanging on
+to him, as you're elegant enough to say. I keep him as my looker because
+he's valiant with the sheep and manages 'em as if born to it, and
+because he minds what I say and doesn't sass me back or meddle, as some
+I could name. As for being set on him, I'm not so far below myself as
+all that. You must think unaccountable low of me, Arthur Alce, if you
+figure I'd get sweet on a man who's courting my chicken-gal, which is
+what Dick Socknersh is doing."
+
+"Courting Martha Tilden?"
+
+"Yes, my chicken-gal. And you think I'd look at him!--I!... You must
+think middling low of me, Arthur Alce ... a man who's courting my
+chicken-gal."
+
+"I'd always thought as Martha Tilden--but you must know best. Well, if
+he's courting her I hope as he'll marry her soon and show folks they're
+wrong about him and you."
+
+"They should ought to be ashamed of themselves to need showing. I look
+at a man who's courting my chicken-gal!--I never! I tell you what I'll
+do--I'll raise his wages, so as he can marry her at once--my
+chicken-gal--and so as folk ull know that I'm satisfied with him as my
+looker."
+
+And Joanna marched off up the drive, where this conversation had taken
+place.
+
+
+
+
+§17
+
+She raised Socknersh's wages to twenty shillings the next day, and it
+was not due to any wordy flow of his gratitude that the name of Martha
+Tilden was not mentioned between them. "Better leave it," thought Joanna
+to herself, "after all, I'm not sure--and she's a slut. I'd sooner he
+married a cleaner, steadier sort of gal."
+
+Grace Wickens had already departed, her cocoa-making tendencies having
+lately passed into mania--and her successor was an older woman, a widow,
+who had fallen on evil days. She was a woman of few words, and Joanna
+wondered a little when one afternoon she said to her rather anxiously:
+"I'd lik to speak to you, ma'am--in private, if you please."
+
+They went into the larder and Mrs. Tolhurst began:
+
+"I hardly lik to say it to you, Miss Joanna, being a single
+spinster ..."
+
+This was a bad beginning, for Joanna flamed at once at the implication
+that her spinsterhood put her at any disadvantage as a woman of the
+world.
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, Mrs. Tolhurst; I may be unwed as yet, but I'm none
+of your Misses."
+
+"No, ma'am--well, it's about this Martha Tilden--"
+
+Joanna started.
+
+"What about her?"
+
+"Only, ma'am, that she's six months gone."
+
+There was no chair in the larder, or Joanna would have fallen into
+it--instead she staggered back against the shelves, with a great rattle
+of crockery. Her face was as white as her own plates, and for a moment
+she could not speak.
+
+"I made bold to tell you, Miss Joanna, for all the neighbourhood's
+beginning to talk--and the gal getting near her time and all.... I
+thought maybe you'd have noticed.... Don't be in such a terrification
+about it, Miss Joanna.... I'm sorry I told you--maybe I shud ought to
+have spuck to the gal fust ..."
+
+"Don't be a fool ... the dirty slut!--I'll learn her ... under my very
+roof--"
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am,'twasn't under your roof--we shouldn't have allowed it.
+She used to meet him in the field down by Beggar's Bush ..."
+
+"Hold your tongue."
+
+Mrs. Tolhurst was offended; she thought her mistress's behaviour
+unwarranted either by modesty or indignation. There were burning tears
+in Joanna's eyes as she flung herself out of the room. She was blind as
+she went down the passage, twisting her apron furiously in her hands.
+
+"Martha Tilden!" she called--"Martha Tilden!"
+
+"Oh," she thought in her heart, "I raised his wages so's he could marry
+her--for months this has been going on ... the field down by Beggar's
+Bush ... Oh, I could kill her!" Then shouting into the yard--"Martha
+Tilden! Martha Tilden!"
+
+"I'm coming, Miss Joanna," Martha's soft drawly voice increased her
+bitterness; her own, compared with it, sounded harsh, empty,
+inexperienced. Martha's voice was full of the secrets of love--the
+secrets of Dick Socknersh's love.
+
+"Come into the dairy," she said hoarsely.
+
+Martha came and stood before her. She evidently knew what was ahead, for
+she looked pale and a little scared, and yet she had about her a strange
+air of confidence ... though not so strange, after all, since she
+carried Dick Socknersh's child, and her memory was full of his caresses
+and the secrets of his love ... thus bravely could Joanna herself have
+faced an angry world....
+
+"You leave my service at once," she said.
+
+Martha began to cry.
+
+"You know what for?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Joanna."
+
+"I wonder you've had the impudence to go about as you've done--eating my
+food and taking my wages, while all the time you've been carrying on
+with my looker."
+
+"Your looker?--No, Miss Joanna."
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"I don't know what _you_ mean, miss--I've never had näun to do wud Dick
+Socknersh if it's him you're thinking of."
+
+"Not Socknersh, but I ... who _is_ the man, then?"
+
+"Well, it äun't no secret from anyone but you, Miss Joanna, so I döan't
+mind telling you as my boy is Peter Relf, their looker at Old
+Honeychild. We've bin walking out ever sinst the day he came after your
+pläace as looker here, and we'd be married now if he hadn't his old
+mother and dad to keep, and got into some nasty silly trouble wud them
+fellers wot put money on horses they've never seen.... He döan't get
+more'n fifteen bob a week at Honeychild, and he can't keep the old folk
+on less than eight, them being always filling themselves with doctor's
+stuff...."
+
+Joanna was not listening to her--she sat amazed and pale, her heart
+beating in heavy thuds of relief. Mixed with her happiness there was a
+little shame, for she saw that the mistake had arisen from her putting
+herself too realistically in Martha's place. Why had she jumped to the
+conclusion that the girl's lover was Socknersh? It is true that he had
+danced with her very often at the Christmas party nine months ago, and
+once since then she had scolded him for telling the chicken-woman some
+news he ought first to have told the mistress ... but that was very
+little in the way of evidence, and Martha had always been running after
+boys....
+
+Seeing her still silent, Martha began to cry again.
+
+"I'm sure I'm unaccountable sorry, Miss Joanna, and what's to become of
+me I don't know, nuther. Maybe I'm a bad lot, but it's hard to love and
+wait on and on for the wedding ... and Pete was sure as he could do
+summat wud a horse running in the Derby race, and at the Woolpack they
+told him it wur bound to win.... I've always kept straight up till this,
+Miss Joanna, and a virtuous virgin for all I do grin and laugh a lot ...
+and many's the temptation I've had, being a lone gal wudout father or
+mother ..."
+
+"Keep quiet, Martha, and have done with so much excuse. You've been a
+very wicked gal, and you shouldn't ought to think any different of
+yourself. But maybe I was too quick, saying you were to go at once. You
+can finish your month, seeing as you were monthly hired."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Joanna, that'll give me time to look around for another
+pläace; though--" bursting out crying again--"I don't see what good
+that'll do me, seeing as my time's three months from hence."
+
+A great softness had come over Joanna. There were tears in her eyes as
+she looked at Martha, but they were no longer tears of anger.
+
+"Don't cry, child," she said kindly, "I'll see you don't come to want."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Miss Joanna ... it's middling good of you, and Pete will
+repay you when we're married and have säaved some tin."
+
+"I'll do my best, for you've worked well on the whole, and I shan't
+forget that Orpington hen you saved when she was egg-bound. But don't
+you think, Martha," she added seriously, "that I'm holding with any of
+your goings-on. I'm shocked and ashamed at you, for you've done
+something very wicked--something that's spoken against in the Bible, and
+in church too--it's in the Ten Commandments. I wonder you could kneel in
+your place and say 'Lord have mercy upon us,' knowing what you'd been up
+to"--Martha's tears flowed freely--"and it's sad to think you've kept
+yourself straight for years as you say, and then gone wrong at last,
+just because you hadn't patience to wait for your lawful wedding ... and
+all the scandal there's been and ull be, and folks talking at you and at
+me ... and you be off now, and tell Mrs. Tolhurst you're to have the
+cream on your milk and take it before it's skimmed."
+
+
+
+
+§18
+
+For the rest of the day Joanna was in a strange fret--dreams seemed to
+hang over life like mist, there was sorrow in all she did, and yet a
+queer, suffocating joy. She told herself that she was upset by Martha's
+revelation, but at the same time she knew it had upset her not so much
+in itself as in the disturbing new self-knowledge it had brought. She
+could not hide from herself that she was delighted, overjoyed to find
+that her shepherd did not love her chicken-girl, that the thoughts she
+had thought about them for nine months were but vain thoughts.
+
+Was it true, then, that she was moving along that road which the
+villages had marked out for her--the road which would end before the
+Lion and the Unicorn in Brodnyx church, with her looker as her
+bridegroom? The mere thought was preposterous to her pride. She, her
+father's daughter, to marry his father's son!--the suspicion insulted
+her. She loved herself and Ansdore too well for that ... and Socknersh,
+fine fellow as he was, had no mind and very little sense--he could
+scarcely read and write, he was slow as an ox, and had common ways and
+spoke the low Marsh talk--he drank out of his saucer and cut his bread
+with his pocket-knife--he spat in the yard. How dared people think she
+would marry him?--that she was so undignified, infatuated and
+unfastidious as to yoke herself to a slow, common boor? Her indignation
+flamed against the scandal-mongers ... that Woolpack! She'd like to see
+their licence taken away, and then perhaps decent women's characters
+would be safe....
+
+But folk said it was queer she should keep on Socknersh when he had
+done her such a lot of harm--they made sure there must be something
+behind it. For the first time Joanna caught a glimpse of his
+shortcomings as a looker, and in a moment of vision asked herself if it
+wasn't really true that he ought to have known about that dip. Was she
+blinding herself to his incapacity simply because she liked to have him
+about the place--to see his big stooping figure blocked against the
+sunset--to see his queer eyes light up with queer thoughts that were
+like a dog's thoughts or a sheep's thoughts ... to watch his hands, big
+and heavy and brown, with the earth worked into the skin ... and his
+neck, when he lifted his head, brown as his hands, and like the trunk of
+an oak with roots of firm, beautiful muscle in the field of his broad
+chest?
+
+Then Joanna was scared--she knew she ought not to think of her looker
+so; and she told herself that she kept him on just because he was the
+only man she'd ever had about the place who had minded her properly....
+
+When evening came, she began to feel stifled in the house, where she had
+been busy ironing curtains, and tying on her old straw hat went out for
+a breath of air on the road. There was a light mist over the
+watercourses, veiling the pollards and thorn trees and the reddening
+thickets of Ansdore's bush--a flavour of salt was in it, for the tides
+were high in the channels, and the sunset breeze was blowing from Rye
+Bay. Northward, the Coast--as the high bank marking the old shores of
+England before the flood was still called--was dim, like a low line of
+clouds beyond the marsh. The sun hung red and rayless above Beggar's
+Bush, a crimson ball of frost and fire.
+
+A queer feeling of sadness came to Joanna--queer, unaccountable, yet
+seeming to drain itself from the very depths of her body, and to belong
+not only to her flesh but to the marsh around her, to the pastures with
+their tawny veil of withered seed-grasses, to the thorn-bushes spotted
+with the red haws, to the sky and to the sea, and the mists in which
+they merged together....
+
+"I'll get shut of Socknersh," she said to herself--"I believe folks are
+right, and he's too like a sheep himself to be any real use to them."
+
+She walked on a little way, over the powdery Brodnyx road.
+
+"I'm silly--that's what I am. Who'd have thought it? I'll send him
+off--but then folks ull say I'm afraid of gossip."
+
+She chewed the bitter cud of this idea over a hurrying half mile, which
+took her across the railway, and then brought her back, close to the
+Kent Ditch.
+
+"I can't afford to let the place come to any harm--besides, what does
+it matter what people think or say of me? I don't care.... But it'll
+be a mortal trouble getting another looker and settling him to my
+ways--and I'll never get a man who'll mind me as poor Socknersh does.
+I want a man with a humble soul, but seemingly you can't get that
+through advertising...."
+
+She had come to the bridge over the Kent Ditch, and Sussex ended in a
+swamp of reeds. Looking southward she saw the boundaries of her own
+land, the Kent Innings, dotted with sheep, and the shepherd's cottage
+among them, its roof standing out a bright orange under the fleece of
+lichen that smothered the tiles. It suddenly struck her that a good way
+out of her difficulty might be a straight talk with Socknersh. He would
+probably be working in his garden now, having those few evening hours as
+his own. Straining her eyes into the shining thickness of mist and sun,
+she thought she could see his blue shirt moving among the bean-rows and
+hollyhocks around the little place.
+
+"I'll go and see him and talk it out--I'll tell him that if he won't
+have proper sense he must go. I've been soft, putting up with him all
+this time."
+
+Being marsh bred, Joanna did not take what seemed the obvious way to the
+cottage, across the low pastures by the Kent Ditch; instead, she went
+back a few yards to where a dyke ran under the road. She followed it out
+on the marsh, and when it cut into another dyke she followed that,
+walking on the bank beside the great teazle. A plank bridge took her
+across between two willows, and after some more such movements, like a
+pawn on a chess-board, she had crossed three dykes and was at the
+shepherd's gate.
+
+He was working at the farther side of the garden and did not see her
+till she called him. She had been to his cottage only once before, when
+he complained of the roof leaking, but Socknersh would not have shown
+surprise if he had seen Old Goodman of the marsh tales standing at his
+door. Joanna had stern, if somewhat arbitrary, notions of propriety, and
+now not only did she refuse to come inside the gate, but she made him
+come and stand outside it, among the seed-grasses which were like the
+ghost of hay.
+
+It struck her that she had timed her visit a little too late. Already
+the brightness had gone from the sunset, leaving a dull red ball hanging
+lustreless between the clouds. There was no wind, but the air seemed to
+be moving slowly up from the sea, heavy with mist and salt and the scent
+of haws and blackberries, of dew-soaked grass and fleeces.... Socknersh
+stood before her with his blue shirt open at the neck. From him came a
+smell of earth and sweat ... his clothes smelt of sheep....
+
+She opened her mouth to tell him that she was highly displeased with the
+way he had managed her flock since the shearing, but instead she only
+said:
+
+"Look!"
+
+Over the eastern rim of the Marsh the moon had risen, a red, lightless
+disk, while the sun, red and lightless too, hung in the west above Rye
+Hill. The sun and the moon looked at each other across the marsh, and
+midway between them, in the spell of their flushed, haunted glow, stood
+Socknersh, big and stooping, like some lonely beast of the earth and
+night.... A strange fear touched Joanna--she tottered, and his arm came
+out to save her....
+
+It was as if Marsh itself enfolded her, for his clothes and skin were
+caked with the soil of it.... She opened her eyes, and looking up into
+his, saw her own face, infinitely white and small, looking down at her
+out of them. Joanna Godden looked at her out of Socknersh's eyes. She
+stirred feebly, and she found that he had set her a little way from him,
+still holding her by the shoulders, as if he feared she would fall.
+
+"Do you feel better, missus?"
+
+"I'm all right," she snapped.
+
+"I beg your pardon if I took any liberty, missus. But I thought maybe
+you'd turned fainty-like."
+
+"You thought wrong"--her anger was mounting--"I trod on a mole-hill.
+You've messed my nice alpaca body--if you can't help getting dirt all
+over yourself you shouldn't ought to touch a lady even if she's in a
+swound."
+
+"I'm middling sorry, missus."
+
+His voice was quite tranquil--it was like oil on the fire of Joanna's
+wrath.
+
+"Maybe you are, and so am I. You shouldn't ought to have cotched hold of
+me like that. But it's all of a match with the rest of your doings, you
+great stupid owl. You've lost me more'n a dozen prime sheep by not
+mixing your dip proper--after having lost me the best of my ewes and
+lambs with your ignorant notions--and now you go and put finger marks
+over my new alpaca body, all because you won't think, or keep yourself
+clean. You can take a month's notice."
+
+Socknersh stared at her with eyes and mouth wide open.
+
+"A month's notice," she repeated, "it's what I came here to give you.
+You're the tale of all the parish with your ignorance. I'd meant to talk
+to you about it and give you another chance, but now I see there'd be no
+sense in that, and you can go at the end of your month."
+
+"You'll give me a character, missus?"
+
+"I'll give you a prime character as a drover or a ploughman or a carter
+or a dairyman or a housemaid or a curate or anything you like except a
+looker. Why should I give you eighteen shillun a week as my
+looker--twenty shillun, as I've made it now--when my best wether could
+do what you do quite as well and not take a penny for it? You've got no
+more sense or know than a tup ..."
+
+She stopped, breathless, her cheeks and eyes burning, a curious ache in
+her breast. The sun was gone now, only the moon hung flushed in the
+foggy sky. Socknersh's face was in darkness as he stood with his back to
+the east, but she could see on his features a look of surprise and
+dismay which suddenly struck her as pathetic in its helpless stupidity.
+After all, this great hulking man was but a child, and he was unhappy
+because he must go, and give up his snug cottage and the sheep he had
+learned to care for and the kind mistress who gave him sides of
+bacon.... There was a sudden strangling spasm in her throat, and his
+face swam into the sky on a mist of tears, which welled up in her eyes
+as without another word she turned away.
+
+His voice came after her piteously--
+
+"Missus--missus--but you raised my wages last week."
+
+
+
+
+§19
+
+Her tears were dry by the time she reached home, but in the night they
+flowed again, accompanied by angry sobs, which she choked in her pillow,
+for fear of waking little Ellen.
+
+She cried because she was humbled in her own eyes. It was as if a veil
+had been torn from the last two years, and she saw her motives at last.
+For two years she had endured an ignorant, inefficient servant simply
+because his strength and good looks had enslaved her susceptible
+womanhood....
+
+Her father would never have acted as she had done; he would not have
+kept Socknersh a single month; he would not have engaged him at
+all--both Relf of Honeychild and Day of Slinches were more experienced
+men, with better recommendations; and yet she had chosen
+Socknersh--because his brown eyes had held and drowned her judgment, as
+surely as they had held her image, so dwindled and wan, when she looked
+into them that evening, between the setting sun and the rising moon.
+
+Then, after she had engaged him, he had shown just enough natural
+capacity for her to blind herself with--his curious affinity with the
+animals he tended had helped her to forget the many occasions on which
+he had failed to rise above them in intelligence. It had been left to
+another to point out to her that a man might be good with sheep simply
+because he was no better than a sheep himself.
+
+And now she was humbled--in her own eyes, and also in the eyes of her
+neighbours. She would have to confess herself in the wrong. Everyone
+knew that she had just raised Socknersh's wages, so there would be no
+good pretending that she had known his shortcomings from the first, but
+had put up with them as long as she could. Everyone would guess that
+something had happened to make her change her mind about him ... there
+would be some terrible talk at the Woolpack.
+
+And there was Socknersh himself, poor fellow--the martyr of her
+impulses. She thrust her face deep into the pillow when she thought of
+him. She had given him as sharp a blow as his thick hide would ever let
+him suffer. She would never forget that last look on his face....
+
+Then she began wondering why this should have come upon her. Why should
+she have made a fool of herself over Socknersh, when she had borne
+unmoved the courtship of Arthur Alce for seven years? Was it just
+because Alce had red whiskers and red hands and red hair on his hands,
+while Socknersh was dark and sweet of face and limb? It was terrible to
+think that mere youth and comeliness and virility should blind her
+judgment and strip her of common sense. Yet this was obviously the
+lesson she must learn from to-day's disgrace.
+
+Hot and tear-stained, she climbed out of bed, and paced across the dark
+room to the grey blot of the window. She forgot her distrust of the
+night air in all her misery of throbbing head and heart, and flung back
+the casement, so that the soft marsh wind came in, with rain upon it,
+and her tears were mingled with the tears of the night.
+
+"Oh God!" she mourned to herself--"why didn't you make me a man?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PART II_
+
+FIRST LOVE
+
+
+
+
+§1
+
+It took Joanna nearly two years to recover from the losses of her sheep.
+Some people would have done it earlier, but she was not a clever
+economist. Where many women on the Marsh would have thrown themselves
+into an orgy of retrenchment--ranging from the dismissal of a dairymaid
+to the substitution of a cheaper brand of tea--she made no new occasions
+for thrift, and persevered but lamely in the old ones. She was fond of
+spending--liked to see things trim and bright; she hated waste,
+especially when others were guilty of it, but she found a positive
+support in display.
+
+She was also generous. Everybody knew that she had paid Dick Socknersh
+thirty shillings for the two weeks that he was out of work after leaving
+her--before he went as cattleman to an inland farm--and she had found
+the money for Martha Tilden's wedding, and for her lying-in a month
+afterwards, and some time later she had helped Peter Relf with ready
+cash to settle his debts and move himself and his wife and baby to West
+Wittering, where he had the offer of a place with three shillings a week
+more than they gave at Honeychild.
+
+She might have indulged herself still further in this way, which
+gratified both her warm heart and her proud head, if she had not wanted
+so much to send Ellen to a good school. The school at Rye was all very
+well, attended by the daughters of tradesmen and farmers, and taught by
+women whom Joanna recognized as ladies; but she had long dreamed of
+sending her little sister to a really good school at Folkestone--where
+Ellen would wear a ribbon round her hat and go for walks in a long
+procession of two-and-two, and be taught wonderful, showy and intricate
+things by ladies with letters after their names--whom Joanna despised
+because she felt sure they had never had a chance of getting married.
+
+She herself had been educated at the National School, and from six to
+fourteen had trudged to and fro on the Brodnyx road, learning to read
+and write and reckon and say her catechism.... But this was not good
+enough for Ellen. Joanna had made up her mind that Ellen should be a
+lady; she was pretty and lazy and had queer likes and dislikes--all
+promising signs of vocation. She would never learn to care for Ansdore,
+with its coarse and crowding occupations, so there was no reason why she
+should grow up like her sister in capable commonness. Half unconsciously
+Joanna had planned a future in which she ventured and toiled, while
+Ellen wore a silk dress and sat on the drawing-room sofa--that being the
+happiest lot she could picture for anyone, though she would have loathed
+it herself.
+
+In a couple of years Ansdore's credit once more stood high at Lewes Old
+Bank, and Ellen could be sent to a select school at Folkestone--so
+select indeed that there had been some difficulty about getting her
+father's daughter into it. Joanna was surprised as well as disgusted
+that the schoolmistress should give herself such airs, for she was very
+plainly dressed, whereas Joanna had put on all her most gorgeous apparel
+for the interview; but she had been very glad when her sister was
+finally accepted as a pupil at Rose Hill House, for now she would have
+as companions the daughters of clergymen and squires, and learn no doubt
+to model herself on their refinement. She might even be asked to their
+homes for her holidays, and, making friends in their circle, take a
+short cut to silken immobility on the drawing-room sofa by way of
+marriage.... Joanna congratulated herself on having really done very
+well for Ellen, though during the first weeks she missed her sister
+terribly. She missed their quarrels and caresses--she missed Ellen's
+daintiness at meals, though she had often smacked it--she missed her
+strutting at her side to church on Sunday--she missed her noisy,
+remonstrant setting out to school every morning and her noisy
+affectionate return--her heart ached when she looked at the little empty
+bed in her room, and being sentimental she often dropped a tear where
+she used to drop a kiss on Ellen's pillow.
+
+Nevertheless she was proud of what she had done for her little sister,
+and she was proud too of having restored Ansdore to prosperity, not by
+stinging and paring, but by her double capacity for working hard herself
+and for getting all the possible work out of others. If no one had gone
+short under her roof, neither had anyone gone idle--if the tea was
+strong and the butter was thick and there was always prime bacon for
+breakfast on Sundays, so was there also a great clatter on the stairs at
+five o'clock each morning, a rattle of brooms and hiss and slop of
+scrubbing-brushes--and the mistress with clogs on her feet and her
+father's coat over her gown, poking her head into the maids' room to see
+if they were up, hurrying the men over their snacks, shouting commands
+across the yard, into the barns or into the kitchen, and seemingly
+omnipresent to those slackers who paused to rest or chat or "put their
+feet up."
+
+That time had scarred her a little--put some lines into the corners of
+her eyes and straightened the curling corners of her mouth, but it had
+also heightened the rich healthy colour on her cheeks, enlarged her fine
+girth, her strength of shoulder and depth of bosom. She did not look any
+older, because she was so superbly healthy and superbly proud. She knew
+that the neighbours were impressed by Ansdore's thriving, when they had
+foretold its downfall under her sway.... She had vindicated her place in
+her father's shoes, and best of all, she had expiated her folly in the
+matter of Socknersh, and restored her credit not only in the bar of the
+Woolpack but in her own eyes.
+
+
+
+
+§2
+
+One afternoon, soon after Ellen had gone back to school for her second
+year, when Joanna was making plum jam in the kitchen, and getting very
+hot and sharp-tongued in the process, Mrs. Tolhurst saw a man go past
+the window on his way to the front door.
+
+"Lor, miss! There's Parson!" she cried, and the next minute came sounds
+of struggle with Joanna's rusty door-bell.
+
+"Go and see what he wants--take off that sacking apron first--and if he
+wants to see me, put him into the parlour."
+
+Mr. Pratt lacked "visiting" among many other accomplishments as a parish
+priest--the vast, strewn nature of his parish partly excused him--and a
+call from him was not the casual event it would have been in many
+places, but startling and portentous, requiring fit celebration.
+
+Joanna received him in state, supported by her father's Bible and
+stuffed owls. She had kept him waiting while she changed her gown, for
+like many people who are sometimes very splendid she could also on
+occasion be extremely disreputable, and her jam-making costume was quite
+unfit for the masculine eye, even though negligible. Mr. Pratt had grown
+rather nervous waiting for her--he had always been afraid of her,
+because of her big, breathless ways, and because he felt sure that she
+was one of the many who criticized him.
+
+"I--I've only come about a little thing--at least it's not a little
+thing to me, but a very big thing--er--er--"
+
+"What is it?" asked Joanna, a stuffed owl staring disconcertingly over
+each shoulder.
+
+"For some time there's been complaints about the music in church. Of
+course I'm quite sure Mr. Elphick does wonders, and the ladies of the
+choir are excellent--er--gifted ... I'm quite sure. But the
+harmonium--it's very old and quite a lot of the notes won't play ... and
+the bellows ... Mr. Saunders came from Lydd and had a look at it, but he
+says it's past repair--er--satisfactory repair, and it ud really save
+money in the long run if we bought a new one."
+
+Joanna was a little shocked. She had listened to the grunts and wheezes
+of the harmonium from her childhood, and the idea of a new one disturbed
+her--it suggested sacrilege and ritualism and the moving of landmarks.
+
+"I like what we've got very well," she said truculently--"It's done for
+us properly this thirty year."
+
+"That's just it," said the Rector, "it's done so well that I think we
+ought to let it retire from business, and appoint something younger in
+its place ... he! he!" He looked at her nervously to see if she had
+appreciated the joke, but Joanna's humour was not of that order.
+
+"I don't like the idea," she said.
+
+Mr. Pratt miserably clasped and unclasped his hands. He felt that one
+day he would be crushed between his parishioners' hatred of change and
+his fellow-priests' insistence on it--rumour said that the Squire's
+elder son, Father Lawrence, was coming home before long, and the poor
+little rector quailed to think of what he would say of the harmonium if
+it was still in its place.
+
+"I--er--Miss Godden--I feel our reputation is at stake. Visitors, you
+know, come to our little church, and are surprised to find us so far
+behind the times in our music. At Pedlinge we've only got a piano, but
+I'm not worrying about that now.... Perhaps the harmonium might be
+patched up enough for Pedlinge, where our services are not as yet Fully
+Choral ... it all depends on how much money we collect."
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"Well, I'm told that a cheap, good make would be thirty pounds. We want
+it to last us well, you see, as I don't suppose we shall ever have a
+proper organ."
+
+He handed her a little book in which he had entered the names of
+subscribers.
+
+"People have been very generous already, and I'm sure if your name is on
+the list they will give better still."
+
+The generosity of the neighbourhood amounted to five shillings from
+Prickett of Great Ansdore, and half-crowns from Vine, Furnese, Vennal,
+and a few others. As Joanna studied it she became possessed of two
+emotions--one was a feeling that since others, including Great Ansdore,
+had given, she could not in proper pride hold back, the other was a
+queer savage pity for Mr. Pratt and his poor little collection--scarcely
+a pound as the result of all his begging, and yet he had called it
+generous....
+
+She immediately changed her mind about the scheme, and going over to a
+side table where an ink-pot and pen reposed on a woolly mat, she
+prepared to enter her name in the little book.
+
+"I'll give him ten shillings," she said to herself--"I'll have given
+the most."
+
+Mr. Pratt watched her. He found something stimulating in the sight of
+her broad back and shoulders, her large presence had invigorated
+him--somehow he felt self-confident, as he had not felt for years, and
+he began to talk, first about the harmonium, and then about himself--he
+was a widower with three pale little children, whom he dragged up
+somehow on an income of two hundred a year.
+
+Joanna was not listening. She was thinking to herself--"My cheque-book
+is in the drawer. If I wrote him a cheque, how grand it would look."
+
+Finally she opened the drawer and took the cheques out. After all, she
+could afford to be generous--she had nearly a hundred pounds in Lewes
+Old Bank, put aside without any scraping for future "improvements." How
+much could she spare? A guinea--that would look handsome, among all the
+miserable half-crowns....
+
+Mr. Pratt had seen the cheque-book, and a stutter came into his speech--
+
+"So good of you, Miss Godden ... to help me ... encouraging, you
+know ... been to so many places, a tiring afternoon ... feel rewarded."
+
+She suddenly felt her throat grow tight; the queer compassion had come
+back. She saw him trotting forlornly round from farm to farm, begging
+small sums from people much better off than himself, receiving denials
+or grudging gifts ... his boots were all over dust, she had noticed them
+on her carpet. Her face flushed, as she suddenly dashed her pen into the
+ink, wrote out the cheque in her careful, half-educated hand, and gave
+it to him.
+
+"There--that'll save you tramping any further."
+
+She had written the cheque for the whole amount.
+
+Mr. Pratt could not speak. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish.
+Then suddenly he began to gabble, he poured out thanks and assurances
+and deprecations in a stammering torrent. His gratitude overwhelmed
+Joanna, disgusted her. She lost her feeling of warmth and
+compassion--after all, what should she pity him for now that he had got
+what he wanted, and much more easily than he deserved?
+
+"That's all right, Mr. Pratt. I'm sorry I can't wait any longer now. I'm
+making jam."
+
+She forgot his dusty boots and weary legs that had scarcely had time to
+rest, she forgot that she had meant to offer him a cup of tea.
+
+"Good afternoon," she said, as he rose, with apologies for keeping her.
+
+She went with him to the door, snatched his hat off the peg and gave it
+to him, then crashed the door behind him, her cheeks burning with a
+queer kind of shame.
+
+
+
+
+§3
+
+For the next few days Joanna avoided Mr. Pratt; she could not tell why
+her munificence should make her dislike him, but it did. One day as she
+was walking through Pedlinge she saw him standing in the middle of the
+road, talking to a young man whom on approach she recognized as Martin
+Trevor, the Squire's second son. She could not get out of his way, as
+the Pedlinge dyke was on one side of the road and on the other were some
+cottages. To turn back would be undignified, so she decided to pass them
+with a distant and lordly bow.
+
+Unfortunately for this, she could not resist the temptation to glance at
+Martin Trevor--she had not seen him for some time, and it was surprising
+to meet him in the middle of the week, as he generally came home only
+for week-ends. That glance was her undoing--a certain cordiality must
+have crept into it, inspired by his broad shoulders and handsome,
+swarthy face, for Mr. Pratt was immediately encouraged, and pounced. He
+broke away from Trevor to Joanna's side.
+
+"Oh, Miss Godden ... so glad to meet you. I--I never thanked you
+properly last week for your generosity--your munificence. Thought of
+writing, but somehow felt that--felt that inadequate.... Mr. Trevor,
+I've told you about Miss Godden ... our harmonium ..."
+
+He had actually seized Joanna's hand. She pulled it away. What a
+wretched undersized little chap he was. She could have borne his
+gratitude if only he had been a real man, tall and dark and straight
+like the young fellow who was coming up to her.
+
+"Please don't, Mr. Pratt. I wish you wouldn't make all this tedious
+fuss."
+
+She turned towards Martin Trevor with a greeting in her eyes. But to her
+surprise she saw that he had fallen back. The Rector had fallen back
+too, and the two men stood together, as when she had first come up to
+them.
+
+Joanna realized that she had missed the chance of an introduction. Well,
+it didn't matter. She really couldn't endure Mr. Pratt and his ghastly
+gratitude. She put her stiffest bow into practice and walked on.
+
+For the rest of the day she tried to account for young Trevor's mid-week
+appearance. Her curiosity was soon satisfied, though she was at a
+disadvantage in having no male to bring her news from the Woolpack.
+However, she made good use of other people's males, and by the same
+evening was possessed of the whole story. Martin Trevor had been ill in
+London with pleurisy, and the doctor said his lungs were in danger and
+that he must give up office work and lead an open-air life. He was going
+to live with his father for a time, and help him farm North Farthing
+House--they were taking in a bit more land there, and buying sheep.
+
+
+
+
+§4
+
+That October the Farmers' Club Dinner was held as usual at the Woolpack.
+There had been some controversy about asking Joanna--there was
+controversy every year, but this year the difference lay in the issue,
+for the ayes had it.
+
+The reasons for this change were indefinite--on the whole, no doubt, it
+was because people liked her better. They had grown used to her at
+Ansdore, where at first her mastership had shocked them; the scandal and
+contempt aroused by the Socknersh episode were definitely dead, and men
+took off their hats to the strenuousness with which she had pulled the
+farm together, and faced a crisis that would have meant disaster to many
+of her neighbours. Ansdore was one of the largest farms of the district,
+and it was absurd that it should never be represented at the Woolpack
+table merely on the ground that its master was a woman.
+
+Of course many women wondered how Joanna could face such a company of
+males, and suggestions were made for admitting farmers' wives on this
+occasion. But Joanna was not afraid, and when approached as to whether
+she would like other women invited, or to bring a woman friend, she
+declared that she would be quite satisfied with the inevitable presence
+of the landlord's wife.
+
+She realized that she would be far more imposing as the only woman
+guest, and made great preparations for a proper display. Among these was
+included the buying of a new gown at Folkestone. She thought that
+Folkestone, being a port for the channel steamers, would be more likely
+to have the latest French fashions than the nearer towns of Bulverhythe
+and Marlingate. My I But she would make the Farmers' Club sit up.
+
+The dressmaker at Folkestone tried to persuade her not to have her
+sleeves lengthened or an extra fold of lace arranged along the top of
+her bodice.
+
+"Madam has such a lovely neck and arms--it's a pity to cover them
+up--and it spoils the character of the gown. Besides, madam, this gown
+is not at all extreme--demi-toilet is what it really is."
+
+"I tell you it won't do--I'm going to dine alone with several gentlemen,
+and it wouldn't be seemly to show such a lot of myself."
+
+It ended, to the dressmaker's despair, in her draping her shoulders in a
+lace scarf and wearing kid gloves to her elbow; but though these
+pruderies might have spoilt her appearance at Dungemarsh Court, there
+was no doubt as to its effectiveness at the Woolpack. The whole room
+held its breath as she sailed in, with a rustle of amber silk skirts.
+Her hair was piled high against a tortoise-shell comb, making her
+statelier still.
+
+Furnese of Misleham, who was chairman that year, came gaping to greet
+her. The others stared and stood still. Most of them were shocked, in
+spite of the scarf and the long gloves, but then it was just like
+Joanna Godden to swing bravely through an occasion into which most women
+would have crept. She saw that she had made a sensation, which she had
+expected and desired, and her physical modesty being appeased, she had
+no objection to the men's following eyes. She saw that Sir Harry Trevor
+was in the room, with his son Martin.
+
+It was the first time that the Squire had been to the Farmers' Club
+Dinner. Up till then no one had taken him seriously as a farmer. For a
+year or two after his arrival in the neighbourhood he had managed the
+North Farthing estate through a bailiff, and on the latter's turning out
+unsatisfactory, had dismissed him, and at the same time let off a good
+part of the land, keeping only a few acres for cow-grazing round the
+house. Now, on his son's coming home and requiring an outdoor life, he
+had given a quarter's notice to the butcher-grazier to whom he had
+sub-let his innings, had bought fifty head of sheep, and joined the
+Farmers' Club--which he knew would be a practical step to his advantage,
+as it brought certain privileges in the way of marketing and hiring.
+Joanna was glad to see him at the Woolpack, because she knew that there
+was now a chance of the introduction she had unfortunately missed in
+Pedlinge village a few weeks ago. She had a slight market-day
+acquaintance with the Old Squire--as the neighbourhood invariably called
+him, to his intense annoyance--and now she greeted him with her broad
+smile.
+
+"Good evening, Sir Harry."
+
+"Good evening, Miss Godden. I'm pleased to see you here. You're looking
+very well."
+
+His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified
+than by all the bulging glances of the other men.
+
+"I'm pleased to see you, too, Sir Harry. I hear you've joined the Club."
+
+"Surelye--as a real farmer ought to say; and so has my son Martin--he's
+going to do most of the work. Martin, you've never met Miss Godden. Let
+me introduce you."
+
+Joanna's welcoming grin broke itself on the young man's stiff bow. There
+was a moment's silence.
+
+"He doesn't look as if a London doctor had threatened him with
+consumption," said the Squire banteringly. "Sometimes I really don't,
+think I believe it--I think he's only come down here so as he can look
+after me."
+
+Martin made some conventional remark. He was a tall, broadly built young
+man, with a dark healthy skin and that generally robust air which
+sometimes accompanies extreme delicacy in men.
+
+"The doctor says he's been overworking," continued his father, "and that
+he ought to try a year's outdoor life and sea air. If you ask me, I
+should say he's overdone a good many things besides work--" he threw the
+boy a defiant, malicious glance, rather like a child who gets a thrust
+into an elder--"but Walland Marsh is as good a cure for over-play as for
+over-work. Not much to keep him up late hereabouts, is there, Miss
+Godden?"
+
+"I reckon it'll be twelve o'clock before any of us see our pillows
+to-night," said Joanna.
+
+"Tut! Tut I What terrible ways we're getting into, just when I'm
+proposing the place as a rest-cure. How do you feel, Miss Godden, being
+the only woman guest?"
+
+"I like it."
+
+"Bet you do--so do we."
+
+Joanna laughed and bridled. She felt proud of her position--she pictured
+every farmer's wife on the Marsh lying awake that night so that she
+could ask her husband directly he came upstairs how Joanna Godden had
+looked, what she had said, and what she had worn.
+
+
+
+
+§5
+
+At dinner she sat on the Chairman's right. On her other side, owing to
+some accident of push and shuffle, sat young Martin Trevor. At first she
+had not thought his place accidental, in spite of his rather stiff
+manner before they sat down, but after a while she realized with a pang
+of vexation that he was not particularly pleased to find himself next
+her. He replied without interest to her remarks and then entered into
+conversation with his right-hand neighbour. Joanna was annoyed--she
+could not put down his constraint to shyness, for he did not at all
+strike her as a shy young man. Nor was he being ungracious to Mr.
+Turner of Beckett's House, though the latter could not talk of turnips
+half so entertainingly as Joanna would have done. He obviously did not
+want to speak to her. Why? Because of what had happened in Pedlinge all
+that time ago? She remembered how he had drawn back ... he had not liked
+the way she had spoken to Mr. Pratt. She had not liked it herself by the
+time she got to the road's turn. But to think of him nursing his
+feelings all this time ... and something she had said to Mr. Pratt ...
+considering that she had bought them all a new harmonium ... the lazy,
+stingy louts with their half-crowns....
+
+She had lost her serenity, her sense of triumph--she felt vaguely angry
+with the whole company, and snapped at Arthur Alce when he spoke to her
+across the table. He had asked after Ellen, knowing she had been to
+Folkestone.
+
+"Ellen's fine--and learning such good manners as it seems a shame to
+bring her into these parts at Christmas for her to lose 'em."
+
+"On the other hand. Miss Godden, she might impart them to us," said the
+Squire from a little farther down.
+
+"She's learning how to dance and make curtsies right down to the floor,"
+said Joanna.
+
+"Then she's fit to see the Queen. You really mustn't keep her away from
+us at Christmas--on the contrary, we ought to make some opportunities
+for watching her dance; she must be as pretty as a sprite."
+
+"That she is," agreed Joanna, warming and mollified, "and I've bought
+her a new gown that pulls out like an accordion, so as she can wave her
+skirts about when she dances."
+
+"Well, the drawing-room at North Farthing would make an excellent
+ball-room ... we must see about that--eh, Martin?"
+
+"It'll want a new floor laid down--there's rot under the carpet," was
+his son's disheartening reply. But Joanna had lost the smarting of her
+own wound in the glow of her pride for Ellen, and she ate the rest of
+her dinner in good-humoured contempt of Martin Trevor.
+
+When the time for the speeches came her health was proposed by the
+Chairman.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "let us drink to--the Lady."
+
+The chivalry of the committee had prompted them to offer her Southland
+to respond to this toast. But Joanna had doubts of his powers as an
+orator, whereas she had none of her own. She stood up, a glow of amber
+brightness above all the black coats, and spoke of her gratification, of
+her work at Ansdore and hopes for south-country farming. Her speech, as
+might have been expected, was highly dogmatic. She devoted her last
+words to the Marsh as a grain-bearing district--on one or two farms,
+where pasture had been broken, the yield in wheat had been found
+excellent. Since that was so, why had so few farms hitherto shown
+enterprise in this direction? There was no denying that arable paid
+better than pasture, and the only excuse for neglecting it was poverty
+of soil. It was obvious that no such poverty existed here--on the
+contrary, the soil was rich, and yet no crops were grown in it except
+roots and here and there a few acres of beans or lucerne. It was the old
+idea, she supposed, about breaking up grass. It was time that old idea
+was bust--she herself would lead the way at Ansdore next spring.
+
+As she was the guest of the evening, they heard her with respect, which
+did not, however, survive her departure at the introduction of pipes and
+port.
+
+"Out on the rampage again, is she?" said Southland to his neighbour.
+
+"Well, if she busts that 'old idea' same as she bust the other 'old
+idea' about crossing Kent sheep, all I can say is that it's Ansdore
+she'll bust next."
+
+"Whosumdever breaks pasture shall himself be broke," said Vine
+oracularly.
+
+"Surelye--surelye," assented the table.
+
+"She's got pluck all the same," said Sir Harry.
+
+But he was only an amateur.
+
+"I don't hold for a woman to have pluck," said Vennal of Beggar's Bush,
+"what do you say, Mr. Alce?"
+
+"I say nothing, Mr. Vennal."
+
+"Pluck makes a woman think she can do without a man," continued Vennal,
+"when everyone knows, and it's in Scripture, that she can't. Now Joanna
+Godden should ought to have married drackly minute Thomas Godden died
+and left her Ansdore, instead of which she's gone on plunging like a
+heifer till she must be past eight and twenty as I calculate--"
+
+"Now, now, Mr. Vennal, we mustn't start anything personal of our lady
+guest," broke in Furnese from the Chair, "we may take up her ideas or
+take 'em down, but while she's the guest of this here Farmers' Club,
+which is till eleven-thirty precise, we mustn't start arguing about her
+age or matrimonious intentions. Anyways, I take it, that's a job for our
+wives."
+
+"Hear, hear," and Joanna passed out of the conversation, for who was
+going to waste time either taking up or taking down a silly, tedious,
+foreign, unsensible notion like ploughing grass?...
+
+Indeed, it may be said that her glory had gone up in smoke--the smoke of
+twenty pipes.
+
+She had been obliged to leave the table just when it was becoming most
+characteristic and convivial, and to retire forlorn and chilly in her
+silken gown to the Woolpack parlour, where she and the landlady drank
+innumerable cups of tea. It was an unwelcome reminder of the fact that
+she was a woman, and that no matter how she might shine and impress the
+company for an hour, she did not really belong to it. She was a guest,
+not a member, of the Farmers' Club, and though a guest has more honour,
+he has less fellowship and fun. It was for fellowship and fun that she
+hungrily longed as she sat under the green lamp-shade of the Woolpack's
+parlour, and discoursed on servants and the price of turkeys with Mrs.
+Jupp, who was rather constrained and absent-minded owing to her
+simultaneous efforts to price Miss Godden's gown. Now and then a dull
+roar of laughter came to her from the Club room. What were they talking
+about, Joanna wondered. Had there been much debate over her remarks on
+breaking pasture?...
+
+
+
+
+§6
+
+On the whole, the Farmers' Club Dinner left behind it a rankling
+trail--for one thing, it was not followed as she had hoped and half
+expected by an invitation to join the Farmers' Club. No, they would
+never have a woman privileged among them--she realized that, in spite of
+her success, certain doors would always be shut on her. The men would
+far rather open those doors ceremonially now and then than allow her to
+go freely in and out. After all, perhaps they were right--hadn't she got
+her own rooms that they were shut out of?... Women were always
+different from men, even if they did the same things ... she had heard
+people talk of "woman's sphere." What did that mean? A husband and
+children, of course--any fool could tell you that. When you had a
+husband and children you didn't go round knocking at the men's doors,
+but shut yourself up snugly inside your own ... you were warm and cosy,
+and the firelight played on the ceiling.... But if you were alone inside
+your room--with no husband or child to keep you company ... then it was
+terrible, worse than being outside ... and no wonder you went round to
+the men's doors, and knocked on them and begged them to give you a
+little company, or something to do to help you to forget your empty
+room....
+
+"Well, I could marry Arthur Alce any day I liked," she thought to
+herself.
+
+But somehow that did not seem any solution to the problem.
+
+She thought of one or two other men who had approached her, but had been
+scared off before they had reached any definite position of courtship.
+They were no good either--young Cobb of Slinches had married six months
+ago, and Jack Abbot of Stock Bridge belonged to the Christian Believers,
+who kept Sunday on Saturday, and in other ways fathered confusion.
+Besides, she didn't want to marry just anyone who would have her--some
+dull yeoman who would take her away from Ansdore, or else come with all
+his stupid, antiquated, man-made notions to sit for ever on her
+enterprising acres. She wanted her marriage to be some big,
+neighbour-startling adventure--she wanted either to marry someone above
+herself in birth and station, or else very much below. She had touched
+the fringe of the latter experience and found it disappointing, so she
+felt that she would now prefer the other--she would like to marry some
+man of the upper classes, a lawyer or a parson or a squire. The two
+first were represented in her mind by Mr. Huxtable and Mr. Pratt, and
+she did not linger over them, but the image she had put up for the third
+was Martin Trevor--dark, tall, well-born, comely and strong of frame,
+and yet with that hidden delicacy, that weakness which Joanna must have
+in a man if she was to love him....
+
+She had been a fool about Martin Trevor--she had managed to put him
+against her at the start. Of course it was silly of him to mind what she
+said to Mr. Pratt, but that didn't alter the fact that she had been
+stupid herself, that she had failed to make a good impression just when
+she most wanted to do so. Martin Trevor was the sort of man she felt she
+could "take to," for in addition to his looks he had the quality she
+prized in males--the quality of inexperience; he was not likely to
+meddle with her ways, since he was only a beginner and would probably be
+glad of her superior knowledge and judgment. He would give her what she
+wanted--his good name and his good looks and her neighbours' envious
+confusion--and she would give him what he wanted, her prosperity and her
+experience. North Farthing House was poorer than Ansdore in spite of
+late dinners and drawing-rooms--the Trevors could look down on her from
+the point of view of birth and breeding but not from any advantage more
+concrete.
+
+As for herself, for her own warm, vigorous, vital person--with that
+curious simplicity which was part of her unawakened state, it never
+occurred to her to throw herself into the balance when Ansdore was
+already making North Farthing kick the beam. She thought of taking a
+husband as she thought of taking a farm hand--as a matter of bargaining,
+of offering substantial benefits in exchange for substantial services.
+If in a secondary way she was moved by romantic considerations, that was
+also true of her engagement of her male servants. Just as she saw her
+future husband in his possibilities as a farm-hand, in his relations to
+Ansdore, so she could not help seeing every farm-hand in his
+possibilities as a husband, in his relations to herself.
+
+
+
+
+§7
+
+Martin Trevor would have been surprised had he known himself the object
+of so much attention. His attitude towards Joanna was one of
+indifference based on dislike--her behaviour towards Mr. Pratt had
+disgusted him at the start, but his antipathy was not all built on that
+foundation. During the weeks he had been at home, he had heard a good
+deal about her--indeed he had found her rather a dominant personality on
+the Marsh--and what he had heard had not helped turn him from his first
+predisposition against her.
+
+As a young boy he had shared his brother's veneration of the Madonna,
+and though, when he grew up, his natural romanticism had not led him his
+brother's way, the boyish ideal had remained, and unconsciously all his
+later attitude towards women was tinged with it. Joanna was certainly
+not the Madonna type, and all Martin's soul revolted from her broad,
+bustling ways--everywhere he went he heard stories of her busyness and
+her bluff, of "what she had said to old Southland," or "the sass she had
+given Vine." She seemed to him to be an arrant, pushing baggage, running
+after notoriety and display. Her rudeness to Mr. Pratt was only part of
+the general parcel. He looked upon her as sexless, too, and he hated
+women to be sexless--his Madonna was not after Memling but after
+Raphael. Though he heard constant gossip about her farming activities
+and her dealings at market, he heard none about her passions, the
+likelier subject. All he knew was that she had been expected for years
+to marry Arthur Alce, but had not done so, and that she had also been
+expected at one time to marry her looker, but had not done so. The root
+of such romances must be poor indeed if this was all the flower that
+gossip could give them.
+
+Altogether he was prejudiced against Joanna Godden, and the prejudice
+did not go deep enough to beget interest. He was not interested in her,
+and did not expect her to be interested in him; therefore it was with
+great surprise, not to say consternation, that one morning at New Romney
+Market he saw her bearing down upon him with the light of battle in her
+eye.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Trevor."
+
+"Good morning, Miss Godden."
+
+"Fine weather."
+
+"Fine weather."
+
+He would have passed on, but she barred the way, rather an imposing
+figure in her bottle-green driving coat, with a fur toque pressed down
+over the flying chestnut of her hair. Her cheeks were not so much
+coloured as stained deep with the sun and wind of Walland Marsh, and
+though it was November, a mass of little freckles smudged and scattered
+over her skin. It had not occurred to him before that she was even a
+good-looking creature.
+
+"I'm thinking, Mr. Trevor," she said deliberately, "that you and me
+aren't liking each other as much as we should ought."
+
+"Really, Miss Godden. I don't see why you need say that."
+
+"Well, we don't like each other, do we? Leastways, you don't like me.
+Now"--lifting a large, well-shaped hand--"you needn't gainsay me, for I
+know what you think. You think I was middling rude to Mr. Pratt in
+Pedlinge street that day I first met you--and so I think myself, and I'm
+sorry, and Mr. Pratt knows it. He came around two weeks back to ask
+about Milly Pump, my chicken-gal, getting confirmed, and I told him I
+liked him and his ways so much that he could confirm the lot, gals and
+men--even old Stuppeny who says he's been done already, but I say it
+don't matter, since he's so old that it's sure to have worn off by this
+time."
+
+Martin stared at her with his mouth open.
+
+"So I say as I've done proper by Mr. Pratt," she continued, her voice
+rising to a husky flurry, "for I'll have to give 'em all a day off to
+get confirmed in, and that'll be a tedious affair for me. However, I
+don't grudge it, if it'll make things up between us--between you and me,
+I'm meaning."
+
+"But, I--I--that is, you've made a mistake--your behaviour to Mr. Pratt
+is no concern of mine."
+
+He was getting terribly embarrassed--this dreadful woman, what would she
+say next? Unconsciously yielding to a nervous habit, he took off his cap
+and violently rubbed up his hair the wrong way. The action somehow
+appealed to Joanna.
+
+"But it is your concern, I reckon--you've shown me plain that it is. I
+could see you were offended at the Farmers' Dinner."
+
+A qualm of compunction smote Martin.
+
+"You're showing me that I've been jolly rude."
+
+"Well, I won't say you haven't," said Joanna affably. "Still you've had
+reason. I reckon no one ud like me better for behaving rude to Mr.
+Pratt ..."
+
+"Oh, damn Mr. Pratt!" cried Martin, completely losing his head--"I tell
+you I don't care tuppence what you or anyone says or does to him."
+
+"Then you should ought to care, Mr. Trevor," said Joanna staidly, "not
+that I've any right to tell you, seeing how I've behaved. But at least I
+gave him a harmonium first--it's only that I couldn't abide the fuss he
+made of his thanks. I like doing things for folks, but I can't stand
+their making fools of themselves and me over it."
+
+Trevor had become miserably conscious that they were standing in the
+middle of the road, that Joanna was not inconspicuous, and if she had
+been, her voice would have made up for it. He could see people--gaitered
+farmers, clay-booted farm-hands--staring at them from the pavement. He
+suddenly felt himself--not without justification--the chief spectacle of
+Romney market-day.
+
+"Please don't think about it any more, Miss Godden," he said hurriedly.
+"I certainly should never presume to question anything you ever said or
+did to Mr. Pratt or anybody else. And, if you'll excuse me, I must go
+on--I'm a farmer now, you know," with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "and
+I've plenty of business in the market."
+
+"Reckon you have," said Joanna, her voice suddenly falling flat.
+
+He snatched off his cap and left her standing in the middle of the
+street.
+
+
+
+
+§8
+
+He did not let himself think of her for an hour or more--the episode
+struck him as grotesque and he preferred not to dwell on it. But after
+he had done his business of buying a farm horse, with the help of Mr.
+Southland who was befriending his inexperience, he found himself
+laughing quietly, and he suddenly knew that he was laughing over the
+interview with Joanna. And directly he had laughed, he was smitten with
+a sense of pathos--her bustle and self-confidence which hitherto had
+roused his dislike, now showed as something rather pathetic, a mere
+trapping of feminine weakness which would deceive no one who saw them at
+close quarters. Under her loud voice, her almost barbaric appearance,
+her queerly truculent manner, was a naïve mixture of child and
+woman--soft, simple, eager to please. He knew of no other woman who
+would have given herself away quite so directly and naturally as she
+had ... and his manhood was flattered. He was far from suspecting the
+practical nature of her intentions, but he could see that she liked him,
+and wanted to stand in his favour. She was not sexless, after all.
+
+This realization softened and predisposed him; he felt a little
+contrite, too--he remembered how her voice had suddenly dragged and
+fallen flat at his abrupt farewell.... She was disappointed in his
+reception of her offers of peace--she had been incapable of appreciating
+the attitude his sophistication was bound to take up in the face of such
+an outburst. She had proved herself, too, a generous soul--frankly
+owning herself in the wrong and trying by every means to make
+atonement.... Few women would have been at once so frank and so
+practical in their repentance. That he suspected the repentance was
+largely for his sake did not diminish his respect of it. When he met
+Joanna Godden again, he would be nice to her.
+
+The opportunity was given him sooner than he expected. Walking up the
+High Street in quest of some quiet place for luncheon--every shop and
+inn seemed full of thick smells of pipes and beer and thick noises of
+agricultural and political discussion conducted with the mouth full--he
+saw Miss Godden's trap waiting for her outside the New Inn. He
+recognized her equipage, not so much from its make or from the fat cob
+in the shafts, as from the figure of old Stuppeny dozing at Smiler's
+head. Old Stuppeny went everywhere with Miss Godden, being now quite
+unfit for work on the farm. His appearance was peculiar, for he seemed,
+like New Romney church tower, to be built in stages. He wore, as a
+farm-labourer of the older sort, a semi-clerical hat, which with his
+long white beard gave him down to the middle of his chest a resemblance
+to that type still haunting the chapels of marsh villages and known as
+Aged Evangelist--from his chest to his knees, he was mulberry coat and
+brass buttons, Miss Joanna Godden's coachman, though as the vapours of
+the marsh had shaped him into a shepherd's crook, his uniform lost some
+of its effect. Downwards from the bottom of his coat he was just a
+farm-labourer, with feet of clay and corduroy trousers tied with string.
+
+His presence showed that Miss Godden was inside the New Inn, eating her
+dinner, probably finishing it, or he would not have brought the trap
+round. It was just like her, thought Martin, with a tolerant twist to
+his smile, to go to the most public and crowded place in Romney for her
+meal, instead of shrinking into the decent quiet of some shop. But
+Joanna Godden had done more for herself in that interview than she had
+thought, for though she still repelled she was no longer uninteresting.
+Martin gave up searching for that quiet meal, and walked into the New
+Inn.
+
+He found Joanna sitting at a table by herself, finishing a cup of tea.
+The big table was edged on both sides with farmers, graziers and
+butchers, while the small tables were also occupied, so there was not
+much need for his apologies as he sat down opposite her. Her face
+kindled at once--
+
+"I'm sorry I'm so near finished."
+
+She was a grudgeless soul, and Martin almost liked her.
+
+"Have you done much business to-day?"
+
+"Not much. I'm going home as soon as I've had my dinner. Are you
+stopping long?"
+
+"Till I've done a bit of shopping"--he found himself slipping into the
+homeliness of her tongue--"I want a good spade and some harness."
+
+"I'll tell you a good shop for harness ..." Joanna loved enlightening
+ignorance and guiding inexperience, and while Martin's chop and
+potatoes were being brought she held forth on different makes of harness
+and called spades spades untiringly. He listened without rancour, for he
+was beginning to like her very much. His liking was largely physical--he
+wouldn't have believed a month ago that he should ever find Joanna
+Godden attractive, but to-day the melting of his prejudice seemed to
+come chiefly from her warm beauty, from the rich colouring of her face
+and the flying sunniness of her hair, from her wide mouth with its wide
+smile, from the broad, strong set of her shoulders, and the sturdy
+tenderness of her breast.
+
+She saw that he had changed. His manner was different, more cordial and
+simple--the difference between his coldness and his warmth was greater
+than in many, for like most romantics he had found himself compelled at
+an early age to put on armour, and the armour was stiff and disguising
+in proportion to the lightness and grace of the body within. Not that he
+and Joanna talked of light and graceful things ... they talked, after
+spades and harness, of horses and sheep, and of her ideas on breaking up
+grass, which was to be a practical scheme at Ansdore that spring in
+spite of the neighbours, of the progress of the new light railway from
+Lydd to Appledore, of the advantages and disadvantages of growing
+lucerne. But the barrier was down between them, and he knew that they
+were free, if they chose, to go on from horses and sheep and railways
+and crops to more daring, intimate things, and because of that same
+freedom they stuck to the homely topics, like people who are free to
+leave the fireside but wait till the sun is warmer on the grass.
+
+He had begun his apple-tart before she rose.
+
+"Well, I must be getting back now. Good-bye, Mr. Trevor. If you should
+ever happen to pass Ansdore, drop in and I'll give you a cup of tea."
+
+He was well aware that the whole room had heard this valediction. He saw
+some of the men smiling at each other, but he was not annoyed. He rose
+and went with her to the door, where she hugged herself into her big
+driving coat. Something about her made him feel big enough to ignore the
+small gossip of the Marsh.
+
+
+
+
+§9
+
+He liked her now--he told himself that she was good common stuff. She
+was like some sterling homespun piece, strong and sweet-smelling--she
+was like a plot of the marsh earth, soft and rich and alive. He had
+forgotten her barbaric tendency, the eccentricity of looks and conduct
+which had at first repelled him--that aspect had melted in the
+unsuspected warmth and softness he had found in her. He had been
+mistaken as to her sexlessness--she was alive all through. She was still
+far removed from his type, but her fundamental simplicity had brought
+her nearer to it, and in time his good will would bring her the rest of
+the way. Anyhow, he would look forward to meeting her again--perhaps he
+would call at Ansdore, as she had proposed.
+
+Joanna was not blind to her triumph, and it carried her beyond her
+actual attainment into the fulfilment of her hopes. She saw Martin
+Trevor already as her suitor--respectful, interested, receptive of her
+wisdom in the matter of spades. She rejoiced in her courage in having
+taken the first step--she would not have much further to go now. Now
+that she had overcome his initial dislike, the advantages of the
+alliance must be obvious to him. She looked into the future, and between
+the present moment and the consummated union of North Farthing and
+Ansdore, she saw thrilling, half-dim, personal adventures for Martin and
+Joanna ... the touch of his hands would be quite different from the
+touch of Arthur Alce's ... and his lips--she had never wanted a man's
+lips before, except perhaps Socknersh's for one wild, misbegotten
+minute ... she held in her heart the picture of Martin's well-cut,
+sensitive mouth, so unlike the usual mouths of Brodnyx and Pedlinge,
+which were either coarse-lipped or no-lipped.... Martin's mouth was
+wonderful--it would be like fire on hers....
+
+Thus Joanna rummaged in her small stock of experience, and of the
+fragments built a dream. Her plans were not now all concrete--they
+glowed a little, though dimly, for her memory held no great store, and
+her imagination was the imagination of Walland Marsh, as a barndoor fowl
+to the birds that fly. She might have dreamed more if her mind had not
+been occupied with the practical matter of welcoming Ellen home for her
+Christmas holidays.
+
+Ellen, who arrived on Thomas-day, already seemed in some strange way to
+have grown apart from the life of Ansdore. As Joanna eagerly kissed her
+on the platform at Rye, there seemed something alien in her soft cool
+cheek, in the smoothness of her hair under the dark boater hat with its
+deviced hat-band.
+
+"Hullo, Joanna," she said.
+
+"Hullo, dearie. I've just about been pining to get you back. How are
+you?--how's your dancing?"--This as she bundled her up beside her in the
+trap, while the porter helped old Stuppeny with her trunk.
+
+"I can dance the waltz and the polka."
+
+"That's fine--I've promised the folks around here that you shall show
+'em what you can do."
+
+She gave Ellen another warm, proud hug, and this time the child's
+coolness melted a little. She rubbed her immaculate cheek against her
+sister's sleeve--
+
+"Good old Jo ..."
+
+Thus they drove home at peace together.
+
+The peace was shattered many times between that day and Christmas. Ellen
+had forgotten what it was like to be slapped and what it was like to
+receive big smacking kisses at odd encounters in yard or passage--she
+resented both equally. "You're like an old bear, Jo--an awful old bear."
+She had picked up at school a new vocabulary, of which the word "awful,"
+used to express every quality of pleasure or pain, was a fair sample.
+Joanna sometimes could not understand her--sometimes she understood too
+well.
+
+"I sent you to school to be made a little lady of, and here you come
+back speaking worse than a National child."
+
+"All the girls talk like that at school."
+
+"Then seemingly it was a waste to send you there, since you could have
+learned bad manners cheaper at home."
+
+"But the mistresses don't allow it," said Ellen, in hasty fear of being
+taken away, "you get a bad mark if you say 'damn.'"
+
+"I should just about think you did, and I'd give you a good spanking
+too. I never heard such language--no, not even at the Woolpack."
+
+Ellen gave her peculiar, alien smile.
+
+"You're awfully old-fashioned, Jo."
+
+"Old-fashioned, am I, because I don't go against my Catechism and take
+the Lord's name in vain?"
+
+"Yes, you do--every time you say 'Lord sakes' you take the Lord's name
+in vain, and it's common into the bargain."
+
+Here Joanna lost her temper and boxed Ellen's ears.
+
+"You dare say I'm common! So that's what you learn at school?--to come
+home and call your sister common. Well, if I'm common, you're common
+too, since we're the same blood."
+
+"I never said you were common," sobbed Ellen--"and you really are a
+beast, hitting me about. No wonder I like school better than home if
+that's how you treat me."
+
+Joanna declared with violence if that was how she felt she should never
+see school again, whereupon Ellen screamed and sobbed herself into a
+pale, quiet, tragic state--lying back in her chair, her face patchy with
+crying, her head falling queerly sideways like a broken doll's--till
+Joanna, scared and contrite, assured her that she had not meant her
+threat seriously, and that Ellen should stop at school as long as she
+was a good girl and minded her sister.
+
+This sort of thing had happened every holiday, but there were also
+brighter aspects, and on the whole Joanna was proud of her little sister
+and pleased with the results of the step she had taken. Ellen could not
+only dance and drop beautiful curtsies, but she could play tunes on the
+piano, and recite poetry. She could ask for things in French at table,
+could give startling information about the Kings of England and the
+exports and imports of Jamaica, and above all these accomplishments, she
+showed a welcome alacrity to display them, so that her sister could
+always rely on her for credit and glory.
+
+"When Martin Trevor comes I'll make her say her piece."
+
+
+
+
+§10
+
+Martin came on Christmas Day. He knew that the feast would lend a
+special significance to the visit, but he did not care; for in absence
+he had idealized Joanna into a fit subject for flirtation. He had no
+longer any wish to meet her on the level footing of friendship--besides,
+he was already beginning to feel lonely on the Marsh, to long for the
+glow of some romance to warm the fogs that filled his landscape. In
+spite of his father's jeers, he was no monk, and generally had some
+sentimental adventure keeping his soul alive--but he was fastidious and
+rather bizarre in his likings, and since he had come to North Farthing,
+no one, either in his own class or out of it, had appealed to him,
+except Joanna Godden.
+
+She owed part of her attraction to the surviving salt of his dislike.
+There was still a savour of antagonism in his liking of her. Also his
+curiosity was still unsatisfied. Was that undercurrent of softness
+genuine? Was she really simple and tender under her hard flaunting? Was
+she passionate under her ignorance and _naïveté_? Only experiment could
+show him, and he meant to investigate, not merely for the barren
+satisfaction of his curiosity, but for the satisfaction of his manhood
+which was bound up with a question.
+
+When he arrived, Joanna was still in church--on Christmas Day as on
+other selected festivals, she always "stayed the Sacrament," and did not
+come out till nearly one. He went to meet her, and waited for her some
+ten minutes in the little churchyard which was a vivid green with the
+Christmas rains. The day was clear and curiously soft for the season,
+even on the Marsh where the winters are usually mild. The sky was a
+delicate blue, washed with queer, flat clouds--the whole country of the
+Marsh seemed faintly luminous, holding the sunshine in its greens and
+browns. Beside the dyke which flows by Brodnyx village stood a big thorn
+tree, still bright with haws. It made a vivid red patch in the
+foreground, the one touch of Christmas in a landscape which otherwise
+suggested October--especially in the sunshine, which poured in a warm
+shower on to the altar-tomb where Martin sat.
+
+He grew dreamy with waiting--his thoughts seemed to melt into the
+softness of the day, to be part of the still air and misty sunshine,
+just as the triple-barned church with its grotesque tower was part....
+He could feel the great Marsh stretching round him, the lonely miles of
+Walland and Dunge and Romney, once the sea's bed, now lately inned for
+man and his small dwellings, his keepings and his cares, perhaps one day
+to return to the same deep from which it had come. People said that the
+bells of Broomhill church--drowned in the great floods which had changed
+the Rother's mouth--still rang under the sea. If the sea came to
+Brodnyx, would Brodnyx bells ring on?--And Pedlinge? And Brenzett? And
+Fairfield? And all the little churches of Thomas à Becket on their
+mounds?--What a ringing there would be.
+
+He woke out of his daydream at the sound of footsteps--the people were
+coming out, and glancing up he saw Joanna a few yards off. She looked
+surprised to see him, but also she made no attempt to hide her pleasure.
+
+"Mr. Trevor! You here?"
+
+"I came over to Ansdore to wish you a happy Christmas, and they told me
+you were still in church."
+
+"Yes--I stopped for Communion--" her mouth fell into a serious,
+reminiscent line, "you didn't come to the first service, neither?"
+
+"No, my brother's at home, and he took charge of my father's spiritual
+welfare--they went off to church at Udimore, and I was too lazy to
+follow them."
+
+"I'm sorry you didn't come here--they used my harmonium, and it was
+valiant."
+
+He smiled at her adjective.
+
+"I'll come another day and hear your valiant harmonium. I suppose you
+think everybody should go to church?"
+
+"My father went, and I reckon I'll keep on going."
+
+"You always do as your father did?"
+
+"In most ways."
+
+"But not in all?--I hear startling tales of new-shaped waggons and other
+adventures, to say nothing of your breaking up grass next spring."
+
+"Well, if you don't see any difference between breaking up grass and
+giving up church ..."
+
+"They are both a revolt from habit."
+
+"Now, don't you talk like that--it ain't seemly. I don't like hearing a
+man make a mock of good things, and going to church is a good thing, as
+I should ought to know, having just come out of it."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Martin humbly, and for some reason he felt ashamed.
+They were walking now along the Pedlinge road, and the whole Marsh, so
+broad and simple, seemed to join in her rebuke of him.
+
+She saw his contrite look, and repented of her sharpness.
+
+"Come along home and have a bit of our Christmas dinner."
+
+Martin stuttered--he had not expected such an invitation, and it alarmed
+him.
+
+"We all have dinner together on Christmas Day," continued Joanna, "men
+and gals, old Stuppeny, Mrs. Tolhurst, everybody--we'd take it kindly if
+you'd join us. But--I'm forgetting--you'll be having your own dinner at
+home."
+
+"We shan't have ours till the evening."
+
+"Oh--late dinner"--her tone became faintly reverential--"it ud never do
+if we had that. The old folk, like Stuppeny and such, ud find their
+stomachs keep them awake. We've got two turkeys and a goose and plum
+puddings and mince pies, to say nothing of the oranges and nuts--that
+ain't the kind of food to go to bed with."
+
+"I agree," said Martin, smiling.
+
+"Then you'll come and have dinner at Ansdore?"
+
+They had reached the first crossing of the railway line, and if he was
+going back to North Farthing he should turn here. He could easily make
+an excuse--no man really wanted to eat two Christmas dinners--but his
+flutter was gone, and he found an attraction in the communal meal to
+which she was inviting him. He would like to see the old folk at their
+feast, the old folk who had been born on the Marsh, who had grown
+wrinkled with its sun and reddened with its wind and bent with their
+labours in its damp soil. There would be Joanna too--he would get a
+close glimpse of her. It was true that he would be pulling the cord
+between them a little tighter, but already she was drawing him and he
+was coming willingly. To-day he had found in her an unsuspected streak
+of goodness, a sound, sweet core which he had not looked for under his
+paradox of softness and brutality.... It would be worth while committing
+himself with Joanna Godden.
+
+
+
+
+§11
+
+Dinner on Christmas Day was always in the kitchen at Ansdore. When
+Joanna reached home with Martin, the two tables, set end to end, were
+laid--with newly ironed cloths and newly polished knives, but with the
+second-best china only, since many of the guests were clumsy. Joanna
+wished there had been time to get out the best china, but there was not.
+
+Ellen came flying to meet them, in a white serge frock tied with a red
+sash.
+
+"Arthur Alce has come, Jo--we're all waiting. Is Mr. Trevor coming too?"
+and she put her head on one side, looking up at him through her long
+fringe.
+
+"Yes, duckie. Mr. Trevor's dropped in to taste our turkey and plum
+pudding--to see if they ain't better than his own to-night."
+
+"Is he going to have another turkey and plum pudding to-night? How
+greedy!"
+
+"Be quiet, you sassy little cat"--and Joanna's hand swooped, missing
+Ellen's head only by the sudden duck she gave it.
+
+"Leave me alone, Joanna--you might keep your temper just for Christmas
+Day."
+
+"I won't have you sass strangers."
+
+"I wasn't sassing."
+
+"You was."
+
+"I wasn't."
+
+Martin felt scared.
+
+"I hope you don't mean me by the stranger," he said, taking up lightness
+as a weapon, "I think I know you well enough to be sassed--not that I
+call that sassing."
+
+"Well, it's good of you not to mind," said Joanna, "personally I've
+great ideas of manners, and Ellen's brought back some queer ones from
+her school, though others she's learned are beautiful. Fancy, she never
+sat down to dinner without a serviette."
+
+"Never," said Ellen emphatically.
+
+Martin appeared suitably impressed. He thought Ellen a pretty little
+thing, strangely exotic beside her sister.
+
+Dinner was ready in the kitchen, and they all went in, Joanna having
+taken off her coat and hat and smoothed her hair. Before they sat down
+there were introductions to Arthur Alce and to Luck and Broadhurst and
+Stuppeny and the other farm people. The relation between employer and
+employed was at once more patriarchal and less sharply defined at
+Ansdore than it was at North Farthing--Martin tried to picture his
+father sitting down to dinner with the carter and the looker and the
+housemaid ... it was beyond imagination, yet Joanna did it quite
+naturally. Of course there was a smaller gulf between her and her
+people--the social grades were inclined to fuse on the Marsh, and the
+farmer was only just better than his looker--but on the other hand, she
+seemed to have far more authority....
+
+"Now, hold your tongues while I say grace," she cried.
+
+Joanna carved the turkeys, refusing to deputise either to Martin or to
+Alce. At the same time she led a general kind of conversation. The
+Christmas feast was to be communal in spirit as well as in fact--there
+were to be no formalities above the salt or mutterings below it. The new
+harmonium provided a good topic, for everyone had heard it, except Mrs.
+Tolhurst who had stayed to keep watch over Ansdore, cheering herself
+with the prospect of carols in the evening.
+
+"It sounded best in the psalms," said Wilson, Joanna's looker since
+Socknersh's day--"oh, the lovely grunts it made when it said--'Thou art
+my Son, this day have I begotten thee!"
+
+"So it did," said Broadhurst, "but I liked it best in the Herald
+Angels."
+
+"I liked it all through," said Milly Pump, the chicken-girl. "And I
+thought Mr. Elphick middling clever to make it sound as if it wur
+playing two different tunes at the same time."
+
+"Was that how it sounded?" asked Mrs. Tolhurst wistfully, "maybe they'll
+have it for the carols to-night."
+
+"Surelye," said old Stuppeny, "you'd never have carols wudout a
+harmonister. I'd lik myself to go and hear it, but doubt if I ull git so
+far wud so much good victual inside me."
+
+"No, you won't--not half so far," said Joanna briskly, "you stop at home
+and keep quiet after this, or you'll be having bad dreams to-night."
+
+"I never do but have one kind o' dream," said old Stuppeny, "I dream as
+I'm setting by the fire and a young gal brings me a cup of cocoa. 'Tis
+but an old dream, but reckon the Lord God sends the old dreams to the
+old folk--all them new dreams that are about on the Marsh, they goes to
+the young uns."
+
+"Well, you've no call to complain of your dreams, Stuppeny," said
+Wilson, "'tisn't everyone who has the luck to dream regular of a pretty
+young gal. Leastways, I guess she's pretty, though you äun't said it."
+
+"I döan't take much count on her looks--'tis the cocoa I'm after, though
+it äun't often as the Lord God lets the dream stay till I've drunk my
+cup. Sometimes 'tis my daughter Nannie wot brings it, but most times
+'tis just some unacquainted female."
+
+"Oh, you sorry old dog," said Wilson, and the table laughed
+deep-throatedly, or giggled, according to sex. Old Stuppeny looked
+pleased. His dream, for some reason unknown to himself, never failed to
+raise a laugh, and generally produced a cup of cocoa sooner or later
+from one of the girls.
+
+Martin did not join in the discussion--he felt that his presence
+slightly damped the company, and for him to talk might spoil their
+chances of forgetting him. He watched Miss Godden as she ate and laughed
+and kept the conversation rolling--he also watched Arthur Alce, trying
+to use this man's devotion as a clue to what was left of Joanna's
+mystery. Alce struck him as a dull fellow, and he put down his
+faithfulness to the fact that having once fallen into love as into a rut
+he had lain there ever since like a sheep on its back. He could see
+that Alce did not altogether approve of his own choice--her vigour and
+flame, her quick temper, her free airs--she was really too big for these
+people; and yet she was so essentially one of them ... their roots
+mingled in the same soil, the rich, damp, hardy soil of the Marsh.
+
+His attitude towards her was undergoing its second and final change. Now
+he knew that he would never want to flirt with her. He did not want her
+tentatively or temporarily. He still wanted her adventurously, but her
+adventure was not the adventure of siege and capture but of peaceful
+holding. Like the earth, she would give her best not to the man who
+galloped over her, but to the man who chose her for his home and
+settlement. Thus he would hold her, or not at all. Very likely after
+to-day he would renounce her--he had not yet gone too far, his eyes were
+still undazzled, and he could see the difficulties and limitations in
+which he was involving himself by such a choice. He was a gentleman and
+a townsman--he trod her country only as a stranger, and he knew that in
+spite of the love which the Marsh had made him give it in the few months
+of his dwelling, his thoughts still worked for years ahead, when better
+health and circumstances would allow him to go back to the town, to a
+quick and crowded life. Could he then swear himself to the slow blank
+life of the Three Marshes, where events move deliberately as a plough?
+To the empty landscape, to the flat miles? He would have to love her
+enough to endure the empty flatness that framed her. He could never take
+her away, any more than he could take away Ansdore or North Farthing. He
+must make a renunciation for her sake--could he do so? And after all,
+she was common stuff--a farmer's daughter, bred at the National School.
+By taking her he would be making just a yokel of himself.... Yet was it
+worth clinging to his simulacrum of gentility--boosted up by his
+father's title and a few dead rites, such as the late dinner which had
+impressed her so much. The only real difference between the Goddens and
+the Trevors was that the former knew their job and the latter didn't.
+
+All this thinking did not make either for much talk or much appetite,
+and Joanna was disappointed. She let fall one or two remarks on farming
+and outside matters, thinking that perhaps the conversation was too
+homely and intimate for him, but he responded only languidly.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Trevor," said Ellen pertly.
+
+"You eat your pudding," said Joanna.
+
+It occurred to her that perhaps Martin was disgusted by the homeliness
+of the meal--after all, he was gentry, and it was unusual for gentry to
+sit down to dinner with a crowd of farm-hands.... No doubt at home he
+had wine-glasses, and a servant-girl to hand the dishes. She made a
+resolution to ask him again and provide both these luxuries. To-day she
+would take him into the parlour and make Ellen show off her
+accomplishments, which would help put a varnish of gentility on the
+general coarseness of the entertainment. She wished she had asked Mr.
+Pratt--she had thought of doing so, but finally decided against it.
+
+So when the company had done shovelling the Stilton cheese into their
+mouths with their knives, she announced that she and Mr. Trevor would
+have their cups of tea in the parlour, and told Milly to go quick and
+light the fire.
+
+Ellen was most satisfactorily equal to this part of the occasion. She
+recited "Curfew shall not Ring Tonight," and played Haydn's "Gipsy
+Rondo." Joanna began to feel complacent once more.
+
+"I made up my mind she should go to a good school," she said when her
+sister had run back to what festivities lingered in the kitchen, "and
+really it's wonderful what they've taught her. She'll grow up to be a
+lady."
+
+It seemed to Martin that she stressed the last word rather wistfully,
+and the next moment she added--
+
+"There's not many of your sort on the Marsh."
+
+"How do you mean--my sort?"
+
+"Gentlefolk."
+
+"Oh, we don't trouble to call ourselves gentlefolk. My father and I are
+just plain farmers now."
+
+"But you don't really belong to us--you're the like of the Savilles at
+Dungemarsh Court, and the clergy families."
+
+"Is that where you put us?--We'd find our lives jolly dull if we shut
+ourselves up in that set. I can tell you that I've enjoyed myself far
+more here to-day than ever at the Court or the Rectory. Besides, Miss
+Godden, your position on Walland Marsh is very much better than ours.
+You're a great personage, you know."
+
+"Reckon folks talk about me," said Joanna proudly. "Maybe you've heard
+'em."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"You've heard about me and Arthur Alce?"
+
+"I've heard some gossip."
+
+"Don't you believe it. I'm fond of Arthur, but he ain't my style--and I
+could do better for myself ..."
+
+She paused--her words seemed to hang in the flickering warmth of the
+room. She was waiting for him to speak, and he felt a little shocked and
+repelled. She was angling for him--he had never suspected that.
+
+"I must go," he said, standing up.
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Yes--tradition sends one home on Christmas Day."
+
+He moved towards the door, and she followed him, glowing and majestic in
+the shadows of the firelit room. Outside, the sky was washed with a
+strange, fiery green, in which the new kindled stars hung like lamps.
+
+They stood for a moment on the threshold, the warm, red house behind
+them, before them the star-hung width and emptiness of the Marsh. Martin
+blocked the sky for Joanna, as he turned and held out his hand. Then, on
+the brink of love, she hesitated. A memory smote her--of herself
+standing before another man who blocked the sky, and in whose eyes sat
+the small, enslaved image of herself. Was she just being a fool
+again?--Ought she to draw back while she had still the power, before she
+became his slave, his little thing, and all her bigness was drowned in
+his eyes. She knew that whatever she gave him now could never be taken
+back. Here stood the master of the mistress of Ansdore.
+
+As for Martin, his thoughts were of another kind.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, renouncing her--for her boldness and her commonness
+and all that she would mean of change and of foregoing--"Good-bye,
+Joanna."
+
+He had not meant to say her name, but it had come, and with it all the
+departing adventure of love. She seemed to fall towards him, to lean
+suddenly like a tree in a gale--he smelt a fresh, sweet smell of clean
+cotton underclothing, of a plain soap, of free unperfumed hair ... then
+she was in his arms, and he was kissing her warm, shy mouth, feeling
+that for this moment he had been born.
+
+
+
+
+§12
+
+"Well, where have you been?" asked Sir Harry, as his son walked in at
+the hall door soon after six.
+
+"I've been having dinner with Joanna Godden."
+
+"The deuce you have."
+
+"I looked in to see her this morning and she asked me to stay."
+
+"You've stayed long enough--your saintly brother's had to do the
+milking."
+
+"Where's Dennett?"
+
+"Gone to the carols with the rest. Confounded nuisance, these primitive
+religious impulses of an elemental people--always seem to require an
+outlet at an hour when other people want their meals."
+
+"They'll be back in time for dinner."
+
+"I doubt it, and cook's gone too--and Tom Saville's coming, you know."
+
+"Well, I'd better go and see after the milking."
+
+"Don't worry. I've finished," and a dark round head came round the door,
+followed by a hunched figure in a cloak, from the folds of which it
+deprecatingly held out a pint jug.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The results of half an hour's milking. I know I should have got more,
+but I think the cows found me unsympathetic."
+
+Martin burst out laughing. Ordinarily he would have felt annoyed at the
+prospect of having to go milking at this hour, but to-night he was
+expansive and good-humoured towards all beasts and men.
+
+He laughed again--
+
+"I don't know that the cows have any particular fancy for me, but I'll
+go and see what I can do."
+
+"I'm sorry not to have succeeded better," said his brother.
+
+The elder Trevor was only two years older than Martin, but his looks
+gave him more. His features were blunter, more humorous, and his face
+was already lined, while his hands looked work-worn. He wore a rough
+grey cassock buttoned up to his chin.
+
+"You should have preached to them," said Sir Harry, "like St. Francis of
+something or other. You should have called them your sisters and they'd
+have showered down their milk in gallons. What's the good of being a
+monk if you can't work miracles?"
+
+"I leave that to St. Francis Dennett--I'm quite convinced that cows are
+milked only supernaturally, and I find it very difficult even to be
+natural with them. Perhaps Martin will take me in hand and show me that
+much."
+
+"I don't think I need. I hear the servants coming in."
+
+"Thank God," exclaimed Sir Harry, "now perhaps we shall get our food
+cooked. Martin's already had dinner, Lawrence--he had it with Joanna
+Godden. Martin, I don't know that I like your having dinner with Joanna
+Godden. It marks you--they'll talk about it at the Woolpack for weeks,
+and it'll probably end in your having to marry her to make her an honest
+woman."
+
+"That's what I mean to do--to marry her."
+
+The words broke out of him. He had certainly not meant to tell his
+father anything just yet. Apart from his natural reserve, Sir Harry was
+not the man he would have chosen for such confidences till they became
+inevitable. The fact that his father was still emotionally young and had
+love affairs of his own gave him feelings of repugnance and
+irritation--he could have endured the conventionally paternal praise or
+blame, but he was vaguely outraged by the queer basis of equality from
+which Sir Harry dealt with his experiences. But now the truth was out.
+What would they say, these two?--The old rake who refused to turn his
+back on youth and love, and the triple-vowed religious who had renounced
+both before he had enjoyed either.
+
+Sir Harry was the first to speak.
+
+"Martin, I am an old man, who will soon be forced to dye his hair, and
+really my constitution is not equal to these shocks. What on earth
+makes you think you want to marry Joanna Godden?"
+
+"I love her."
+
+"A most desperate situation. But surely marriage is rather a drastic
+remedy."
+
+"Well, don't let's talk about it any longer. I'm going to dress--Saville
+will be here in a quarter of an hour."
+
+"But I must talk about it. Hang it all, I'm your father--I'm the father
+of both of you, though you don't like it a bit and would rather forget
+it. Martin, you mustn't marry Joanna Godden however much you love her.
+It would be a silly mistake--she's not your equal, and she's not your
+type. Have you asked her?"
+
+"Practically."
+
+"Oh that's all right, then. It doesn't matter asking a woman practically
+as long as you don't ask her literally."
+
+"Father, please don't talk about it."
+
+"I will talk about it. Lawrence, do you know what this idiot's letting
+himself in for? Have you seen Joanna Godden? Why, she'd never do for
+him? She's a big, bouncing female, and her stays creak."
+
+"Be quiet, father. You make me furious."
+
+"Yes, you'll be disrespectful to me in a minute. That would be very sad,
+and the breaking of a noble record. Of course it's presumptuous of me to
+want a lady for my daughter-in-law, and perhaps you're right to chuck
+away the poor remains of our dignity--they were hardly worth keeping."
+
+"I've thought over that," said Martin. He saw now that having recklessly
+started the subject he could not put it aside till it had been fought
+out. "I've thought over that, and I've come to the conclusion that
+Joanna's worth any sacrifice I can make for her."
+
+"But not marriage--why must you ask her to marry you? You don't really
+know her. You'll cool off."
+
+"I shan't."
+
+"What about your health, Martin?" asked Lawrence, "are you fit and able
+to marry? You know what the doctor said."
+
+"He said I might go off into consumption if I hung on in town--that
+beastly atmosphere at Wright's and all the racket.... But there's
+nothing actually wrong with me, I'm perfectly fit down here. I'll last
+for ever in this place, and I tell you it's been a ghastly thought till
+now--knowing that I must either stop here, away from all my friends and
+interests, or else shorten my life. But now, I don't care--when I marry
+Joanna Godden I'll take root, I'll belong to the Marsh, I'll be at home.
+You don't know Joanna Godden, Lawrence--if you did I believe you'd like
+her. She's so sane and simple--she's so warm and alive; and she's good,
+too--when I met her to-day, she had just been to Communion. She'll help
+me to live--at last I'll be able to live the best life for me, body and
+soul, down here in the sea air, with no town rubbish ..."
+
+"It sounds a good thing," said Lawrence. "After all, father, there
+really isn't much use trying to keep up the state of the Trevors and all
+that now ..."
+
+"No, there isn't--especially when this evening's guest will arrive in
+two minutes to find us sitting round in dirt and darkness and
+dissension, all because we've been too busy discussing our heir's
+betrothal to a neighbouring goose-girl to trouble about such fripperies
+as dressing for dinner. Of course now Lawrence elects to take Martin's
+part there's no good my trying to stand against the two of you. I've
+always been under your heels, ever since you were old enough to boss me.
+Let the state of the Trevors go--Martin, marry Joanna Godden and we will
+come to you for our mangolds--Lawrence, if you were not hindered by your
+vows, I should suggest your marrying one of the Miss Southlands or the
+Miss Vines, and then we could have a picturesque double wedding. As for
+me, I will build on more solid foundations than either of you, and marry
+my cook."
+
+With which threat he departed to groom himself.
+
+"He'll be all right," said Martin, "he likes Joanna Godden really."
+
+"So do I. She sounds a good sort. Will you take me to see her before I
+go?"
+
+"Certainly. I want you to meet her. When you do you'll see that I'm not
+doing anything rash, even from the worldly point of view. She comes of
+fine old yeoman stock, and she's of far more consequence on the Marsh
+than any of us."
+
+"I can't see that the social question is of much importance. As long as
+your tastes and your ideas aren't too different ..."
+
+"I'm afraid they are, rather. But somehow we seem to complement each
+other. She's so solid and so sane--there's something barbaric about her
+too ... it's queer."
+
+"I've seen her. She's a fine-looking girl--a bit older than you, isn't
+she?"
+
+"Five years. Against it, of course--but then I'm so much older than she
+is in most ways. She's a practical woman of business--knows more about
+farming than I shall ever know in my life--but in matters of life and
+love, she's a child ..."
+
+"I should almost have thought it better the other way round--that you
+should know about the business and she about the love. But then in such
+matters I too am a child."
+
+He smiled disarmingly, but Martin felt ruffled--partly because his
+brother's voluntary abstention from experience always annoyed him, and
+partly because he knew that in this case the child was right and the man
+wrong.
+
+
+
+
+§13
+
+In the engagement of Joanna Godden to Martin Trevor Walland Marsh had
+its biggest sensation for years. Indeed it could be said that nothing so
+startling had happened since the Rother changed its mouth. The feelings
+of those far-back marsh-dwellers who had awakened one morning to find
+the Kentish river swirling past their doors at Broomhill might aptly be
+compared with those of the farms round the Woolpack, who woke to find
+that Joanna Godden was not going just to jog on her final choice between
+Arthur Alce and old maidenhood, but had swept aside to make an
+excellent, fine marriage.
+
+"She's been working for this all along," said Prickett disdainfully.
+
+"I don't see that she's had the chance to work much," said Vine, "she
+hasn't seen the young chap more than three or four times."
+
+"Bates's looker saw them at Romney once," said Southland, "having their
+dinner together; but that time at the Farmers' Club he'd barely speak to
+her."
+
+"Well she's got herself talked about over two men that she hasn't took,
+and now she's took a man that she hasn't got herself talked about over."
+
+"Anyways, I'm glad of it," said Furnese, "she's a mare that's never been
+präaperly broken in, and now at last she's got a man to do it."
+
+"Poor feller, Alce. I wonder how he'll take it."
+
+Alce took it very well. For a week he did not come to Ansdore, then he
+appeared with Joanna's first wedding present in the shape of a silver
+tea-service which had belonged to his mother.
+
+"Maybe it's a bit early yet for wedding presents. They say you won't be
+married till next fall. But I've always wanted you to have this tea-set
+of mother's--it's real silver, as you can see by the lion on it--a
+teapot and milk jug and sugar bowl; many's the time I've seen you in my
+mind's eye, setting like a queen and pouring my tea out of it. Since it
+can't be my tea, it may as well be another's."
+
+"There'll always be a cup for you, Arthur," said Joanna graciously.
+
+"Thanks," said Arthur in a stricken voice.
+
+Joanna could not feel as sorry for Alce as she ought and would have
+liked. All her emotions, whether of joy or sorrow, seemed to be poured
+into the wonderful new life that Martin had given her. A new life had
+begun for her on Christmas Day--in fact, it would be true to say that a
+new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out
+of all recognition--she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender.
+She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin
+had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming
+spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had
+come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing--but he had stripped her of
+Ansdore, and she was just Joanna Godden who had waited twenty-eight
+years for love.
+
+Yet, perhaps because she had waited so long, she was now a little
+afraid. She had hitherto met love only in the dim forms of Arthur Alce
+and Dick Socknersh, with still more hazy images in the courtships of
+Abbot and Cobb. Now Martin was showing her love as no dim flicker or
+candlelight or domestic lamplight but as a bright, eager fire. She loved
+his kisses, the clasp of his strong arms, the stability of his chest and
+shoulders--but sometimes his passion startled her, and she had queer,
+shy withdrawals. Yet these were never more than temporary and
+superficial; her own passions were slowly awaking, and moreover had
+their roots in a sweet, sane instinct of vocation and common sense.
+
+On the whole, though, she was happiest in the quieter ways of love--the
+meals together, the fireside talks, the meetings in lonely places, the
+queer, half-laughing secrets, the stolen glances in company. She made a
+great fuss of his bodily needs--she was convinced that he did not get
+properly fed or looked after at home, and was always preparing him
+little snacks and surprises. For her sake Martin swallowed innumerable
+cups of milk and wrapped his chin in choky mufflers.
+
+She had prouder moments too. On her finger glittered a gorgeous band of
+diamonds and sapphires which she had chosen for her engagement ring, and
+it was noticed that Joanna Godden now always drove with her gloves off.
+She had insisted on driving Martin round the Marsh to call on her
+friends--to show him to Mrs. Southland, Mrs. Vine, and Mrs. Prickett, to
+say nothing of their husbands who had always said no man in his senses
+would marry Joanna Godden. Well, not merely a man but a gentleman was
+going to do it--a gentleman who had his clothes made for him at a London
+tailor's instead of buying them ready-made at Lydd or Romney or Rye, who
+had--he confessed it, though he never wore it--a top hat in his
+possession, who ate late dinner and always smelt of good tobacco and
+shaving soap ... such thoughts would bring the old Joanna back, for one
+fierce moment of gloating.
+
+Her reception by North Farthing House had done nothing to spoil her
+triumph. Martin's father and brother had both accepted her--the latter
+willingly, since he believed that she would be a sane and stabilizing
+influence in Martin's life, hitherto over-restless and mood-ridden. He
+looked upon his brother as a thwarted romantic, whose sophistication had
+debarred him from finding a natural outlet in religion. He saw in his
+love for Joanna the chance of a return to nature and romance, since he
+loved a thing at once simple and adventurous, homely and splendid--which
+was how religion appeared to Father Lawrence. He had liked Joanna very
+much on their meeting, and she liked him too, though as she told him
+frankly she "didn't hold with Jesoots."
+
+As for Sir Harry, he too liked Joanna, and was too well-bred and fond of
+women to show himself ungracious about that which he could not prevent.
+
+"I've surrendered, Martin. I can't help myself. You'll bring down my
+grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, but I am all beautiful resignation.
+Indeed I think I shall offer myself as best man, and flirt dutifully
+with Ellen Godden, who I suppose will be chief bridesmaid. Your brother
+shall himself perform the ceremony. What could your family do more?"
+
+"What indeed?" laughed Martin. He felt warmhearted towards all men
+now--he could forgive both his father for having had too much experience
+and his brother for having had too little.
+
+
+
+
+§14
+
+The actual date of the wedding was not fixed till two months had run.
+Though essentially adult and practical in all matters of business and
+daily life, Joanna was still emotionally adolescent, and her betrothed
+state satisfied her as it would never have done if her feelings had been
+as old as her years. Also this deferring of love had helped other things
+to get a hold on her--Martin was astonished to find her swayed by such
+considerations as sowing and shearing and marketing--"I can't fix up
+anything till I've got my spring sowings done"--"that ud be in the
+middle of the shearing"--"I'd sooner wait till I'm through the autumn
+markets."
+
+He discovered that she thought "next fall" the best time for the
+wedding--"I'll have got everything clear by then, and I'll know how the
+new ploughs have borne." He fought her and beat her back into
+June--"after the hay." He was rather angry with her for thinking about
+these things, they expressed a side of her which he would have liked to
+ignore. He did not care for a "managing" woman, and he could still see,
+in spite of her new moments of surrender, that Joanna eternally would
+"manage." But in spite of this his love for her grew daily, as he
+discovered daily her warmth and breadth and tenderness, her growing
+capacity for passion. Once or twice he told her to let the sowings and
+the shearings be damned, and come and get married to him quietly without
+any fuss at the registrar's. But Joanna was shocked at the idea of
+getting married anywhere but in church--she could not believe a marriage
+legal which the Lion and the Unicorn had not blessed. Also he discovered
+that she rejoiced in fuss, and thought June almost too early for the
+preparations she wanted to make.
+
+"I'm going to show 'em what a wedding's like," she remarked
+ominously--"I'm going to do everything in the real, proper, slap-up
+style. I'm going to have a white dress and a veil and carriages and
+bridesmaids and favours--" this was the old Joanna--"you don't mind, do
+you, Martin?" this was the new.
+
+Of course he could not say he minded. She was like an eager child,
+anxious for notice and display. He would endure the wedding for her
+sake. He also would endure for her sake to live at Ansdore; after a few
+weeks he saw that nothing else could happen. It would be ridiculous for
+Joanna to uproot herself from her prosperous establishment and settle in
+some new place just because in spirit he shrank from becoming "Mr.
+Joanna Godden." She had said that "Martin and Joanna Trevor" should be
+painted on the scrolled name-boards of her waggons, but he knew that on
+the farm and in the market-place they would not be on an equal footing,
+whatever they were in the home. As farmer and manager she would outshine
+him, whose tastes and interests and experiences were so different. Never
+mind--he would have more time to give to the beloved pursuit of
+exploring the secret, shy marsh country--he would do all Joanna's
+business afield, in the far market towns of New Romney and Dymchurch,
+and the farms away in Kent or under the Coast at Ruckinge and Warhorne.
+
+Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time at Ansdore. He liked the
+life of the place with its mixture of extravagance and simplicity,
+democracy and tyranny. Fortunately Ellen approved of him--indeed he
+sometimes found her patronage excessive. He thought her spoilt and
+affected, and might almost have come to dislike her if she had not been
+such a pretty, subtle little thing, and if she had not interested and
+amused him by her sharp contrasts with her sister. He was now also
+amused by the conflicts between the two, which at first had shocked him.
+He liked to see Joanna's skin go pink as she faced Ellen in a torment of
+loving anger and rattled the fierce words off her tongue, while Ellen
+tripped and skipped and evaded and generally triumphed by virtue of a
+certain fundamental coolness. "It will be interesting to watch that girl
+growing up," he thought.
+
+
+
+
+§15
+
+As the year slid through the fogs into the spring, he persuaded Joanna
+to come with him on his rambles on the Marsh. He was astonished to find
+how little she knew of her own country, of that dim flat land which was
+once under the sea. She knew it only as the hunting ground of her
+importance. It was at Yokes Court that she bought her roots, and from
+Becket's House her looker had come; Lydd and Rye and Romney were only
+market-towns--you did best in cattle at Rye, but the other two were
+proper for sheep; Old Honeychild was just a farm where she had bought
+some good spades and dibbles at an auction; at Misleham they had once
+had foot-and-mouth disease--she had gone to Picknye Bush for the
+character of Milly Pump, her chicken-girl....
+
+He told her of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as
+their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads,
+with their mouths full of slang--cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing"
+and "hornies" and "Oliver's glim."
+
+"Well, if they talked worse there then than they talk now, they must
+have talked very bad indeed," was all Joanna found to say.
+
+He told her of the old monks of Canterbury who had covered the Marsh
+with the altars of Thomas à Becket.
+
+"We got shut of 'em all on the fifth of November," said Joanna, "as we
+sing around here on bonfire nights--and 'A halfpenny loaf to feed the
+Pope, a penn'orth of cheese to choke him,' as we say."
+
+All the same he enjoyed the expeditions that they had together in her
+trap, driving out on some windy-skied March day, to fill the hours
+snatched from her activities at Ansdore and his muddlings at North
+Farthing, with all the sea-green sunny breadth of Walland, and still
+more divinely with Walland's secret places--the shelter of tall reeds by
+the Yokes Sewer, or of a thorn thicket making a tent of white blossom
+and spindled shadows in the midst of the open land.
+
+Sometimes they crossed the Rhee Wall on to Romney Marsh, and he showed
+her the great church at Ivychurch, which could have swallowed up in its
+nave the two small farms that make the village. He took her into the
+church at New Romney and showed her the marks of the Great Flood,
+discolouring the pillars for four feet from the ground.
+
+"Doesn't it thrill you?--Doesn't it excite you?" he teased her, as they
+stood together in the nave, the church smelling faintly of hearthstones.
+
+"How long ago did it happen?"
+
+"In the year of our Lord twelve hundred and eighty seven the Kentish
+river changed his mouth, and after swilling out Romney Sands and
+drowning all the marsh from Honeychild to the Wicks, did make himself a
+new mouth in Rye Bay, with which mouth he swallowed the fifty taverns
+and twelve churches of Broomhill, and--"
+
+"Oh, have done talking that silly way--it's like the Bible, only there's
+no good in it."
+
+Her red mouth was close to his in the shadows of the church--he kissed
+it....
+
+"Child!"
+
+"Oh, Martin--"
+
+She was faintly shocked because he had kissed her in church, so he drew
+her to him, tilting back her chin.
+
+"You mustn't" ... but she had lost the power of gainsaying him now, and
+made no effort to release herself. He held her up against the pillar and
+gave her mouth another idolatrous kiss before he let her go.
+
+"If it happened all that while back, they might at least have got the
+marks off by this time," she said, tucking away her loosened hair.
+
+Martin laughed aloud--her little reactions of common sense after their
+passionate moments never failed to amuse and delight him.
+
+"You'd have had it off with your broom, and that's all you think about
+it. But look here, child--what if it happened again?"
+
+"It can't."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"It can't--I know it."
+
+"But if it happened then it could happen again."
+
+"There ain't been a flood on the Marsh in my day, nor in my poor
+father's day, neither. Sometimes in February the White Kemp brims a bit,
+but I've never known the roads covered. You're full of old tales. And
+now let's go out, for laughing and love-making ain't the way to behave
+in church."
+
+"The best way to behave in church is to get married."
+
+She blushed faintly and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+They went out, and had dinner at the New Inn, which held the memory of
+their first meal together, in that huge, sag-roofed dining-room, then so
+crowded, now empty except for themselves. Joanna was still given to
+holding forth on such subjects as harness and spades, and to-day she
+gave Martin nearly as much practical advice as on that first occasion.
+
+"Now, don't you waste your money on a driller--we don't give our sheep
+turnips on the Marsh. It's an Inland notion. The grass here is worth a
+field of roots. You stick to grazing and you'll keep your money in your
+pocket and never send coarse mutton to the butcher."
+
+He did not resent her advice, for he was learning humility. Her superior
+knowledge and experience of all practical matters was beginning to lose
+its sting. She was in his eyes so adorable a creature that he could
+forgive her for being dominant. The differences in their natures were
+no longer incompatibilities, but gifts which they brought each other--he
+brought her gifts of knowledge and imagination and emotion, and she
+brought him gifts of stability and simplicity and a certain saving
+commonness. And all these gifts were fused in the glow of personality,
+in a kind bodily warmth, in a romantic familiarity which sometimes found
+its expression in shyness and teasing.
+
+They loved each other.
+
+
+
+
+§16
+
+Martin had always wanted to go out on the cape at Dunge Ness, that
+tongue of desolate land which rakes out from Dunge Marsh into the sea,
+slowly moving every year twenty feet towards France. Joanna had a
+profound contempt of Dunge Ness--"not enough grazing on it for one
+sheep"--but Martin's curiosity mastered her indifference and she
+promised to drive him out there some day. She had been once before with
+her father, on some forgotten errand to the Hope and Anchor inn.
+
+It was an afternoon in May when they set out, bowling through Pedlinge
+in the dog cart behind Smiler's jogging heels. Joanna wore her bottle
+green driving coat, with a small, close-fitting hat, since Martin, to
+her surprise and disappointment, disliked her best hat with the
+feathers. He sat by her, unconsciously huddling to her side, with his
+hand thrust under her arm and occasionally pressing it--she had told him
+that she could suffer that much of a caress without detriment to her
+driving.
+
+It was a bright, scented day, heavily coloured with green and gold and
+white; for the new grass was up in the pastures, releasing the farmer
+from many anxious cares, and the buttercups were thick both on the
+grazing lands and on the innings where the young hay stood, still green;
+the watercourses were marked with the thick dumpings of the may, walls
+of green-teased white streaking here and there across the pastures,
+while under the boughs the thick green water lay scummed with white
+ranunculus, and edged with a gaudy splashing of yellow irises, torches
+among the never silent reeds. Above it all the sky was misty and fall
+of shadows, a low soft cloud, occasionally pierced with sunlight.
+
+"It'll rain before night," said Joanna.
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"The way of the wind, and those clouds moving low--and the way you see
+Rye Hill all clear with the houses on it--and the way the sheep are
+grazing with their heads to leeward."
+
+"Do you think they know?"
+
+"Of course they know. You'd be surprised at the things beasts know,
+Martin."
+
+"Well, it won't matter if it does rain--we'll be home before night. I'm
+glad we're going down on the Ness--I'm sure it's wonderful."
+
+"It's a tedious hole."
+
+"That's what you think."
+
+"I know--I've been there."
+
+"Then it's very sweet of you to come again with me."
+
+"It'll be different with you."
+
+She was driving him by way of Broomhill, for that was another place
+which had fired his imagination, though to her it too was a tedious
+hole. Martin could not forget the Broomhill of old days--the glamour of
+taverns and churches and streets lay over the few desolate houses and
+ugly little new church which huddled under the battered sea-wall. Great
+reedy pools still remained from the thirteenth century floods, brackish
+on the flat seashore, where the staked keddle nets showed that the
+mackerel were beginning to come into Rye Bay.
+
+"Nothing but fisher-folk around here," said Joanna
+contemptuously--"you'll see 'em all in the summer, men, women and
+children, with heaps of mackerel that they pack in boxes for London and
+such places--so much mackerel they get that there's nothing else ate in
+the place for the season, and yet if you want fish-guts for manure they
+make you pay inland prices, and do your own carting."
+
+"I think it's a delicious place," he retorted, teasing her, "I've a mind
+to bring you here for our honeymoon."
+
+"Martin, you'd never I You told me you were taking me to foreign parts,
+and I've told Mrs. Southland and Mrs. Furnese and Maudie Vine and half a
+dozen more all about my going to Paris and seeing the sights and
+hearing French spoken."
+
+"Yes--perhaps it would be better to go abroad; Broomhill is wonderful,
+but you in Paris will be more wonderful than Broomhill--even in the days
+before the flood."
+
+"I want to see the Eiffel Tower--where they make the lemonade--and I
+want to buy myself something really chick in the way of hats."
+
+"Joanna--do you know the hat which suits you best?"
+
+"Which?" she asked eagerly, with some hope for the feathers.
+
+"The straw hat you tie on over your hair when you go out to the chickens
+first thing in the morning."
+
+"That old thing I Why I My! Lor! Martin! That's an old basket that I tie
+under my chin with a neckerchief of poor father's."
+
+"It suits you better than any hat in the Rue St. Honoré--it's brown and
+golden like yourself, and your hair comes creeping and curling from
+under it, and there's a shadow on your face, over your eyes--the shadow
+stops just above your mouth--your mouth is all of your face that I can
+see dearly, and it's your mouth that I love most ..."
+
+He suddenly kissed it, ignoring her business with the reins and the
+chances of the road, pulling her round in her seat and covering her face
+with his, so that his eyelashes stroked her cheek. She drew her hands up
+sharply to her breast, and with the jerk the horse stopped.
+
+For a few moments they stayed so, then he released her and they moved
+on. Neither of them spoke; the tears were in Joanna's eyes and in her
+heart was a devouring tenderness that made it ache. The trap lurched in
+the deep ruts of the road, which now had become a mass of shingle and
+gravel, skirting the beach. Queer sea plants grew in the ruts, the
+little white sea-campions with their fat seed-boxes filled the furrows
+of the road as with a foam--it seemed a pity and a shame to crush them,
+and one could tell by their fresh growth how long it was since wheels
+had passed that way.
+
+At Jury's Gap, a long white-daubed coastguard station marked the end of
+the road. Only a foot-track ran out to the Ness. They left the horse and
+trap at the station and went afoot.
+
+"I told you it was a tedious place," said Joanna. Like a great many busy
+people she did not like walking, which she always looked upon as a waste
+of time. Martin could seldom persuade her to come for a long walk.
+
+It was a long walk up the Ness, and the going was bad, owing to the
+shingle. The sea-campion grew everywhere, and in sunny corners the
+yellow-horned poppy put little spots of colour into a landscape of
+pinkish grey. The sea was the same colour as the land, for the sun had
+sunk away into the low thick heavens, leaving the sea an unrelieved,
+tossed dun waste.
+
+The wind came tearing across Rye Bay with a moan, lifting all the waves
+into little sharp bitter crests.
+
+"We'll get the rain," said Joanna sagely.
+
+"I don't care if we do," said Martin.
+
+"You haven't brought your overcoat."
+
+"Never mind that."
+
+"I do mind."
+
+His robust appearance--his broad back and shoulders, thick vigorous neck
+and swarthy skin--only magnified his pathos in her eyes. It was pitiful
+that this great thing should be so frail.... He could pick her up with
+both hands on her waist, and hold her up before him, the big Joanna--and
+yet she must take care of him.
+
+
+
+
+§17
+
+An hour's walking brought them to the end of the Ness--to a strange
+forsaken country of coastguard stations and lonely taverns and shingle
+tracks. The lighthouse stood only a few feet above the sea, at the end
+of the point, and immediately before it the water dropped to sinister,
+glaucous depths.
+
+"Well, it ain't much to see," said Joanna.
+
+"It's wonderful," said Martin--"it's terrible."
+
+He stood looking out to sea, into the Channel streaked with green and
+grey, as if he would draw France out of the southward fogs. He felt
+half-way to France ... here on the end of this lonely crane, with water
+each side of him and ahead, and behind him the shingle which was the
+uttermost of Kent.
+
+"Joanna--don't you feel it, too?"
+
+"Yes--maybe I do. It's queer and lonesome--I'm glad I've got you,
+Martin."
+
+She suddenly came close to him and put out her arms, hiding her face
+against his heart.
+
+"Child--what is it?"
+
+"I dunno. Maybe it's this place, but I feel scared. Oh, Martin, you'll
+never leave me? You'll always be good to me?..."
+
+"I ... oh, my own precious thing."
+
+He held her close to him and they both trembled--she with her first fear
+of those undefinable forces and associations which go to make the
+mystery of place, he with the passion of his faithfulness, of his vows
+of devotion, too fierce and sacrificial even to express.
+
+"Let's go and have tea," she said, suddenly disengaging herself, "I'll
+get the creeps if we stop out here on the beach much longer--reckon I've
+got 'em now, and I never was the one to be silly like that. I told you
+it was a tedious hole."
+
+They went to the Britannia, on the eastern side of the bill. The inn
+looked surprised to see them, but agreed to put the kettle on. They sat
+together in a little queer, dim room, smelling of tar and fish, and
+bright with the flames of wreckwood. Joanna had soon lost her fears--she
+talked animatedly, telling him of the progress of her spring wheat; of
+the dead owl that had fallen out of the beams of Brenzett church during
+morning prayers last Sunday, of the shocking way they had managed their
+lambing at Beggar's Bush, of King Edward's Coronation that was coming
+off in June.
+
+"I know of something else that's coming off in June," said Martin.
+
+"Our wedding?"
+
+"Surelye."
+
+"I'm going into Folkestone next week, to that shop where I bought my
+party gown."
+
+"And I'm going to Mr. Pratt to tell him to put up our banns, or we
+shan't have time to be cried three times before the first of June."
+
+"The first!--I told you the twenty-fourth."
+
+"But I'm not going to wait till the twenty-fourth. You promised me
+June."
+
+"But I shan't have got in my hay, and the shearers are coming on the
+fourteenth--you have to book weeks ahead, and that was the only date
+Harmer had free."
+
+"Joanna."
+
+Her name was a summons, almost stern, and she looked up. She was still
+sitting at the table, stirring the last of her tea. He sat under the
+window on an old sea-chest, and had just lit his pipe.
+
+"Come here, Joanna."
+
+She came obediently, and sat beside him, and he put his arm round her.
+The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day.
+
+"I've been thinking a lot about this, and I know now--there is only one
+thing between us, and that's Ansdore."
+
+"How d'you mean? It ain't between us."
+
+"It is--again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of
+our love. What other woman on God's earth would put off her marriage to
+fit in with the sheep-shearing?"
+
+"I ain't putting it off. We haven't fixed the day yet, and I'm just
+telling you to fix a day that's suitable and convenient."
+
+"You know I always meant to marry you the first week in June."
+
+"And you know as I've told you, that I can't take the time off then."
+
+"The time off! You're not a servant. You can leave Ansdore any day you
+choose."
+
+"Not when the shearing's on. You don't understand, Martin--I can't have
+all the shearers up and nobody to look after 'em."
+
+"What about your looker?--or Broadhurst? You don't trust anybody but
+yourself."
+
+"You're just about right--I don't."
+
+"Don't you trust me?"
+
+"Not to shear sheep."
+
+Martin laughed ruefully.
+
+"You're very sensible, Joanna--unshakably so. But I'm not asking you to
+trust me with the sheep, but to trust me with yourself. Don't
+misunderstand me, dear. I'm not asking you to marry me at the beginning
+of the month just because I haven't the patience to wait till the end.
+It isn't that, I swear it. But don't you see that if you fix our
+marriage to fit in with the farm-work, it'll simply be beginning things
+in the wrong way? As we begin we shall have to go on, and we can't go on
+settling and ordering our life according to Ansdore's requirements--it's
+a wrong principle. Think, darling," and he drew her close against his
+heart, "we shall want to see our children--and will you refuse, just
+because that would mean that you would have to lie up and keep quiet and
+not go about doing all your own business?"
+
+Joanna shivered.
+
+"Oh, Martin, don't talk of such things."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+She had given him some frank and graphic details about the accouchement
+of her favourite cow, and he did not understand that the subject became
+different when it was human and personal.
+
+"Because I--because we ain't married yet."
+
+"Joanna, you little prude!"
+
+She saw that he was displeased and drew closer to him, slipping her arms
+round his neck, so that he could feel the roughness of her work-worn
+hands against it.
+
+"I'm not shocked--only it's so wonderful--I can't abear talking of
+it ... Martin, if we had one ... I should just about die of joy ..."
+
+He gripped her to him silently, unable to speak. Somehow it seemed as if
+he had just seen deeper into Joanna than during all the rest of his
+courtship. He moved his lips over her bright straying hair--her face was
+hidden in his sleeve.
+
+"Then we'll stop at Mr. Pratt's on our way home and ask him to put up
+the banns at once?"
+
+"Oh no--" lifting herself sharply--"I didn't mean that."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, it won't make any difference to our marriage, being married three
+weeks later--but it'll make an unaccountable difference to my wool
+prices if the shearers don't do their job proper--and then there's the
+hay."
+
+"On the contrary, child--it will make a difference to our marriage. We
+shall have started with Ansdore between us."
+
+"What nonsense."
+
+"Well, I can't argue with you--you must do as you like. My wife is a
+very strong-willed person, who will keep her husband in proper order.
+But he loves her enough to bear it."
+
+He kissed her gently, and they both stood up. At the same time there was
+a sharp scud of rain against the window.
+
+
+
+
+§18
+
+The journey home was quieter and dimmer than the journey out. Their
+voices and footsteps were muffled in the roar of the wind, which had
+risen from sorrow to anger. The rain beat in their faces as they walked
+arm in arm over the shingle. They could not hurry, for at every step
+their feet sank.
+
+"I said it was a tedious hole," reiterated Joanna, "and now perhaps
+you'll believe me--the folk here walk with boards on their feet, what
+they call backstays. Our shoes will be just about ruined."
+
+She was not quite happy, for she felt that Martin was displeased with
+her, though he made no reproaches. He did not like her to arrange their
+wedding day to fit in with the shearing. But what else could she do? If
+she was away when the shearers came, there'd be no end to their goings
+on with the girls, and besides, who'd see that the work was done proper
+and the tegs not scared out of their lives?
+
+It was only six o'clock, but a premature darkness was falling as the
+clouds dropped over Dunge Marsh, and the rain hung like a curtain over
+Rye Bay, blotting out all distances, showing them nothing but the
+crumbling, uncertain track. In half an hour they were both wet through
+to their shoulders, for the rain came down with all the drench of May.
+Joanna could see that Martin was beginning to be worried about
+himself--he was worried about her too, but he was more preoccupied with
+his own health than other men she knew, the only way in which he
+occasionally betrayed the weak foundations of his stalwart looks.
+
+"The worst of it is, we'll have to sit for an hour in the dog-cart after
+we get to Jury's Gap. You'll catch your death of cold, Joanna."
+
+"Not I! I often say I'm like our Romney sheep--I can stand all winds and
+waters. But you're not used to it like I am--you should ought to have
+brought your overcoat."
+
+"How was I to know it would turn out like this?"
+
+"I told you it would rain."
+
+"But not till after we'd started."
+
+Joanna said nothing. She accepted Martin's rather unreasonable
+displeasure without protest, for she felt guilty about other things. Was
+he right, after all, when he said that she was putting Ansdore between
+them?... She did not feel that she was, any more than she was putting
+Ansdore between herself and Ellen. But she hated him to have the
+thought. Should she give in and tell him he could call on Mr. Pratt on
+their way home?... No, there was plenty of time to make up her mind
+about that. To-day was only Tuesday, and any day up till Saturday would
+do for putting in notice of banns ... she must think things over before
+committing herself ... it wasn't only the shearers--there was the
+hay....
+
+Thus they came, walking apart in their own thoughts, to Jury's Gap. In a
+few moments the horse was put to, and they were lurching in the ruts of
+the road to Broomhill. The air was full of the sound of hissing rain, as
+it fell on the shingle and in the sea and on the great brackish pools of
+the old flood. Round the pools were thick beds of reeds, shivering and
+moaning, while along the dykes the willows tossed their branches and the
+thorn-trees rattled.
+
+"It'll freshen up the grass," said Joanna, trying to cheer Martin.
+
+"I was a fool not to bring my overcoat," he grumbled.
+
+Then suddenly her heart went out to him more than ever, because he was
+fractious and fretting about himself. She took one hand off the reins
+and pressed his as it lay warm between her arm and her side.
+
+"Reckon you're my own silly child," she said in a low voice.
+
+"I'm sorry, Jo," he replied humbly, "I know I'm being a beast and
+worrying you. But I'm worried about you too--you're as wet as I am."
+
+"No, I'm not. I've got my coat. I'm not at all worried about myself--nor
+about you, neither." She could not conceive of a man taking cold through
+a wetting.
+
+She had planned for him to come back to supper with her at Ansdore, but
+with that fussiness which seemed so strange and pathetic, he insisted on
+going straight back to North Farthing to change his clothes.
+
+"You get into a hot bath with some mustard," he said to her, meaning
+what he would do himself.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Joanna, at such an idea.
+
+
+
+
+§19
+
+She did not see Martin for the next two days. He had promised to go up
+to London for the first night of a friend's play, and was staying till
+Friday morning. She missed him very much--he used to come to Ansdore
+every day, sometimes more than once, and they always had at least one
+meal together. She brooded about him too, for she could not rid herself
+of the thought that she had failed him in her refusal to be married
+before the shearing. He was disappointed--he could not understand....
+
+She looked round on Ansdore almost distrustfully ... was it true that
+she loved it too much? The farm looked very lonely and bare, with the
+mist hanging in the doorways, and the rain hissing into the midden,
+while the bush--as the trees were called which sheltered nearly every
+marsh dwelling--sighed and tossed above the barn-roofs. She suddenly
+realized that she did not love it as much as she used.
+
+The knowledge came like a slap. She suddenly knew that for the last four
+months her love for Martin had been eating into her love for Ansdore....
+It was like the sun shining on a fire and putting it out--now that the
+sun had gone she saw that her hearth was cold. It was for Martin she
+had sown her spring wheat, for Martin she had broken up twelve acres of
+pasture by the Kent Ditch, for Martin she would shear her sheep and cut
+her hay....
+
+Then since it was all for Martin, what an owl she was to sacrifice him
+to it, to put it before his wants and needs. He wanted her, he needed
+her, and she was offering him bales of wool and cocks of hay. Of course
+in this matter she was right and he was wrong--it would be much better
+to wait just a week or two till after the shearing and the
+hay-making--but for the first time Joanna saw that even right could
+surrender. Even though she was right, she could give way to him, bend
+her will to his. After all, nothing really mattered except his love, his
+good favour--better that she should muddle her shearing and her crops
+than the first significant weeks of their married life. He should put
+his dear foot upon her neck--for the last of her pride was gone in that
+discovery of the dripping day, the discovery that her plans, her
+ambitions, her life, herself, had their worth only in the knowledge that
+they belonged to him.
+
+It was on Thursday afternoon that Joanna finally beat Ansdore out of her
+love. She cried a little, for she wished that it had happened earlier,
+before Martin went away. Still, it was his going that had shown her at
+last clearly where she belonged. She thought of writing and telling him
+of her surrender, but like most of her kind she shrank from writing
+letters except when direly necessary; and she would see Martin
+to-morrow--he had promised to come to Ansdore straight from the station.
+
+So instead of writing her letter, she went and washed the tears off her
+face over the sink and sat down to a cup of tea and a piece of bread and
+dripping with Mrs. Tolhurst and Milly Pump. When Ellen was at home
+Joanna was lofty and exclusive, and had her meals in the
+dining-room--she did not think it right that her little sister, with all
+her new accomplishments and elegancies, should lead the common, kitchen
+life--also, of course, when Martin came they sat down in state, with
+pink wine-glasses beside their tumblers. But when she was alone she much
+preferred a friendly meal with Milly and Mrs. Tolhurst--she even joined
+them in pouring her tea into her saucer, and sat with it cooling on her
+spread fingers, her elbow on the cloth. She unbent from mistress to
+fellow-worker, and they talked the scandal of a dozen farms.
+
+"It's as I said, at Yokes Court," said Mrs. Tolhurst--"there's no good
+young Mus' Southland saying as the girl's mother sent for her--_I_ know
+better."
+
+"I saw Mrs. Lambarde after church on Sunday," said Joanna, "and she
+wasn't expecting Elsie then."
+
+"Elsie went before her box did," said Milly Pump, "Bill Piper fetched it
+along after her, as he told me himself."
+
+"I'm sure it's Tom Southland," said Joanna.
+
+"Surelye," said Mrs. Tolhurst, "and all the more as he's been saying at
+the Woolpack that the Old Squire's been hanging around after the
+girl--which reminds me, Miss Joanna, as I hear Mus' Martin's back this
+afternoon."
+
+"This afternoon! He said to-morrow morning."
+
+"Well, he's come this afternoon. Broadhurst met him driving from Rye
+station."
+
+"Then he's sure to be over to-night. You get the wine-glasses out, Mrs.
+Tolhurst, and spread in the dining-room."
+
+She rose up from table, once more apart from her servants. Her brain was
+humming with surprised joy--Martin was back, she would soon see him, he
+would be sure to come to her. And then she would tell him of her
+surrender, and the cloud would be gone from their love.
+
+With beating heart she ran upstairs to change her dress and tidy
+herself, for he might come at any moment. There was a red-brown velvet
+dress he particularly liked--she pulled it out of her drawer and
+smoothed its folds. Her drawers were crammed and heavy with the garments
+she was to wear as Martin's wife; there were silk blouses bought at
+smart shops in Folkestone and Marlingate; there was a pair of buckled
+shoes--size eight; there were piles of neat longcloth and calico
+underclothing, demure nightdresses buttoning to the chin, stiff
+petticoats, and what she called "petticoat bodies," fastening down the
+front with linen buttons, and with tiny, shy frills of embroidery at the
+neck and armholes.
+
+She put on the brown dress, and piled up her hair against the big comb.
+She looked at herself in the glass by the light of the candles she had
+put to light up the rainy evening. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
+bright, and her hair and her dress were the same soft, burning
+colour.... When would Martin come?
+
+Then suddenly she thought of something even better than his coming. She
+thought of herself going over to North Farthing House and telling him
+that she had changed her mind and that she was his just as soon as ever
+he wanted her.... Her breath came fast at the inspiration--it would be
+better than waiting for him here; it gave to her surrender the
+spectacular touch which hitherto it had lacked and her nature demanded.
+The rain was coming down the wind almost as fiercely and as fast as it
+had come on Tuesday night, but Joanna the marsh-born had never cared for
+weather. She merely laced on her heavy boots and bundled into her
+father's overcoat. Then she put out a hand for an old hat, and suddenly
+she remembered the hat Martin had said he liked her in above all others.
+It was an old rush basket, soft and shapeless with age, and she tied it
+over her head with her father's red and white spotted handkerchief.
+
+She was now ready, and all she had to do was to run down and tell Mrs.
+Tolhurst that if Mr. Martin called while she was out he was to be asked
+to wait. She was not really afraid of missing him, for there were few
+short cuts on the Marsh, where the long way round of the road was often
+the only way--but she hoped she would reach North Farthing before he
+left it; she did not want anything to be taken from her surrender, it
+must be absolute and complete ... the fires of her own sacrifice were
+kindled and were burning her heart.
+
+
+
+
+§20
+
+She did not meet Martin on the Brodnyx Road; only the wind was with her,
+and the rain. She turned aside to North Farthing between the Woolpack
+and the village, and still she did not meet him--and now she really
+thought that she would arrive in time. On either side of the track she
+followed, Martin's sheep were grazing--that was his land, those were his
+dykes and willows, ahead of her were the lighted windows of his house.
+She wondered what he would say when he saw her. Would he be much
+surprised? She had come to North Farthing once or twice before, but not
+very often. If he was not surprised to see her, he would be surprised
+when she told him why she had come. She pictured how he would receive
+her news--with his arms round her, with his kisses on her mouth.
+
+Her arrival was a check--the formalities of her betrothed's house never
+failed to upset her. To begin with she had to face that impertinent
+upstart of a Nell Raddish, all tricked out in a black dress and white
+apron and cap and collar and cuffs, and she only a cowman's daughter
+with a face like a plum, and no sense or notions at all till she came to
+Farthing, since when, as everyone knew, her skirts had grown shorter and
+her nose whiter and her hair frizzier and her ways more knowing.
+
+"Good evening, Nell," said Joanna, covering her embarrassment with
+patronage, "is Mr. Martin at home?"
+
+"Yes, he is," said Nell, "he came back this afternoon."
+
+"I know that, of course. I want to see him, please."
+
+"I'm not sure if he's gone up to bed. Come in, and I'll go and look."
+
+"Up to bed!"
+
+"Yes, he's feeling poorly. That's why he came home."
+
+"Poorly, what's the matter?" Joanna pushed past Nell into the house.
+
+"I dunno, a cold or cough. He told me to bring him some tea and put a
+hot brick in his bed. Sir Harry ain't in yet."
+
+Joanna marched up the hall to the door of Martin's study. She stopped
+and listened for a moment, but could hear nothing, except the beating of
+her own heart. Then, without knocking, she went in. The room was ruddy
+and dim with firelight, and at first she thought it was empty, but the
+next minute she saw Martin huddled in an armchair, a tea-tray on a low
+stool beside him.
+
+"Martin!"
+
+He started up out of a kind of sleep, and blinked at her.
+
+"Jo! Is that you?"
+
+"Yes. I've come over to tell you I'll marry you whenever you want.
+Martin dear, what's the matter? Are you ill?"
+
+"It's nothing much--I've caught cold, and thought I'd better come home.
+Colds always make me feel wretched."
+
+She could see that he was anxious about himself, and in her pity she
+forgave him for having ignored her surrender. She knelt down beside him
+and took both his restless hands.
+
+"Have you had your tea, dear?"
+
+"No. I asked her to bring it, and then I sort of fell asleep ..."
+
+"I'll give it to you."
+
+She poured out his tea, giving him a hot black cup, with plenty of
+sugar, as they liked it on the Marsh. He drank it eagerly, and felt
+better.
+
+"Jo, how good of you to come over and see me. Who told you I was back?"
+
+"I heard it from Milly Pump, and she heard it from Broadhurst."
+
+"I meant to send a message round to you. I hope I'll be all right
+to-morrow."
+
+"Reckon you will, dear.... Martin, you heard what I said--about marrying
+you when you want?"
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"Of course I mean it--I came over a-purpose to tell you. While you was
+away I did some thinking, and I found that Ansdore doesn't matter to me
+what it used. It's only you that matters now."
+
+She was crouching at his feet, and he stooped over her, taking her in
+his arms, drawing her back between his knees.
+
+"You noble, beloved thing ..."
+
+The burning touch of his lips and face reminded her that he was ill, so
+the consecration of her sacrifice lost a little of its joy.
+
+"You're feverish--you should ought to go to bed."
+
+"I'm going--when I've had another cup of tea. Will you give me another,
+child?"
+
+"I've a mind to go home through Brodnyx and ask Dr. Taylor to call
+round."
+
+"Oh, I don't think I'm bad enough for a doctor--I catch cold easily,
+and I was wet through the other night."
+
+"Was it that!" Her voice shook with consternation.
+
+"I expect so--but don't fret, darling Jo. It's nothing. I'll be quite
+right to-morrow--I feel better already."
+
+"I think you should ought to see a doctor, though. I'll call in on my
+way back. I'll can in on Mr. Pratt, too, and tell him to start crying us
+next Sunday."
+
+"That's my business--I'll go to-morrow. But are you sure, darling, you
+can make such a sacrifice? I'm afraid I've been a selfish beast, and I'm
+spoiling your plans."
+
+"Oh no, you ain't. I feel now as if I wanted to get married more'n
+anything wotsumever. The shearing ull do proper--the men know their
+job--and Broadhurst ull see to the hay. They dursn't muck things up,
+knowing as I'll be home to see to it by July."
+
+"To say nothing of me," said Martin, pinching her ear.
+
+"To say nothing of you."
+
+"Joanna, you've got on the old hat ..."
+
+"I put it on special."
+
+"Bless you."
+
+He pulled her down to the arm of his chair, and for a moment they
+huddled together, cheek on cheek. The opening of the door made Joanna
+spring virtuously upright. It was Sir Harry.
+
+"Hullo, Joanna!--you here. Hullo, Martin! The lovely Raddish says you've
+come home middling queer. I hope that doesn't mean anything serious."
+
+"I've got some sort of a chill, and I feel a beast. So I thought I'd
+better come home."
+
+"I've given him his tea," said Joanna, "and now he should ought to go to
+bed."
+
+Sir Harry looked at her. She struck him as an odd figure, in her velvet
+gown and basket hat, thick boots and man's overcoat. The more he saw of
+her, the less could he think what to make of her as a daughter-in-law;
+but to-night he was thankful for her capable managing--mentally and
+physically he was always clumsy with Martin in illness. He found it hard
+to adapt himself to the occasional weakness of this being who dominated
+him in other ways.
+
+"Do you think he's feverish?"
+
+Joanna felt Martin's hands again.
+
+"I guess he is. Maybe he wants a dose--or a cup of herb tea does good,
+they say. But I'll ask Doctor to come around. Martin, I'm going now this
+drackly minute, and I'll call in at Dr. Taylor's and at Mr. Pratt's."
+
+"Wait till to-morrow, and I'll see Pratt," said Martin, unable to rid
+himself of the idea that a bride should find such an errand
+embarrassing.
+
+"I'd sooner go myself to-night. Anyways you mustn't go traipsing around,
+even if you feel better to-morrow. I'll settle everything, so don't you
+fret."
+
+She took his face between her hands, and kissed him as if he were a
+child.
+
+"Good night, my duck. You get off to bed and keep warm."
+
+
+
+
+§21
+
+She worked off her fears in action. Having given notice of the banns to
+Mr. Pratt, sent off Dr. Taylor to North Farthing, put up a special
+petition for Martin in her evening prayers, she went to bed and slept
+soundly. She was not an anxious soul, and a man's illness never struck
+her as particularly alarming. Men were hard creatures--whose weaknesses
+were of mind and character rather than of body--and though Martin was
+softer than some, she could not quite discount his broad back and
+shoulders, his strong, swinging arms.
+
+She drove over to North Farthing soon after breakfast, expecting to find
+him, in spite of her injunctions, about and waiting for her.
+
+"The day's warm and maybe he won't hurt if he drives on with me to
+Honeychild"--the thought of him there beside her was so strong that she
+could almost feel his hand lying pressed between her arm and her heart.
+
+But when she came to the house she found only Sir Harry, prowling in the
+hall.
+
+"I'm glad you've come, Joanna. I'm anxious about Martin."
+
+"What's the matter? What did the doctor say?"
+
+"He said there's congestion of the lung or something. Martin took a fit
+of the shivers after you'd gone, and of course it made him worse when
+the doctor said the magic word 'lung.' He's always been hipped about
+himself, you know."
+
+"I'd better go and see him."
+
+She hitched the reins, and climbed down out of the trap--stumbling
+awkwardly as she alighted, for she had begun to tremble.
+
+"You don't think he's very bad, do you?"
+
+"Can't say. I wish Taylor ud come. He said he'd be here again this
+morning."
+
+His voice was sharp and complaining, for anything painful always made
+him exasperated. Martin lying ill in bed, Martin shivering and in pain
+and in a funk was so unlike the rather superior being whom he liked to
+pretend bullied him, that he felt upset and rather shocked. He gave a
+sigh of relief as Joanna ran upstairs--he told himself that she was a
+good practical sort of woman, and handsome when she was properly
+dressed.
+
+She had never been upstairs in North Farthing House before, but she
+found Martin's room after only one false entry--which surprised the
+guilty Raddish sitting at Sir Harry's dressing-table and smarming his
+hair-cream on her ignoble head. The blinds in Martin's room were down,
+and he was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, with his head turned away
+from her.
+
+"That you, father?--has Taylor come?"
+
+"No, it's me, dearie. I've come to see what I can do for you."
+
+The sight of him huddled there in the pillows, restless, comfortless,
+neglected, wrung her heart. Hitherto her love for Martin had been
+singularly devoid of intimacy. They had kissed each other, they had
+eaten dinner and tea and supper together, they had explored the Three
+Marshes in each other's company, but she had scarcely ever been to his
+house, never seen him asleep, and in normal circumstances would have
+perished rather than gone into his bedroom. To-day when she saw him
+there, lying on his wide, tumbled bed, among his littered
+belongings--his clothes strewn untidily on the floor, his books on their
+shelves, his pictures that struck her rigidity as indecent, his
+photographs of people who had touched his life, some perhaps closely,
+but were unknown to her, she had a queer sense of the revelation of
+poor, pathetic secrets. This, then, was Martin when he was away from
+her--untidy, sensual, forlorn, as all men were ... she bent down and
+kissed him.
+
+"Lovely Jo," ... he yielded childish, burning lips, then drew away--"No,
+you mustn't kiss me--it might be bad for you."
+
+"Gammon, dear. 'Tis only a chill."
+
+She saw that he was in a bate about himself, so after her tender
+beginnings, she became rough. She made him sit up while she shook his
+pillows, then she made him lie flat and tucked the sheet round him
+strenuously; she scolded him for leaving his clothes lying about on the
+floor. She felt as if her love for him was only just beginning--the last
+four months seemed cold and formal compared with these moments of warm,
+personal service. She brought him water for his hands, and scrubbed his
+face with a sponge to his intense discomfort. She was bawling downstairs
+to the unlucky Raddish to put the kettle on for some herb tea--since an
+intimate cross-examination revealed that he had not had the recommended
+dose--when the doctor arrived and came upstairs with Sir Harry.
+
+He undid a good deal of Joanna's good work--he ordered the blind to be
+let down again, and he refused to back her up in her injunctions to the
+patient to lie flat--on the contrary he sent for more pillows, and
+Martin had to confess to feeling easier when he was propped up against
+them with a rug round his shoulders. He then announced that he would
+send for a nurse from Rye.
+
+"Oh, but I can manage," cried Joanna--"let me nurse him. I can come and
+stop here, and nurse him day and night."
+
+"I am sure there is no one whom he'd rather have than you, Miss Godden,"
+said Dr. Taylor gallantly, "but of course you are not professional, and
+pneumonia wants thoroughly experienced nursing--the nurse counts more
+than the doctor in a case like this."
+
+"Pneumonia! Is that what's the matter with him?"
+
+They had left Martin's room, and the three of them were standing in the
+hall.
+
+"I'm afraid that's it--only in the right lung so far."
+
+"But you can stop it--you won't let him get worse. Pneumonia!..."
+
+The word was full of a sinister horror to her, suggesting
+suffocation--agony. And Martin's chest had always been weak--the weak
+part of his strong body. She should have thought of that ... thought of
+it three nights ago when, all through her, he had been soaked with the
+wind-driven rain ... just like a drowned rat he had looked when they
+came to Ansdore, his cap dripping, the water running down his neck....
+No, no, it could not be that--he couldn't have caught pneumonia just
+through getting wet that time--she had got wet a dunnamany times and not
+been tuppence the worse ... his lungs were not weak in that way--it was
+the London fogs that had disagreed with them, the doctor had said so,
+and had sent him away from town, to the Marsh and the rain.... He had
+been in London for the last two days, and the fog had got into his poor
+chest again,--that was all, and now that he was home on the Marsh he
+would soon be well--of course he would soon be well--she was a fool to
+fret. And now she would go upstairs and sit with him till the nurse
+came; it was her last chance of doing those little tender, rough,
+intimate things for him ... till they were married--oh, she wouldn't let
+him fling his clothes about like that when they were married! Meantime
+she would go up, and see that he swallowed every drop of the herb
+tea--that was the stuff to give anyone who was ill on the Marsh, no
+matter what the doctor said ... rheumatism, bronchitis, colic, it cured
+them all.
+
+
+
+
+§22
+
+Martin was very ill. The herb tea did not cure him, nor did the stuff
+the doctor gave him. Nor did the starched crackling nurse, who turned
+Joanna out of the room and exasperatingly spoke of Martin as "my
+patient."
+
+Joanna had lunch with Sir Harry, who in the stress of anxiety was
+turning into something very like a father, and afterwards drove off in
+her trap to Rye, having forgotten all about the Honeychild errand. She
+went to the fruiterers, and ordered grapes and peaches.
+
+"But you won't get them anywhere now, Miss Godden. It's just between
+seasons--in another month ..."
+
+"I must have 'em now," said Joanna truculently, "I don't care what I
+pay."
+
+It ended in the telephone at the Post Office being put into hysteric
+action, and a London shop admonished to send down peaches and grapes to
+Rye station by passenger train that afternoon.
+
+The knowledge of Martin's illness was all over Walland Marsh by the
+evening. All the Marsh knew about the doctor and the nurse and the
+peaches and grapes from London. The next morning they knew that he was
+worse, and that his brother had been sent for--Father Lawrence arrived
+on Saturday night, driving in the carrier's cart from Rye station. On
+Sunday morning people met on their way to church, and shook their heads
+as they told each other the latest news from North Farthing--double
+pneumonia, an abscess on the lung.... Nell Raddish said his face was
+blue ... the Old Squire was quite upset ... the nurse was like a
+heathen, raging at the cook.... Joanna Godden?--she sat all day in Mr.
+Martin's study, waiting to be sent for upstairs, but she'd only seen him
+once....
+
+Then, when tongues at last were quiet in church, just before the second
+lesson, Mr. Pratt read out--
+
+"I publish the banns of marriage between Martin Arbuthnot Trevor,
+bachelor, of this parish, and Joanna Mary Godden, spinster, of the
+parish of Pedlinge. This is for the first time of asking. If any of you
+know any just cause or impediment why these persons should not be joined
+together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it."
+
+
+
+
+§23
+
+Martin died early on Monday morning. Joanna was with him at the last,
+and to the last she did not believe that he would die--because he had
+given up worrying about himself, so she was sure he must feel better.
+Three hours before he died he held both her hands and looked at her
+once more like a man out of his eyes ... "Lovely Jo," he said.
+
+She had lain down in most of her clothes as usual, in the little spare
+room, and between two and three o'clock in the morning the nurse had
+roused her.
+
+"You're wanted ... but I'm not sure if he'll know you."
+
+He didn't. He knew none of them--his mind seemed to have gone away and
+left his body to fight its last fight alone.
+
+"He doesn't feel anything," they said to her, when Martin gasped and
+struggled--"but don't stay if you'd rather not."
+
+"I'd rather stay," said Joanna, "he may know me. Martin ..." she called
+to him. "Martin--I'm here--I'm Jo--" but it was like calling to someone
+who is already far away down a long road.
+
+There was a faint sweet smell of oil in the room--Father Lawrence had
+administered the last rites of Holy Church. His romance and Martin's had
+met at his brother's death-bed ... "Go forth, Christian soul, from this
+world, in the Name of God--in the name of the Angels and Archangels--in
+the name of the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs,
+Confessors, Virgins, and of all the Saints of God; let thine habitation
+to-day be in peace and thine abode in Holy Sion" ... "Martin, it's only
+me, it's only Jo" ... Thus the two voices mingled, and he heard neither.
+
+The cold morning lit up the window square, and the window rattled with
+the breeze of Rye Bay. Joanna felt someone take her hand and lead her
+towards the door. "He's all right now," said Lawrence's voice--"it's
+over ..."
+
+Somebody was giving her a glass of wine--she was sitting in the
+dining-room, staring unmoved at Nell Raddish's guilt revealed in a
+breakfast-table laid over night. Lawrence and Sir Harry were both with
+her, being kind to her, forgetting their own grief in trying to comfort
+her. But Joanna only wanted to go home. Suddenly she felt lonely and
+scared in this fine house, with its thick carpets and mahogany and
+silver--now that Martin was not here to befriend her in it. She did not
+belong--she was an outsider, she wanted to go away.
+
+She asked for the trap, and they tried to persuade her to stay and have
+some breakfast, but she repeated doggedly, "I want to go." Lawrence went
+and fetched the trap round, for the men were not about yet. The morning
+had not really come--only the cold twilight, empty and howling with
+wind, with a great drifting sky of fading stars.
+
+Lawrence went with her to the door, and kissed her--"Good-bye, dear Jo.
+Father or I will come and see you soon." She was surprised at the kiss,
+for he had never kissed her before, though the Squire had taken full
+advantage of their relationship--she had supposed it wasn't right for
+Jesoots.
+
+She did not know what she said to him--probably nothing. There was a
+terrible silence in her heart. She heard Smiler's hoofs upon the
+road--clop, clop, clop. But they did not break the silence within ...
+oh, Martin, Martin, put your hand under my arm, against my heart--maybe
+that'll stop it aching.
+
+Thoughts of Martin crowding upon her, filling her empty heart with
+memories.... Martin sitting on the tombstone outside Brodnyx church on
+Christmas day, Martin holding her in his arms on the threshold of
+Ansdore ... Martin kissing her in New Romney church, bending her back
+against the pillar stained with the old floods ... that drive through
+Broomhill--how he had teased her!--"we'll come here for our honeymoon"
+... Dunge Ness, the moaning sea, the wind, her fear, his arms ... the
+warm kitchen of the Britannia, with the light of the wreckwood fire, the
+teacups on the table, "we shall want to see our children".... No, no,
+you mustn't say that--not _now_, not _now_.... Remember instead how we
+quarrelled, how he tried to get between me and Ansdore, so that I forgot
+Ansdore, and gave it up for his sake; but it's all I've got now. I gave
+up Ansdore to Martin, and now I've lost Martin and got Ansdore. I've got
+three hundred acres and four hundred sheep and three hundred pounds at
+interest in Lewes Old Bank. But I've lost Martin. I've done valiant for
+Ansdore, better'n ever I hoped--poor father ud be proud of me. But my
+heart's broken. I don't like remembering--it hurts--I must forget.
+
+Colour had come into the dawn. The Marsh was slowly turning from a
+strange papery grey to green. The sky changed from white to blue, and
+suddenly became smeared with ruddy clouds. At once the watercourses lit
+up, streaking across the green in fiery slats--the shaking boughs of the
+willows became full of fire, and at the turn of the road the windows of
+Ansdore shone as if it were burning.
+
+There it stood at the road's bend. Its roofs a fiery yellow with the
+swarming sea-lichen, its solid walls flushed faintly pink in the
+sunrise, its windows squares of amber and flame. It was as a house lit
+up and welcoming. It seemed to shout to Joanna as she came to it clop,
+clop along the road.
+
+"Come back--come home to me--I'm glad to see you again. You forgot me
+for five days, but you won't forget me any more--for I'm all that you've
+got now."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PART III_
+
+THE LITTLE SISTER
+
+
+
+
+§1
+
+For many months Ansdore was a piece of wreckage to which a drowning
+woman clung. Joanna's ship had foundered--the high-castled, seaworthy
+ship of her life--and she drifted through the dark seas, clinging only
+to this which had once been so splendid in the midst of her decks, but
+was now mere wreckage, the least thing saved. If she let go she would
+drown. So she trailed after Ansdore, and at last it brought her a kind
+of anchorage, not in her native land, but at least in no unkind country
+of adoption. During the last weeks of Martin's wooing, she had withdrawn
+herself a little from the business of the farm into a kind of
+overlordship, from which she was far more free to detach herself than
+from personal service. Now she went back to work with her hands--she did
+not want free hours, either for his company or for her own dreams; she
+rose early, because she waked early and must rise when she waked, and
+she went round waking the girls, hustling the men, putting her own hand
+to the milking or the cooking, more sharp-tongued than ever, less
+tolerant, but more terribly alive, with a kind of burning, consuming
+life that vexed all those about her.
+
+"She spicks short wud me," said old Stuppeny, "and I've töald her as she
+mun look around fur a new head man. This time I'm going."
+
+"She's a scold," said Broadhurst, "and reckon the young chap säaved
+himself a tedious life by dying."
+
+"Reckon her heart's broke," said Mrs. Tolhurst.
+
+"Her temper's broke," said Milly Pump.
+
+They were unsympathetic, because she expressed her grief in terms of
+fierce activity instead of in the lackadaisical ways of tradition. If
+Joanna had taken to her bed on her return from North Farthing House that
+early time, and had sent for the doctor, and shown all the credited
+symptoms of a broken heart, they would have pitied her and served her
+and borne with her. But, instead, she had come back hustling and
+scolding, and they could not see that she did so because not merely her
+heart but her whole self was broken, and that she was just flying and
+rattling about like a broken thing. So instead of pitying her, they
+grumbled and threatened to leave her service--in fact, Milly Pump
+actually did so, and was succeeded by Mene Tekel Fagge, the daughter of
+Bibliolatious parents at Northlade.
+
+Ansdore throve on its mistress's frenzy. That autumn Joanna had four
+hundred pounds in Lewes Old Bank, the result of her splendid markets and
+of her new ploughs, which had borne eight bushels to the acre. She had
+triumphed gloriously over everyone who had foretold her ruin through
+breaking up pasture; strong-minded farmers could scarcely bear to drive
+along that lap of the Brodnyx road which ran through Joanna's wheat,
+springing slim and strong and heavy-eared as from Lothian soil--if there
+had been another way from Brodnyx to Rye market they would have taken
+it; indeed it was rumoured that on one occasion Vine had gone by train
+from Appledore because he couldn't abear the sight of Joanna Godden's
+ploughs.
+
+This rumour, when it reached her, brought her a faint thrill. It was the
+beginning of a slow process of reidentification of herself with her own
+activities, which till then had been as some furious raging outside the
+house. She began to picture new acts of discomfiting adventure, new
+roads which should be shut to Vine through envy. Ansdore was all she
+had, so she must make it much. When she had given it and herself to
+Martin she had had all the Marsh and all the world to plant with her
+love; but since he was gone and had left her gifts behind him, she had
+just a few acres to plant with wheat--and her harvest should be bread
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+§2
+
+Her black months had changed her--not outwardly very much, but leaving
+wounds in her heart. Martin had woken in her too many needs for her to
+be able to go back quietly into the old life of unfulfilled content. He
+had shown her a vision of herself as complete woman, mother and wife, of
+a Joanna Godden bigger than Ansdore. She could no longer be the Joanna
+Godden whose highest ambition was to be admitted member of the Farmers'
+Club. He had also woken in her certain simple cravings--for a man's
+strong arm round her and his shoulder under her cheek. She had now to
+make the humiliating discovery that the husk of such a need can remain
+after the creating spirit had left it. In the course of the next year
+she had one or two small, rather undignified flirtations with
+neighbouring farmers--there was young Gain over at Botolph's Bridge, and
+Ernest Noakes of Belgar. They did not last long, and she finally
+abandoned both in disgust, but a side of her, always active
+unconsciously, was now disturbingly awake, requiring more concrete
+satisfactions than the veiled, self-deceiving episode of Socknersh.
+
+She was ashamed of this. And it made her withdraw from comforts she
+might have had. She never went to North Farthing House, where she could
+have talked about Martin with the one person who--as it happened--would
+have understood her treacheries. Lawrence came to see her once at the
+end of September, but she was gruff and silent. She recoiled from his
+efforts to break the barriers between life and death; he wanted her to
+give Martin her thoughts and her prayers just as if he were alive. But
+she "didn't hold with praying for the dead"--the Lion and the Unicorn
+would certainly disapprove of such an act; and Martin was now robed in
+white, with a crown on his head and a harp in his hand and a new song in
+his mouth--he had no need of the prayers of Joanna Godden's unfaithful
+lips. As for her thoughts, by the same token she could not think of him
+as he was now; that radiant being in glistening white was beyond the
+soft approaches of imagination--robed and crowned, he could scarcely be
+expected to remember himself in a tweed suit and muddy boots kissing a
+flushed and hot Joanna on the lonely innings by Beggar's Bush. No,
+Martin was gone--gone beyond thought and prayer--gone to sing hymns for
+ever and ever--he who could never abide them on earth--gone to forget
+Joanna in the company of angels--pictured uncomfortably by her as
+females, who would be sure to tell him that she had let Thomas Gain kiss
+her in the barn over at Botolph's Bridge....
+
+She could not think of him as he was now, remote and white, and she
+could bear still less to think of him as he had been once, warm and
+loving, with his caressing hands and untidy hair, with his flushed cheek
+pressed against hers, and the good smell of his clothes--with his living
+mouth closing slowly down on hers ... no, earth was even sharper than
+heaven. All she had of him in which her memory and her love could find
+rest were those few common things they keep to remember their dead by on
+the Marsh--a memorial card, thickly edged with black, which she had had
+printed at her own expense, since apparently such things were no part of
+the mourning of North Farthing House; his photograph in a black frame;
+his grave in Brodnyx churchyard, in the shadow of the black,
+three-hooded tower, and not very far from the altar-tomb on which he had
+sat and waited for her that Christmas morning.
+
+
+
+
+§3
+
+In the fall of the next year, she found that once again she had
+something to engross her outside Ansdore. Ellen was to leave school that
+Christmas. The little sister was now seventeen, and endowed with all the
+grace; and learning that forty pounds a term can buy. During the last
+year she and Joanna had seen comparatively little of each other. She had
+received one or two invitations from her school friends to spend her
+holidays with them--a fine testimonial, thought Joanna, to her manners
+and accomplishments--and her sister had been only too glad that she
+should go, that she should be put out of the shadow of a grief which had
+grown too black even for her sentimental schoolgirl sympathy, so
+gushing and caressing, in the first weeks of her poor Joanna's mourning.
+
+But things were different now--Martin's memory was laid. She told
+herself that it was because she was too busy that she had not gone as
+usual to the Harvest Festival at New Romney, to sing hymns beside the
+pillar marked with the old floods. She was beginning to forget. She
+could think and she could love. She longed to have Ellen back again, to
+love and spoil and chasten. She was glad that she was leaving school,
+and would make no fugitive visit to Ansdore. Immediately her mind leapt
+to preparations--her sister was too big to sleep any more in the little
+bed at the foot of her own, she must have a new bed ... and suddenly
+Joanna thought of a new room, a project which would mop up all her
+overflowing energies for the next month.
+
+It should be a surprise for Ellen. She sent for painters and
+paper-hangers, and chose a wonderful new wall-paper of climbing
+chrysanthemums, rose and blue in colour, and tied with large bows of
+gold ribbon--real, shining gold. The paint she chose was a delicate
+fawn, picked out with rose and blue. She bought yards of flowered
+cretonne for the bed and window curtains, and had the mahogany furniture
+moved in from the spare bedroom. The carpet she bought brand new--it was
+a sea of stormy crimson, with fawn-coloured islands rioted over with
+roses and blue tulips. Joanna had never enjoyed herself so much since
+she lost Martin, as she did now, choosing all the rich colours, and
+splendid solid furniture. The room cost her nearly forty pounds, for she
+had to buy new furniture for the spare bedroom, having given Ellen the
+mahogany.
+
+As a final touch she hung the walls with pictures. There was a large
+photograph of Ventnor church, Isle of Wight, and another of Furness
+Abbey in an Oxford frame; there was "Don't Touch" and "Mother's Boy"
+from "Pears' Christmas Annual," and two texts, properly expounded with
+robins. To crown all, there was her father's certificate of enrolment in
+the Ancient Order of Buffaloes, sacrificed from her own room, and hung
+proudly in the place of honour over Ellen's bed.
+
+
+
+
+§4
+
+Her sister came at Thomas-tide, and Joanna drove in to meet her at Rye.
+Brodnyx had now a station of its own on the new light railway from
+Appledore to Lydd, but Joanna was still faithful to Rye. She loved the
+spanking miles, the hard white lick of road that flew under her wheels
+as she drove through Pedlinge, and then, swinging round the throws,
+flung out on the Straight Mile. She trotted under the Land Gate, feeling
+pleasantly that all the town was watching her from shop and street. Her
+old love of swagger had come back, with perhaps a slight touch of
+defiance.
+
+At the station she had to wake old Stuppeny out of his slumber on the
+back seat, and put him in his proper place at Smiler's head, while she
+went on the platform. The train was just due, and she had not passed
+many remarks with the ticket-collector--a comely young fellow whom she
+liked for his build and the sauciness of his tongue--before it arrived.
+As it steamed in, her heart began to beat anxiously--she bit her lip,
+and actually looked nervous. Ellen was the only person in the world who
+could make her feel shy and ill at ease, and Ellen had only lately
+acquired this power; but there had been a constraint about their
+meetings for the last year. During the last year Ellen had become
+terribly good-mannered and grown up, and somehow that first glimpse of
+the elegant maiden whom her toil and sacrifice had built out of little
+Ellen Godden of Ansdore, never failed to give Joanna a queer sense of
+awkwardness and inferiority.
+
+To-day Ellen was more impressive, more "different" than ever. She had
+been allowed to buy new clothes before leaving Folkestone, and her long
+blue coat and neat little hat made Joanna, for the first time in her
+life, feel tawdry and savage in her fur and feathers. Her sister stepped
+down from her third-class carriage as a queen from her throne, beckoned
+to Rye's one porter, and without a word pointed back into the
+compartment, from which he removed a handbag; whereat she graciously
+gave him twopence and proceeded to greet Joanna.
+
+"Dear Jo," she murmured, filling her embrace with a soft perfume of
+hair, which somehow stifled the "Hello, duckie" on the other's tongue.
+
+Joanna found herself turning to Rye's one porter with inquiries after
+his wife and little boy, doing her best to take the chill off the
+proceedings. She wished that Ellen wouldn't give herself these airs. It
+is true that they always wore off as Ansdore reasserted itself in old
+clothes and squabbles, but Joanna resented her first impressions.
+
+However, her sister thawed a little on the drive home--she was curious
+about the affairs of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, for her time in two worlds
+was at an end, and Ansdore was henceforth to give her its horizons.
+
+"Will there be any parties at Christmas?" she asked.
+
+"Sure to be," said Joanna, "I'll be giving one myself, and Mrs. Vine was
+telling me only yesterday as she's a mind to have some neighbours in for
+whist."
+
+"Won't there be any dancing?"
+
+"Oh, it's that what you're after, is it?" said Joanna proudly.
+
+"Mabel and Pauline are going to heaps of dances this Christmas--and Myra
+West is coming out. Mayn't I come out, Joanna?"
+
+"Come out o' what, dearie?"
+
+"Oh, you know--put up my hair and go to balls."
+
+"You can put your hair up any day you please--I put mine up at fifteen,
+and you're turned seventeen now. As for balls ..."
+
+She broke off, a little at a loss as to how she was to supply this
+deficiency. It would scarcely be possible for her to break into the
+enclosures of Dungemarsh Court--especially since she had allowed herself
+to drop away from North Farthing House ... she had been a fool to do
+that--Sir Harry might have helped her now. But then ... her lips
+tightened.... Anyhow, he would not be at home for Christmas--since
+Martin's death he had sub-let the farm and was a good deal away; people
+said he had "come into" some money, left him by a former mistress, who
+had died more grateful than he deserved.
+
+"I'll do the best I can for you, duck," said Joanna, "you shall have
+your bit of dancing--and anyways I've got a fine, big surprise for you
+when we're home."
+
+"What sort of a surprise?"
+
+"That's telling."
+
+Ellen, in spite of her dignity, was child enough to be intensely excited
+at the idea of a secret, and the rest of the drive was spent in baffled
+question and provoking answer.
+
+"I believe it's something for me to wear," she said finally, as they
+climbed out of the trap at the front door--"a ring, Joanna.... I've
+always wanted a ring."
+
+"It's better than a ring," said Joanna, "leastways it's bigger," and she
+laughed to herself.
+
+She led the way upstairs, while Mrs. Tolhurst and old Stuppeny waltzed
+recriminatingly with Ellen's box.
+
+"Where are you taking me?" asked her sister, pausing with her hand on
+the door-knob of Joanna's bedroom.
+
+"Never you mind--come on."
+
+Would Mene Tekel, she wondered, have remembered to set the lamps, so
+that the room should not depend on the faint gutter of sunset to display
+its glories? She opened the door, and was reassured--a fury of light and
+colour leapt out--rose, blue, green, buff, and the port-wine red of
+mahogany. The pink curtains were drawn, but there was no fire in the
+grate--for fires in bedrooms were unknown at Ansdore; however, a
+Christmas-like effect was given by sprigs of holly stuck in the
+picture-frames, and a string of paper flowers hung from the bed-tester
+to the top of the big woolly bell-rope by the mantelpiece. Joanna heard
+her sister gasp.
+
+"It's yours, Ellen--your new room. I've given it to you--all to
+yourself. There's the spare mahogany furniture, and the best pictures,
+and poor father's Buffalo certificate."
+
+The triumph of her own achievement melted away the last of her
+uneasiness--she seized Ellen in her arms and kissed her, knocking her
+hat over one ear.
+
+"See, you've got new curtains--eighteenpence a yard ... and that's
+mother's text--'Inasmuch....' and I've bought a new soap-dish at
+Godfrey's--it doesn't quite go with the basin, but they've both got
+roses on 'em ... and you won't mind there being a few of my gowns in the
+wardrobe--only the skirts--I've got room for the bodies in my drawers
+... that's the basket armchair out of the dining-room, with a new cover
+that Mene Tekel fixed for it ... the clock's out of the spare room--it
+don't go, but it looks fine on the mantelpiece.... Say, duckie, are you
+pleased?--are you pleased with your old Jo?"
+
+"Oh, Joanna ... thank you," said Ellen.
+
+"Well, I'll have to be leaving you now--that gal's got a rabbit pie in
+the oven for our tea, and I must go and have a look at her crust. You
+unpack and clean yourself--and be careful not to spoil anything."
+
+
+
+
+§5
+
+Supper that night was rather a quiet meal. Something about Ellen drove
+Joanna back into her old sense of estrangement. Her sister made her
+think of a lily on a thundery day. She wore a clinging dress of dull
+green stuff, which sheathed her delicate figure like a lily bract--her
+throat rose out of it like a lily stalk, and her face, with its small
+features and soft skin, was the face of a white flower. About her clung
+a dim atmosphere of the languid and exotic, like the lily's scent which
+is so unlike the lily.
+
+"Ellen," broke out Joanna, with a glance down at her own high, tight
+bosom, "don't you ever wear stays?"
+
+"No. Miss Collins and the gym mistress both say it's unhealthy."
+
+"Unhealthy! And don't they never wear none themselves?"
+
+"Never. They look much better without--besides, small waists are going
+out of fashion."
+
+"But ... Ellen ... it ain't seemly--to show the natural shape of your
+body as you're doing."
+
+"I've been told my figure's a very good one."
+
+"And whoever dared make such a remark to you?"
+
+"It was a compliment."
+
+"I don't call it any compliment to say such things to a young girl.
+Besides, what right have you to go showing what you was meant to hide?"
+
+"I'm not showing anything I was meant to hide. My figure isn't nearly so
+pronounced as yours--if I had your figure, I couldn't wear this sort of
+frock."
+
+"My figure is as God made it"--which it certainly was not--"and I was
+brought up to be the shape of a woman, in proper stays, and not the
+shape of a heathen statue. I'd be ashamed for any of the folk around
+here to see you like that--and if Arthur Alce, or any other man, came
+in, I'd either have to send you out or wrap the table-cover round you."
+
+Ellen took refuge in a haughty silence, and Joanna began to feel uneasy
+and depressed. She thought that Ellen was "fast." Was this what she had
+learned at school--to flout the standards of her home?
+
+
+
+
+§6
+
+The next morning Joanna overslept herself, in consequence of a restless
+hour during the first part of the night. As a result, it had struck half
+past seven before she went into her sister's room. She was not the kind
+of person who knocks at doors, and burst in to find Ellen, inadequately
+clothed in funny little garments, doing something very busily inside the
+cupboard.
+
+"Hullo, duckie! And how did you sleep in your lovely bed?"
+
+She was once more aglow with the vitality and triumph of her own being,
+but the next moment she experienced a vague sense of chill--something
+was the matter with the room, something had happened to it. It had lost
+its sense of cheerful riot, and wore a chastened, hangdog air. In a
+spasm of consternation Joanna realized that Ellen had been tampering
+with it.
+
+"What have you done?--Where's my pictures?--Where've you put the window
+curtains?" she cried at last.
+
+Ellen stiffened herself and tried not to look guilty.
+
+"I'm just trying to find room for my own things."
+
+Joanna stared about her.
+
+"Where's father's Buffalo certificate?"
+
+"I've put it in the cupboard."
+
+"In the cupboard!--father's ... and I'm blessed if you haven't taken
+down the curtains."
+
+"They clash with the carpet--it quite hurts me to look at them. Really,
+Joanna, if this is my room, you oughtn't to mind what I do in it."
+
+"Your room, indeed!--You've got some sass!--And I spending more'n forty
+pound fixing it up for you. I've given you new wall paper and new carpet
+and new curtains and all the best pictures, and took an unaccountable
+lot of trouble, and now you go and mess it up."
+
+"I haven't messed it up. On the contrary"--Ellen's vexation was breaking
+through her sense of guilt--"I'm doing the best I can to make it look
+decent. Since you say you've done it specially for me and spent all that
+money on it, I think at least you might have consulted my taste a
+little."
+
+"And what is your taste, ma'am?"
+
+"A bit quieter than yours," said Ellen saucily. "There are about six
+different shades of red and pink in this room."
+
+"And what shades would you have chosen, may I be so bold as to ask?"
+Joanna's voice dragged ominously with patience--"the same shade as your
+last night's gownd, which is the colour of the mould on jam? I'll have
+the colours I like in my own house--I'm sick of your dentical, die-away
+notions. You come home from school thinking you know everything, when
+all you've learned is to despise my best pictures, and say my curtains
+clash with the carpet, when I chose 'em for a nice match. I tell you
+what, ma'am, you can just about put them curtains back, and them
+pictures, and that certificate of poor father's that you're so ashamed
+of."
+
+"I want to put my own pictures up," said Ellen doggedly--"if I've got to
+live with your carpet and wallpaper, I don't see why I shouldn't have my
+own pictures."
+
+Joanna swept her eye contemptuously over "The Vigil," "Sir Galahad,"
+"The Blessed Damozel," and one or two other schoolgirl favourites that
+were lying on the bed.
+
+"You can stick those up as well--there ain't such a lot."
+
+"But can't you see, Joanna, that there are too many pictures on the wall
+already?--It's simply crowded with them. Really, you're an obstinate old
+beast," and Ellen began to cry.
+
+Joanna fought back in herself certain symptoms of relenting. She could
+not bear to see Ellen cry, but on the other hand she had "fixed up" this
+room for Ellen--she had had it furnished and decorated for her--and now
+Ellen must and should appreciate it. She should not be allowed to
+disguise and bowdlerize it to suit the unwelcome tastes she had acquired
+at school. The sight of her father's Buffalo certificate, lying face
+downwards on the cupboard floor, gave strength to her flagging purpose.
+
+"You pick that up and hang it in its proper place."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"You will."
+
+"I won't! Why should I have that hideous thing over my bed?"
+
+"Because it was your father's, and you should ought to be proud of it."
+
+"It's some low drinking society he belonged to, and I'm not proud--I'm
+ashamed."
+
+Joanna boxed her ears.
+
+"You don't deserve to be his daughter, Ellen Godden, speaking so. It's
+you that's bringing us all to shame--thank goodness you've left school,
+where you learned all that tedious, proud nonsense. You hang those
+pictures up again, and those curtains, and you'll keep this room just
+what I've made it for you."
+
+Ellen was weeping bitterly now, but her sacrilege had hardened Joanna's
+heart. She did not leave the room till the deposed dynasty of curtains
+and pictures was restored, with poor father's certificate once more in
+its place of honour. Then she marched out.
+
+
+
+
+§7
+
+The days till Christmas were full of strain. Joanna had won her victory,
+but she did not find it a satisfying one. Ellen's position in the
+Ansdore household was that of a sulky rebel--resentful, plaintive, a
+nurse of hard memories--too close to be ignored, too hostile to be
+trusted.
+
+The tyrant groaned under the heel of her victim. She was used to
+quarrels, but this was her first experience of a prolonged estrangement.
+It had been all very well to box Ellen's ears as a child, and have her
+shins kicked in return, and then an hour or two later be nursing her on
+her lap to the tune of "There was an Old Woman," or "Little Boy
+Blue".... But this dragged out antagonism wore down her spirits into a
+long sadness. It was the wrong start for that happy home she had
+planned, in which Ellen, the little sister, was to absorb that
+overflowing love which had once been Martin's, but which his memory
+could not hold in all its power.
+
+It seemed as if she would be forced to acknowledge Ellen's education as
+another of her failures. She had sent her to school to be made a lady
+of, but the finished article was nearly as disappointing as the
+cross-bred lambs of Socknersh's unlucky day. If Ellen had wanted to lie
+abed of a morning, never to do a hand's turn of work, or had demanded a
+table napkin at all her meals, Joanna would have humoured her and
+bragged about her. But, on the contrary, her sister had learned habits
+of early rising at school, and if left to herself would have been busy
+all day with piano or pencil or needle of the finer sort. Also she found
+more fault with the beauties of Ansdore's best parlour than the rigours
+of its kitchen; there lay the sting--her revolt was not against the
+toils and austerities of the farm's life but against its glories and
+comelinesses. She despised Ansdore for its very splendours, just as she
+despised her sister's best clothes more than her old ones.
+
+By Christmas Day things had righted themselves a little. Ellen was too
+young to sulk more than a day or two, and she began to forget her
+grievances in the excitement of the festival. There was the usual
+communal midday dinner, with Arthur Alce back in his old place at
+Joanna's right hand. Alce had behaved like a gentleman, and refused to
+take back the silver tea set, his premature wedding gift. Then in the
+evening, Joanna gave a party, at which young Vines and Southlands and
+Furneses offered their sheepish admiration to her sister Ellen. Of
+course everyone was agreed that Ellen Godden gave herself lamentable
+airs, but she appealed to her neighbours' curiosity through her queer,
+exotic ways, and the young men found her undeniably beautiful--she had a
+thick, creamy skin, into which her childhood's roses sometimes came as a
+dim flush, and the younger generation of the Three Marshes was inclined
+to revolt from the standards of its fathers.
+
+So young Stacey Vine kissed her daringly under the mistletoe at the
+passage bend, and was rewarded with a gasp of sweet scent, which made
+him talk a lot at the Woolpack. While Tom Southland, a man of few words,
+went home and closed with his father's offer of a partnership in his
+farm, which hitherto he had thought of setting aside in favour of an
+escape to Australia. Ellen was pleased at the time, but a night's
+thought made her scornful.
+
+"Don't you know any really nice people?" she asked Joanna. "Why did you
+send me to school with gentlemen's daughters if you just meant me to mix
+with common people when I came out?"
+
+"You can mix with any gentlefolk you can find to mix with. I myself have
+been engaged to marry a gentleman's son, and his father would have come
+to my party if he hadn't been away for Christmas."
+
+She felt angry and sore with Ellen, but she was bound to admit that her
+grievance had a certain justification. After all, she had always meant
+her to be a lady, and now, she supposed, she was merely behaving like
+one. She cast about her for means of introducing her sister into the
+spheres she coveted ... if only Sir Harry Trevor would come home!--But
+she gathered there was little prospect of that for some time. Then she
+thought of Mr. Pratt, the rector.... It was the first time that she had
+ever considered him as a social asset--his poverty, his inefficiency and
+self-depreciation had quite outweighed his gentility in her ideas; he
+had existed only as the Voice of the Church on Walland Marsh, and the
+spasmodic respect she paid him was for his office alone. But now she
+began to remember that he was an educated man and a gentleman, who might
+supply the want in her sister's life without in any way encouraging
+those more undesirable "notions" she had picked up at school.
+
+Accordingly, Mr. Pratt, hitherto neglected, was invited to Ansdore with
+a frequency and enthusiasm that completely turned his head. He spoiled
+the whole scheme by misinterpreting its motive, and after about the
+ninth tea-party, became buoyed with insane and presumptuous hopes, and
+proposed to Joanna. She was overwhelmed, and did not scruple to
+overwhelm him, with anger and consternation. It was not that she did not
+consider the rectory a fit match for Ansdore, even with only two hundred
+a year attached to it, but she was furious that Mr. Pratt should think
+it possible that she could fancy him as a man--"a little rabbity chap
+like him, turned fifty, and scarce a hair on him. If he wants another
+wife at his age he should get an old maid like Miss Godfrey or a hopeful
+widder like Mrs. Woods--not a woman who's had real men to love her, and
+ud never look at anything but a real, stout feller."
+
+However, she confided the proposal to Ellen, for she wanted her sister
+to know that she had had an offer from a clergyman, and also that she
+was still considered desirable--for once or twice Ellen had thrown out
+troubling hints that she thought her sister middle-aged. Of course she
+was turned thirty now, and hard weather and other hard things had made
+her inclined to look older, by reddening and lining her face. But she
+had splendid eyes, hair and teeth, and neither the grace nor the energy
+of youth had left her body, which had coarsened into something rather
+magnificent, tall and strong, plump without stoutness, clean-limbed
+without angularity.
+
+She could certainly now have had her pick among the unmarried
+farmers--which could not have been said when she first set up her
+mastership at Ansdore. Since those times men had learned to tolerate her
+swaggering ways, also her love affair with Martin had made her more
+normal, more of a soft, accessible woman. Arthur Alce was no longer the
+only suitor at Ansdore--it was well known that Sam Turner, who had
+lately moved from inland to Northlade, was wanting to have her, and Hugh
+Vennal would have been glad to bring her as his second wife to Beggar's
+Bush. Joanna was proud of these attachments and saw to it that they
+were not obscure--also, one or two of the men, particularly Vennal, she
+liked for themselves, for their vitality and "set-upness"; but she shied
+away from the prospect of marriage. Martin had shown her all that it
+meant in the way of renunciation, and she felt that she could make its
+sacrifices for no one less than Martin. Also, the frustration of her
+hopes and the inadequacy of her memories had produced in her a queer
+antipathy to marriage--a starting aside. Her single state began to have
+for her a certain worth in itself, a respectable rigour like a pair of
+stays. For a year or so after Martin's death, she had maintained her
+solace of secret kisses, but in time she had come to withdraw even from
+these, and by now the full force of her vitality was pouring itself into
+her life at Ansdore, its ambitions and business, her love for Ellen, and
+her own pride.
+
+
+
+
+§8
+
+Ellen secretly despised Joanna's suitors, just as she secretly despised
+all Joanna's best and most splendid things. They were a dull lot,
+driving her sister home on market-day, or sitting for hours in the
+parlour with Arthur Alce's mother's silver tea-set. It was always "Good
+evening, Miss Godden," "Good evening, Mr. Turner"--"Fine weather for
+roots"--"A bit dry for the grazing." It was not thus that Ellen Godden
+understood love. Besides, these men looked oafs, in spite of the fine
+build of some of them--they were not so bad in their working clothes,
+with their leggings and velveteen breeches, but in their Sunday best,
+which they always wore on these occasions, they looked clumsy and
+ridiculous, their broad black coats in the cut of yester-year and
+smelling of camphor, their high-winged collars scraping and reddening
+their necks ... in their presence Ellen was rather sidling and sweet,
+but away from them in the riotous privacy of her new bedroom, she
+laughed to herself and jeered.
+
+She had admirers of her own, but she soon grew tired of them--would have
+grown tired sooner if Joanna had not clucked and shoo'd them away, thus
+giving them the glamour of the forbidden thing. Joanna looked upon them
+all as detrimentals, presumptuously lifting up their eyes to Ansdore's
+wealth and Ellen's beauty.
+
+"When you fall in love, you can take a stout yeoman with a bit of money,
+if you can't find a real gentleman same as I did. Howsumever, you're too
+young to go meddling with such things just yet. You be a good girl,
+Ellen Godden, and keep your back straight, and don't let the boys kiss
+you."
+
+Ellen had no particular pleasure in letting the boys kiss her--she was a
+cold-blooded little thing--but, she asked herself, what else was there
+to do in a desert like Walland Marsh? The Marsh mocked her every morning
+as she looked out of her window at the flat miles between Ansdore and
+Dunge Ness. This was her home--this wilderness of straight dykes and
+crooked roads, every mile of which was a repetition of the mile before
+it. There was never any change in that landscape, except such as came
+from the sky--cloud-shadows shaking like swift wings across the swamp of
+buttercups and sunshine, mists lying in strange islands by the sewers,
+rain turning all things grey, and the wind as it were made visible in a
+queer flying look put on by the pastures when the storms came groaning
+inland from Rye Bay ... with a great wail of wind and slash of rain and
+a howl and shudder through all the house.
+
+She found those months of spring and summer very dreary. She disliked
+the ways of Ansdore; she met no one but common and vulgar people, who
+took it for granted that she was just one of themselves. Of course she
+had lived through more or less the same experiences during her holidays,
+but then the contact had not been so close or so prolonged, and there
+had always been the prospect of school to sustain her.
+
+But now schooldays were over, and seemed very far away. Ellen felt cut
+off from the life and interests of those happy years. She had hoped to
+receive invitations to go and stay with the friends she had made at
+school; but months went by and none came. Her school-friends were being
+absorbed by a life very different from her own, and she was sensitive
+enough to realize that parents who had not minded her associating with
+their daughters while they were still at school, would not care for
+their grown-up lives to be linked together. At first letters were
+eagerly written and constantly received, but in time even this comfort
+failed, as ways became still further divided, and Ellen found herself
+faced with the alternative of complete isolation or such friendships as
+she could make on the Marsh.
+
+She chose the latter. Though she would have preferred the humblest seat
+in a drawing-room to the place of honour in a farm-house kitchen, she
+found a certain pleasure in impressing the rude inhabitants of Brodnyx
+and Pedlinge with her breeding and taste. She accepted invitations to
+"drop in after church," or to take tea, and scratched up rather
+uncertain friendships with the sisters of the boys who admired her.
+
+Joanna watched her rather anxiously. She tried to persuade herself that
+Ellen was happy and no longer craved for the alien soil from which she
+had been uprooted. But there was no denying her own disappointment. A
+lady was not the wonderful being Joanna Godden had always imagined.
+Ellen refused to sit in impressive idleness on the parlour sofa, not
+because she disapproved of idleness, but because she disapproved of the
+parlour and the sofa. She despised Joanna's admirers, those stout,
+excellent men she was so proud of, who had asked her in marriage, "as no
+one ull ever ask you, Ellen Godden, if you give yourself such airs." And
+worst of all, she despised her sister ... her old Jo, on whose back she
+had ridden, in whose arms she had slept.... Those three years of polite
+education seemed to have wiped out all the fifteen years of happy,
+homely childhood. Sometimes Joanna wished she had never sent her to a
+grand school. All they had done there was to stuff her head with
+nonsense. It would have been better, after all, if she had gone to the
+National, and learned to say her Catechism instead of to despise her
+home.
+
+
+
+
+§9
+
+One day early in October the Vines asked Ellen to go with them into Rye
+and visit Lord John Sanger's menagerie.
+
+Joanna was delighted that her sister should go--a wild beast show was
+the ideal of entertainment on the Three Marshes.
+
+"You can put on your best gown, Ellen--the blue one Miss Godfrey made
+you. You've never been to Lord John Sanger's before, have you? I'd like
+to go myself, but Wednesday's the day for Romney, and I just about can't
+miss this market. I hear they're sending up some heifers from
+Orgarswick, and there'll be sharp bidding.... I envy you going to a wild
+beast show. I haven't been since Arthur Alce took me in '93. That was
+the first time he asked me to marry him. I've never had the time to go
+since, though Sanger's been twice since then, and they had Buffalo Bill
+in Cadborough meadow.... I reckon you'll see some fine riding and some
+funny clowns--and there'll be stalls where you can buy things, and maybe
+a place where you can get a cup of tea. You go and enjoy yourself,
+duckie."
+
+Ellen smiled a wan smile.
+
+On Monday night the news came to the Vines that their eldest son, Bill,
+who was in an accountant's office at Maidstone, had died suddenly of
+peritonitis. Of course Wednesday's jaunt was impossible, and Joanna
+talked as if young Bill's untimely end had been an act of premeditated
+spite.
+
+"If only he'd waited till Thursday--even Wednesday morning ud have done
+... the telegram wouldn't have got to them till after they'd left the
+house, and Ellen ud have had her treat."
+
+Ellen bore the deprivation remarkably well, but Joanna fumed and
+champed. "I call it a shame," she said to Arthur Alce,--"an
+unaccountable shame, spoiling the poor child's pleasure. It's seldom she
+gets anything she likes, with all her refined notions, but here you
+have, as you might say, amusement and instruction combined. If only I
+hadn't got that tedious market ... but go I must; it's not a job I can
+give to Broadhurst, bidding for them heifers--and I mean to have 'em. I
+hear Furnese is after 'em, but he can't bid up to me."
+
+"Would you like me to take Ellen to the wild beast show?" said Arthur
+Alce.
+
+"Oh, Arthur--that's middling kind of you, that's neighbourly. But aren't
+you going into Romney yourself?"
+
+"I've nothing particular to go for. I don't want to buy. If I went it
+ud only be to look at stock."
+
+"Well, I'd take it as a real kindness if you'd drive in Ellen to Rye on
+Wednesday. The show's there only for the one day, and nobody else is
+going up from these parts save the Cobbs, and I don't want Ellen to go
+along with them 'cos of that Tom Cobb what's come back and up to no
+good."
+
+"I'm only too pleased to do anything for you, Joanna, as you know well."
+
+"Yes, I know it well. You've been a hem good neighbour to me, Arthur."
+
+"A neighbour ain't so good as I'd like to be."
+
+"Oh, don't you git started on that again--I thought you'd done."
+
+"I'll never have done of that."
+
+Joanna looked vexed. Alce's wooing had grown stale, and no longer
+gratified her. She could not help comparing his sandy-haired sedateness
+with her memories of Martin's fire and youth--that dead sweetheart had
+made it impossible for her to look at a man who was not eager and
+virile; her admirers were now all, except for him, younger than herself.
+She liked his friendship, his society, his ready and unselfish support,
+but she could not bear to think of him as a suitor, and there was almost
+disdain in her eyes.
+
+"I don't like to hear such talk from you," she said coldly. Then she
+remembered the silver tea-set which he had never taken back, and the
+offer he had made just now.... "Not but that you ain't a good friend to
+me, Arthur--my best."
+
+A faint pink crept under his freckles and tan.
+
+"Well, I reckon that should ought to be enough for me--to hear you say
+that."
+
+"I do say it. And now I'll go and tell Ellen you're taking her into Rye
+for the show. She'll be a happy girl."
+
+
+
+
+§10
+
+Ellen was not quite so happy as her sister expected. Her sum of
+spectacular bliss stood in Shakespearean plays which she had seen, and
+in "Monsieur Beaucaire," which she had not. A wild beast show with its
+inevitable accompaniment of dust and chokiness and noise would give her
+no pleasure at all, and the slight interest which had lain in the escort
+of the Vines with the amorous Stacey was now removed. She did not want
+Arthur Alce's company. Her sister's admirer struck her as a dull dog.
+
+"I won't trouble him," she said. "I'm sure he doesn't really want to
+go."
+
+"Reckon he does," said Joanna. "He wants to go anywhere that pleases
+me."
+
+This did not help to reconcile Ellen.
+
+"Well, I don't want to be taken anywhere just to please you."
+
+"It pleases you too, don't it?"
+
+"No, it doesn't. I don't care twopence about fairs and shows, and Arthur
+Alce bores me."
+
+This double blasphemy temporarily deprived Joanna of speech.
+
+"If he's only taking me to please you," continued Ellen, "he can just
+leave me at home to please myself."
+
+"What nonsense!" cried her sister--"here have I been racking around for
+hours just to fix a way of getting you to the show, and now you say you
+don't care about it."
+
+"Well, I don't."
+
+"Then you should ought to. I never saw such airs as you give yourself.
+Not care about Sanger's World Wide Show!--I tell you, you just about
+shall go to it, ma'am, whether you care about it or not, and Arthur Alce
+shall take you."
+
+Thus the treat was arranged, and on Wednesday afternoon Alce drove to
+the door in his high, two-wheeled dog-cart, and Ellen climbed up beside
+him, under the supervision of Mrs. Tolhurst, whom Joanna, before setting
+out for market, had commissioned to "see as she went." Not that Joanna
+could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying
+she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer
+contrariness might keep her away.
+
+Ellen was wearing her darkest, demurest clothes, in emphatic contrast to
+the ribbons and laces in which Brodnyx and Pedlinge usually went to the
+fair. Her hair was neatly coiled under her little, trim black hat, and
+she wore dark suède gloves and buckled shoes. Alce felt afraid of her,
+especially as during the drive she never opened her mouth except in
+brief response to some remark of his.
+
+Ellen despised Arthur Alce--she did not like his looks, his
+old-fashioned side-whiskers and Gladstone collars, or the amount of hair
+and freckles that covered the exposed portions of his skin. She despised
+him, too, for his devotion to Joanna; she did not understand how a man
+could be inspired with a lifelong love for Joanna, who seemed to her
+unattractive--coarse and bouncing. She also a little resented this
+devotion, the way it was accepted as an established fact in the
+neighbourhood, a standing sum to Joanna's credit. Of course she was fond
+of her sister--she could not help it--but she would have forgiven her
+more easily for her ruthless domineering, if she had not also had the
+advantage in romance. An admirer who sighed hopelessly after you all
+your life was still to Ellen the summit of desire. It was fortunate that
+she could despise Alce so thoroughly in his person, or else she might
+have found herself jealous of her sister.
+
+They arrived at Sanger's in good time for the afternoon performance, and
+their seats were the best in the tent. Alce, ever mindful of Joanna,
+bought Ellen an orange and a bag of bull's-eyes. During the performance
+he was too much engrossed to notice her much--the elephants, the clowns,
+the lovely ladies, were as fresh and wonderful to him as to any child
+present, though as a busy farmer he had long ago discarded such
+entertainments and would not have gone to-day if it had not been for
+Ellen, or rather for her sister. When the interval came, however, he had
+time to notice his companion, and it seemed to him that she drooped.
+
+"Are you feeling it hot in here?"
+
+"Yes--it's very close."
+
+He did not offer to take her out--it did not strike him that she could
+want to leave.
+
+"You haven't sucked your orange--that'll freshen you a bit."
+
+Ellen looked at her orange.
+
+"Let me peel it for you," said Alce, noticing her gloved hands.
+
+"Thanks very much--but I can't eat it here; there's nowhere to put the
+skin and pips."
+
+"What about the floor? Reckon they sweep out the sawdust after each
+performance."
+
+"I'm sure I hope they do," said Ellen, whose next-door neighbour had
+spat at intervals between his knees, "but really, I'd rather keep the
+orange till I get home."
+
+At that moment the ring-master came in to start the second half of the
+entertainment, and Alce turned away from Ellen. He was unconscious of
+her till the band played "God Save the King," and there was a great
+scraping of feet as the audience turned to go out.
+
+"We'll go and have a cup of tea," said Alce.
+
+He took her into the refreshment tent, and blundered as far as offering
+her a twopenny ice-cream at the ice-cream stall. He was beginning to
+realize that she took her pleasures differently from most girls he knew;
+he felt disappointed and ill at ease with her--it would be dreadful if
+she went home and told Joanna she had not enjoyed herself.
+
+"What would you like to do now?" he asked when they had emptied their
+tea-cups and eaten their stale buns in the midst of a great steaming,
+munching squash--"there's swings and stalls and a merry-go-round--and I
+hear the Fat Lady's the biggest they've had yet in Rye; but maybe you
+don't care for that sort of thing?"
+
+"No, I don't think I do, and I'm feeling rather tired. We ought to be
+starting back before long."
+
+"Oh, not till you've seen all the sights. Joanna ud never forgive me if
+I didn't show you the sights. We'll just stroll around, and then we'll
+go to the George and have the trap put to."
+
+Ellen submitted--she was a born submitter, whose resentful and watchful
+submission had come almost to the pitch of art. She accompanied Alce to
+the swings, though she would not go up in them, and to the
+merry-go-round, though she would not ride in it.
+
+"There's Ellen Godden out with her sister's young man," said a woman's
+voice in the crowd.
+
+"Maybe he'll take the young girl now he can't get the old 'un," a man
+answered her.
+
+"Oh, Arthur Alce ull never change from Joanna Godden."
+
+"But the sister's a dear liddle thing, better worth having to my mind."
+
+"Still, I'll never believe ..."
+
+The voices were lost in the crowd, and Ellen never knew who had spoken,
+but for the first time that afternoon her boredom was relieved. It was
+rather pleasant to have anyone think that Arthur Alce was turning to her
+from Joanna ... it would be a triumph indeed if he actually did turn ...
+for the first time she began to take an interest in him.
+
+The crowd was very thick, and Alce offered her his arm.
+
+"Hook on to me, or maybe I'll lose you."
+
+Ellen did as he told her, and after a time he felt her weight increase.
+
+"Reckon you're middling tired."
+
+He looked down on her with a sudden pity--her little hand was like a
+kitten under his arm.
+
+"Yes, I am rather tired." It was no pretence--such an afternoon, without
+the stimulant and sustenance of enjoyment, was exhausting indeed.
+
+"Then we'll go home--reckon we've seen everything."
+
+He piloted her out of the crush, and they went to the George, where the
+trap was soon put to. Ellen sat drooping along the Straight Mile.
+
+"Lord, but you're hem tired," said Alce, looking down at her.
+
+"I've got a little headache--I had it when I started."
+
+"Then you shouldn't ought to have come."
+
+"Joanna said I was to."
+
+"You should have told her about your head."
+
+"I did--but she said I must come all the same. I said I was sure you
+wouldn't mind, but she wouldn't let me off."
+
+"Joanna's valiant for getting her own way. Still, it was hard on you,
+liddle girl, making you come--I shouldn't have taken offence."
+
+"I know you wouldn't. But Jo's so masterful. She always wants me to
+enjoy myself in her way, and being strong, she doesn't understand people
+who aren't."
+
+"That's so, I reckon. Still your sister's a fine woman, Ellen--the best
+I've known."
+
+"I'm sure she is," snapped Ellen.
+
+"But she shouldn't ought to have made you come this afternoon, since you
+were feeling poorly."
+
+"Don't let out I said anything to you about it, Arthur--it might make
+her angry. Oh, don't make her angry with me."
+
+
+
+
+§11
+
+During the next few weeks it seemed to Joanna that her sister was a
+little more alert. She went out more among the neighbours, and when
+Joanna's friends came to see her, she no longer sulked remotely, but
+came into the parlour, and was willing to play the piano and talk and be
+entertaining. Indeed, once or twice when Joanna was busy she had sat
+with Arthur Alce after tea and made herself most agreeable--so he said.
+
+The fact was that Ellen had a new interest in life. Those words sown
+casually in her thoughts at the show were bearing remarkable fruit. She
+had pondered them well, and weighed her chances, and come to the
+conclusion that it would be a fine and not impossible thing to win
+Arthur Alce from Joanna to herself.
+
+She did not see why she should not be able to do so. She was prettier
+than her sister, younger, more accomplished, better educated. Alce on
+his side must be tired of wooing without response. When he saw there was
+a chance of Ellen, he would surely take it; and then--what a triumph!
+How people would talk and marvel when they saw Joanna Godden's life-long
+admirer turn from her to her little sister! They would be forced to
+acknowledge Ellen as a superior and enchanting person. Of course there
+was the disadvantage that she did not particularly want Arthur Alce, but
+her schemings did not take her as far as matrimony.
+
+She was shrewd enough to see that the best way to capture Alce was to
+make herself as unlike her sister as possible. With him she was like a
+little soft cat, languid and sleek, or else delicately playful. She
+appealed to his protecting strength, and in time made him realize that
+she was unhappy in her home life and suffered under her sister's
+tyranny. She had hoped that this might help detach him from Joanna, but
+his affection was of that passive, tenacious kind which tacitly accepts
+all the faults of the beloved. He was always ready to sympathize with
+Ellen, and once or twice expostulated with Joanna--but his loyalty
+showed no signs of wavering.
+
+As time went on, Ellen began to like him more in himself. She grew
+accustomed to his red hair and freckles, and when he was in his everyday
+kit of gaiters and breeches and broadcloth, she did not find him
+unattractive. Moreover she could not fail to appreciate his fundamental
+qualities of generosity and gentleness--he was like a big, faithful,
+gentle dog, a red-haired collie, following and serving.
+
+
+
+
+§12
+
+The weeks went by, and Ellen still persevered. But she was disappointed
+in results. She had thought that Alce's subjection would not take very
+long, she had not expected the matter to drag. It was the fault of his
+crass stupidity--he was unable to see what she was after, he looked upon
+her just as a little girl, Joanna's little sister, and was good to her
+for Joanna's sake.
+
+This was humiliating, and Ellen fretted and chafed at her inability to
+make him see. She was no siren, and was without either the parts or the
+experience for a definite attack on his senses. She worked as an amateur
+and a schoolgirl, with only a certain fundamental shrewdness to guide
+her; she was doubtless becoming closer friends with Alce--he liked to
+sit and talk to her after tea, and often gave her lifts in his trap--but
+he used their intimacy chiefly to confide in her his love and admiration
+for her sister, which was not what Ellen wanted.
+
+The first person to see what was happening was Joanna herself. She had
+been glad for some time of Ellen's increased friendliness with Alce, but
+had pat it down to nothing more than the comradeship of that happy day
+at Lord John Sanger's show. Then something in Ellen's looks as she spoke
+to Arthur, in her manner as she spoke of him, made her suspicious--and
+one Sunday evening, walking home from church, she became sure. The
+service had been at Pedlinge, in the queer barn-like church whose walls
+inside were painted crimson; and directly it was over Ellen had taken
+charge of Alce, who was coming back to supper with them. Alce usually
+went to his parish church at Old Romney, but had accepted Ellen's
+invitation to accompany the Goddens that day, and now Ellen seemed
+anxious that he should not walk with her and Joanna, but had taken him
+on ahead, leaving Joanna to walk with the Southlands.
+
+The elder sister watched them--Alce a little oafish in his Sunday
+blacks, Ellen wearing her new spring hat with the daisies. As she spoke
+to him she lifted her face on her graceful neck like a swan, and her
+voice was eager and rather secret. Joanna lost the thread of Mrs.
+Southland's reminiscences of her last dairy-girl, and she watched Ellen,
+watched her hands, watched the shrug of her shoulders under her
+gown--the girl's whole body seemed to be moving, not restlessly or
+jerkily, but with a queer soft ripple.
+
+Then Joanna suddenly said to herself--"She loves him. Ellen wants Arthur
+Alce." Her first emotion was of anger, a resolve to stop this impudence;
+but the next minute she pitied instead--Ellen, with her fragile beauty,
+her little die-away airs, would never be able to get Arthur Alce from
+Joanna, to whom he belonged. He was hers, both by choice and habit, and
+Ellen would never get him. Then from pity, she passed into
+tenderness--she was sorry Ellen could not get Arthur, could not have him
+when she wanted him, while Joanna, who could have him, did not want him.
+It would be a good thing for her, too. Alce was steady and
+well-established--he was not like those mucky young Vines and
+Southlands. Ellen would be safe to marry him. It was a pity she hadn't a
+chance.
+
+Joanna looked almost sentimentally at the couple ahead--then she
+suddenly made up her mind. "If I spoke to Arthur Alce, I believe I could
+make him do it." She could make Arthur do most things, and she did not
+see why he should stop at this. Of course she did not want Ellen to
+marry him or anybody, but now she had once come to think of it she could
+see plainly, in spite of herself, that marriage would be a good thing
+for her sister. She was being forced up against the fact that her
+schemes for Ellen had failed--school-life had spoiled her, home-life was
+making both her and home miserable. The best thing she could do would be
+to marry, but she must marry a good man and true--Alce was both good and
+true, and moreover his marriage would set Joanna free from his hang-dog
+devotion, of which she was beginning to grow heartily tired. She
+appreciated his friendship and his usefulness, but they could both
+survive, and she would at the same time be free of his sentimental
+lapses, the constant danger of a declaration. Yes, Ellen should have
+him--she would make a present of him to Ellen.
+
+
+
+
+§13
+
+"Arthur, I want a word with you."
+
+They were alone in the parlour, Ellen having been dispatched resentfully
+on an errand to Great Ansdore.
+
+"About them wethers?"
+
+"No--it's a different thing. Arthur, have you noticed that Ellen's sweet
+on you?"
+
+Joanna's approach to a subject was ever direct, but this time she seemed
+to have taken the breath out of Arthur's body.
+
+"Ellen ... sweet on me?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes, you blind-eyed owl. I've seen it for a dunnamany weeks."
+
+"But--Ellen? That liddle girl ud never care an onion for a dull, dry
+chap lik me."
+
+"Reckon she would. You ain't such a bad chap, Arthur, though I could
+never bring myself to take you."
+
+"Well, I must say I haven't noticed anything, or maybe I'd have spoken
+to you about it. I'm unaccountable sorry, Jo, and I'll do all I can to
+help you stop it."
+
+"I'm not sure I want to stop it. I was thinking only to-day as it
+wouldn't be a bad plan if you married Ellen."
+
+"But, Jo, I don't want to marry anybody but you."
+
+"Reckon that's middling stupid of you, for I'll never marry you, Arthur
+Alce--_never_!"
+
+"Then I don't want nobody."
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. You'll be a fool if you don't marry and get a wife to
+look after you and your house, which has wanted new window-blinds this
+eighteen month. You can't have me, so you may as well have Ellen--she's
+next best to me, I reckon, and she's middling sweet on you."
+
+"Ellen's a dear liddle thing, as I've always said against them that said
+otherwise--but I've never thought of marrying her, and reckon she don't
+want to marry me, she'd sooner marry a stout young Southland or young
+Vine."
+
+"She ain't going to marry any young Vine. When she marries I'll see she
+marries a steady, faithful, solid chap, and you're the best I know."
+
+"It's kind of you to say it, but reckon it wouldn't be a good thing for
+me to marry one sister when I love the other."
+
+"But you'll never get the other, not till the moon's cheese, so there's
+no sense in vrothering about that. And I want Ellen to marry you,
+Arthur, since she's after you. I never meant her to marry yet awhiles,
+but reckon I can't make her happy at home--I've tried and I can't--so
+you may as well try."
+
+"It ud be difficult to make Ellen happy--she's a queer liddle dentical
+thing."
+
+"I know, but marriage is a wonderful soberer-down. She'll be happy once
+she gets a man and a house of her own."
+
+"I'm not so sure. Anyways I'm not the man for her. She should ought to
+marry a gentleman."
+
+"Well, there ain't none for her to marry, nor likely to be none. She'll
+go sour if she has to stand ... and she wants you, Arthur. I wouldn't be
+asking you this if I hadn't seen she wanted you, and seen too as the
+best thing as could happen to her would be for her to marry you."
+
+"I'm sure she'll never take me."
+
+"You can but ask her."
+
+"She'll say 'No.'"
+
+"Reckon she won't--but if she does, there'll be no harm in asking her."
+
+"You queer me, Jo--it seems a foolish thing to marry Ellen when I want
+to marry you."
+
+"But I tell you, you can never marry me. You're a stupid man, Arthur,
+who won't see things as they are. You go hankering after whom you can't
+get, and all the time you might get someone who's hankering after you.
+It's a lamentable waste, I say, and I'll never be pleased if you don't
+ask Ellen. It ain't often I ask you to do anything to please me, and
+this is no hard thing. Ellen's a fine match--a pretty girl, and clever,
+and well-taught--she'll play the piano to your friends. And I'll see as
+she has a bit of money with her. You'll do well for yourself by taking
+her, and I tell you, Arthur, I'm sick and tired of your dangling after
+me."
+
+
+
+
+§14
+
+Joanna had many more conversations with Arthur Alce, and in the end bore
+down his objections. She used her tongue to such good purpose that by
+next Sunday he had come to see that Ellen wanted him, and that for him
+to marry her would be the best thing for everyone--Joanna, Ellen and
+himself. After all, it wasn't as if he had the slightest chance of
+Joanna--she had made that abundantly clear, and his devotion did not
+feed on hope so much as on a stale content in being famous throughout
+three marshes as her rejected suitor. Perhaps it was not amiss that her
+sudden call should stir him into a more active and vital service.
+
+In the simplicity of his heart, he saw nothing outrageous in her
+demands. She was troubled and anxious about Ellen, and had a right to
+expect him to help her solve this problem in the best way that had
+occurred to her. As for Ellen herself, now his attention had been called
+to the matter, he could see that she admired him and sought him out. Why
+she should do so was as much a mystery as ever--he could not think why
+so soft and dainty and beautiful a creature should want to marry a
+homely chap like himself. But he did not doubt the facts, and when, at
+the beginning of the second week, he proposed to her, he was much less
+surprised at her acceptance than she was herself.
+
+Ellen had never meant to accept him--all she had wanted had been the
+mere proclaimable fact of his surrender; but during the last weeks the
+focus of her plans had shifted--they had come to mean more than the
+gratification of her vanity. The denial of what she sought, the dragging
+of her schemes, the growing sense of hopelessness, had made her see just
+exactly how much she wanted. She would really like to marry Alce--the
+slight physical antipathy with which she had started had now
+disappeared, and she felt that she would not object to him as a lover.
+He was, moreover, an excellent match--better than any young Vines or
+Southlands or Furneses; as his wife she would be important and
+well-to-do, her triumph would be sealed, open and celebrated.... She
+would moreover be free. That was the strong hidden growth that had
+heaved up her flat little plans of a mere victory in tattle--if she
+married she would be her own mistress, free for ever of Joanna's
+tyranny. She could do what she liked with Alce--she would be able to go
+where she liked, know whom she liked, wear what she liked; whereas with
+Joanna all these things were ruthlessly decreed. Of course she was fond
+of Jo, but she was tired of living with her--you couldn't call your soul
+your own--she would never be happy till she had made herself independent
+of Jo, and only marriage would do that. She was tired of sulking and
+submitting--she could make a better life for herself over at Donkey
+Street than she could at Ansdore. Of course if she waited she might get
+somebody better, but she might have to wait a long time, and she did not
+care for waiting. She was not old or patient or calculating enough to be
+a really successful schemer; her plans carried her this time only as far
+as a triumph over Joanna and an escape from Ansdore.
+
+
+
+
+§15
+
+Certainly her triumph was a great one. Brodnyx and Pedlinge had never
+expected such a thing. Their attitude had hitherto been that of the man
+at the fair, who would rather distrust appearances than believe Arthur
+Alce could change from Joanna Godden to her sister Ellen. It would have
+been as easy to think of the sunset changing from Rye to
+Court-at-Street.
+
+There was a general opinion that Joanna had been injured--though no one
+really doubted her sincerity when she said that she would never have
+taken Arthur. Her evident pleasure in the wedding was considered
+magnanimous--it was also a little disappointing to Ellen. Not that she
+wanted Joanna to be miserable, but she would have liked her to be rather
+more sensible of her sister's triumph, to regret rather more the honour
+that had been taken from her. The bear's hug with which her sister had
+greeted her announcement, the eager way in which she had urged and
+hustled preparations for the wedding, all seemed a little incongruous
+and humiliating.... Joanna should at least have had some moments of
+realizing her fallen state.
+
+However, what she missed at home Ellen received abroad. Some neighbours
+were evidently offended, especially those who had sons to mate. Mrs.
+Vine had been very stiff when Ellen called with Alce.
+
+"Well, Arthur"--ignoring the bride-to-be--"I always felt certain you
+would marry Ansdore, but it was the head I thought you'd take and not
+the tail."
+
+"Oh, the tail's good enough for me," said Arthur, which Ellen thought
+clumsy of him.
+
+Having taken the step, Arthur was curiously satisfied. His obedience in
+renouncing Joanna seemed to have brought him closer to her than all his
+long wooing. Besides, he was growing very fond of little Ellen--her
+soft, clinging ways and little sleek airs appealed to him as those of a
+small following animal would, and he was proud of her cleverness, and of
+her prettiness, which now he had come to see, though for a long time he
+had not appreciated it, because it was so different from Joanna's
+healthy red and brown.
+
+He took her round the farms, not only in her own neighbourhood, but
+those near Donkey Street, over on Romney Marsh, across the Rhee Wall. In
+her honour he bought a new trap, and Ellen drove beside him in it,
+sitting very demure and straight. People said--"There goes Ellen
+Godden, who's marrying her sister's young man," and sometimes Ellen
+heard them.
+
+She inspected Donkey Street, which was a low, plain, oblong house,
+covered with grey stucco, against which flamed the orange of its
+lichened roof. It had been built in Queen Anne's time, and enlarged and
+stuccoed over about fifty years ago. It was a good, solid house, less
+rambling than Ansdore, but the kitchens were a little damp.
+
+Alce bought new linen and new furniture. He had some nice pieces of old
+furniture too, which Ellen was very proud of. She felt she could make
+quite a pleasant country house of Donkey Street. In spite of Joanna's
+protests, Alce let her have her own way about styles and colours, and
+her parlour was quite unlike anything ever seen on the Marsh outside
+North Farthing and Dungemarsh Court. There was no centre table and no
+cabinet, but a deep, comfortable sofa, which Ellen called a
+chesterfield, and a "cosy corner," and a Sheraton bureau, and a Sheraton
+china-cupboard with glass doors. The carpet was purple, without any
+pattern on it, and the cushions were purple and black. For several days
+those black cushions were the talk of the Woolpack bar and every farm.
+It reminded Joanna a little of the frenzy that had greeted the first
+appearance of her yellow waggons, and for the first time she felt a
+little jealous of Ellen.
+
+She sometimes, too, had moments of depression at the thought of losing
+her sister, of being once more alone at Ansdore, but having made up her
+mind that Ellen was to marry Arthur Alce, she was anxious to carry
+through the scheme as quickly and magnificently as possible. The wedding
+was fixed for May, and was to be the most wonderful wedding in the
+experience of the three marshes of Walland, Dunge and Romney. For a
+month Joanna's trap spanked daily along the Straight Mile, taking her
+and Ellen either into Rye to the confectioner's--for Joanna had too true
+a local instinct to do as her sister wanted and order the cake from
+London--or to the station for Folkestone where the clothes for both
+sisters were being bought. They had many a squabble over the
+clothes--Ellen pleaded passionately for the soft, silken undergarments
+in the shop windows, for the little lace-trimmed drawers and chemises
+... it was cruel and bigoted of Joanna to buy yards and yards of calico
+for nightgowns and "petticoat bodies," with trimmings of untearable
+embroidery. It was also painful to be obliged to wear a saxe-blue
+going-away dress when she wanted an olive green, but Ellen reflected
+that she was submitting for the last time, and anyhow she was spared the
+worst by the fact that the wedding-gown must be white--not much scope
+for Joanna there.
+
+
+
+
+§16
+
+The day before the wedding Joanna felt unusually nervous and restless.
+The preparations had been carried through so vigorously that everything
+was ready--there was nothing to do, no finishing touches, and into her
+mind came a sudden blank and alarm. All that evening she was unable to
+settle down either to work or rest. Ellen had gone to bed early,
+convinced of the good effect of sleep on her complexion, and Joanna
+prowled unhappily from room to room, glancing about mechanically for
+dust which she knew could not be there ... the farm was just a
+collection of gleaming surfaces and crackling chintzes and gay, dashing
+colours. Everything was as she wished it, yet did not please her.
+
+She went into her room. On the little spare bed which had once been
+Ellen's lay a mass of tissue paper, veiling a marvellous gown of brown
+and orange shot silk, the colour of the sunburn on her cheeks, which she
+was to wear to-morrow when she gave the bride away. In vain had Ellen
+protested and said it would look ridiculous if she came down the aisle
+with her sister--Joanna had insisted on her prerogative. "It isn't as if
+we had any he-cousins fit to look at--I'll cut a better figger than
+either Tom or Pete Stansbury, and what right has either of them to give
+you away, I'd like to know?" Ellen had miserably suggested Sam Huxtable,
+but Joanna had fixed herself in her mind's eye, swaggering, rustling and
+flaming up Pedlinge aisle, with the little drooping lily of the bride
+upon her arm. "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" Mr.
+Pratt would say--"I do," Joanna would answer. Everyone would stare at
+Joanna, and remember that Arthur Alce had loved her for years before he
+loved her sister--she was certainly "giving" Ellen to him in a double
+sense.
+
+She would be just as grand and important at this wedding as she could
+possibly have been at her own, yet to-night the prospect had ceased to
+thrill her. Was it because in this her first idleness she realized she
+was giving away something she wanted to keep? Or because she saw that,
+after all, being grand and important at another person's wedding is not
+as good a thing even as being humble at your own?
+
+"Well, it might have been my own if I'd liked," she said to herself, but
+even that consideration failed to cheer her.
+
+She went over to the chest of drawers. On it stood Martin's photograph
+in a black velvet frame adorned with a small metal shield on which were
+engraved the words "Not lost but gone before." The photograph was a
+little faded--Martin's eyes had lost some of their appealing darkness
+and the curves of the mouth she had loved were dim.... She put her face
+close to the faded face in the photograph, and looked at it. Gradually
+it blurred in a mist of tears, and she could feel her heart beating very
+slowly, as if each beat were an effort....
+
+Then suddenly she found herself thinking about Ellen in a new way, with
+a new, strange anxiety. Martin's fading face seemed to have taught her
+about Ellen, about some preparation for the wedding which might have
+been left out, in spite of all the care and order of the burnished
+house. Did she really love Arthur Alce?--Did she really know what she
+was doing--what love meant?
+
+Joanna put down the photograph and straightened her back. She thought of
+her sister alone for the last time in her big flowery bedroom, lying
+down for the last time in the rose-curtained, mahogany bed, for her last
+night's rest under Ansdore's roof. It was the night on which, if she had
+not been motherless, her mother would have gone to her with love and
+advice. Surely on this night of all nights it was not for Joanna to
+shirk the mother's part.
+
+Her heaviness had gone, for its secret cause had been displayed--no
+doubt this anxiety and this question had lurked with her all the
+evening, following her from room to room. She did not hesitate, but went
+down the passage to Ellen's door, which she opened as usual without
+knocking.
+
+"Not in bed, yet, duckie?"
+
+Ellen was sitting on the bolster, in her little old plain linen
+nightdress buttoning to her neck, two long plaits hanging over her
+shoulders. The light of the rose-shaded lamp streamed on the flowery
+walls and floor of her compulsory bower, showing the curtains and
+pictures and vases and father's Buffalo certificate--showing also her
+packed and corded trunks, lying there like big, blobbed seals on her
+articles of emancipation.
+
+"Hullo," she said to Joanna, "I'm just going to get in." She did not
+seem particularly pleased to see her.
+
+"You pop under the clothes, and I'll tuck you up. There's something I
+want to speak to you about if you ain't too sleepy."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About this wedding of yours."
+
+"You've spoken to me about nothing else for weeks and months."
+
+"But I want to speak to you different and most particular. Duckie, are
+you quite sure you love Arthur Alce?"
+
+"Of course I'm sure, or I shouldn't be marrying him."
+
+"There's an unaccountable lot of reasons why any gal ud snap at Arthur.
+He's got a good name and a good establishment, and he's as mild-mannered
+and obliging as a cow."
+
+Ellen looked disconcerted at hearing her bridegroom thus defined.
+
+"If that's all I saw in him I shouldn't have said 'yes.' I like
+him--he's got a kind heart and good manners, and he won't interfere with
+me--he'll let me do as I please."
+
+"But that ain't enough--it ain't enough for you just to like him. Do you
+love him?--It's struck me all of a sudden, Ellen, I've never made sure
+of that, and it ud be a lamentable job if you was to get married to
+Arthur without loving him."
+
+"But I do love him--I've told you. And may I ask, Jo, what you'd have
+done if I'd said I didn't? It's rather late for breaking off the match."
+
+Joanna had never contemplated such a thing. It would be difficult to say
+exactly how far her plans had stretched, probably no further than the
+argument and moral suasion which would forcibly compel Ellen to love if
+she did not love already.
+
+"No, no--I'd never have you break it off--with the carriages and the
+breakfast ordered, and my new gownd, and your troosoo and all.... But,
+Ellen, if you _want_ to change your mind ... I mean, if you feel,
+thinking honest, that you don't love Arthur ... for pity's sake say so
+now before it's too late. I'll stand by you--I'll face the racket--I'd
+sooner you did anything than--"
+
+"Oh, don't be an ass, Jo. Of course I don't want to change my mind. I
+know what I'm doing, and I'm very fond of Arthur--I love him, if you
+want the word. I like being with him, and I even like it when he kisses
+me. So you needn't worry."
+
+"Marriage is more than just being kissed and having a man about the
+house."
+
+"I know it is."
+
+Something in the way she said it made Joanna see she was abysmally
+ignorant.
+
+"Is there anything you'd like to ask me, dearie?"
+
+"Nothing you could possibly know anything about."
+
+Joanna turned on her.
+
+"I'll learn you to sass me. You dare say such a thing!"
+
+"Well, Jo--you're not married, and there _are_ some things you don't
+know."
+
+"That's right--call me an old maid! I tell you I could have made a
+better marriage than you, my girl.... I could have made the very
+marriage you're making, for the matter of that."
+
+She stood up, preparing to go in anger. Then suddenly as she looked down
+on Ellen, fragile and lily-white among the bed-clothes, her heart smote
+her and she relented. This was Ellen's last night at home.
+
+"Don't let's grumble at each other. I know you and I haven't quite hit
+it off, my dear, and I'm sorry, as I counted a lot on us being at
+Ansdore together. I thought maybe we'd be at Ansdore together all our
+lives. Howsumever, I reckon things are better as they are--it was my own
+fault, trying to make a lady of you, and I'm glad it's all well ended.
+Only see as it's truly well ended, dear--for Arthur's sake as well as
+yours. He's a good chap and deserves the best of you."
+
+Ellen was still angry, but something about Joanna as she stooped over
+the bed, her features obscure in the lamplight, her shadow dim and
+monstrous on the ceiling, made a sudden, almost reproachful appeal. A
+rush of genuine feeling made her stretch out her arms.
+
+"Jo ..."
+
+Joanna stooped and caught her to her heart, and for a moment, the last
+moment, the big and the little sister were as in times of old.
+
+
+
+
+§17
+
+Ellen's wedding was the most wonderful that Brodnyx and Pedlinge had
+seen for years. It was a pity that the law of the land required it to
+take place in Pedlinge church, which was comparatively small and mean,
+and which indeed Joanna could never feel was so Established as the
+church at Brodnyx, because it had only the old harmonium, and queer
+paintings of angels instead of the Lion and the Unicorn.
+
+However, Mr. Elphick ground and sweated wonders out of "the old
+harmonister" as it was affectionately called by the two parishes, and
+everyone was too busy staring at the bride and the bride's sister to
+notice whether angels or King George the Third presided over the altar.
+
+Joanna had all the success that she had longed for and expected. She
+walked down the aisle with Ellen white and drooping on her arm, like a
+sunflower escorting a lily. When Mr. Pratt said "Who giveth this woman
+to be married to this man?" she answered "I do" in a voice that rang
+through the church. Afterwards, she took her handkerchief out of her
+pocket and cried a little, as is seemly at weddings.
+
+Turner of Northlade was Arthur Alce's best man, and there were four
+bridesmaids dressed in pink--Maudie Vine, Gertrude Prickett, Maggie
+Southland and Ivy Cobb. They carried bouquets of roses with lots of
+spiræa, and wore golden hearts "the gift of the bridegroom." Altogether
+the brilliance of the company made up for the deficiencies of its
+barn-like setting and the ineffectiveness of Mr. Pratt, who, discomposed
+by the enveloping presence of Joanna, blundered more helplessly than
+ever, so that, as Joanna said afterwards, she was glad when it was all
+finished without anyone getting married besides the bride and
+bridegroom.
+
+After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Ansdore, with a wedding-cake
+and ices and champagne, and waiters hired from the George Hotel at Rye.
+Ellen stood at the end of the room shaking hands with a long procession
+of Pricketts, Vines, Furneses, Southlands, Bateses, Turners, Cobbs....
+She looked a little tired and droopy, for she had had a trying day, with
+Joanna fussing and fighting her ever since six in the morning; and now
+she felt resentfully that her sister had snatched the splendours of the
+occasion from her to herself--it did not seem right that Joanna should
+be the most glowing, conspicuous, triumphant object in the room, and
+Ellen, unable to protest, sulked languishingly.
+
+However, if the bride did not seem as proud and happy as she might, the
+bridegroom made up for it. There was something almost spiritual in the
+look of Arthur Alce's eyes, as he stood beside Ellen, his arm held
+stiffly for the repose of hers, his great choker collar scraping his
+chin, lilies of the valley and camellias sprouting from his buttonhole,
+a pair of lemon kid gloves--split at the first attempt, so he could only
+hold them--clutched in his moist hand. He looked devout, exalted, as he
+armed his little bride and watched her sister.
+
+"Arthur Alce looks pleased enough," said Furnese to Mrs. Bates--"reckon
+he sees he's got the best of the family."
+
+"Maybe he's thankful now that Joanna wouldn't take him."
+
+Neither of them noticed that the glow was in Alce's eyes chiefly when
+they rested on Joanna.
+
+He knew that to-day he had pleased her better than he had ever pleased
+her in his life. To-day she had said to him "God bless you,
+Arthur--you're the best friend I have, or am like to have, neither."
+To-day he had made himself her kinsman, with a dozen new opportunities
+of service. Chief among these was the dear little girl on his arm--how
+pretty and sweet she was! How he would love her and cherish her as he
+had promised Mr. Pratt! Well, thank God, he had done Joanna one good
+turn, and himself not such a bad one, neither. How clever she had been
+to think of his marrying Ellen! He would never have thought of it
+himself; yet now he saw clearly that it was a wonderful notion--nothing
+could be better. Joanna was valiant for notions.... Alce had had one
+glass of champagne.
+
+At about four o'clock, Joanna dashed into the circle round the bride,
+and took Ellen away upstairs, to put on her travelling dress of
+saxe-blue satin--the last humiliation she would have to endure from
+Ansdore. The honeymoon was being spent at Canterbury, cautiously chosen
+by Arthur as a place he'd been to once and so knew the lie of a bit.
+Ellen had wanted to go to Wales, or to the Lakes, but Joanna had sternly
+forbidden such outrageous pinings--"Arthur's got two cows calving next
+week--what are you thinking of, Ellen Godden?"
+
+The bridal couple drove away amidst much hilarity, inspired by the
+unaccustomed champagne and expressed in rice and confetti. After they
+had gone the guests still lingered, feasting at the littered tables or
+re-inspecting and re-valuing the presents which had been laid out, after
+the best style, in the dining-room. Sir Harry Trevor had sent Ellen a
+little pearl pendant, though he had been unable to accept Joanna's
+invitation and come to the wedding himself--he wrote from a London
+address and hinted vaguely that he might never come back to North
+Farthing House, which had been let furnished. His gift was the chief
+centre of interest--when Mrs. Vine had done comparing her electro-plated
+cruet most favourably with the one presented by Mrs. Furnese and the
+ignoble china object that Mrs. Cobb had had the meanness to send, and
+Mrs. Bates had recovered from the shock of finding that her tea-cosy was
+the exact same shape and pattern as the one given by Mrs. Gain. People
+thought it odd that the Old Squire should send pearls to Ellen
+Godden--something for the table would have been much more seemly.
+
+Joanna had grown weary--her shoulders drooped under her golden gown, she
+tossed back her head and yawned against the back of her hand. She was
+tired of it all, and wanted them to go. What were they staying for? They
+must know the price of everything pretty well by this time and have
+eaten enough to save their suppers. She was no polished hostess,
+concealing her boredom, and the company began soon to melt away. Traps
+lurched over the shingle of Ansdore's drive, the Pricketts walked off
+across the innings to Great Ansdore, guests from Rye packed into two
+hired wagonettes, and the cousins from the Isle of Wight drove back to
+the George, where, as there were eight of them and they refused to be
+separated, Joanna was munificently entertaining them instead of under
+her own roof.
+
+When the last was gone, she turned back into the house, where Mrs.
+Tolhurst stood ready with her broom to begin an immediate sweep-up after
+the waiters, whom she looked upon as the chief source of the disorder. A
+queer feeling came over Joanna, a feeling of loneliness, of craving, and
+she fell in all her glory of feathers and silk upon Mrs. Tolhurst's
+alpaca bosom. Gone were those arbitrary and often doubtful distinctions
+between them, and the mistress enjoyed the luxury of a good cry in her
+servant's arms.
+
+
+
+
+§18
+
+Ellen's marriage broke into Joanna's life quite as devastatingly as
+Martin's death. Though for more than three years her sister had been
+away at school, with an ever-widening gulf of temperament between
+herself and the farm, and though since her return she had been little
+better at times than a rebellious and sulky stranger, nevertheless she
+was a part of Ansdore, a part of Joanna's life there, and the elder
+sister found it difficult to adjust things to her absence.
+
+Of course Ellen had not gone very far--Donkey Street was not five miles
+from Ansdore, though in a different parish and a different county. But
+the chasm between them was enormous--it was queer to think that a mere
+change of roof-tree could make such a difference. No doubt the reason
+was that with Ellen it had involved an entire change of habit. While she
+lived with Joanna she had been bound both by the peculiarities of her
+sister's nature and her own to accept her way of living. She had
+submitted, not because she was weak or gentle-minded but because
+submission was an effective weapon of her welfare; now, having no
+further use for it, she ruled instead and was another person. She was,
+besides, a married woman, and the fact made all the difference to Ellen
+herself. She felt herself immeasurably older and wiser than Joanna, her
+teacher and tyrant. Her sister's life seemed to her puerile.... Ellen
+had at last read the riddle of the universe and the secret of wisdom.
+
+The sisters' relations were also a little strained over Arthur Alce.
+Joanna resented the authority that Ellen assumed--it took some time to
+show her that Arthur was no longer hers. She objected when Ellen made
+him shave off his moustache and whiskers; he looked ten years younger
+and a far handsomer man, but he was no longer the traditional Arthur
+Alce of Joanna's history, and she resented it. Ellen on her part
+resented the way Joanna still made use of him, sending him to run
+errands and make inquiries for her just as she used in the old days
+before his marriage. "Arthur, I hear there's some good pigs going at
+Honeychild auction--I can't miss market at Lydd, but you might call
+round and have a look for me." Or "Arthur, I've a looker's boy coming
+from Abbot's Court--you might go there for his characters, I haven't
+time, with the butter-making to-day and Mene Tekel such an owl."
+
+Ellen rebelled at seeing her husband ordered about, and more than once
+"told off" her sister, but Joanna had no intention of abandoning her
+just claims in Arthur, and the man himself was pig-headed--"I mun do
+what I can for her, just as I used." Ellen could make him shave off his
+whiskers, she could even make him on occasion young and fond and
+frolicsome, but she could not make him stop serving Joanna, or, had she
+only known it, stop loving her. Arthur was perfectly happy as Ellen's
+husband, and made her, as Joanna had foretold, an exemplary one, but
+his love for Joanna seemed to grow rather than diminish as he cared for
+and worked for and protected her sister. It seemed to feed and thrive on
+his love for Ellen--it gave him a wonderful sense of action and
+effectiveness, and people said what a lot of good marriage had done for
+Arthur Alce, and that he was no longer the dull chap he used to be.
+
+
+
+
+§19
+
+It had done Ellen a lot of good too. During the next year she blossomed
+and expanded. She lost some of her white looks. The state of marriage
+suited her thoroughly well. Being her own mistress and at the same time
+having a man to take care of her, having an important and comfortable
+house of her own, ordering about her own servants and spending her
+husband's money, such things made her life pleasant, and checked the
+growth of peevishness that had budded at Ansdore.
+
+During the first months of her marriage, Joanna went fairly often to see
+her, one reason being the ache which Ellen's absence had left in her
+heart--she wanted to see her sister, sit with her, hear her news.
+Another reason was the feeling that Ellen, a beginner in the ways of
+life and household management, still needed her help and guidance. Ellen
+soon undeceived her on this point. "I really know how to manage my own
+house, Joanna," she said once or twice when the other commented and
+advised, and Joanna had been unable to enforce her ideas, owing to the
+fact that she seldom saw Ellen above once or twice a week. Her sister
+could do what she liked in her absence, and it was extraordinary how
+definite and cocksure the girl was about things she should have
+approached in the spirit of meekness and dependence on her elders.
+
+"I count my linen after it is aired--it comes in at such an inconvenient
+time that I can't attend to it then. The girls can easily hang it out on
+the horse--really, Joanna, one must trust people to do something."
+
+"Well, then, don't blame me when you're a pillowcase short."
+
+"I certainly shan't blame you," said Ellen coolly.
+
+Joanna felt put out and injured. It hurt her to see that Ellen did not
+want her supervision--she had looked forward to managing Donkey Street
+as well as Ansdore. She tried to get a hold on Ellen through Arthur
+Alce.
+
+"Arthur, it's your duty to see Ellen don't leave the bread-making to
+that cook-gal of hers. I never heard of such a notion--her laying on the
+sofa while the gal wastes coal and flour." ... "Arthur, Ellen needs a
+new churn--let her get a Wallis. It's a shame for her to be buying new
+cushions when her churn's an old butter-spoiler I wouldn't use if I was
+dead--Arthur, you're there with her, and you can make her do what I
+say."
+
+But Arthur could not, any more than Joanna, make Ellen do what she did
+not want. He had always been a mild-mannered man, and he found Ellen, in
+her different way, quite as difficult to stand up to as her sister.
+
+"I'm not going to have Jo meddling with my affairs," she would say with
+a toss of her head.
+
+
+
+
+§20
+
+Another thing that worried Joanna was the fact that the passing year
+brought no expectations to Donkey Street. One of her happiest
+anticipations in connexion with Ellen's marriage was her having a dear
+little baby whom Joanna could hug and spoil and teach. Perhaps it would
+be a little girl, and she would feel like having Ellen over again.
+
+She was bitterly disappointed when Ellen showed no signs of obliging her
+quickly, and indeed quite shocked by her sister's expressed indifference
+on the matter.
+
+"I don't care about children, Jo, and I'm over young to have one of my
+own."
+
+"Young! You're rising twenty, and mother was but eighteen when I was
+born."
+
+"Well, anyhow, I don't see why I should have a child just because you
+want one."
+
+"I don't want one. For shame to say such things, Ellen Alce."
+
+"You want me to have one, then, for your benefit."
+
+"Don't you want one yourself?"
+
+"No--not now. I've told you I don't care for children."
+
+"Then you should ought to! Dear little mites! It's a shame to talk like
+that. Oh, what wouldn't I give, Ellen, to have a child of yours in my
+arms."
+
+"Why don't you marry and have one of your own?"
+
+Joanna coloured.
+
+"I don't want to marry."
+
+"But you ought to marry if that's how you feel. Why don't you take a
+decent fellow like, say, Sam Turner, even if you don't love him, just so
+that you may have a child of your own? You're getting on, you know,
+Joanna--nearly thirty-four--you haven't much time to waste."
+
+"Well it ain't my fault," said Joanna tearfully, "that I couldn't marry
+the man I wanted to. I'd have been married more'n five year now if he
+hadn't been took. And it's sorter spoiled the taste for me, as you might
+say. I don't feel inclined to get married--it don't take my fancy, and I
+don't see how I'm ever going to bring myself to do it. That's why it ud
+be so fine for me if you had a little one, Ellen--as I could hold and
+kiss and care for and feel just as if it was my own."
+
+"Thanks," said Ellen.
+
+
+
+
+§21
+
+The winding up of her plans for her sister made it necessary that Joanna
+should cast about for fresh schemes to absorb her energies. The farm
+came to her rescue in this fresh, more subtle collapse, and she turned
+to it as vigorously as she had turned after Martin's death, and with an
+increase of that vague feeling of bitterness which had salted her
+relations with it ever since.
+
+A strong rumour was blowing on the Marsh that shortly Great Ansdore
+would come into the market. Joanna's schemes at once were given their
+focus. She would buy Great Ansdore if she had the chance. She had always
+resented its presence, so inaptly named, on the fringe of Little
+Ansdore's greatness. If she bought it, she would be adding more than
+fifty acres to her own, but it was good land--Prickett was a fool not
+to have made more of it--and the possession carried with it manorial
+rights, including the presentation of the living of Brodnyx with
+Pedlinge. When Joanna owned Great Ansdore in addition to her own
+thriving and established patrimony, she would be a big personage on the
+Three Marshes, almost "county." No tenant or yeoman from Dymchurch to
+Winchelsea, from Romney to the coast, would dare withhold his
+respect--she might even at last be admitted a member of the Farmers'
+Club....
+
+It was characteristic of her that, with this purchase in view, she made
+no efforts to save money. She set out to make it instead, and her
+money-making was all of the developing, adventurous kind--she ploughed
+more grass, and decided to keep three times the number of cows and open
+a milk-round.
+
+As a general practice only a few cows were kept on the Marsh farms, for,
+owing to the shallowness of the dykes, it was difficult to prevent their
+straying. However, Joanna boldly decided to fence all the Further
+Innings. She could spare that amount of grazing, and though she would
+have to keep down the numbers of her sheep till after she had bought
+Great Ansdore, she expected to make more money out of the milk and dairy
+produce--she might even in time open a dairy business in Rye. This would
+involve the engaging of an extra girl for the dairy and chickens, and an
+extra man to help Broadhurst with the cows, but Joanna was undaunted.
+She enjoyed a gamble, when it was not merely a question of luck, but
+also in part a matter of resource and planning and hard driving pace.
+
+"There's Joanna Godden saving her tin to buy Great Ansdore," said Bates
+of Picknye Bush to Cobb of Slinches, as they watched her choosing her
+shorthorns at Romney. She had Arthur Alce beside her, and he was, as in
+the beginning, trying to persuade her to be a little smaller in her
+ideas, but, as in the beginning, she would not listen.
+
+"Setting up cow-keeping now, is she?--Will she make as much a valiant
+wonder of that as she did with her sheep? Ha! ha!"
+
+"Ha! ha!" The two men laughed and winked and rubbed their noses, for
+they liked to remember the doleful tale of Joanna's first adventure at
+Ansdore; it made them able to survey more equably her steady rise in
+glory ever since.
+
+It was obvious to Walland Marsh that, on the whole, her big ideas had
+succeeded where the smaller, more cautious ones of her neighbours had
+failed. Of course she had been lucky--luckier than she deserved--but she
+was beginning to make men wonder if after all there wasn't policy in
+paying a big price for a good thing, rather than in obeying the rules of
+haggle which maintained on other farms. Ansdore certainly spent half as
+much again as Birdskitchen or Beggar's Bush or Misleham or Yokes Court,
+but then it had nearly twice as much to show for it. Joanna was not the
+woman who would fail to keep pace with her own prosperity--her swelling
+credit was not recorded merely in her pass-book; it was visible, indeed
+dazzling, to every eye.
+
+She had bought a new trap and mare--a very smart turn-out, with rubber
+tires and chocolate-coloured upholstery, while the mare herself had
+blood in her, and a bit of the devil too, and upset the sleepy,
+chumbling rows of farmers' horses waiting for their owners in the
+streets of Lydd or Rye. Old Stuppeny had died in the winter following
+Ellen's marriage, and had been lavishly buried, with a tombstone, and an
+obituary notice in the _Rye Observer_, at Joanna's expense. In his place
+she had now one of those good-looking, rather saucy-eyed young men, whom
+she liked to have about her in a menial capacity. He wore a
+chocolate-coloured livery made by a tailor in Marlingate, and sat on the
+seat behind Joanna with his arms folded across his chest, as she spanked
+along the Straight Mile.
+
+Joanna was now thirty-three years old, and in some ways looked older
+than her age, in others younger. Her skin, richly weather-beaten into
+reds and browns, and her strong, well-developed figure in its
+old-fashioned stays, made her look older than her eyes, which had an
+expectant, childish gravity in their brightness, and than her mouth,
+which was still a young woman's mouth, large, eager, full-lipped, with
+strong, little, white teeth. Her hair was beautiful--it had no
+sleekness, but, even in its coils, looked rough and abundant, and it
+had the same rich, apple-red colours in it as her skin.
+
+She still had plenty of admirers, for the years had made her more rather
+than less desirable in herself, and men had grown used to her
+independence among them. Moreover, she was a "catch," a maid with money,
+and this may have influenced the decorous, well-considered offers she
+had about this time from farmers inland as well as on the Marsh. She
+refused them decidedly--nevertheless, it was obvious that she was well
+pleased to have been asked; these solid, estimable proposals testified
+to a quality in her life which had not been there before.
+
+Yes--she had done well for herself on the whole, she thought. Looking
+back over her life, over the ten years she had ruled at Ansdore, she saw
+success consistently rewarding hard work and high ambition. She saw,
+too, strange gaps--parts of the road which had grown dim in her memory,
+parts where probably there had been a turning, where she might have left
+this well-laid, direct and beaten highway for more romantic field-paths.
+It was queer, when she came to think of it, that nothing in her life had
+been really successful except Ansdore, that directly she had turned off
+her high-road she had become at once as it were bogged and lantern-led.
+Socknersh ... Martin ... Ellen ... there had been by-ways, dim paths
+leading into queer unknown fields, a strange beautiful land, which now
+she would never know.
+
+
+
+
+§22
+
+Ellen watched her sister's thriving. "She's almost a lady," she said to
+herself, "and it's wasted on her." She was inclined to be dissatisfied
+with her own position in local society. When she had first married she
+had not thought it would be difficult to get herself accepted as
+"county" in the new neighbourhood, but she had soon discovered that she
+had had far more consequence as Joanna Godden's sister than she would
+ever have as Arthur Alce's wife. Even in those days Little Ansdore had
+been a farm of the first importance, and Joanna was at least notorious
+where she was not celebrated; but Donkey Street held comparatively
+humble rank in a district overshadowed by Dungemarsh Court, and Arthur
+was not the man to push himself into consideration, though Ellen had
+agreed that half her marriage portion should be spent on the improvement
+of his farm.
+
+No one of any consequence had called upon her, though her drawing-room,
+with its black cushions and Watts pictures, was more fit to receive the
+well-born and well-bred than Joanna's disgraceful parlour of oleographs
+and aspidistras and stuffed owls. The Parson had "visited" Mrs. Alce a
+few weeks after her arrival, but a "visit" is not a call, and when at
+the end of three months his wife still ignored her existence, Ellen made
+Arthur come over with her to Brodnyx and Pedlinge on the Sundays she
+felt inclined to go to church, saying that she did not care for their
+ways at Romney, where they had a lot of ceremonial centering round the
+alms-dish.
+
+It was bitter for her to have to watch Joanna's steady rise in
+importance--the only respect in which she felt bitter towards her
+sister, since it was the only respect in which she felt inferior to her.
+After a time, Joanna discovered this. At first she had enjoyed pouring
+out her triumphs to Ellen on her visits to Donkey Street, or on the
+rarer occasions when Ellen visited Ansdore.
+
+"Yes, my dear, I've made up my mind. I'm going to give a dinner-party--a
+late dinner-party. I shall ask the people to come at seven, and then not
+have dinner till the quarter, so as there'll be no chance of the food
+being kept waiting. I shall have soup and meat and a pudding, and wine
+to drink."
+
+"Who are you going to invite?" asked Ellen, with a curl of her lip.
+
+"Why, didn't I tell you? Sir Harry Trevor's coming back to North
+Farthing next month. Mrs. Tolhurst got it from Peter Crouch, who had it
+from the Woolpack yesterday. He's coming down with his married sister,
+Mrs. Williams, and I'll ask Mr. Pratt, so as there'll be two gentlemen
+and two ladies. I'd ask you, Ellen, only I know Arthur hasn't got an
+evening suit."
+
+"Thanks. I don't care about dinner-parties. Who's going to do your
+waiting?"
+
+"Mene Tekel. She's going to wear a cap, and stand in the room all the
+time."
+
+"I hope that you'll be able to hear yourselves talk through her
+breathing."
+
+It struck Joanna that Ellen was not very cordial.
+
+"I believe you want to come," she said, "and I tell you, duckie, I'll
+try and manage it. It doesn't matter about Arthur not having proper
+clothes--I'll put 'evening dress optional' on the invitations."
+
+"I shouldn't do that," said Ellen, and laughed in a way that made Joanna
+feel uncomfortable. "I really don't want to come in the least--it would
+be very dreary driving to and fro."
+
+"Then what's the matter, dearie?"
+
+"Matter? There's nothing the matter."
+
+But Joanna knew that Ellen felt sore, and failing to discover the reason
+herself at last applied to Arthur Alce.
+
+"If you ask me," said Arthur, "it's because she's only a farmer's wife."
+
+"Why should that upset her all of a sudden?"
+
+"Well, folks don't give her the consequence she'd like; and now she sees
+you having gentry at your table ..."
+
+"I'd have had her at it too, only she didn't want to come, and you
+haven't got the proper clothes. Arthur, if you take my advice, you'll go
+into Lydd this very day and buy yourself an evening suit."
+
+"Ellen won't let me. She says I'd look a clown in it."
+
+"Ellen's getting very short. What's happened to her these days?"
+
+"It's only that she likes gentlefolk and is fit to mix with them; and
+after all, Jo, I'm nothing but a pore common man."
+
+"I hope you don't complain of her, Arthur?"
+
+"Oh, no--I've no complaints--don't you think it. And don't you go saying
+anything to her, Jo."
+
+"Then what am I to do about it? I won't have her troubling you, nor
+herself, neither. I tell you what I'll do--look here!--I--I--" Joanna
+gave a loud sacrificial gulp--"I'll make it middle-day dinner instead of
+late, and then you won't have to wear evening dress, and Ellen can come
+and meet the Old Squire. She should ought to, seeing as he gave her a
+pearl locket when she was married. It won't be near so fine as having
+it in the evening, but I don't want neither her nor you to be upset--and
+I can always call it 'lunch' ..."
+
+
+
+
+§23
+
+As the result of Joanna's self-denial, Ellen and Arthur were able to
+meet Sir Harry Trevor and his sister at luncheon at Ansdore. The
+luncheon did not differ in any respect from the dinner as at first
+proposed. There was soup--much to Ellen's annoyance, as Arthur had never
+been able to master the etiquette of its consumption--and a leg of
+mutton and roast fowls, and a large fig pudding, washed down with some
+really good wine, for Joanna had asked the wine-merchant at Rye
+uncompromisingly for his best--"I don't mind what I pay so long as it's
+that"--and had been served accordingly. Mene Tekel waited, with creaking
+stays and shoes, and loud breaths down the visitors' necks as she thrust
+vegetable dishes and sauce-boats at perilous angles over their
+shoulders.
+
+Ellen provided a piquant contrast to her surroundings. As she sat there
+in her soft grey dress, with her eyes cast down under her little town
+hat, with her quiet voice, and languid, noiseless movements, anything
+more unlike the average farmer's wife of the district was difficult to
+imagine. Joanna felt annoyed with her for dressing up all quiet as a
+water-hen, but she could see that, in spite of it, her sacrifice in
+having her party transferred from the glamorous evening hour had been
+justified. Both the Old Squire and his sister were obviously interested
+in Ellen Alce--he in the naïve unguarded way of the male, she more
+subtly and not without a dash of patronage.
+
+Mrs. Williams always took an interest in any woman she thought
+downtrodden, as her intuition told her Ellen was by that coarse, hairy
+creature, Arthur Alce. She herself had disposed of an unsatisfactory
+husband with great decision and resource, and, perhaps as a
+thank-offering, had devoted the rest of her life to woman's
+emancipation. She travelled about the country lecturing for a
+well-known suffrage society, and was bitterly disappointed in Joanna
+Godden because she expressed herself quite satisfied without the vote.
+
+"But don't you feel it humiliating to see your carter and your cowman
+and your shepherd boy all go up to Rye to vote on polling-day, while
+you, who own this farm, and have such a stake in the country, aren't
+allowed to do so?"
+
+"It only means as I've got eight votes instead of one," said Joanna,
+"and don't have the trouble of going to the poll, neither. Not one of my
+men would dare vote but as I told him, so reckon I do better than most
+at the elections."
+
+Mrs. Williams told Joanna that it was such opinions which were keeping
+back the country from some goal unspecified.
+
+"Besides, you have to think of other women, Miss Godden--other women who
+aren't so fortunate and independent as yourself."
+
+She gave a long glance at Ellen, whose downcast eyelids flickered.
+
+"I don't care about other women," said Joanna, "if they won't stand up
+for themselves, I can't help them. It's easy enough to stand up to a
+man. I don't think much of men, neither. I like 'em, but I can't think
+any shakes of their doings. That's why I'd sooner they did their own
+voting and mine too. Now, Mene Tekel, can't you see the Squire's ate all
+his cabbage?--You hand him the dish again--not under his chin--he don't
+want to eat out of it--but low down, so as he can get hold of the
+spoon...."
+
+Joanna looked upon her luncheon party as a great success, and her
+pleasure was increased by the fact that soon after it Sir Harry Trevor
+and his sister paid a ceremonial call on Ellen at Donkey Street.
+
+"Now she'll be pleased," thought Joanna, "it's always what she's been
+hankering after--having gentlefolk call on her and leave their cards. It
+ain't my fault it hasn't happened earlier.... I'm unaccountable glad she
+met them at my house. It'll learn her to think prouder of me."
+
+
+
+
+§24
+
+That spring and summer Sir Harry Trevor was a good deal at North
+Farthing, and it was rumoured on the Marsh that he had run through the
+money so magnanimously left him and had been driven home to economize.
+Joanna did not see as much of him as in the old days--he had given up
+his attempts at farming, and had let off all the North Farthing land
+except the actual garden and paddock. He came to see her once or twice,
+and she went about as rarely to see him. It struck her that he had
+changed in many ways, and she wondered a little where he had been and
+what he had done during the last four years. He did not look any older.
+Some queer, rather unpleasant lines had traced themselves at the corners
+of his mouth and eyes, but strangely enough, though they added to his
+characteristic air of humorous sophistication, they also added to his
+youth, for they were lines of desire, of feeling ... perhaps in his four
+years of absence from the Marsh he had learned how to feel at last, and
+had found youth instead of age in the commotions which feeling brings.
+Though he must be fifty-five, he looked scarcely more than forty--and he
+had a queer, weak, loose, emotional air about him that she found it hard
+to account for.
+
+In the circumstances she did not press invitations upon him, she had no
+time to waste on men who did not appreciate her as a woman--which the
+Squire, in spite of his susceptibility, obviously failed to do. From
+June to August she met him only once, and that was at Ellen's. Neither
+did she see very much of Ellen that summer--her life was too full of
+hard work, as a substitute for economy.
+
+Curiously enough next time she went to see her sister Sir Harry was
+there again.
+
+"Hullo! I always seem to be meeting you here," she said--"and nowhere
+else--you never come to see me now."
+
+Sir Harry grinned.
+
+"You're always so mortal busy, Jo--I'd feel in your way. Now this little
+woman never seems to have much to do. You're a lazy little thing,
+Ellen--I don't believe you ever move off the sofa, except to the
+piano."
+
+Joanna was surprised to see him on such familiar terms with her
+sister--"Ellen," indeed! He'd no right to call her that.
+
+"Mrs. Alce hasn't nothing beyond her housework to do--and any woman
+worth her keep 'ull get shut of that in the morning. Now I've got
+everything on my hands--and I've no good, kind Arthur to look after me
+neither," and Joanna beamed on Arthur Alce as he stirred his tea at the
+end of the table.
+
+"And jolly thankful you are that you haven't," said the Squire. "Own up,
+Joanna, and say that the last thing you'd want in life would be someone
+to look after you."
+
+"Well, it strikes me," said Joanna, "as most of the people I meet want
+looking after themselves, and it 'ud be just about waste for any of 'em
+to start looking after me."
+
+Arthur Alce unexpectedly murmured something that sounded like "Hear,
+hear."
+
+When Joanna left, he brought round her trap, as the saucy-eyed young
+groom was having a day off in Rye.
+
+"How've your turnips done?" he asked.
+
+"Not so good as last year, but the wurzels are fine."
+
+"Mine might be doing better"--he stood fumbling with a trace-buckle.
+
+"Has that come loose?" asked Joanna.
+
+"Nun-no. I hope your little lady liked her oats."
+
+"She looks in good heart--watch her tugging. You've undone that buckle,
+Arthur."
+
+"So I have--I was just fidgeting."
+
+He fastened the strap again, his fingers moving clumsily and slowly. It
+struck her that he was trying to gain time, that he wanted to tell her
+something.
+
+"Anything the matter, Arthur?"
+
+"Nothing--why?"
+
+"Oh, it struck me you looked worried."
+
+"What should I be worried about?"
+
+"There's a lot of things you might be worried about. What did you tell
+me about your wurzels?"
+
+"They're not so bad."
+
+"Then I can't see as there's any need for you to look glum."
+
+"No more there ain't," said Arthur in the voice of a man making a
+desperate decision.
+
+
+
+
+§25
+
+It was not till nearly a month later that Joanna heard that people were
+"talking" about Ellen and Sir Harry. Gossip generally took some time to
+reach her, owing to her sex, which was not privileged to frequent the
+Woolpack bar, where rumours invariably had a large private circulation
+before they were finally published at some auction or market. She
+resented this disability, but in spite of the general daring of her
+outlook and behaviour, nothing would have induced her to enter the
+Woolpack save by the discreet door of the landlady's parlour, where she
+occasionally sipped a glass of ale. However, she had means of acquiring
+knowledge, though not so quickly as those women who were provided with
+husbands and sons. On this occasion Mene Tekel Fagge brought the news,
+through the looker at Slinches, with whom she was walking out.
+
+"That'll do, Mene," said Joanna to her handmaiden, "you always was the
+one to pick up idle tales, and Dansay should ought to be ashamed of
+himself, drinking and talking the way he does. Now you go and tell Peter
+Crouch to bring me round the trap."
+
+She drove off to Donkey Street, carrying her scandal to its source. She
+was extremely angry--not that for one moment she believed in the truth
+of those accusations brought against her sister, but Ellen was just the
+sort of girl, with her airs and notions, to get herself talked about at
+the Woolpack, and it was disgraceful to have such things said about one,
+even if they were not true. There was a prickly heat of shame in
+Joanna's blood as she hustled the mare over the white loops of the
+Romney road.
+
+The encounter with Ellen made her angrier still.
+
+"I don't care what they say," said her sister, "why should I mind what a
+public-house bar says against me?"
+
+"Well, you should ought to mind--it's shameful."
+
+"They've said plenty against you."
+
+"Not that sort of thing."
+
+"I'd rather have that sort of thing said about me than some."
+
+"Ellen!"
+
+"Well, the Squire's isn't a bad name to have coupled with mine, if they
+must couple somebody's."
+
+"I wonder you ain't afraid of being struck dead, talking like that--you
+with the most kind, good-tempered and lawful husband that ever was."
+
+"Do you imagine that I'm disloyal to Arthur?"
+
+"Howsumever could you think I'd dream of such a thing?"
+
+"Well, it's the way you're talking."
+
+"It ain't."
+
+"Then why are you angry?"
+
+"Because you shouldn't ought to get gossiped about like that."
+
+"It isn't my fault."
+
+"It is. You shouldn't ought to have Sir Harry about the place as much as
+you do. The last two times I've been here, he's been too."
+
+"I like him--he amuses me."
+
+"I like him too, but he ain't worth nothing, and he's got a bad name.
+You get shut of him, Ellen--I know him, and I know a bit about him; he
+ain't the sort of man to have coming to your house when folks are
+talking."
+
+"You have him to yours--whenever you can get him."
+
+"But then I'm a single woman, and he being a single man there's no harm
+in it."
+
+"Do you think that a married woman should know no man but her husband?"
+
+"What did she marry a husband for?"
+
+"Really, Joanna ... however, there's no use arguing with you. I'm sorry
+you're annoyed at the gossip, but to keep out of the gossip here one
+would have to live like a cabbage. You haven't exactly kept out of it
+yourself."
+
+"Have done, do, with telling me that. They only talk about me because
+I'm more go-ahead than any of 'em, and make more money. Anyone may talk
+about you that way and I shan't mind. But to have it said at the
+Woolpack as you, a married woman, lets a man like Sir Harry be for ever
+hanging around your house ..."
+
+"Are you jealous?" said Ellen softly. "Poor old Jo--I'm sorry if I've
+taken _another_ of your men."
+
+Joanna opened her mouth and stared at her. At first she hardly
+understood, then, suddenly grasping what was in Ellen's mind, she took
+in her breath for a torrential explanation of the whole matter. But the
+next minute she realized that this was hardly the moment to say anything
+which would prejudice her sister against Arthur Alce. If Ellen would
+value him more as a robbery, then let her persist in her delusion. The
+effort of silence was so great that Joanna became purple and
+apoplectic--with a wild, grabbing gesture she turned away, and burst out
+of the house into the drive, where her trap was waiting.
+
+
+
+
+§26
+
+The next morning Mene Tekel brought fresh news from the Woolpack, and
+this time it was of a different quality, warranted to allay the seething
+of Joanna's moral sense. Sir Harry Trevor had sold North Farthing to a
+retired bootmaker. He was going to the South of France for the winter,
+and was then coming back to his sister's flat in London, while she went
+for a lecturing tour in the United States. The Woolpack was very
+definitely and minutely informed as to his doings, and had built its
+knowledge into the theory that he must have had some more money left
+him.
+
+Joanna was delighted--she forgave Sir Harry, and Ellen too, which was a
+hard matter. None the less, as November approached through the showers
+and floods, she felt a little anxious lest he should delay his going or
+perhaps even revoke it. However, the first week of the month saw the
+arrival of the bootmaker from Deal, with two van-loads of furniture, and
+his wife and four grown-up daughters--all as ugly as roots, said the
+Woolpack. The Squire's furniture was sold by auction at Dover, from
+which port his sailing was in due course guaranteed by credible
+eye-witnesses. Joanna once more breathed freely. No one could talk
+about him and Ellen now--that disgraceful scandal, which seemed to lower
+Ellen to the level of Marsh dairy-girls in trouble, and had about it too
+that strange luciferian flavour of "the sins of Society," that scandal
+had been killed, and its dead body taken away in the Dover mail.
+
+Now that he was gone, and no longer a source of danger to her family's
+reputation, she found herself liking Sir Harry again. He had always been
+friendly, and though she fundamentally disapproved of his "ways," she
+was woman enough to be thrilled by his lurid reputation. Moreover, he
+provided a link, her last living link, with Martin's days--now that
+strange women kept rabbits in the backyards of North Farthing and the
+rooms were full of the Deal bootmaker's resplendent suites, that time of
+dew and gold and dreams seemed to have faded still further off. For many
+years it had lain far away on the horizon, but now it seemed to have
+faded off the earth altogether, and to live only in the sunset sky or in
+the dim moon-risings, which sometimes woke her out of her sleep with a
+start, as if she slipped on the verge of some troubling memory.
+
+This kindlier state of affairs lasted for about a month, during which
+Joanna saw very little of Ellen. She was at rest about her sister, for
+the fact that Ellen might be feeling lonely and unhappy at the departure
+of her friend did not trouble her in the least; such emotions, so vile
+in their source, could not call for any sympathy. Besides, she was busy,
+hunting for a new cowman to work under Broadhurst, whose undertakings,
+since the establishment of the milk-round, had almost come to equal
+those of the looker in activity and importance.
+
+She was just about to set out one morning for a farm near Brenzett, when
+she saw Arthur Alce come up to the door on horseback.
+
+"Hullo, Jo!" he called rather anxiously through the window. "Have you
+got Ellen?"
+
+"I?--No. Why should I have her, pray?"
+
+"Because I ain't got her."
+
+"What d'you mean? Get down, Arthur, and come and talk to me in here.
+Don't let everyone hear you shouting like that."
+
+Arthur hitched his horse to the paling and came in.
+
+"I thought maybe I'd find her here," he said. "I ain't seen her since
+breakfast."
+
+"There's other places she could have gone besides here. Maybe she's gone
+shopping in Romney and forgot to tell you."
+
+"It's queer her starting off like that without a word--and she's took
+her liddle bag and a few bits of things with her too."
+
+"What things?--Arthur! Why couldn't you tell me that before?"
+
+"I was going to.... I'm feeling a bit anxious, Jo.... I've a feeling
+she's gone after that Old Squire."
+
+"You dare say such a thing! Arthur, I'm ashamed of you, believing such a
+thing of your wife and my sister."
+
+"Well, she was unaccountable set on him."
+
+"Nonsense! He just amused her. It's you whose wife she is."
+
+"She's scarce given me a word more'n in the way of business, as you
+might say, this last three month. And she won't let me touch her."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
+
+"I didn't want to trouble you, and I thought maybe it was a private
+matter."
+
+"You should have told me the drackly minute Ellen started not to treat
+you proper. I'd have spoken to her.... Now we're in for a valiant
+terrification."
+
+"I'm unaccountable sorry, Jo."
+
+"How long has she been gone?"
+
+"Since around nine. I went out to see the tegs, counting them up to go
+inland, and when I came in for dinner the gal told me as Ellen had gone
+out soon after breakfast, and had told her to see as I got my dinner, as
+she wouldn't be back."
+
+"Why didn't you start after her at once?"
+
+"Well, I made sure as she'd gone to you. Then I began to think over
+things and put 'em together, and I found she'd taken her liddle bag, and
+I got scared. I never liked her seeing such a lot of that man."
+
+"Then why didn't you stop it?"
+
+"How could I?"
+
+"I could have--and the way people talked.... I'd have locked her up
+sooner than ... well, it's too late now ... the boat went at twelve. Oh,
+Arthur, why didn't you watch her properly? Why did you let her go like
+that? Think of it! What's to become of her--away in foreign parts with a
+man who ain't her husband ... my liddle Ellen ... oh, it's
+turble--turble--"
+
+Her speech suddenly roughened into the Doric of the Marsh, and she sat
+down heavily, dropping her head to her knees.
+
+"Joanna--don't, don't ... don't take on, Jo."
+
+He had not seen her cry before, and now she frightened him. Her
+shoulders heaved, and great panting sobs shook her broad back.
+
+"My liddle Ellen ... my treasure, my duckie ... oh, why have you left
+us?... You could have come back to me if you didn't like it.... Oh,
+Ellen, where are you?... Come back ..."
+
+Arthur stood motionless beside her, his frame rigid, his protuberant
+blue eyes staring through the window at the horizon. He longed to take
+Joanna in his arms, caress and comfort her, but he knew that he must
+not.
+
+"Cheer up," he said at last in a husky voice, "maybe it ain't so bad as
+you think. Maybe I'll find her at home when I get back to Donkey
+Street."
+
+"Not if she took her bag. Oh, whatsumever shall we do?--whatsumever
+shall we do?"
+
+"We can but wait. If she don't come back, maybe she'll send me a
+letter."
+
+"It queers me how you can speak so light of it."
+
+"I speak light?"
+
+"Yes, you don't seem to tumble to it."
+
+"Reckon I do tumble to it, but what can we do?"
+
+"You shouldn't have left her alone all that time from breakfast till
+dinner--if you'd gone after her at the start you could have brought her
+back. You should ought to have kicked Sir Harry out of Donkey Street
+before the start. I'd have done it surely. Reckon I love Ellen more'n
+you."
+
+"Reckon you do, Jo. I tell you, I ought never to have married her--since
+it was you I cared for all along."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Arthur. I'm ashamed of you to choose this time to
+say such an immoral thing."
+
+"It ain't immoral--it's the truth."
+
+"Well, it shouldn't ought to be the truth. When you married Ellen you'd
+no business to go on caring for me. I guess all this is a judgment on
+you, caring for a woman when you'd married her sister."
+
+"You ain't yourself, Jo," said Arthur sadly, "and there's no sense
+arguing with you. I'll go away till you've got over it. Maybe I'll have
+some news for you to-morrow morning."
+
+
+
+
+§27
+
+To-morrow morning he had a letter from Ellen herself. He brought it at
+once to a strangely drooping and weary-eyed Joanna, and read it again
+over her shoulder.
+
+     "DEAR ARTHUR," it ran--
+
+     "I'm afraid this will hurt you and Joanna terribly, but I expect
+     you have already guessed what has happened. I am on my way to San
+     Remo, to join Sir Harry Trevor, and I am never coming back, because
+     I know now that I ought not to have married you. I do not ask you
+     to forgive me, and I'm sure Joanna won't, but I had to think of my
+     own happiness, and I never was a good wife to you. Believe me, I
+     have done my best--I said 'Good-bye for ever' to Harry a month ago,
+     but ever since then my life has been one long misery; I cannot live
+     without him.
+
+     "ELLEN."
+
+"Well, it's only told us what we knew already," said Joanna with a gulp,
+"but now we're sure we can do better than just talk about it."
+
+"What can we do?"
+
+"We can get the Old Squire's address from somebody--Mrs. Williams or the
+people at North Farthing House--and then send a telegram after her,
+telling her to come back."
+
+"That won't be much use."
+
+"It'll be something, anyway. Maybe when she gets out there in foreign
+parts she won't be so pleased--or maybe he never asked her to come, and
+he'll have changed his mind about her. We must try and get her back.
+Where have you told your folk she's gone to?"
+
+"I've told 'em she's gone to stop with you."
+
+"Well, I can't pretend she's here. You might have thought of something
+better, Arthur."
+
+"I can't think of nothing else."
+
+"You just about try. If only we can get her somewheres for a week, so as
+to have time to write and tell her as all will be forgiven and you'll
+take her back...."
+
+Arthur looked mutinous.
+
+"I don't know as I want her back."
+
+"Arthur, you must. Otherways, everybody ull have to know what's
+happened."
+
+"But she didn't like being with me, or she wouldn't have gone away."
+
+"She liked it well enough, or she wouldn't have stayed with you two
+year. Arthur, you must have her back, you just about must. You send her
+a telegram saying as you'll have her back if only she'll come this once,
+before folks find out where she's gone."
+
+Arthur's resistance gradually failed before Joanna's entreaties and
+persuasions. He could not withstand Jo when her blue eyes were all dull
+with tears, and her voice was hoarse and frantic. For some months now
+his marriage had seemed to him a wrong and immoral thing, but he rather
+sorrowfully told himself that having made the first false step he could
+not now turn round and come back, even if Ellen herself had broken away.
+He rode off to find out the Squire's address, and send his wife the
+summoning and forgiving telegram.
+
+
+
+
+§28
+
+It was not perhaps surprising that, in spite of a lavish and exceedingly
+expensive offer of forgiveness, Ellen did not come home. Over a week
+passed without even an acknowledgment of the telegram, which she must
+have found reproachfully awaiting her arrival--the symbol of Walland
+Marsh pursuing her into the remoteness of a new life and a strange
+country.
+
+As might have been expected Joanna felt this period of waiting and
+inactivity far more than she had felt the actual shock. She had all the
+weight on her shoulders of a sustained deception. She and Arthur had to
+dress up a story to deceive the neighbourhood, and they gave out that
+Ellen was in London, staying with Mrs. Williams--her husband had
+forbidden her to go, so she had run away, and now there would have to be
+some give and take on both sides before she could come back. Joanna had
+been inspired to circulate this legend by the discovery that Ellen
+actually had taken a ticket for London. She had probably guessed the
+sensation that her taking a ticket to Dover would arouse at the local
+station, so had gone first to London and travelled down by the boat
+express. It was all very cunning, and Joanna thought she saw the Old
+Squire's experienced hand in it. Of course it might be true that he had
+not persuaded Ellen to come out to him, but that she had gone to him on
+a sudden impulse.... But even Joanna's plunging instinct realized that
+her sister was not the sort to take desperate risks for love's sake, and
+the whole thing had about it a sly, concerted air, which made her think
+that Sir Harry was not only privy, but a prime mover.
+
+After some ten days of anxiety, self-consciousness, shame and
+exasperation, these suspicions were confirmed by a letter from the
+Squire himself. He wrote from Oepedaletti, a small place near San Remo,
+and he wrote charmingly. No other adverb could qualify the peculiarly
+suave, tactful, humorous and gracious style in which not only he flung a
+mantle of romance over his and Ellen's behaviour (which till then,
+judged by the standards of Ansdore, had been just drably "wicked"), but
+by some mysterious means brought in Joanna as a third conspirator,
+linked by a broad and kindly intuition with himself and Ellen against a
+censorious world.
+
+     "You, who know Ellen so well, will realize that she has never till
+     now had her birthright. You did your best for her, but both of you
+     were bounded north, south, east and west by Walland Marsh. I wish
+     you could see her now, beside me on the terrace--she is like a
+     little finch in the sunshine of its first spring day. Her only
+     trouble is her fear of you, her fear that you will not understand.
+     But I tell her I would trust you first of all the world to do that.
+     As a woman of the world, you must realize exactly what public
+     opinion is worth--if you yourself had bowed down to it, where would
+     you be now? Ellen is only doing now what you did for yourself
+     eleven years ago."
+
+Joanna's feelings were divided between gratification at the flattery she
+never could resist, and a fierce resentment at the insult offered her in
+supposing she could ever wink at such "goings on." The more indignant
+emotions predominated in the letter she wrote Sir Harry, for she knew
+well enough that the flattery was not sincere--he was merely out to
+propitiate.
+
+Her feelings towards Ellen were exceedingly bitter, and the letter she
+wrote her was a rough one:--
+
+     "You're nothing but a baggage. It makes no difference that you wear
+     fine clothes and shoes that he's bought you to your shame. You're
+     just every bit as low as Martha Tilden whom I got shut of ten year
+     ago for no worse than you've done."
+
+Nevertheless, she insisted that Ellen should come home. She guaranteed
+Arthur's forgiveness, and--somewhat rashly--the neighbours' discretion.
+"I've told them you're in London with Mrs. Williams. But that won't hold
+good much more than another week. So be quick and come home, before it's
+too late."
+
+Unfortunately the facts of Ellen's absence were already beginning to
+leak out. People did not believe in the London story. Had not the Old
+Squire's visits to Donkey Street been the tattle of the Marsh for six
+months? She was condemned not only at the Woolpack, but at the three
+markets of Rye, Lydd and Romney. Joanna was furious.
+
+"It's that Post Office," she exclaimed, and the remark was not quite
+unjust. The contents of telegrams had always had an alarming way of
+spreading themselves over the district, and Joanna felt sure that Miss
+Godfrey would have both made and published her own conclusions on the
+large amount of foreign correspondence now received at Ansdore.
+
+Ellen herself was the next to write. She wrote impenitently and
+decidedly. She would never come back, so there was no good either Joanna
+or Arthur expecting it. She had left Donkey Street because she could not
+endure its cramped ways any longer, and it was unreasonable to expect
+her to return.
+
+"If Arthur has any feeling for me left, he will divorce me. He can
+easily do it, and then we shall both be free to re-marry."
+
+"Reckon she thinks the old Squire ud like to marry her," said Alce, "I'd
+be glad if I thought so well of him."
+
+"He can't marry her, seeing as she's your wife."
+
+"If we were divorced, she wouldn't be."
+
+"She would. You were made man and wife in Pedlinge church, as I saw with
+my own eyes, and I'll never believe as what was done then can be undone
+just by having some stuff written in the papers."
+
+"It's a lawyer's business," said Arthur.
+
+"I can't see that," said Joanna--"a parson married you, so reckon a
+parson must unmarry you."
+
+"He wouldn't do it. It's a lawyer's job."
+
+"I'd thank my looker if he went about undoing my carter's work. Those
+lawyers want to put their heads in everywhere. And as for Ellen, all I
+can say is, it's just like her wanting the Ten Commandments altered to
+suit her convenience. Reckon they ain't refined and high-class enough
+for her. But she may ask for a divorce till she's black in the face--she
+shan't get it."
+
+So Ellen had to remain--very much against the grain, for she was
+fundamentally respectable--a breaker of the law. She wrote once or twice
+more on the subject, appealing to Arthur, since Joanna's reply had shown
+her exactly how much quarter she could expect. But Arthur was not to be
+won, for apart from Joanna's domination, and his own unsophisticated
+beliefs in the permanence of marriage, his suspicions were roused by the
+Old Squire's silence on the matter. At no point did he join his appeals
+and arguments with Ellen's, though he had been ready enough to write to
+excuse and explain.... No, Arthur felt that love and wisdom lay not in
+sanctifying Ellen in her new ways with the blessing of the law, but in
+leaving the old open for her to come back to when the new should perhaps
+grow hard. "That chap 'ull get shut of her--I don't trust him--and then
+she'll want to come back to me or Jo."
+
+So he wrote with boring reiteration of his willingness to receive her
+home again as soon as she chose to return, and assured her that he and
+Joanna had still managed to keep the secret of her departure, so that
+she need not fear scornful tongues. They had given the Marsh to
+understand that no settlement having been arrived at, Ellen had
+accompanied Mrs. Williams to the South of France, hoping that things
+would have improved on her return. This would account for the foreign
+post-marks, and both he and Joanna were more proud of their cunning than
+was quite warrantable from its results.
+
+
+
+
+§29
+
+That winter brought Great Ansdore at last into the market. It would have
+come in before had not Joanna so rashly bragged of her intention to buy
+it. As it was--"I guess I'll get a bit more out of the old gal by
+holding on," said Prickett disrespectfully, and he held on till Joanna's
+impatience about equalled his extremity; whereupon he sold it to her for
+not over fifty per cent, more than he would have asked had he not known
+of her ambition. She paid the price manfully, and Prickett went out with
+his few sticks.
+
+The Woolpack was inclined to be contemptuous.
+
+"Five thousand pounds for Prickett's old shacks, and his mouldy pastures
+that are all burdock and fluke. If Joanna Godden had had any know, she
+could have beaten him down fifteen hundred--he was bound to sell, and
+she was a fool not to make him sell at her price."
+
+But when Joanna wanted a thing she did not mind paying for it, and she
+had wanted Great Ansdore very much, though no one knew better than she
+that it was shacky and mouldy. For long it had mocked with its proud
+title the triumphs of Little Ansdore. Now the whole manor of Ansdore
+was hers, Great and Little, and with it she held the living of Brodnyx
+and Pedlinge--it was she, of her own might, who would appoint the next
+Rector, and for some time she imagined that she had it in her power to
+turn out Mr. Pratt.
+
+She at once set to work, putting her new domain in order. Some of the
+pasture she grubbed up for spring sowings, the rest she drained by
+cutting a new channel from the Kent Ditch to the White Kemp Sewer. She
+re-roofed the barns with slate, and painted and re-tiled the
+dwelling-house. This last she decided to let to some family of
+gentlepeople, while herself keeping on the farm and the barns. The
+dwelling-house of Little Ansdore, though more flat and spreading, was in
+every way superior to that of Great Ansdore, which was rather new and
+inclined to gimcrackiness, having been built on the site of the first
+dwelling, burnt down somewhere in the eighties. Besides, she loved
+Little Ansdore for its associations--under its roof she had been born
+and her father had been born, under its roof she had known love and
+sorrow and denial and victory; she could not bear to think of leaving
+it. The queer, low house, with its mixture of spaciousness and
+crookedness, its huge, sag-ceilinged rooms and narrow, twisting
+passages, was almost a personality to her now, one of the Godden family,
+the last of kin that had remained kind.
+
+Her activities were merciful in crowding what would otherwise have been
+a sorrowful period of emptiness and anxiety. It is true that Ellen's
+behaviour had done much to spoil her triumph, both in the neighbourhood
+and in her own eyes, but she had not time to be thinking of it always.
+Visits to Rye, either to her lawyers or to the decorators and
+paper-hangers, the engaging of extra hands, both temporary and
+permanent, for the extra work, the supervising of labourers and workmen
+whom she never could trust to do their job without her ... all these
+crowded her cares into a few hours of evening or an occasionally wakeful
+night.
+
+But every now and then she must suffer. Sometimes she would be
+overwhelmed, in the midst of all her triumphant business, with a sense
+of personal failure. She had succeeded where most women are hopeless
+failures, but where so many women are successful and satisfied she had
+failed and gone empty. She had no home, beyond what was involved in the
+walls of this ancient dwelling, the womb and grave of her existence--she
+had lost the man she loved, had been unable to settle herself
+comfortably with another, and now she had lost Ellen, the little sister,
+who had managed to hold at least a part of that over-running love, which
+since Martin's death had had only broken cisterns to flow into.
+
+The last catastrophe now loomed the largest. Joanna no longer shed tears
+for Martin, but she shed many for Ellen, either into her own pillow, or
+into the flowery quilt of the flowery room which inconsequently she held
+sacred to the memory of the girl who had despised it. Her grief for
+Ellen was mixed with anxiety and with shame. What would become of her?
+Joanna could not, would not, believe that she would never come back. Yet
+what if she came?... In Joanna's eyes, and in the eyes of all the
+neighbourhood, Ellen had committed a crime which raised a barrier
+between her and ordinary folk. Between Ellen and her sister now stood
+the wall of strange, new conditions--conditions that could ignore the
+sonorous Thou Shalt Not, which Joanna never saw apart from Mr. Pratt in
+his surplice and hood, standing under the Lion and the Unicorn, while
+all the farmers and householders of the Marsh murmured into their Prayer
+Books--"Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this
+law." She could not think of Ellen without this picture rising up
+between them, and sometimes in church she would be overwhelmed with a
+bitter shame, and in the lonely enclosure of her great cattle-box pew
+would stuff her fingers into her ears, so that she should not hear the
+dreadful words of her sister's condemnation.
+
+She had moments, too, of an even bitterer shame--strange, terrible, and
+mercifully rare times when her attitude towards Ellen was not of
+judgment or of care or of longing, but of envy. Sometimes she would be
+overwhelmed with a sense of Ellen's happiness in being loved, even if
+the love was unlawful. She had never felt this during the years that her
+sister had lived with Alce; the thought of his affection had brought her
+nothing but happiness and content. Now, on sinister occasions, she
+would find herself thinking of Ellen cherished and spoiled, protected
+and caressed, living the life of love--and a desperate longing would
+come to her to enjoy what her sister enjoyed, to be kissed and stroked
+and made much of and taken care of, to see some man laying schemes and
+taking risks for her ... sometimes she felt that she would like to see
+all the fullness of her life at Ansdore, all her honour on the Three
+Marshes, blown to the winds if only in their stead she could have just
+ordinary human love, with or without the law.
+
+Poor Joanna was overwhelmed with horror at herself--sometimes she
+thought she must be possessed by a devil. She must be very wicked--in
+her heart just as wicked as Ellen. What could she do to cast out this
+dumb, tearing spirit?--should she marry one of her admirers on the
+Marsh, and trust to his humdrum devotion to satisfy her devouring need?
+Even in her despair and panic she knew that she could not do this. It
+was love that she must have--the same sort of love that she had given
+Martin; that alone could bring her the joys she now envied in her
+sister. And love--how shall it be found?--Who shall go out to seek it?
+
+
+
+
+§30
+
+Towards the spring, Ellen wrote again, breaking the silence of several
+weeks. She wrote in a different tone--some change had passed over her.
+She no longer asked Arthur to divorce her--on the contrary she hinted
+her thanks for his magnanimity in not having done so. Evidently she no
+longer counted on marrying Sir Harry Trevor, perhaps, even, she did not
+wish to. But in one point she had not changed--she was not coming back
+to her husband.
+
+"I couldn't bear to live that life again, especially after what's
+happened. It's not his fault--it's simply that I'm different. If he
+wants his freedom, I suggest that he should let me divorce him--it could
+easily be arranged. He should go and see a really good lawyer in
+London."
+
+Yes--Ellen spoke truly when she said that she was "different." Her
+cavalier dealings with the situation, the glib way she spoke of divorce,
+the insult she flung at the respectable form of Huxtable, Vidler and
+Huxtable by suggesting that Arthur should consult "a really good lawyer
+in London," all showed how far she had travelled from the ways of
+Walland Marsh.
+
+"What's she after now?" asked Joanna.
+
+"Reckon they're getting tired of each other."
+
+"She don't say so."
+
+"No--she wants to find out which way the land lays first."
+
+"I'll write and tell her she can come back and live along of me, if she
+won't go to you."
+
+"Then I'll have to be leaving these parts--I couldn't be at Donkey
+Street and her at Ansdore."
+
+"Reckon you could--she can go out of the way when you call."
+
+"It wouldn't be seemly."
+
+"Where ud you go?"
+
+"I've no notion. But reckon all this ain't the question yet. Ellen won't
+come back to you no more than she'll come back to me."
+
+"She'll just about have to come if she gets shut of the Old Squire,
+seeing as she's got no more than twelve pounds a year of her own. Reckon
+poor father was a wise man when he left Ansdore to me and not to both of
+us--you'd almost think he'd guessed what she was coming to."
+
+Joanna wrote to Ellen and made her offer. Her sister wrote back at great
+length, and rather pathetically--"Harry" was going on to Venice, and she
+did not think she would go with him--"when one gets to know a person,
+Jo, one sometimes finds they are not quite what one thought them." She
+would like to be by herself for a bit, but she did not want to come back
+to Ansdore, even if Arthur went away--"it would be very awkward after
+what has happened." She begged Jo to be generous and make her some small
+allowance--"Harry would provide for me if he hadn't had such terrible
+bad luck--he never was very well off, you know, and he can't manage
+unless we keep together. I know you wouldn't like me to be tied to him
+just by money considerations."
+
+Joanna was bewildered by the letter. She could have understood Ellen
+turning in horror and loathing from the partner of her guilt, but she
+could not understand this wary and matter-of-fact separation. What was
+her sister made of? "Harry would provide for me" ... would she really
+have accepted such a provision? Joanna's ears grew red. "I'll make her
+come home," she exclaimed savagely--"she'll have to come if she's got no
+money."
+
+"Maybe she'll stop along of him," said Arthur.
+
+"Then let her--I don't care. But she shan't have my money to live on by
+herself in foreign parts, taking up with any man that comes her way; for
+I don't trust her now--I reckon she's lost to shame."
+
+She wrote Ellen to this effect, and, not surprisingly, received no
+answer. She felt hard and desperate--the thought that she was perhaps
+binding her sister to her misdoing gave her only occasional spasms of
+remorse. Sometimes she would feel as if all her being and all her
+history, Ansdore and her father's memory, disowned her sister, and that
+she could never take her back into her life again, however
+penitent--"She's mocked at our good ways--she's loose, she's low." At
+other times her heart melted towards Ellen in weakness, and she knew
+within herself that no matter what she did, she would always be her
+little sister, her child, her darling, whom all her life she had
+cherished and could never cast out.
+
+She said nothing about these swaying feelings to Arthur--she had of late
+grown far more secretive about herself--as for him, he took things as
+they came. He found a wondrous quiet in this time, when he was allowed
+to serve Joanna as in days of old. He did not think of marrying her--he
+knew that even if it was true that the lawyers could set aside parson's
+word, Joanna would not take him now, any more than she would have taken
+him five or ten or fifteen years ago; she did not think about him in
+that way. On the other hand she appreciated his company and his
+services. He called at Ansdore two or three times a week, and ran her
+errands for her. It was almost like old times, and in his heart he knew
+and was ashamed to know that he hoped Ellen would never come back. If
+she came back either to him or to Joanna, these days of quiet happiness
+would end. Meantime, he would not think of it--he was Joanna's servant,
+and when she could not be in two places at once it was his joy and
+privilege to be in one of them. "I could live like this for ever,
+surely," he said to himself, as he sat stirring his solitary cup of tea
+at Donkey Street, knowing that he was to call at Ansdore the next
+morning. That was the morning he met Joanna in the drive, hatless, and
+holding a piece of paper in her hand.
+
+"I've heard from Ellen--she's telegraphed from Venice--she's coming
+home."
+
+
+
+
+§31
+
+Now that she knew Ellen was coming, Joanna had nothing in her heart but
+joy and angry love. Ellen was coming back, at last, after many
+wanderings--and she saw now that these wanderings included the years of
+her life with Alce--she was coming back to Ansdore and the old home.
+Joanna forgot how much she had hated it, would not think that this
+precious return was merely the action of a woman without resources. She
+gave herself up to the joy of preparing a welcome--as splendidly and
+elaborately as she had prepared for her sister's return from school.
+This time, however, she went further, and actually made some concessions
+to Ellen's taste. She remembered that she liked dull die-away colours
+"like the mould on jam," so she took down the pink curtains and folded
+away the pink bedspread, and put in their places material that the shop
+at Rye assured her was "art green"--which, in combination with the
+crimson, flowery walls and floor contrived most effectually to suggest a
+scum of grey-green mould on a pot of especially vivid strawberry jam.
+
+But she was angry too--her heart burned to think not only of Ellen's sin
+but of the casual way in which she treated it. "I won't have none of her
+loose notions here," said Joanna grimly. She made up her mind to give
+her sister a good talking to, to convince her of the way in which her
+"goings on" struck decent folk; but she would not do it at the
+start--"I'll give her time to settle down a bit first."
+
+During the few days which elapsed between Ellen's telegram and her
+arrival, Joanna saw nothing of Alce. She had one letter from him, in
+which he told her that he had been over to Fairfield to look at the
+plough she was speaking of, but that it was old stuff and would be no
+use to her. He did not even mention Ellen's name. She wondered if he was
+making any plans for leaving Donkey Street--she hoped he would not be
+such a fool as to go. He and Ellen could easily keep out of each other's
+way. Still, if Ellen wouldn't stay unless he went, she would rather have
+Ellen than Alce.... He would have to sell Donkey Street, or perhaps he
+might let it off for a little time.
+
+April had just become May when Ellen returned to Ansdore. It had been a
+rainy spring, and great pools were on the marshes, overflows from the
+dykes and channels, clear mirrors green from the grass beneath their
+shallows and the green rainy skies that hung above them. Here and there
+they reflected white clumps and walls of hawthorn, with the pale
+yellowish gleam of the buttercups in the pastures. The two sisters,
+driving back from Rye, looked round on the green twilight of the Marsh
+with indifferent eyes. Joanna had ceased to look for any beauty in her
+surroundings since Martin's days--the small gift of sight that he had
+given her had gone out with the light of his own eyes, and this evening
+all she saw was the flooded pastures, which meant poor grazing for her
+tegs due to come down from the Coast, and her lambs new-born on the Kent
+Innings. As for Ellen, the Marsh had always stood with her for
+unrelieved boredom. Its eternal flatness--the monotony of its roads
+winding through an unvarying landscape of reeds and dykes and grazings,
+past farms each of which was almost exactly like the one before it, with
+red walls and orange roofs and a bush of elms and oaks--the wearisome
+repetition of its seasons--the mists and floods of winter, the may and
+buttercups of spring, the hay and meadow-sweet and wild carrot of the
+summer months, the bleakness and winds of autumn--all this was typical
+of her life there, water-bound, cut off from all her heart's desire of
+variety and beauty and elegance, of the life to which she must now
+return because her attempt to live another had failed and left her
+stranded on a slag-heap of disillusion from which even Ansdore was a
+refuge.
+
+Ellen sat very trim and erect beside Joanna in the trap. She wore a neat
+grey coat and skirt, obviously not of local, nor indeed of English,
+make, and a little toque of flowers. She had taken Joanna's breath away
+on Rye platform; it had been very much like old times when she came home
+for the holidays and checked the impulse of her sister's love by a
+baffling quality of self-containment. Joanna, basing her expectations on
+the Bible story of the Prodigal Son rather than on the experiences of
+the past winter, had looked for a subdued penitent, surfeited with
+husks, who, if not actually casting herself at her sister's feet and
+offering herself as her servant, would at least have a hang-dog air and
+express her gratitude for so much forgiveness. Instead of which Ellen
+had said--"Hullo, Jo--it's good to see you again," and offered her a
+cool, delicately powdered cheek, which Joanna's warm lips had kissed
+with a queer, sad sense of repulse and humiliation. Before they had been
+together long, it was she who wore the hang-dog air--for some
+unconscionable reason she felt in the wrong, and found herself asking
+her sister polite, nervous questions about the journey.
+
+This attitude prevailed throughout the evening--on the drive home, and
+at the excellent supper they sat down to: a stuffed capon and a bottle
+of wine, truly a genteel feast of reconciliation--but Joanna had grown
+more aristocratic in her feeding since she bought Great Ansdore. Ellen
+spoke about her journey--she had had a smooth crossing, but had felt
+rather ill in the train. It was a long way from Venice--yes, you came
+through France, and Switzerland too ... the St. Gothard tunnel ...
+twenty minutes--well, I never?... Yes, a bit smoky--you had to keep the
+windows shut ... she preferred French to Italian cooking--she did not
+like all that oil ... oh yes, foreigners were very polite when they knew
+you, but not to strangers ... just the opposite from England, where
+people were polite to strangers and rude to their friends. Joanna had
+never spoken or heard so many generalities in her life.
+
+At the end of supper she felt quite tired, what with saying one thing
+with her tongue and another in her heart. Sometimes she felt that she
+must say something to break down this unreality, which was between
+them like a wall of ice--at other times she felt angry, and it was
+Ellen she wanted to break down, to force out of her superior refuge,
+and show up to her own self as just a common sinner receiving common
+forgiveness. But there was something about Ellen which made this
+impossible--something about her manner, with its cold poise, something
+about her face, which had indefinitely changed--it looked paler,
+wider, and there were secrets at the corners of her mouth.
+
+This was not the first time that Joanna had seen her sister calm and
+collected while she herself was flustered--but this evening a sense of
+her own awkwardness helped to put her at a still greater disadvantage.
+She found herself making inane remarks, hesitating and stuttering--she
+grew sulky and silent, and at last suggested that Ellen would like to go
+to bed.
+
+Her sister seemed glad enough, and they went upstairs together. But even
+the sight of her old bedroom, where the last year of her maidenhood had
+been spent, even the sight of the new curtains chastening its exuberance
+with their dim austerity, did not dissolve Ellen's terrible, cold
+sparkle--her frozen fire.
+
+"Good night," said Joanna.
+
+"Good night," said Ellen, "may I have some hot water?"
+
+"I'll tell the gal," said Joanna tamely, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+§32
+
+When she was alone in her own room, she seemed to come to herself. She
+felt ashamed of having been so baffled by Ellen, of having received her
+on those terms. She could not bear to think of Ellen living on in the
+house, so terribly at an advantage. If she let things stay as they were,
+she was tacitly acknowledging some indefinite superiority which her
+sister had won through sin. All the time she was saying nothing she
+felt that Ellen was saying in her heart--"I have been away to foreign
+parts, I have been loved by a man I don't belong to, I have Seen Life, I
+have stopped at hotels, I have met people of a kind you haven't even
+spoken to...." That was what Ellen was saying, instead of what Joanna
+thought she ought to say, which was--"I'm no better then a dairy girl in
+trouble, than Martha Tilden whom you sacked when I was a youngster, and
+it's unaccountable good of you to have me home."
+
+Joanna was not the kind to waste her emotions in the sphere of thought.
+She burst out of the room, and nearly knocked over Mene Tekel, who was
+on her way to Ellen with a jug of hot water.
+
+"Give that to me," she said, and went to her sister's door, at which she
+was still sufficiently demoralized to knock.
+
+"Come in," said Ellen.
+
+"I've brought you your hot water."
+
+"Thank you very much--I hope it hasn't been a trouble."
+
+Ellen was standing by the bed in a pretty lilac silk wrapper, her hair
+tucked away under a little lace cap. Joanna wore her dressing-gown of
+turkey-red flannel, and her hair hung down her back in two great rough
+plaits. For a moment she stared disapprovingly at her sister, whom she
+thought looked "French," then she suddenly felt ashamed of herself and
+her ugly, shapeless coverings. This made her angry, and she burst out--
+
+"Ellen Alce, I want a word with you."
+
+"Sit down, Jo," said Ellen sweetly.
+
+Joanna flounced on to the rosy, slippery chintz of Ellen's sofa. Ellen
+sat down on the bed.
+
+"What do you want to say to me?"
+
+"An unaccountable lot of things."
+
+"Must they all be said to-night? I'm very sleepy."
+
+"Well, you must just about keep awake. I can't let it stay over any
+longer. Here you've been back five hour, and not a word passed between
+us."
+
+"On the contrary, we have had some intelligent conversation for the
+first time in our lives."
+
+"You call that rot about furriners 'intelligent conversation'? Well,
+all I can say is that it's like you--all pretence. One ud think you'd
+just come back from a pleasure-trip abroad instead of from a wicked life
+that you should ought to be ashamed of."
+
+For the first time a flush darkened the heavy whiteness of Ellen's skin.
+
+"So you want to rake up the past? It's exactly like you, Jo--'having
+things out,' I suppose you'd call it. How many times in our lives have
+you and I 'had things out'?--And what good has it ever done us?"
+
+"I can't go on all pretending like this--I can't go on pretending I
+think you an honest woman when I don't--I can't go on saying 'It's a
+fine day' when I'm wondering how you'll fare in the Day of Judgment."
+
+"Poor old Jo," said Ellen, "you'd have had an easier life if you hadn't
+lived, as they say, so close to nature. It's just what you call
+pretences and others call good manners that make life bearable for some
+people."
+
+"Yes, for 'some people' I daresay--people whose characters won't stand
+any straight talking."
+
+"Straight talking is always so rude--no one ever seems to require it on
+pleasant occasions."
+
+"That's all nonsense. You always was a squeamish, obstropulous little
+thing, Ellen. It's only natural that having you back in my house--as I'm
+more than glad to do--I should want to know how you stand. What made you
+come to me sudden like that?"
+
+"Can't you guess? It's rather unpleasant for me to have to tell you."
+
+"Reckon it was that man"--somehow Sir Harry's name had become vaguely
+improper, Joanna felt unable to pronounce it--"then you've made up your
+mind not to marry him," she finished.
+
+"How can I marry him, seeing I'm somebody else's wife?"
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say such a proper thing. It ain't what you was
+saying at the start. Then you wanted a divorce and all sorts of foreign
+notions ... what's made you change round?"
+
+"Well, Arthur wouldn't give me a divorce, for one thing. For another, as
+I told you in my letter, one often doesn't know people till one's lived
+with them--besides, he's too old for me."
+
+"He'll never see sixty again."
+
+"He will," said Ellen indignantly--"he was only fifty-five in March."
+
+"That's thirty year more'n you."
+
+"I've told you he's too old for me."
+
+"You might have found out that at the start--he was only six months
+younger then."
+
+"There's a great many things I might have done at the start," said Ellen
+bitterly--"but I tell you, Joanna, life isn't quite the simple thing you
+imagine. There was I, married to a man utterly uncongenial--"
+
+"He wasn't! You're not to miscall Arthur--he's the best man alive."
+
+"I don't deny it--perhaps that is why I found him uncongenial. Anyhow,
+we were quite unsuited to each other--we hadn't an idea in common."
+
+"You liked him well enough when you married him."
+
+"I've told you before that it's difficult to know anyone thoroughly till
+one's lived with them."
+
+"Then at that rate, who's to get married--eh?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ellen wearily, "all I know is that I've made two
+bad mistakes over two different men, and I think the least you can do is
+to let me forget it--as far as I'm able--and not come here baiting me
+when I'm dog tired, and absolutely down and out...."
+
+She bowed her face into her hands, and burst into tears. Joanna flung
+her arms round her--
+
+"Oh, don't you cry, duckie--don't--I didn't mean to bait you. Only I was
+getting so mortal vexed at you and me walking round each other like two
+cats and never getting a straight word."
+
+"Jo," ... said Ellen.
+
+Her face was hidden in her sister's shoulder, and her whole body had
+drooped against Joanna's side, utterly weary after three days of travel
+and disillusioned loneliness.
+
+
+"Reckon I'm glad you've come back, dearie--and I won't ask you any more
+questions. I'm a cross-grained, cantankerous old thing, but you'll stop
+along of me a bit, won't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Ellen, "you're all I've got in the world."
+
+"Arthur ud take you back any day you ask it," said Joanna, thinking this
+a good time for mediation.
+
+"No--no!" cried Ellen, beginning to cry again--"I won't stay if you try
+to make me go back to Arthur. If he had the slightest feeling for me he
+would let me divorce him."
+
+"How could you?--seeing that he's been a pattern all his life."
+
+"He needn't do anything wrong--he need only pretend to. The lawyers ud
+fix it up."
+
+Ellen was getting French again. Joanna pushed her off her shoulder.
+
+"Really, Ellen Alce, I'm ashamed of you--that you should speak such
+words! What upsets me most is that you don't seem to see how wrong
+you've done. Don't you never read your Bible any more?"
+
+"No," sobbed Ellen.
+
+"Well, there's lots in the Bible about people like you--you're called by
+your right name there, and it ain't a pretty one. Some are spoken
+uncommon hard of, and some were forgiven because they loved much.
+Seemingly you haven't loved much, so I don't see how you expect to be
+forgiven. And there's lots in the Prayer Book too ... the Bible and the
+Prayer Book both say you've done wrong, and you don't seem to mind--all
+you think of is how you can get out of your trouble. Reckon you're like
+a child that's done wrong and thinks of nothing but coaxing round so as
+not to be punished."
+
+"I have been punished."
+
+"Not half what you deserve."
+
+"It's all very well for you to say that--you don't understand; and
+what's more, you never will. You're a hard woman, Jo--because you've
+never had the temptations that ordinary women have to fight against."
+
+"How dare you say that?--Temptation!--Reckon I know ..." A sudden memory
+of those painful and humiliating moments when she had fought with those
+strange powers and discontents, made Joanna turn hot with shame. The
+realization that she had come very close to Ellen's sin in her heart did
+not make her more relenting towards the sinner--on the contrary, she
+hardened.
+
+"Anyways, I've said enough to you for to-night."
+
+"I hope you don't mean to say more to-morrow."
+
+"No--I don't know that I do. Reckon you're right, and we don't get any
+good from 'having things out.' Seemingly we speak with different
+tongues, and think with different hearts."
+
+She stood up, and her huge shadow sped over the ceiling, hanging over
+Ellen as she crouched on the bed. Then she stalked out of the room,
+almost majestic in her turkey-red dressing-gown.
+
+
+
+
+§33
+
+Ellen kept very close to the house during the next few days. Her face
+wore a demure, sullen expression--towards Joanna she was quiet and
+sweet, and evidently anxious that there should be no further opening of
+hearts between them. She was very polite to the maids--she won their
+good opinion by making her bed herself, so that they should not have any
+extra work on her account.
+
+Perhaps it was this domestic good opinion which was at the bottom of the
+milder turn which the gossip about her took at this time. Naturally
+tongues had been busy ever since it became known that Joanna was
+expecting her back--Sir Harry Trevor had got shut of her for the baggage
+she was ... she had got shut of Sir Harry Trevor for the blackguard he
+was ... she had travelled back as somebody's maid, to pay her fare ...
+she had brought her own French maid as far as Calais ... she had walked
+from Dover ... she had brought four trunks full of French clothes. These
+conflicting rumours must have killed each other, for a few days after
+her return the Woolpack was saying that after all there might be
+something in Joanna's tale of a trip with Mrs. Williams--of course
+everyone knew that both Ellen and the Old Squire had been at San Remo,
+but now it was suddenly discovered that Mrs. Williams had been there
+too--anyway, there was no knowing that she hadn't, and Ellen Alce didn't
+look the sort that ud go to a furrin place alone with a man. Mrs. Vine
+had seen her through the parlour window, and her face was as white as
+chalk--not a scrap of paint on it. Mr. Southland had met her on the
+Brodnyx Road, and she had bowed to him polite and stately--no shrinking
+from an honest man's eye. According to the Woolpack, if you sinned as
+Ellen was reported to have sinned, you were either brazen or thoroughly
+ashamed of yourself, and Ellen, by being neither, did much to soften
+public opinion, and make it incline towards the official explanation of
+her absence.
+
+This tendency increased when it became known that Arthur Alce was
+leaving Donkey Street. The Woolpack held that if Ellen had been guilty,
+Alce would not put himself in the wrong by going away. He would either
+have remained as the visible rebuke of her misconduct, or he would have
+bundled Ellen herself off to some distant part of the kingdom, such as
+the Isle of Wight, where the Goddens had cousins. By leaving the
+neighbourhood he gave colour to the mysteriously-started rumour that he
+was not so easy to get on with as you'd think ... after all, it's never
+a safe thing for a girl to marry her sister's sweetheart ... probably
+Alce had been hankering after his old love and Ellen resented it ... the
+Woolpack suddenly discovered that Alce was leaving not so much on
+Ellen's account as on Joanna's--he'd been unable to get off with the old
+love, even when he'd got on with the new, and now that the new was off
+too ... well, there was nothing for it but for Arthur Alce to be off. He
+was going to his brother, who had a big farm in the shires--a proper
+farm, with great fields each of which was nearly as big as a marsh farm,
+fifty, seventy, a hundred acres even.
+
+
+
+
+§34
+
+Joanna bitterly resented Arthur's going, but she could not prevent it,
+for if he stayed Ellen threatened to go herself.
+
+"I'll get a post as lady's-maid sooner than stay on here with you and
+Arthur. Have you absolutely no delicacy, Jo?--Can't you see how awkward
+it'll be for me if everywhere I go I run the risk of meeting him?
+Besides, you'll be always plaguing me to go back to him, and I tell you
+I'll never do that--never."
+
+Arthur, too, did not seem anxious to stay. He saw that if Ellen was at
+Ansdore he could not be continually running to and fro on his errands
+for Joanna. That tranquil life of service was gone, and he did not care
+for the thought of exile at Donkey Street, a shutting of himself into
+his parish of Old Romney, with the Kent Ditch between him and Joanna
+like a prison wall.
+
+When Joanna told him what Ellen had said, he accepted it meekly--
+
+"That's right, Joanna--I must go."
+
+"But that ull be terrible hard for you, Arthur."
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"Reckon it will."
+
+"Where ull you go?"
+
+"Oh, I can go to Tom's."
+
+"That's right away in the shires, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes--beyond Leicester."
+
+"Where they do the hunting."
+
+"Surelye."
+
+"What's the farm?"
+
+"Grain mostly--and he's done well with his sheep. He'd be glad to have
+me for a bit."
+
+"What'll you do with Donkey Street?"
+
+"Let it off for a bit."
+
+"Don't you sell!"
+
+"Not I!"
+
+"You'll be meaning to come back?"
+
+"I'll be hoping."
+
+Joanna gazed at him for a few moments in silence, and a change came into
+her voice--
+
+"Arthur, you're doing all this because of me."
+
+"I'm doing it for you, Joanna."
+
+"Well--I don't feel I've any call--I haven't any right.... I mean, if
+Ellen don't like you here, she must go herself ... it ain't fair on
+you--you at Donkey Street for more'n twenty year ..."
+
+"Don't you trouble about that. A change won't hurt me. Reckon either
+Ellen or me ull have to go and it ud break your heart if it was Ellen."
+
+"Why can't you both stay? Ellen ull have to stay if I make her. I don't
+believe a word of what she says about going as lady's maid--she hasn't
+got the grit--nor the character neither, though she doesn't seem to
+think of that."
+
+"It ud be unaccountable awkward, Jo--and it ud set Ellen against both of
+us, and bring you trouble. Maybe if I go she'll take a different view of
+things. I shan't let off the place for longer than three year ... it'll
+give her a chance to think different, and then maybe we can fix up
+something...."
+
+Joanna fastened on to these words, both for her own comfort in Arthur's
+loss, and for the quieting of her conscience, which told her that it was
+preposterous that he should leave Donkey Street so that she could keep
+Ellen at Ansdore. Of course, if she did her duty she would pack Ellen
+off to the Isle of Wight, so that Arthur could stay. The fact was,
+however, that she wanted the guilty, ungracious Ellen more than she
+wanted the upright, devoted Arthur--she was glad to know of any terms on
+which her sister would consent to remain under her roof--it seemed
+almost too good to be true, to think that once more she had the little
+sister home....
+
+So she signed the warrant for Arthur's exile, which was to do so much to
+spread the more favourable opinion of Ellen Alce that had mysteriously
+crept into being since her return. He let off Donkey Street on a three
+years' lease to young Jim Honisett, the greengrocer's son at Rye, who
+had recently married and whose wish to set up as farmer would naturally
+be to the advantage of his father's shop. He let his furniture with it
+too.... He himself would take nothing to his brother, who kept house in
+a very big way, the same as he farmed.... "Reckon I should ought to
+learn a thing or two about grain-growing that'll be useful to me when I
+come back," said Arthur stoutly.
+
+He had come to say good-bye to Joanna on a June evening just before the
+quarter day. The hot scents of hay-making came in through the open
+parlour window, and they were free, for Ellen had gone with Mr. and Mrs.
+Southland to Rye for the afternoon--of late she had accepted one or two
+small invitations from the neighbours. Joanna poured Arthur out a cup of
+tea from the silver teapot he had given her as a wedding present six
+years ago.
+
+"Well, Arthur--reckon it'll be a long time before you and me have tea
+again together."
+
+"Reckon it will."
+
+"Howsumever, I shall always think of you when I pour it out of your
+teapot--which will be every day that I don't have it in the kitchen."
+
+"Thank you, Jo."
+
+"And you'll write and tell me how you're getting on?"
+
+"Reckon I will."
+
+"Maybe you'll send me some samples of those oats your brother did so
+well with. I'm not over pleased with that Barbacklaw, and ud make a
+change if I could find better."
+
+"I'll be sure and send."
+
+Joanna told him of an inspiration she had had with regard to the poorer
+innings of Great Ansdore--she was going to put down fish-guts for
+manure--it had done wonders with some rough land over by Botolph's
+Bridge--"Reckon it'll half stink the tenants out, but they're at the
+beginning of a seven years lease, so they can't help themselves much."
+She held forth at great length, and Arthur listened, holding his cup and
+saucer carefully on his knee with his big freckled hands. His eyes were
+fixed on Joanna, on the strong-featured, high-coloured face he thought
+so much more beautiful than Ellen's with its delicate lines and pale,
+petal-like skin.... Yes, Joanna was the girl all along--the one for
+looks, the one for character--give him Joanna every time, with her red
+and brown face, and thick brown hair, and her high, deep bosom, and
+sturdy, comfortable waist ... why couldn't he have had Joanna, instead
+of what he'd got, which was nothing? For the first time in his life
+Arthur Alce came near to questioning the ways of Providence. Reckon it
+was the last thing he would ever do for her--this going away. He wasn't
+likely to come back, though he did talk of it, just to keep up their
+spirits. He would probably settle down in the shires--go into
+partnership with his brother--run a bigger place than Donkey Street,
+than Ansdore even.
+
+"Well, I must be going now. There's still a great lot of things to be
+tidied up."
+
+He rose, awkwardly setting down his cup. Joanna rose too. The sunset,
+rusty with the evening sea-mist, poured over her goodly form as she
+stood against the window, making its outlines dim and fiery and her hair
+like a burning crown.
+
+"I shall miss you, Arthur."
+
+He did not speak, and she held out her hand.
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+He could not say it--instead he pulled her towards him by the hand he
+held.
+
+"Jo--I must."
+
+"Arthur--no!"
+
+But it was too late--he had kissed her.
+
+"That's the first time you done it," she said reproachfully.
+
+"Because it's the last. You aren't angry, are you?"
+
+"I?--no. But, Arthur, you mustn't forget you're married to Ellen."
+
+"Am I like to forget it?--And seeing all the dunnamany kisses she's
+given to another man, reckon she won't grudge me this one poor kiss I've
+given the woman I've loved without clasp or kiss for fifteen years."
+
+For the first time she heard in his voice both bitterness and passion,
+and at that moment the man himself seemed curiously to come alive and to
+compel.... But Joanna was not going to dally with temptation in the
+unaccustomed shape of Arthur Alce. She pushed open the door.
+
+"Have they brought round Ranger?--Hi! Peter Crouch!--Yes, there he is.
+You'll have a good ride home, Arthur."
+
+"But there'll be rain to-morrow."
+
+"I don't think it. The sky's all red at the rims."
+
+"The wind's shifted."
+
+Joanna moistened her finger and held it up--
+
+"So it has. But the glass is high. Reckon it'll hold off till you're in
+the shires, and then our weather won't trouble you."
+
+She watched him ride off, standing in the doorway till the loops of the
+Brodnyx road carried him into the rusty fog that was coming from the
+sea.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PART IV_
+
+LAST LOVE
+
+
+
+
+§1
+
+Time passed on, healing the wounds of the Marsh. At Donkey Street, the
+neighbours were beginning to get used to young Honisett and his bride,
+at Rye and Lydd and Romney the farmers had given up expecting Arthur
+Alce to come round the corner on his grey horse, with samples of wheat
+or prices of tegs. At Ansdore, too, the breach was healed. Joanna and
+Ellen lived quietly together, sharing their common life without
+explosions. Joanna had given up all idea of "having things out" with
+Ellen. There was always a bit of pathos about Joanna's surrenders, and
+in this case Ellen had certainly beaten her. It was rather difficult to
+say exactly to what the younger sister owed her victory, but undoubtedly
+she had won it, and their life was in a measure based upon it. Joanna
+accepted her sister--past and all; she accepted her little calm
+assumptions of respectability together with those more expected
+tendencies towards the "French." When Ellen had first come back, she had
+been surprised and resentful to see how much she took for granted in the
+way of acceptance, not only from Joanna but from the neighbours.
+According to her ideas, Ellen should have kept in shamed seclusion till
+public opinion called her out of it, and she had been alarmed at her
+assumptions, fearing rebuff, just as she had almost feared heaven's
+lightning stroke for that demure little figure in her pew on Sunday,
+murmuring "Lord have mercy" without tremor or blush.
+
+But heaven had not smitten and the neighbours had not snubbed. In some
+mysterious way Ellen had won acceptance from the latter, whatever her
+secret relations with the former may have been. The stories about her
+grew ever more and more charitable. The Woolpack pronounced that Arthur
+Alce would not have gone away "if it had been all on her side," and it
+was now certainly known that Mrs. Williams had been at San Remo....
+Ellen's manner was found pleasing--"quiet but affable." Indeed, in this
+respect she had much improved. The Southlands took her up, forgiving her
+treatment of their boy, now comfortably married to the daughter of a big
+Folkestone shopkeeper. They found her neither brazen nor shamefaced--and
+she'd been as shocked as any honest woman at Lady Mountain's trial in
+the Sunday papers ... if folk only knew her real story, they'd probably
+find....
+
+In fact, Ellen was determined to get her character back.
+
+She knew within herself that she owed a great deal to Joanna's
+protection--for Joanna was the chief power in the parishes of Brodnyx
+and Pedlinge, both personally and territorially. Ellen had been wise
+beyond the wisdom of despair when she came home. She was not unhappy in
+her life at Ansdore, for her escapade had given her a queer advantage
+over her sister, and she now found that she could to a certain extent,
+mould the household routine to her comfort. She was no longer entirely
+dominated, and only a small amount of independence was enough to satisfy
+her, a born submitter, to whom contrivance was more than rule. She
+wanted only freedom for her tastes and pleasures, and Joanna did not now
+strive to impose her own upon her. Occasionally the younger woman
+complained of her lot, bound to a man whom she no longer cared for,
+wearing only the fetters of her wifehood--she still hankered after a
+divorce, though Arthur must be respondent. This always woke Joanna to
+rage, but Ellen's feelings did not often rise to the surface, and on the
+whole the sisters were happy in their life together--more peaceful
+because they were more detached than in the old days. Ellen invariably
+wore black, hoping that strangers and newcomers would take her for a
+widow.
+
+This she actually became towards the close of the year 1910. Arthur did
+a fair amount of hunting with his brother in the shires, and one day his
+horse came down at a fence, throwing him badly and fracturing his skull.
+He died the same night without regaining consciousness--death had
+treated him better on the whole than life, for he died without pain or
+indignity, riding to hounds like any squire. He left a comfortable
+little fortune, too--Donkey Street and its two hundred acres--and he
+left it all to Joanna.
+
+Secretly he had made his will anew soon after going to the shires, and
+in it he had indulged himself, ignoring reality and perhaps duty.
+Evidently he had had no expectations of a return to married life with
+Ellen, and in this new testament he ignored her entirely, as if she had
+not been. Joanna was his wife, inheriting all that was his, of land and
+money and live and dead stock--"My true, trusty friend, Joanna Godden."
+
+Ellen was furious, and Joanna herself was a little shocked. She
+understood Arthur's motives--she guessed that one of his reasons for
+passing over Ellen had been his anxiety to leave her sister dependent on
+her, knowing her fear that she would take flight. But this exaltation of
+her by his death to the place she had refused to occupy during his life,
+gave her a queer sense of smart and shame. For the first time it struck
+her that she might not have treated Arthur quite well....
+
+However, she did not sympathize with Ellen's indignation--
+
+"You shouldn't ought to have expected a penny, the way you treated him."
+
+"I don't see why he shouldn't have left me at least some furniture,
+seeing there was about five hundred pounds of my money in that farm.
+He's done rather well out of me on the whole--making me no allowance
+whatever when he was alive."
+
+"Because I wouldn't let him make it--I've got some pride if you
+haven't."
+
+"Your pride doesn't stop you taking what ought to have been mine."
+
+"'Ought to'.... I never heard such words. Not that I'm pleased he should
+make it all over to me, but it ain't my doing."
+
+Ellen looked at her fixedly out of her eyes which were like the shallow
+floods.
+
+"Are you quite sure? Are you quite sure, Joanna, that you honestly
+played a sister's part by me while I was away?"
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"I mean, Arthur seems to have got a lot fonder of you while I was away
+than he--er--seemed to be before."
+
+Joanna gaped at her.
+
+"Of course it was only natural," continued Ellen smoothly--"I know I
+treated him badly--but don't you think you needn't have taken advantage
+of that?"
+
+"Well, I'm beat ... look here, Ellen ... that man was mine from the
+first, and I gave him over to you, and I never took him back nor wanted
+him, neither."
+
+"How generous of you, Jo, to have 'given him over' to me."
+
+A little maddening smile twisted the corners of her mouth, and Joanna
+remembered that now Arthur was dead and there was no hope of Ellen going
+back to him she need not spare her secret.
+
+"Yes, I gave him to you," she said bluntly--"I saw you wanted him, and I
+didn't want him myself, so I said to him 'Arthur, look here, you take
+her'--and he said to me--'I'd sooner have you, Jo'--but I said 'you
+won't have me even if you wait till the moon's cheese, so there's no
+good hoping for that. You take the little sister and please me'--and he
+said 'I'll do it to please you, Jo.' That's the very thing that
+happened, and I'm sorry it happened now--and I never told you before,
+because I thought it ud put you against him, and I wanted you to go back
+to him, being his wife; but now he's dead, and you may as well know,
+seeing the upstart notions you've got."
+
+She looked fiercely at Ellen, to watch the effect of the blow, but was
+disconcerted to see that the little maddening smile still lingered.
+There were dimples at the flexing corners of her sister's mouth, and now
+they were little wells of disbelieving laughter. Ellen did not believe
+her--she had told her long-guarded secret and her sister did not believe
+it. She thought it just something Joanna had made up to salve her
+pride--and nothing would ever make her believe it, for she was a woman
+who had been loved and knew that she was well worth loving.
+
+
+
+
+§2
+
+Both Ellen and Joanna were a little afraid that Arthur's treatment of
+his widow might disestablish her in public opinion. People would think
+that she must have behaved unaccountable badly to be served out like
+that. But the effects were not so disastrous as might have been
+expected. Ellen, poor and forlorn, in her graceful weeds, without
+complaining or resentful words, soon won the neighbours' compassion. It
+wasn't right of Alce to have treated her so--showed an unforgiving
+nature--if only the real story could be known, most likely folks would
+see.... There was also a mild scandal at his treatment of Joanna. "Well,
+even if he loved her all the time when he was married to her sister, he
+needn't have been so brazen about it.... Always cared for Joanna more'n
+he ought and showed it more'n he ought."
+
+Joanna was not worried by these remarks--she brushed them aside. Her
+character was gossip-proof, whereas Ellen's was not, therefore it was
+best that the stones should be thrown at her rather than at her sister.
+She at once went practically to work with Donkey Street. She did not
+wish to keep it--it was too remote from Ansdore to be easily workable,
+and she was content with her own thriving estate. She sold Donkey Street
+with all its stock, and decided to lay out the money in improvements of
+her land. She would drain the waterlogged innings by the Kent Ditch, she
+would buy a steam plough and make the neighbourhood sit up--she would
+start cattle-breeding. She had no qualms in thus spending the money on
+the farm, instead of on Ellen. Her sister rather plaintively pointed out
+that the invested capital would have brought her in a comfortable small
+income--"and then I needn't be such a burden to you, Joanna, dear."
+
+"You ain't a burden to me," said Joanna.
+
+She could not bear to think of Ellen's becoming independent and leaving
+her. But Ellen was far better contented with her life at home than she
+wisely let it appear. Ansdore was a manor now--the largest estate not
+only in Brodnyx and Pedlinge, but on Walland Marsh; indeed the whole of
+the Three Marshes had little to beat it with. Moreover, Ellen was
+beginning to get her own way in the house--her bedroom was no longer a
+compulsory bower of roses, but softly cream-coloured and purple-hung.
+She had persuaded Joanna to have a bathroom fitted up, with hot and cold
+water and other glories, and though she had been unable to induce her to
+banish her father's Bible and the stuffed owls from the parlour, she had
+been allowed to supplement--and practically annihilate--them with the
+notorious black cushions from Donkey Street. Joanna was a little proud
+to have these famous decorations on the premises, to be indoors what her
+yellow waggons were outdoors, symbols of daring and progress.
+
+On the whole, this substantial house, with its wide lands, respectable
+furniture and swarming servants, was one to be proud of. Ellen's
+position as Squire Joanna Godden's sister was much better than if she
+were living by herself in some small place on a small income. Her brief
+adventure into what she thought was a life of fashionable gaiety had
+discouraged and disillusioned her--she was slowly slipping back into the
+conventions of her class and surroundings. Ansdore was no longer either
+a prison or a refuge, it was beginning to be a home--not permanent, of
+course, for she was now a free woman and would marry again, but a good
+home to rest in and re-establish herself.
+
+Thanks to Ellen's contrivance and to the progress of Joanna's own
+ambition--rising out of its fulfilment in the sphere of the material
+into the sphere of style and manners--the sisters now lived the lives of
+two well-to-do ladies. They had late dinner every night--only soup and
+meat and pudding, still definitely neither supper nor high tea. Joanna
+changed for it into smart, stiff silk blouses, with a great deal of lace
+and guipure about them, while Ellen wore a rest-gown of drifting black
+charmeuse. Mene Tekel was promoted from the dairy to be Ansdore's first
+parlourmaid, and wore a cap and apron, and waited at table. Ellen would
+have liked to keep Mene Tekel in her place and engage a smart town
+girl, whose hands were not the colour of beetroots and whose breathing
+could not be heard through a closed door; but Joanna stood firm--Mene
+had been her faithful servant for more than seven years, and it wasn't
+right that she should have a girl from the town promoted over her.
+Besides, Joanna did not like town girls--with town speech that rebuked
+her own, and white hands that made her want to put her own large brown
+ones under the table.
+
+
+
+
+§3
+
+Early the next year Mr. Pratt faded out. He could not be said to have
+done anything so dramatic as to die, though the green marsh-turf of
+Brodnyx churchyard was broken to make him a bed, and the little bell
+rocked in the bosom of the drunken Victorian widow who was Brodnyx
+church steeple, sending a forlorn note out over the Marsh. Various aunts
+in various stages of resigned poverty bore off his family to separate
+destinations, and the great Rectory house which had for so long mocked
+his two hundred a year, stood empty, waiting to swallow up its next
+victim.
+
+Only in Joanna Godden's breast did any stir remain. For her at least the
+fading out of Mr. Pratt had been drama, the final scene of her
+importance; for it was now her task to appoint his successor in the
+living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge. Ever since she had found out that she
+could not get rid of Mr. Pratt she had been in terror lest this crowning
+triumph might be denied her, and the largeness of her funeral wreath and
+the lavishness of her mourning--extinguishing all the relations in their
+dyed blacks--had testified to the warmth of her gratitude to the late
+rector for so considerately dying.
+
+She felt exceedingly important, and the feeling was increased by the
+applications she received for the living. Clergymen wrote from different
+parts of the country; they told her that they were orthodox--as if she
+had imagined a clergyman could be otherwise--that they were acceptable
+preachers, that they were good with Boy Scouts. One or two she
+interviewed and disliked, because they had bad teeth or large
+families--one or two turned the tables on her and refused to have
+anything to do with a living encumbered by so large a rectory and so
+small an endowment. Joanna felt insulted, though she was not responsible
+for either. She resolved not to consider any applicants, but to make her
+own choice outside their ranks. This was a difficult matter, for her
+sphere was hardly clerical, and she knew no clergy except those on the
+Marsh. None of these she liked, because they were for the most part
+elderly and went about on bicycles--also she wanted to dazzle her
+society with a new importation.
+
+The Archdeacon wrote to her, suggesting that she might be glad of some
+counsel in filling the vacancy, and giving her the names of two men whom
+he thought suitable. Joanna was furious--she would brook no interference
+from Archdeacons, and wrote the gentleman a letter which must have been
+unique in his archidiaconal experience. All the same she began to feel
+worried--she was beginning to doubt if she had the same qualifications
+for choosing a clergyman as she had for choosing a looker or a
+dairy-girl. She knew the sort of man she liked as a man, and more
+vaguely the sort of man she liked as a parson, she also was
+patriotically anxious to find somebody adequate to the honours and
+obligations of the living. Nobody she saw or heard of seemed to come up
+to her double standard of man and minister, and she was beginning to
+wonder to what extent she could compromise her pride by writing--not to
+the Archdeacon, but over his head to the Bishop--when she saw in the
+local paper that Father Lawrence, of the Society of Sacred Pity, was
+preaching a course of sermons in Marlingate.
+
+Immediately memories came back to her, so far and pale that they were
+more like the memories of dreams than of anything which had actually
+happened. She saw a small dark figure standing with its back to the
+awakening light and bidding godspeed to all that was vital and beautiful
+and more-than-herself in her life.... "Go, Christian soul"--while she in
+the depths of her broken heart had cried "Stay, stay!" But he had obeyed
+the priest rather than the lover, he had gone and not stayed ... and
+afterwards the priest had tried to hold him for her in futurity--"think
+of Martin, pray for Martin," but the lover had let him slip, because she
+could not think and dared not pray, and he had fallen back from her into
+his silent home in the past.
+
+The old wound could still hurt, for a moment it seemed as if her whole
+body was pain because of it. Successful, important, thriving Joanna
+Godden could still suffer because eight years ago she had not been
+allowed to make the sacrifice of all that she now held so triumphantly.
+This mere name of Martin's brother had pricked her heart, and she
+suddenly wanted to get closer to the past than she could get with her
+memorial-card and photograph and tombstone. Even Sir Harry Trevor,
+ironic link with faithful love, was gone now--there was only Lawrence.
+She would like to see him--not to talk to him of Martin, she couldn't
+bear that, and there would be something vaguely improper about it--but
+he was a clergyman, for all he disguised the fact by calling himself a
+priest, and she would offer him the living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge and
+let the neighbourhood sit up as much as it liked.
+
+
+
+
+§4
+
+Father Lawrence came to see her one April day when the young lambs were
+bleating on the sheltered innings and making bright clean spots of white
+beside the ewes' fog-soiled fleeces, when the tegs had come down from
+their winter keep inland, and the sunset fell in long golden slats
+across the first water-green grass of spring. The years had aged him
+more than they had aged Joanna--the marks on her face were chiefly
+weather marks, tokens of her exposure to marsh suns and winds, and of
+her own ruthless applications of yellow soap. Behind them was a little
+of the hardness which comes when a woman has to fight many battles and
+has won her victories largely through the sacrifice of her resources.
+The lines on his face were mostly those of his own humour and other
+people's sorrows, he had exposed himself perhaps not enough to the
+weather and too much to the world, so that where she had fine lines and
+a fundamental hardness, he had heavy lines like the furrows of a
+ploughshare, and a softness beneath them like the fruitful soil that the
+share turns up.
+
+Joanna received him in state, with Arthur Alce's teapot and her best
+pink silk blouse with the lace insertion. Ellen, for fairly obvious
+reasons, preferred not to be present. Joanna was terrified lest he
+should begin to talk of Martin, so after she had conformed to local
+etiquette by inquiring after his health and abusing the weather, she
+offered him the living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge and a slice of cake
+almost in the same breath.
+
+She was surprised and a little hurt when he refused the former. As a
+member of a religious community he could not hold preferment, and he had
+no vocation to settled Christianity.
+
+"I shouldn't be at all good as a country clergyman. Besides, Jo"--he had
+at once slipped into the brotherliness of their old relations--"I know
+you; you wouldn't like my ways. You'd always be up at me, teaching me
+better, and then I should be up at you, and possibly we shouldn't stay
+quite such good friends as we are now."
+
+"I shouldn't mind your ways. Reckon it might do the folks round here a
+proper lot of good to be prayed over same as you--I mean I'd like to see
+a few of 'em prayed over when they were dying and couldn't help
+themselves. Serve them right, I say, for not praying when they're alive,
+and some who won't put their noses in church except for a harvest
+thanksgiving. No, if you'll only come here, Lawrence, you may do what
+you like in the way of prayers and such. I shan't interfere as long as
+you don't trouble us with the Pope, whom I never could abide after all
+I've heard of him, wanting to blow up the Established Church in London,
+and making people kiss his toe, which I'd never do, not if he was to
+burn me alive."
+
+"Well, if that's the only limit to your toleration I think I could help
+you, even though I can't come myself. I know one or two excellent
+priests who would do endless good in a place like this."
+
+Joanna suddenly felt her imagination gloat and kindle at the thought of
+Brodnyx and Pedlinge compelled to holiness--all those wicked old men who
+wouldn't go to church, but expected their Christmas puddings just the
+same, those hobbledehoys who loafed against gate-posts the whole of
+Sunday, those vain hussies who giggled behind their handkerchiefs all
+the service through--it would be fine to see them hustled about and
+taught their manners ... it would be valiant sport to see them made to
+behave, as Mr. Pratt had never been able to make them. She with her
+half-crown in the plate and her quarterly communion need have no qualms,
+and she would enjoy seeing the fear of God put into other folk.
+
+So Lawrence's visit was fruitful after all--a friend of his had been
+ordered to give up his hard work in a slum parish and find a country
+vocation. He promised that this friend should write to Joanna.
+
+"But I must see him, too," she said.
+
+They were standing at the open door, and the religious in his black
+habit was like a cut paper silhouette against the long streaks of fading
+purple cloud.
+
+"I remember," he said, "that you always were particular about a man's
+looks. How Martin's must have delighted you!"
+
+His tongue did not falter over the loved, forbidden name--he spoke it
+quite naturally and conversationally, as if glad that he could introduce
+it at last into their business.
+
+Joanna's body stiffened, but he did not see it, for he was gazing at the
+young creeper's budding trail over the door.
+
+"I hope you have a good photograph of him," he continued--"I know that a
+very good photograph was taken of him a year before he died--much better
+than any of the earlier ones. I hope you have one of those."
+
+"Yes, I have," said Joanna gruffly. From shock she had passed into a
+thrilling anger. How calmly he had spoken the dear name, how
+unblushingly he had said the outrageous word "died!" How brazen,
+thoughtless, cruel he was about it all!--tearing the veil from her
+sorrow, talking as if her dead lived ... she felt exposed, indecent, and
+she hated him, all the more because mixed with her hatred was a kind of
+disapproving envy, a resentment that he should be free to remember
+where she was bound to forget....
+
+He saw her hand clench slowly at her side, and for the first time became
+aware of her state of mind.
+
+"Good-bye, Jo," he said kindly--"I'll tell Father Palmer to write to
+you."
+
+"Thanks, but I don't promise to take him," was her ungracious fling.
+
+"No--why should you? And of course he may have already made his plans.
+Good-bye, and thank you for your great kindness in offering the living
+to me--it was very noble of you, considering what your family has
+suffered from mine."
+
+He had carefully avoided all reference to his father, but he now
+realized that he had kept the wrong silence. It was the man who had
+brought her happiness, not the man who had brought her shame, that she
+was unable to speak of.
+
+"Oh, don't you think of that--it wasn't your doing"--she melted towards
+him now she had a genuine cause for indignation--"and we've come through
+it better than we hoped, and some of us deserved."
+
+Lawrence gave her an odd smile, which made his face with its innumerable
+lines and pouches look rather like a gargoyle's. Then he walked off
+bare-headed into the twilight.
+
+
+
+
+§5
+
+Ellen was intensely relieved when she heard that he had refused the
+living, and a little indignant with Joanna for having offered it to him.
+
+"You don't seem to realize how very awkward it would have been for me--I
+don't want to have anything more to do with that family."
+
+"I daresay not," said Joanna grimly, "but that ain't no reason why this
+parish shouldn't have a good parson. Lawrence ud have made the people
+properly mind their ways. And it ain't becoming in you, Ellen Alce, to
+let your own misdoings stand between folk and what's good for 'em."
+
+Ellen accepted the rebuke good-humouredly. She had grown more mellow of
+late, and was settling into her life at Ansdore as she had never settled
+since she went to school. She relished her widowed state, for it
+involved the delectable business of looking about for a second husband.
+She was resolved to act with great deliberation. This time there should
+be no hustling into matrimony. It seemed to her now as if that
+precipitate taking of Arthur Alce had been at the bottom of all her
+troubles; she had been only a poor little schoolgirl, a raw contriver,
+hurling herself out of the frying-pan of Ansdore's tyranny into the fire
+of Donkey Street's dullness. She knew better now--besides, the increased
+freedom and comfort of her conditions did not involve the same urgency
+of escape.
+
+She made up her mind that she would not take anyone of the farming
+classes; this time she would marry a gentleman--but a decent sort. She
+did not enjoy all her memories of Sir Harry Trevor. She would not take
+up with that kind of man again, any more than with a dull fellow like
+poor Arthur.
+
+She had far better opportunities than in the old days. The exaltation of
+Ansdore from farm to manor had turned many keys, and Joanna now received
+calls from doctors' and clergymen's wives, who had hitherto ignored her
+except commercially. It was at Fairfield Vicarage that Ellen met the
+wife of a major at Lydd camp, and through her came to turn the heads of
+various subalterns. The young officers from Lydd paid frequent visits to
+Ansdore, which was a novelty to both the sisters, who hitherto had had
+no dealings with military society. Ellen was far too prudent to engage
+herself to any of these boys; she waited for a major or a captain at
+least. But she enjoyed their society, and knew that their visits gave
+her consequence in the neighbourhood. She was invariably discreet in her
+behaviour, and was much reproached by them for her coldness, which they
+attributed to Joanna, who watched over her like a dragon, convinced that
+the moment she relaxed her guard her sister would inevitably return to
+her wicked past.
+
+Ellen would have felt sore and insulted if she had not the comfort of
+knowing in her heart that Joanna was secretly envious--a little hurt
+that these personable young men came to Ansdore for Ellen alone. They
+liked Joanna, in spite of her interference; they said she was a good
+sort, and spoke of her among themselves as "the old girl" and "Joanna
+God-dam." But none of them thought of turning from Ellen to her
+sister--she was too weather-beaten for them, too big and
+bouncing--over-ripe. Ellen, pale as a flower, with wide lips like
+rose-leaves and narrow, brooding eyes, with her languor, and faint
+suggestions of the exotic, all the mystery with which fate had chosen to
+veil the common secret which was Ellen Alce.... She could now have the
+luxury of pitying her sister, of seeing herself possessed of what her
+tyrant Joanna had not, and longed for.... Slowly she was gaining the
+advantage, her side of the wheel was mounting while Joanna's went down;
+in spite of the elder woman's success and substance the younger was
+unmistakably winning ascendancy over her.
+
+
+
+
+§6
+
+Her pity made her kind. She no longer squabbled, complained or resented.
+She took Joanna's occasionally insulting behaviour in good part. She
+even wished that she would marry--not one of the subalterns, for they
+were not her sort, but some decent small squire or parson. When the new
+rector first came to Brodnyx she had great hopes of fixing a match
+between him and Jo--for Ellen was now so respectable that she had become
+a match-maker. But she was disappointed--indeed, they both were, for
+Joanna had liked the looks of Mr. Pratt's successor, and though she did
+not go so far as to dream of matrimony--which was still below her
+horizons--she would have much appreciated his wooing.
+
+But it soon became known that the new rector had strange views on the
+subject of clerical marriage--in fact, he shocked his patron in many
+ways. He was a large, heavy, pale-faced young man, with strange, sleek
+qualities that appealed to her through their unaccustomedness. But he
+was scarcely a sleek man in office, and under his drawling, lethargic
+manner there was an energy that struck her as shocking and out of
+place. He was like Lawrence, speaking forbidden words and of hidden
+things. In church he preached embarrassing perfections--she could no
+longer feel that she had attained the limits of churchmanship with her
+weekly half-crown and her quarterly communion. He turned her young
+people's heads with strange glimpses of beauty and obligation.
+
+In fact, poor Joanna was deprived of the spectacle she had looked
+forward to with such zest--that of a parish made to amend itself while
+she looked on from the detachment of her own high standard. She was made
+to feel just as uncomfortable as any wicked old man or giggling
+hussy.... She was all the more aggrieved because, though Mr. Palmer had
+displeased her, she could not get rid of him as she would have got rid
+of her looker in the same circumstances. "If I take a looker and he
+don't please me I can sack him--the gal I engage I can get shut of at a
+month's warning, but a parson seemingly is the only kind you can put in
+and not put out."
+
+Then to crown all, he took away the Lion and the Unicorn from their
+eternal dance above the Altar of God, and in their place he put tall
+candles, casting queer red gleams into daylight.... Joanna could bear no
+more; she swallowed the pride which for the first few months of
+innovation had made her treat the new rector merely with distant
+rudeness, and descended upon him in the three rooms of Brodnyx Rectory
+which he inhabited with cheerful contempt for the rest of its howling
+vastness.
+
+She emerged from the encounter strangely subdued. Mr. Palmer had been
+polite, even sympathetic, but he had plainly shown her the indifference
+(to use no cruder term) that he felt for her as an ecclesiastical
+authority. He was not going to put the Lion and the Unicorn back in
+their old place, they belonged to a bygone age which was now forgotten,
+to a bad old language which had lost its meaning. The utmost he would do
+was to consent to hang them up over the door, so that they could bless
+Joanna's going out and coming in. With this she had to be content.
+
+Poor Joanna! The episode was more than a passing outrage and
+humiliation--it was ominous, it gave her a queer sense of downfall.
+With her beloved symbol something which was part of herself seemed also
+to have been dispossessed. She became conscious that she was losing
+authority. She realized that for long she had been weakening in regard
+to Ellen, and now she was unable to stand up to this heavy, sleek young
+man whom her patronage had appointed.... The Lion and the Unicorn had
+from childhood been her sign of power--they were her theology in
+oleograph, they stood for the Church of England as by law established,
+large rectory houses, respectable and respectful clergymen, "dearly
+beloved brethren" on Sunday mornings, and a nice nap after dinner. And
+now they were gone, and in their place was a queer Jesuitry of kyries
+and candles, and a gospel which kicked and goaded and would not allow
+one to sleep....
+
+
+
+
+§7
+
+It began to be noticed at the Woolpack that Joanna was losing heart.
+"She's lost her spring," they said in the bar--"she's got all she
+wanted, and now she's feeling dull"--"she's never had what she wanted
+and now she's feeling tired"--"her sister's beat her and parson's beat
+her--she can't be properly herself." There was some talk about making
+her an honorary member of the Farmers' Club, but it never got beyond
+talk--the traditions of that exclusive body were too strong to admit her
+even now.
+
+To Joanna it seemed as if life had newly and powerfully armed itself
+against her. Her love for Ellen was making her soft, she was letting her
+sister rule. And not only at home but abroad she was losing her power.
+Both Church and State had taken to themselves new arrogances. The Church
+had lost its comfortable atmosphere of Sunday beef--and now the State,
+which hitherto had existed only for that most excellent purpose of
+making people behave themselves, had lifted itself up against Joanna
+Godden.
+
+Lloyd George's Finance Act had caught her in its toils, she was being
+overwhelmed with terrible forms and schedules, searching into her
+profits, making strange inquiries as to minerals, muddling her with long
+words. Then out of all the muddle and welter finally emerged the
+startling fact that the Government expected to have twenty per cent. of
+her profits on the sale of Donkey Street.
+
+She was indignant and furious. She considered that the Government had
+been grossly treacherous, unjust, and disrespectful to poor Arthur's
+memory. It was Arthur who had done so well with his land that she had
+been able to sell it to Honisett at such a valiant price. She had spent
+all the money on improvements, too--she was not like some people who
+bought motor-cars and took trips to Paris. She had not bought a
+motor-car but a motor-plough, the only one in the district--the
+Government could come and see it themselves if they liked. It was well
+worth looking at.
+
+Thus she delivered herself to young Edward Huxtable, who now managed his
+father's business at Rye.
+
+"But I'm afraid it's all fair and square, Miss Joanna," said her
+lawyer--"there's no doubt about the land's value or what you sold it
+for, and I don't see that you are entitled to any exemption."
+
+"Why not?--If I'm not entitled, who is?"
+
+Joanna sat looking very large and flushed in the Huxtable office in
+Watchbell Street. She felt almost on the verge of tears, for it seemed
+to her that she was the victim of the grossest injustice which also
+involved the grossest disrespect to poor Arthur, who would turn in his
+grave if he knew that the Government were trying to take his legacy from
+her.
+
+"What are lawyers for?" she continued hotly. "You can turn most things
+inside out--why can't you do this? Can't I go to County Court about it?"
+
+Edward Huxtable consulted the Act.... "'Notice of objection may be
+served on the Commissioners within sixty days. If they do not allow the
+objection, the petitioner may appeal to a referee under the Act, and an
+appeal by either the petitioner or the Commissioners lies from the
+referee to the High Court, or where the site value does not exceed £500,
+to the County Court.' I suppose yours is worth more than £500?"
+
+"I should just about think it is--it's worth something more like five
+thousand if the truth was known."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't enlarge on that. Do you think it worth while to
+serve an objection? No doubt there are grounds on which we could appeal,
+but they aren't very good, and candidly I think we'd lose. It would cost
+you a great deal of money, too, before you'd finished."
+
+"I don't care about that. I'm not going to sit down quiet and have my
+rightful belongings taken from me."
+
+Edward Huxtable considered that he had done his duty in warning
+Joanna--lots of lawyers wouldn't have troubled to do that--and after all
+the old girl had heaps of money to lose. She might as well have her fun
+and he his fee.
+
+"Well, anyhow we'll go as far as the Commissioners. If I were you, I
+shouldn't apply for total exemption, but for a rebate. We might do
+something with allowances. Let me see, what did you sell for?"...
+
+He finally prepared an involved case, partly depending on the death
+duties that had already been paid when Joanna inherited Alce's farm, and
+which he said ought to be considered in calculating increment value.
+Joanna would not have confessed for worlds that she did not understand
+the grounds of her appeal, though she wished Edward Huxtable would let
+her make at least some reference to her steam tractor, and thus win her
+victory on moral grounds, instead of just through some lawyer's mess.
+But, moral appeal or lawyer's mess, her case should go to the
+Commissioners, and if necessary to the High Court. Just because she knew
+that in her own home and parish the fighting spirit was failing her,
+Joanna resolved to fight this battle outside it without counting the
+cost.
+
+
+
+
+§8
+
+That autumn she had her first twinge of rheumatism. The days of the
+marsh ague were over, but the dread "rheumatiz" still twisted
+comparatively young bones. Joanna had escaped till a later age than
+many, for her work lay mostly in dry kitchens and bricked yards, and she
+had had little personal contact with the soil, that odorous sponge of
+the marsh earth, rank with the soakings of sea-fogs and land-fogs.
+
+Like most healthy people, she made a tremendous fuss once she was laid
+up. Mene Tekel and Mrs. Tolhurst were kept flying up and down stairs
+with hot bricks and poultices and that particularly noxious brew of
+camomile tea which she looked upon as the cure of every ill. Ellen would
+come now and then and sit on her bed, and wander round the room playing
+with Joanna's ornaments--she wore a little satisfied smile on her face,
+and about her was a queer air of restlessness and contentment which
+baffled and annoyed her sister.
+
+The officers from Lydd did not now come so often to Ansdore. Ellen's
+most constant visitor at this time was the son of the people who had
+taken Great Ansdore dwelling-house. Tip Ernley had just come back from
+Australia; he did not like colonial life and was looking round for
+something to do at home. He was a county cricketer, an exceedingly
+nice-looking young man, and his people were a good sort of people, an
+old West Sussex family fallen into straightened circumstances.
+
+On his account Joanna came downstairs sooner than she ought. She could
+not get rid of her distrust of Ellen, the conviction that once her
+sister was left to herself she would be up to all sorts of mischief.
+Ellen had behaved impossibly once and therefore, according to Joanna,
+there was no guarantee that she would not go on behaving impossibly to
+the end of time. So she came down to play the dragon to Tip Ernley as
+she had played the dragon to the young lieutenants of the summer. There
+was not much for her to do--she saw at once that the boy was different
+from the officers, a simple-minded creature, strong, gentle and
+clean-living, with deferential eyes and manners. Joanna liked him at
+first sight, and relented. They had tea together, and a game of
+three-handed bridge afterwards--Ellen had taught her sister to play
+bridge.
+
+Then as the evening wore on, and the mists crept up from the White Kemp
+Sewer to muffle the windows of Ansdore and make Joanna's bones twinge
+and ache, she knew that she had come down too late. These young people
+had had time enough to settle their hearts' business in a little less
+than a week, and Joanna God-dam could not scare them apart. Of course
+there was nothing to fear--this fine, shy man would make no assault on
+Ellen Alce's frailty, it was merely a case of Ellen Alce becoming Ellen
+Ernley, if he could be persuaded to overlook her "past"--a matter which
+Joanna thought important and doubtful. But the elder sister's heart
+twinged and ached as much as her bones. There was not only the thought
+that she might lose Ellen once more and have to go back to her lonely
+living ... her heart was sick to think that again love had come under
+her roof and had not visited her. Love ... love ... for Ellen--no more
+for Joanna Godden. Perhaps now it was too late. She was getting on, past
+thirty-seven--romance never came as late as that on Walland Marsh,
+unless occasionally to widows. Then, since it was too late, why did she
+so passionately long for it?--Why had not her heart grown old with her
+years?
+
+
+
+
+§9
+
+During the next few weeks Joanna watched the young romance grow and
+sweeten. Ellen was becoming almost girlish again, or rather, girlish as
+she had never been. The curves of her mouth grew softer and her voice
+lost its even tones--she had moments of languor and moments of a queer
+lightness. Great and Little Ansdore were now on very good terms, and
+during that winter there was an exchange of dinners and bridge. Joanna
+could now, as she expressed it, give a dinner-party with the best of
+'em. Nothing more splendid could be imagined than Joanna Godden sitting
+at the head of her table, wearing her Folkestone-made gown of apricot
+charmeuse, adapted to her modesty by means of some rich gold lace; Ellen
+had induced her to bind her hair with a gold ribbon, and from her ears
+great gold ear-rings hung nearly to her shoulders, giving the usual
+barbaric touch to her stateliness. Ellen, in contrast, wore iris-tinted
+gowns that displayed nacreous arms and shoulders, and her hair passed in
+great dark shining licks over her little unadorned ears.
+
+Joanna was annoyed because Ellen never told her anything about herself
+and Tip Ernley. She wanted to know in what declared relation they stood
+to each other. She hoped Ellen was being straight with him, as she was
+obviously not being straight with her. She did not think they were
+definitely engaged--surely they would have let her know that. Perhaps he
+was waiting till he had found some satisfactory job and could afford to
+keep a wife. She told herself angrily that if only they would confide in
+her, she would help the young pair ... they were spoiling their own
+chances by keeping her out of their secrets. It never struck her that
+Ernley would rather not be beholden to her, whatever Ellen might feel in
+the matter.
+
+His father and mother--well-bred, cordial people--and his maiden sister,
+of about Joanna's age, never seemed to see anything remarkable in the
+way Ellen and Tip always went off together after dinner, while the
+others settled down to their bridge. It seemed to Joanna a grossly
+improper proceeding if they were not engaged. But all Mr. and Mrs.
+Ernley would say was--"Quite right too--it's just as well when young
+people aren't too fond of cards." Joanna herself was growing to be quite
+fond of cards, though in her heart she did not think that for sheer
+excitement bridge was half as good as beggar-my-neighbour, which she
+used to play with Mene Tekel, in the old days before she and Mene both
+became dignified, the one as mistress, the other as maid. She enjoyed
+her bridge--but often the game would be quite spoilt by the thought of
+Ellen and Tip in some secluded corner. He must be making love to her, or
+they wouldn't go off alone together like that ... I go no trumps ... if
+they wanted just ordinary talk they could stay in here, we wouldn't
+trouble them if they sat over there on the sofa ... me to play, is it?...
+I wonder if she lets him kiss her ... oh, I beg your pardon, I'm
+sure....
+
+Joanna had no more returns of rheumatism that winter. Scared and
+infuriated by her one experience, she took great care of herself, and
+that winter was drier than usual, with crisp days of cold sunshine, and
+a skin of ice on the sewers. Once or twice there was a fall of snow, and
+even Joanna saw beauty in those days of a blue sky hanging above the
+dazzling white spread of the three marshes, Walland, Dunge and Romney,
+one huge white plain, streaked with the watercourses black under their
+ice, like bars of iron. Somehow the sight hurt her; all beautiful things
+hurt her strangely now--whether it was the snow-laden marsh, or the
+first scents of spring in the evenings of February, or even Ellen's face
+like a broad, pale flower.
+
+She felt low-spirited and out of sorts that turn of the year. It was
+worse than rheumatism.... Then she suddenly conceived the idea that it
+was the rheumatism "driven inside her." Joanna had heard many terrible
+tales of people who had perished through quite ordinary complaints, like
+measles, being mysteriously "driven inside." It was a symptom of her low
+condition that she should worry about her health, which till then had
+never given her a minute's preoccupation. She consulted "The Family
+Doctor," and realized the number of diseases she might be suffering from
+besides suppressed rheumatics--cancer, consumption, kidney disease,
+diabetes, appendicitis, asthma, arthritis, she seemed to have them all,
+and in a fit of panic decided to consult a physician in the flesh.
+
+So she drove off to see Dr. Taylor in her smart chocolate-coloured trap,
+behind her chocolate-coloured mare, with her groom in chocolate-coloured
+livery on the seat behind her. She intended to buy a car if she won her
+case at the High Court--for to the High Court it had gone, both the
+Commissioners and their referee having shown themselves blind to the
+claims of justice.
+
+The doctor listened respectfully to the long list of her symptoms and to
+her own diagnosis of them. No, he did not think it was the rheumatism
+driven inside her.... He asked her a great many questions, some of which
+she thought indelicate.
+
+"You're thoroughly run down," he said at last--"been doing too
+much--you've done a lot, you know."
+
+"Reckon I have," said Joanna--"but I'm a young woman yet"--there was a
+slight touch of defiance in her last words.
+
+"Oh, age has nothing to do with it. We're liable to overwork ourselves
+at all ages. Overwork and worry.... What you need is a thorough rest of
+mind and body. I recommend a change."
+
+"You mean I should ought to go away?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"But I haven't been away for twenty year."
+
+"That's just it. You've let yourself get into a groove. You want a
+thorough change of air, scene and society. I recommend that you go away
+to some cheerful gay watering-place, where there's plenty going on and
+you'll meet new people."
+
+"But what'll become of Ansdore?"
+
+"Surely it can get on without you for a few weeks?"
+
+"I can't go till the lambing's finished."
+
+"When will that be?"
+
+"Not till after Easter."
+
+"Well, Easter is a very good time to go away. Do take my advice about
+this, Miss Godden. You'll never be really well and happy if you keep in
+a groove ..."
+
+"Groove!" snorted Joanna.
+
+
+
+
+§10
+
+She was so much annoyed with him for having twice referred to Ansdore as
+a "groove" that at first she felt inclined not to take his advice. But
+even to Joanna this was unsatisfactory as a revenge--"If I stay at home,
+maybe I'll get worse, and then he'll be coming over to see me in my
+'groove' and getting eight-and-six each time for it." It would certainly
+be better to go away and punish the doctor by a complete return to
+health. Besides, she was awed by the magnitude of the prescription. It
+was a great thing on the Marsh to be sent away for change of air,
+instead of just getting a bottle of stuff to take three times daily
+after meals.... She'd go, and make a splash of it.
+
+Then the question arose--where should she go? She could go to her
+cousins in the Isle of Wight, but they were a poor lot. She could go to
+Chichester, where Martha Relf, the girl who had been with her when she
+first took over Ansdore and had behaved so wickedly with the looker at
+Honeychild, now kept furnished rooms as a respectable widow. Martha, who
+was still grateful to Joanna, had written and asked her to come and try
+her accommodation.... But by no kind of process could Chichester be
+thought of as a "cheerful watering-place," and Joanna was resolved to
+carry out her prescription to the letter.
+
+"Why don't you go to a really good place?" suggested Ellen--"Bath or
+Matlock or Leamington. You could stay at a hydro, if you liked."
+
+But these were all too far--Joanna did not want to be beyond the summons
+of Ansdore, which she could scarcely believe would survive her absence.
+Also, to her horror, she discovered that nothing would induce Ellen to
+accompany her.
+
+"But I can't go without you!" she cried dismally--"it wouldn't be
+seemly--it wouldn't be proper."
+
+"What nonsense, Jo. Surely a woman of your age can stop anywhere by
+herself."
+
+"Oh, indeed, can she, ma'am? And what about a woman of your age?--It's
+you I don't like leaving alone here."
+
+"That's absurd of you. I'm a married woman, and quite able to look after
+myself. Besides, I've Mrs. Tolhurst with me, and the Ernleys are quite
+close."
+
+"Oh, yes, the Ernleys!" sniffed Joanna with a toss of her head. She felt
+that now was a fitting opportunity for Ellen to disclose her exact
+relations with the family, but surprisingly her sister took no advantage
+of the opening thus made.
+
+"You'd much better go alone, Joanna--it won't do you half so much good
+if I go with you. We're getting on each other's nerves, you know we are.
+At least I'm getting on yours. You'll be much happier among entirely new
+people."
+
+It ended in Joanna's taking rooms at the Palace Hotel, Marlingate. No
+persuasions would make her go farther off. She was convinced that
+neither Ansdore nor Ellen could exist, at least decorously, without her,
+and she must be within easy reach of both. The fortnight between the
+booking of her room and her setting out she spent in mingled fretfulness
+and swagger. She fretted about Ansdore, and nearly drove her carter and
+her looker frantic with her last injunctions; she fretted about Ellen,
+and cautioned Mrs. Tolhurst to keep a strict watch over her--"She's not
+to go up to late dinner at Great Ansdore without you fetch her home." On
+the other hand, she swaggered tremendously about the expensive and
+fashionable trip she was making. Her room was on the first floor of the
+hotel and would cost her twelve-and-six a night. She had taken it for a
+week, "But I told them I'd stay a fortnight if I was satisfied, so
+reckon they'll do all they can. I'll have breakfast in bed"--she added,
+as a climax.
+
+
+
+
+§11
+
+In spite of this, Joanna could not help feeling a little nervous and
+lonely when she found herself at the Palace Hotel. It was so very
+different from the New Inn at Romney, or the George at Rye, or any other
+substantial farmers' ordinary where she ate her dinner on market days.
+Of course she had been to the Metropole at Folkestone--whatever place
+Joanna visited, whether Brodnyx or Folkestone, she went to the best
+hotel--so she was not uninitiated in the mysteries of hotel menus and
+lifts and hall porters, and other phenomena that alarm the
+simple-minded; but that was many years ago, and it was more years still
+since she had slept away from Ansdore, out of her own big bed with its
+feather mattress and flowered curtains, so unlike this narrow hotel
+arrangement, all box mattress and brass knobs.
+
+The first night she lay miserably awake, wishing she had never come. She
+felt shy and lonely and scared and homesick. After the dead stillness of
+Ansdore, a stillness which brooded unbroken till dawn, which was the
+voice of a thick darkness, she found even this quiet seaside hotel full
+of disturbing noise. The hum of the ascending lift far into the night,
+the occasional wheels and footsteps on the parade, the restless heaving
+roar of the sea, all disturbed the small slumbers that her sense of
+alarm and strangeness would let her enjoy. She told herself she would
+never sleep a wink in this rackety place, and would have sought comfort
+in the resolution to go home the next morning, if she had not had Ellen
+to face, and the servants and neighbours to whom she had boasted so
+much.
+
+However, when daylight came, and sunshine, and her breakfast-in-bed,
+with its shining dish covers and appetizing smells, she felt quite
+different, and ate her bacon and eggs with appetite and a thrilling
+sense of her own importance. The waitress, for want of a definite order,
+had brought her coffee, which somehow made her feel very rakish and
+continental, though she would have much preferred tea. When she had
+finished breakfast, she wrote a letter to Ellen describing all her
+experiences with as much fullness as was compatible with that strange
+inhibition which always accompanied her taking up of the pen, and
+distinguished her letters so remarkably from the feats of her tongue.
+
+When she had written the letter and posted it adventurously in the hotel
+letter-box, she went out on the parade to listen to the band. It was
+Easter week, and there were still a great many people about, couples
+sitting round the bandstand, more deeply absorbed in each other than in
+the music. Joanna paid twopence for a chair, having ascertained that
+there were no more expensive seats to be had, and at the end of an hour
+felt consumedly bored. The music was bright and popular enough, but she
+was not musical, and soon grew tired of listening to "tunes." Also
+something about the music made her feel uncomfortable--the same dim yet
+searching discomfort she had when she looked at the young couples in the
+sun ... the young girls in their shady hats and silk stockings, the
+young men in their flannels and blazers. They were all part of a whole
+to which she did not belong, of which the music was part ... and the
+sea, and the sun, and the other visitors at the hotel, the very servants
+of the hotel ... and Ellen at Ansdore ... all day she was adding fresh
+parts to that great whole, outside which she seemed to exist alone.
+
+"I'm getting fanciful," she thought--"this place hasn't done me a bit of
+good yet."
+
+She devoted herself to the difficult art of filling up her day.
+Accustomed to having every moment occupied, she could hardly cope with
+the vast stretch of idle hours. After a day or two she found herself
+obliged to give up having breakfast in bed. From force of habit she woke
+every morning at five, and could not endure the long wait in her room.
+If the weather was fine she usually went for a walk on the sea-front,
+from Rock-a-Nore to the Monypenny statue. Nothing would induce her to
+bathe, though even at that hour and season the water was full of young
+men and women rather shockingly enjoying themselves and each other.
+After breakfast she wrote laborious letters to Broadhurst, Wilson, Mrs.
+Tolhurst, Ellen, Mene Tekel--she had never written so many letters in
+her life, but every day she thought of some fresh thing that would be
+left undone if she did not write about it. When she had finished her
+letters she went out and listened respectfully to the band. The
+afternoon was generally given up to some excursion or charabanc drive,
+and the day finished rather somnolently in the lounge.
+
+She did not get far beyond civilities with the other visitors in the
+hotel. More than one had spoken to her, attracted by this handsome,
+striking, and probably wealthy woman--through Ellen's influence her
+appearance had been purged of what was merely startling--but they either
+took fright at her broad marsh accent ... "she must be somebody's cook
+come into a fortune" ... or the more fundamental incompatibility of
+outlook kept them at a distance. Joanna was not the person for the
+niceties of hotel acquaintanceship--she was too garrulous, too
+overwhelming. Also she failed to realize that all states of society are
+not equally interested in the price of wheat, that certain details of
+sheep-breeding seem indelicate to the uninitiated, and that strangers do
+not really care how many acres one possesses, how many servants one
+keeps, or the exact price one paid for one's latest churn.
+
+
+
+
+§12
+
+The last few days of her stay brought her a rather ignominious sense of
+relief. In her secret heart she was eagerly waiting till she should be
+back at Ansdore, eating her dinner with Ellen, sleeping in her own bed,
+ordering about her own servants. She would enjoy, too, telling everyone
+about her exploits, all the excursions she had made, the food she had
+eaten, the fine folk she had spoken to in the lounge, the handsome
+amount she had spent in tips.... They would all ask her whether she felt
+much the better for her holiday, and she was uncertain what to answer
+them. A complete recovery might make her less interesting; on the other
+hand she did not want anyone to think she had come back half-cured
+because of the expense ... that was just the sort of thing Mrs.
+Southland would imagine, and Southland would take it straight to the
+Woolpack.
+
+Her own feelings gave her no clue. Her appetite had much improved, but,
+against that, she was sleeping badly--which she partly attributed to the
+"noise"--and was growing, probably on account of her idle days,
+increasingly restless. She found it difficult to settle down to
+anything--the hours in the hotel lounge after dinner, which used to be
+comfortably drowsy after the day of sea-air, were now a long stretch of
+boredom, from which she went up early to bed, knowing that she would not
+sleep. The band played on the parade every evening, but Joanna
+considered that it would be unseemly for her to go out alone in
+Marlingate after dark. Though she would have walked out on the Brodnyx
+road at midnight without putting the slightest strain on either her
+courage or her decorum, the well-lighted streets of a town became to her
+vaguely dangerous and indecorous after dusk had fallen. "It wouldn't be
+seemly," she repeated to herself in the loneliness and dullness of the
+lounge, and went desperately to bed.
+
+However, three nights before going away she could bear it no longer.
+After a warm April day, a purple starry evening hung over the sea. The
+water itself was a deep, glaucous gray, holding strange lights besides
+the golden path of the moon. Beachy Head stood out purple against the
+fading amber of the west, in the east All Holland Hill was hung with a
+crown of stars, which seemed to be mirrored in the lights of the
+fisher-boats off Rock-a-Nore.... It was impossible to think of such an
+evening spent in the stuffy, lonely lounge, with heavy curtains shutting
+out the opal and the amethyst of night.
+
+She had not had time to dress for dinner, having come home late from a
+charabanc drive to Pevensey, and the circumstance seemed slightly to
+mitigate the daring of a stroll. In her neat tailor-made coat and skirt
+and black hat with the cock's plumes she might perhaps walk to and fro
+just a little in front of the hotel. She went out, and was a trifle
+reassured by the light which still lingered in the sky and on the
+sea--it was not quite dark yet, and there was a respectable-looking lot
+of people about--she recognized a lady staying in the hotel, and would
+have joined her, but the lady, whom she had already scared, saw her
+coming, and dodged off in the direction of the Marine Gardens.
+
+The band began to play a waltz from "A Persian Princess." Joanna felt
+once more in her blood the strange stir of the music she could not
+understand. It would be nice to dance ... queer that she had so seldom
+danced as a girl. She stood for a moment irresolute, then walked towards
+the bandstand, and sat down on one of the corporation benches, outside
+the crowd that had grouped round the musicians. It was very much the
+same sort of crowd as in the morning, but it was less covert in its
+ways--hands were linked, even here and there waists entwined.... Such
+details began to stand out of the dim, purplescent mass of the twilight
+people ... night was the time for love. They had come out into the
+darkness to make love to each other--their voices sounded different from
+in the day, more dragging, more tender....
+
+She began to think of the times, which now seemed so far off, when she
+herself had sought a man's kisses. Half-ashamed she went back to stolen
+meetings--in a barn--behind a rick--in the elvish shadow of some
+skew-blown thorn. Just kisses ... not love, for love had been dead in
+her then.... But those kisses had been sweet, she remembered them, she
+could feel them on her lips ... oh, she could love again now--she could
+give and take kisses now.
+
+The band was playing a rich, thick, drawling melody, full of the purple
+night and the warm air. The lovers round the bandstand seemed to sway to
+it and draw closer to each other. Joanna looked down into her lap, for
+her eyes were full of tears. She regretted passionately the days that
+were past--those light loves which had not been able to live in the
+shadow of Martin's memory. Oh, why had he taught her to love and then
+made it impossible for her ever to love again?--till it was too late,
+till she was a middle-aged woman to whom no man came.... It was not
+likely that anyone would want her now--her light lovers all lived now in
+substantial wedlock, the well-to-do farmers who had proposed to her in
+the respectful way of business had now taken to themselves other wives.
+The young men looked to women of their own age, to Ellen's pale, soft
+beauty ... once again she envied Ellen her loves, good and evil, and
+shame was in her heart. Then she lifted her eyes and saw Martin coming
+towards her.
+
+
+
+
+§13
+
+In the darkness, lit only now by the lamp-dazzled moonlight, and in the
+mist of her own tears, the man before her was exactly like Martin, in
+build, gait, colouring and expression. Her moment of recognition stood
+out clear, quite distinct from the realization of impossibility which
+afterwards engulfed it. She unclasped her hands and half rose in her
+seat--the next minute she fell back. "Reckon I'm crazy," she thought to
+herself.
+
+Then she was startled to realize that the man had sat down beside her.
+Her heart beat quickly. Though she no longer confused him with Martin,
+the image of Martin persisted in her mind ... how wonderfully like him
+he was ... the very way he walked....
+
+"I saw you give me the glad eye ..." not the way he talked, certainly.
+
+There was a terrible silence.
+
+"Are you going to pretend you didn't?"
+
+Joanna turned on him the tear-filled eyes he had considered glad. She
+blinked the tears out recklessly on to her cheek, and opened her mouth
+to reduce him to the level of the creeping things upon the earth.... But
+the mouth remained open and speechless. She could not look him in the
+face and still feel angry. Though now she would no longer have taken him
+for Martin, the resemblance still seemed to her startling. He had the
+same rich eyes--with an added trifle of impudence under the same
+veiling, womanish lashes, the same black sweep of hair from a rather
+low forehead, the same graceful setting of the head, though he had not
+Martin's breadth of shoulder or deceiving air of strength.
+
+Her hesitation gave him his opportunity.
+
+"You aren't going to scold me, are you? I couldn't help it."
+
+His unlovely, Cockney voice had in it a stroking quality. It stirred
+something in the depths of Joanna's heart. Once again she tried to speak
+and could not.
+
+"It's such a lovely night--just the sort of night you feel lonely,
+unless you've got someone very nice with you."
+
+This was terribly true.
+
+"And you did give me the glad eye, you know."
+
+"I didn't mean to." She had found her voice at last. "I--I thought you
+were someone else; at least I--"
+
+"Are you expecting a friend?"
+
+"Oh, no--no one. It was a mistake."
+
+"Then mayn't I stay and talk to you--just for a bit. I'm here all alone,
+you know--a fortnight's holiday. I don't know anyone."
+
+By this time he had dragged all her features out of the darkness, and
+saw that she was not quite what he had first taken her for. He had never
+thought she was a girl--his taste was for maturity--but he had not
+imagined her of the obviously well-to-do and respectable class to which
+she evidently belonged. He saw now that her clothes were of a
+fashionable cut, that she had about her a generally expensive air, and
+at the same time he knew enough to tell that she was not what he called
+a lady. He found her rather difficult to place. Perhaps she was a
+wealthy milliner on a holiday ... but, her accent--you could lean up
+against it ... well, anyhow she was a damn fine woman.
+
+"What do you think of the band?" he asked, subtly altering the tone of
+the conversation which he saw now had been pitched too low.
+
+"I think it a proper fine band."
+
+"So it is. They're going to play 'The Merry Widow' next--ever seen it?"
+
+"No, never. I was never at a play but once, which they did at the
+Monastery at Rye in aid of Lady Buller's Fund when we was fighting the
+Boers. 'Our Flat' it was called, and all done by respectable people--not
+an actor or an actress among 'em."
+
+What on earth had he picked up?
+
+"Do you live at Rye?"
+
+"I live two mile out of it--Ansdore's the name of my place--Ansdore
+Manor, seeing as now I've got both Great and Little Ansdore, and the
+living's in my gift. I put in a new parson last year."
+
+This must be a remarkable woman, unless she was telling him the tale.
+
+"I went over to Rye on Sunday," he said. "Quaint old place, isn't it?
+Funny to think it used to be on the seashore. They say there once was a
+battle between the French and English fleets where it's all dry marsh
+now."
+
+Joanna thrilled again--that was like Martin, telling her things, old
+things about the Marsh. The conversation was certainly being conducted
+on very decorous lines. She began to lose the feeling of impropriety
+which had disturbed her at first. They sat talking about the
+neighbourhood, the weather, and--under Joanna's guidance--the prospects
+of the harvest, for another ten minutes, at the end of which the band
+went off for their "interval."
+
+The cessation of the music and scattering of the crowd recalled Joanna
+to a sense of her position. She realized also that it was quite
+dark--the last redeeming ray had left the sky. She stood up--
+
+"Well, I must be getting back."
+
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+"The Palace Hotel."
+
+What ho! She must have some money.
+
+"May I walk back with you?"
+
+"Oh, thanks," said Joanna--"it ain't far."
+
+They walked, rather awkwardly silent, the few hundred yards to the
+hotel. Joanna stopped and held out her hand. She suddenly realized that
+she did not want to say good-bye to the young man. Their
+acquaintanceship had been most shockingly begun--Ellen must never
+know--but she did not want it to end. She felt, somehow, that he just
+meant to say good-bye and go off, without any plans for another meeting.
+She must take action herself.
+
+"Won't you come and have dinner--I mean lunch--with me to-morrow?"
+
+She scanned his face eagerly as she spoke. It suddenly struck her what a
+terrible thing it would be if he went out of her life now after having
+just come into it--come back into it, she had almost said, for she could
+not rid herself of that strange sense of Martin's return, of a second
+spring.
+
+But she need not have been afraid. He was not the man to refuse his
+chances.
+
+"Thanks no end--I'll be honoured."
+
+"Then I'll expect you. One o'clock, and ask for Miss Godden."
+
+
+
+
+§14
+
+Joanna had a nearly sleepless night. The torment of her mind would not
+allow her to rest. At times she was overwhelmed with shame at what she
+had done--taken up with a strange man at the band, like any low servant
+girl on her evening out--My! but she'd have given it to Mene Tekel if
+she dared behave so! At other times she drifted on a dark sweet river of
+thought ... every detail of the boy's appearance haunted her with
+disturbing charm--his eyes, black and soft like Martin's--his mouth
+which was coarser and sulkier than Martin's, yet made her feel all
+disquieted ... the hair which rolled like Martin's hair from his
+forehead--dear hair she used to tug.... Oh, he's the man I could
+love--he's my sort--he's the kind I like.... And I don't even know his
+name.... But he talks like Martin--knows all about old places when they
+were new--queer he should talk about them floods.... Romney Church, you
+can see the marks on the pillars.... I can't bear to think of that.... I
+wonder what he'll say when he comes to-morrow?--Maybe he'll find me too
+old--I'm ten year older than him if I'm a day.... I must dress myself up
+smart--I'm glad I brought my purple body.... Martin liked me in the old
+basket hat I fed the fowls in ... but I was slimmer then.... I'm getting
+on now ... he won't like me as well by daylight as he did in the
+dark--and properly I'll deserve it, carrying on like that. I've half a
+mind not to be in--I'll leave a polite message, saying "Miss Godden's
+compliments, but she's had to go home, owing to one of her cows having a
+miscarriage." I'll be wise to go home to-morrow--reckon I ain't fit to
+be trusted alone.
+
+But a quarter to one the next day saw her in all the splendour of her
+"purple body," standing before her mirror, trying to make up her mind
+whether to wear her big hat or her little one. The little hat was
+smarter and had cost more money, but the big hat put a becoming shadow
+over her eyes, and hid those little lines that were straying from the
+corners.... For the first time Joanna had begun to realize that clothes
+should have other qualities besides mere splendour. Hitherto she had
+never thought of clothes in any definite relation to herself, as
+enhancing, veiling, suggesting, or softening the beauty which was Joanna
+Godden. But to-day she chose warily--her hat for shadow, her shoes for
+grace, her amber necklace because she must have that touch of barbarism
+which suited her best--an unconscious process this--and her amber
+earrings, because they matched her necklace, and because in the mirror
+she could see the brighter colours of her hair swinging in them. At the
+last minute she changed her "purple body" for one of rich
+chestnut-coloured silk. This was so far her best inspiration, for it
+toned not only with the amber beads, but with her skin and hair. As she
+turned to leave the room she was like a great glowing amber bead
+herself, all brown and gold, with rich red lights and gleams of yellow
+... then just as she was going out she had her last and best inspiration
+of all. She suddenly went back into the room, and before the mirror tore
+off the swathe of cream lace she wore round her throat. The short thick
+column of her neck rose out of her golden blouse. She burned to her
+ears, but walked resolutely from the room.
+
+Her young man was waiting for her in the lounge, and she saw his rather
+blank face light up when she appeared. She had been successful, then ...
+the realization gave her confidence, and more beauty. During the meal
+which followed, he re-cast a little of that opinion he had formed of
+her the night before. She was younger than he had thought, probably only
+a little over thirty, and far better looking than he had gathered from a
+first impression. Joanna was that rather rare type of woman who
+invariably looks her best in sunshine--the dusk had hidden from him her
+really lovely colouring of skin and eyes and hair; here at her little
+table by the window her face seemed almost a condensation of the warm,
+ruddy light which poured in from the sea. Her eyes, with the queer
+childlike depths behind their feminine hardness, her eager mouth and
+splendid teeth, the scatter of freckles over her nose, all combined to
+hold him in a queer enchantment of youth. There was a curious,
+delightful freshness about her ... and she was a damn fine woman, too.
+
+The night before he had gathered that she was of overwhelming
+respectability, but now he had his doubts about that also. She certainly
+seemed of a more oncoming disposition than he had thought, though there
+was something naïve and virginal about her forwardness. Her acquaintance
+might prove more entertaining than he had supposed. He fixed his eyes on
+her uncovered throat; she blushed deeply, and put her hand up.
+
+Their talk was very much on the same lines as the night before. He
+discovered that she had a zest for hearing him discourse on old
+places--she drank in all he had to say about the old days of Marlingate,
+when it was just a red fishing-village asleep between two hills. He told
+her how the new town had been built northward and westward, in the days
+of the great Monypenny, whose statue now stares blindly out to sea. He
+was a man naturally interested in topography and generally "read up" the
+places he visited, but he had never before found a woman who cared to
+listen to that sort of stuff.
+
+After luncheon, drinking coffee in the lounge, they became more personal
+and intimate. He told her about himself. His name was Albert Hill--his
+father was dead, and he lived with his mother and sister at Lewisham. He
+had a good position as clerk in a firm of carpet-makers. He was
+twenty-five years old, and doing well. Joanna became confidential in her
+turn. Her confidences mostly concerned the prosperity of her farm, the
+magnitude of its acreage, the success of this year's lambing and last
+year's harvest, but they also included a few sentimental adventures--she
+had had ever so many offers of marriage, including one from a clergyman,
+and she had once been engaged to a baronet's son.
+
+He wondered if she was pitching him a yarn, but did not think so; if she
+was, she would surely do better for herself than a three hundred acre
+farm, and an apparently unlimited dominion over the bodies and souls of
+clergymen. By this time he was liking her very much, and as he
+understood she had only two days more at Marlingate, he asked her to go
+to the pier theatre with him the next evening.
+
+Joanna accepted, feeling that she was committing herself to a desperate
+deed. But she was reckless now--she, as well as Hill, thought of those
+two poor days which were all she had left. She must do something in
+those two days to bind him, for she knew that she could not let him go
+from her--she knew that she loved again.
+
+
+
+
+§15
+
+She did not love as she had loved the first time. Then she had loved
+with a calmness and an acceptance which were impossible to her now. She
+had trusted fate and trusted the beloved, but now she was unsure of
+both. She was restless and tormented, and absorbed as she had never been
+in Martin. Her love consumed every other emotion, mental or physical--it
+would not let her sleep or eat or listen to music. It kept her whole
+being concentrated on the new force that had disturbed it--she could
+think of nothing but Albert Hill, and her thoughts were haggard and
+anxious, picturing their friendship at a standstill, failing, and
+lost.... Oh, she must not lose him--she could not bear to lose him--she
+must bind him somehow in the short time she had left.
+
+There were intervals in which she became uneasily conscious of her
+folly. He was thirteen years younger than she--it was ridiculous. She
+was a fool, after all the opportunities she'd had, to fall in love with
+a mere boy. But she knew in her heart that it was his youth she wanted
+most, partly because it was Martin's youth, partly because it called to
+something in her which was not youth, nor yet belonged to age--something
+which was wise, tender and possessive--something which had never yet
+been satisfied.
+
+Luckily she had health robust enough to endure the preyings of her mind,
+and did not bear her conflict on her face when Hill called for her the
+next evening. She had been inspired to wear the same clothes as
+before--having once pleased, she thought perhaps she would be wise not
+to take any risks with the purple body, and as for an evening gown,
+Joanna would have felt like a bad woman in a book if she had worn one.
+But she was still guiltily without her collar.
+
+He took her to a small restaurant on the sea-front, where half a dozen
+couples sat at little rosily lit tables. Joanna was pleased--she was
+beginning faintly to enjoy the impropriety of her existence ... dinner
+in a restyrong--with wine--that would be something to hold in her heart
+against Ellen, next time that young person became superior. Joanna did
+not really like wine--a glass of stout at her meals, or pale ale in the
+hot weather, was all she took as a rule--but there was a subtle
+fascination in putting her lips to the red glass full of broken lights,
+and feeling the wine like fire against them, while her eyes gazed over
+the brim at Hill ... he gazed at her over the brim of his, and somehow
+when their eyes met thus over their glasses, over the red wine, it was
+more than when they just met across the table, in the pauses of their
+talk. It seemed to her that he was more lover-like to-night--his words
+seemed to hover round her, to caress her, and she was not surprised when
+she felt his foot press hers under the table, though she hastily drew
+her own away.
+
+After dinner, he took her on the pier. "East Lynne" was being played in
+the Pavilion, and they had two of the best seats. Joanna was terribly
+thrilled and a little shocked--she was also, at the proper time,
+overcome with emotion. When little Willie lay dying, it was more than
+she could bear ... poor little chap, it made your heart ache to see
+him--even though he was called Miss Maidie Masserene on the programme,
+and when not in bed stuck out in parts of his sailor suit which little
+boys do not usually stick out in. His poor mother, too ... the tears
+rolled down Joanna's face, and her throat was speechless and swollen ...
+something seemed to be tugging at her heart ... she grew ashamed, almost
+frightened. It was a positive relief when the curtain came down, and
+rose again to show that little Willie had done likewise and stood bowing
+right and left in his night-shirt.
+
+Still the tears would furtively trickle ... what a fool she was
+getting--it must be the wine. My, but she had a weak head ... she must
+never take another glass. Then suddenly, in the darkness, she felt a
+hand take hers, pick it up, set it on a person's knee ... her hand lay
+palm downwards on his knee, and his own lay over it--she began to
+tremble and her heart turned to water. The tears ran on and on.
+
+... They were outside, the cool sea wind blew over them, and in the wind
+was the roar of the sea. Without a word they slipped out of the stream
+of people heading for the pier gates, and went to the railing, where
+they stood looking down on the black water.
+
+"Why are you crying, dear?" asked Hill tenderly, as his arm crept round
+her.
+
+"I dunno--I'm not the one to cry. But that little chap ... and his poor
+mother ..."
+
+"You soft-hearted darling." ... He held her close, in all her gracious
+and supple warmth, which even the fierceness of her stays could not
+quite keep from him. Oh, she was the dearest thing, so crude and yet so
+soft ... how glad he was he had not drawn back at the beginning, as he
+had half thought of doing ... she was the loveliest woman,
+adorable--mature, yet unsophisticated ... she was like a quince, ripe
+and golden red, yet with a delicious tartness.
+
+"Joanna," he breathed, his mouth close to the tawny, flying anthers of
+her hair--"Do you think you could love me?"
+
+He felt her hair stroke his lips, as she turned her head. He saw her
+eyes bright with tears and passion. Then suddenly she broke from him--
+
+"I can't--I can't ... it's more than I can bear."
+
+He came after her, overtaking her just before the gate.
+
+"Darling thing, what's the matter?--You ain't afraid?"
+
+"No--no--it isn't that. Only I can't bear ... beginning to feel it ...
+again."
+
+"Again?"
+
+"Yes--I told you a bit ... I can't tell you any more."
+
+"But the chap's dead."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Hang it all, we're alive ..." and she surrendered to his living mouth.
+
+
+
+
+§16
+
+That night she slept, and the next morning she felt calmer. Some queer,
+submerged struggle seemed to be over. As a matter of fact, her affair
+was more uncertain than ever. After Albert's kiss, they had had no
+discussion and very little conversation. He had taken her back to the
+hotel, and had kissed her again--this time on the warm, submissive mouth
+she lifted to him. He had said--"I'll come and see you at Ansdore--I've
+got another week." And she had said--nothing. She did not know if he
+wanted to marry her, or even if she wanted to marry him. She did not
+worry about how--or if--she should explain him to Ellen. All her
+cravings and uncertainties were swallowed up in a great quiet, a strange
+quiet which was somehow all the turmoil of her being expressed in
+silence.
+
+The next day he was true to his promise, and saw her off--sitting
+decorously in her first-class carriage "For Ladies Only."
+
+"You'll come and see me at Ansdore?" she said, as the moment of
+departure drew near, and he said nothing about last night's promise.
+
+"Do you really want me to come?"
+
+"Reckon I do."
+
+"I'll come, then."
+
+"Which day?"
+
+"Say Monday, or Tuesday."
+
+"Come on Monday, by this train--and I'll meet you at the station in my
+trap. I've got a fine stepper."
+
+"Right you are. I'll come on Monday. It's kind of you to want me so
+much."
+
+"I do want you."
+
+Her warm, glowing face in the frame of the window invited him, and they
+kissed. Funny, thought Hill to himself, the fuss she had made at first,
+and she was all over him now.... But women were always like
+that--wantons by nature and prudes by grace, and it was wonderful what a
+poor fight grace generally made of it.
+
+Joanna, unaware that she had betrayed herself and womankind, leaned back
+comfortably in the train as it slid out of the station. She was in a
+happy dream, hardly aware of her surroundings. Mechanically she watched
+the great stucco amphitheatre of Marlingate glide past the window--then
+the red throbbing darkness of a tunnel ... and the town was gone, like a
+bad dream, giving place to the tiny tilted fields and century-old hedges
+of the south-eastern weald. Then gradually these sloped and lost
+themselves in marsh--first only a green tongue running into the weald
+along the bed of the Brede River, then spreading north and south and
+east and west, from the cliff-line of England's ancient coast to the
+sand-line of England's coast to-day, from the spires of the monks of
+Battle to the spires of the monks of Canterbury.
+
+Joanna was roused automatically by this return to her old surroundings.
+She began to think of her trap waiting for her outside Rye station. She
+wondered if Ellen would have come to meet her. Yes, there she was on the
+platform ... wearing a green frock, too. She'd come out of her blacks.
+Joanna thrilled to a faint shock. She wondered how many other
+revolutions Ellen had carried out in her absence.
+
+"Well, old Jo ..." It seemed to her that Ellen's kiss was warmer than
+usual. Or was it that her own heart was so warm...?
+
+Ellen found her remarkably silent. She had expected an outpouring of
+Joanna's adventures, achievements and triumphs, combined with a
+desperate catechism as to just how much ruin had befallen Ansdore while
+she was away. Instead of which Joanna seemed for the first time in
+Ellen's experience, a little dreamy. She had but little to say to Rye's
+one porter, or to Peter Crouch, the groom. She climbed up on the front
+seat of the trap, and took the reins.
+
+"You're looking well," said Ellen--"I can see your change has done you
+good."
+
+"Reckon it has, my dear."
+
+"Were you comfortable at the hotel?"
+
+This, if anything, should have started Joanna off, but all she said
+was--
+
+"It wasn't a bad place."
+
+"Well, if you don't want to talk about your own affairs," said Ellen to
+herself--"you can listen to mine, for a change. Joanna,"--she added
+aloud--"I came to meet you, because I've got something special to tell
+you."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Perhaps you can guess."
+
+Joanna dreamily shook her head.
+
+"Well, I'm thinking of getting married again."
+
+"Married!"
+
+"Yes--it's eighteen months since poor Arthur died," sighed the devoted
+widow, "and--perhaps you've noticed--Tip Ernley's been getting very fond
+of me."
+
+"Yes, I had noticed.... I was wondering why you didn't tell."
+
+"There was nothing to tell. He couldn't propose to me till he had
+something definite to do. Now he's just been offered the post of agent
+on the Duke of Wiltshire's estate--a perfectly splendid position. Of
+course, I told him all about my first marriage"--she glanced
+challengingly at her sister--"but he's a perfect dear, and he saw at
+once I'd been more sinned against than sinning. We're going to be
+married this summer."
+
+"I'm unaccountable glad."
+
+Ellen gave her a queer look.
+
+"You take it very calmly, Jo."
+
+"Well, I'd been expecting it all along."
+
+"You won't mind my going away and leaving you?"
+
+"Reckon you'll have to go where your husband goes."
+
+"What on earth's happened?" thought Ellen to herself--"She's positively
+meek."
+
+The next minute she knew.
+
+"Ellen," said Joanna, as they swung into the Straight Mile, "I've got a
+friend coming to spend the day on Monday--a Mr. Hill that I met in
+Marlingate."
+
+
+
+
+§17
+
+For the next few days Joanna was restless and nervous; she could not be
+busy with Ansdore, even after a fortnight's absence. The truth in her
+heart was that she found Ansdore rather flat. Wilson's pride in the
+growth of the young lambs, Broadhurst's anxiety about Spot's calving and
+his preoccupation with the Suffolk dray-horse Joanna was to buy at
+Ashford fair that year, all seemed irrelevant to the main purpose of
+life. The main stream of her life had suddenly been turned
+underground--it ran under Ansdore's wide innings--on Monday it would
+come again to the surface, and take her away from Ansdore.
+
+The outward events of Monday were not exciting. Joanna drove into Rye
+with Peter Crouch behind her, and met Albert Hill with a decorous
+handshake on the platform. During the drive home, and indeed during most
+of his visit, his attitude towards her was scarcely more than ordinary
+friendship. In the afternoon, when Ellen had gone out with Tip Ernley,
+he gave her a few kisses, but without much passion. She began to feel
+disquieted. Had he changed? Was there someone else he liked? At all
+costs she must hold him--she must not let him go.
+
+The truth was that Hill felt uncertain how he stood--he was bewildered
+in his mind. What was she driving at? Surely she did not think of
+marriage--the difference in their ages was far too great. But what else
+could she be thinking of? He gathered that she was invincibly
+respectable--and yet he was not sure.... In spite of her decorum, she
+had queer, unguarded ways. He had met no one exactly like her, though he
+was a man of wide and not very edifying experience. The tactics which
+had started his friendship with Joanna he had learned at the shorthand
+and typewriting college where he had learned his clerking job--and they
+had brought him a rummage of adventures, some transient, some sticky,
+some dirty, some glamorous. He had met girls of a fairly good
+class--for his looks caused much to be forgiven him--as well as the
+typists, shop-girls and waitresses of his more usual association. But he
+had never met anyone quite like Joanna--so simple yet so swaggering, so
+solid yet so ardent, so rigid yet so unguarded, so superior and yet, he
+told himself, so lacking in refinement. She attracted him enormously ...
+but he was not the sort of man to waste his time.
+
+"When do you go back to London?" she asked.
+
+"Wednesday morning."
+
+She sighed deeply, leaning against him on the sofa.
+
+"Is this all the holiday you'll get this year?"
+
+"No--I've Whitsun coming--Friday to Tuesday. I might run down to
+Marlingate ..."
+
+He watched her carefully.
+
+"Oh, that 'ud be fine. You'd come and see me here?"
+
+"Of course--if you asked me?"
+
+"If I asked you," she repeated in a sudden, trembling scorn.
+
+Her head drooped to his breast, and he took her in his arms, holding her
+across him--all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a
+lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as
+if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized
+him--prude or rake, she should get her lesson from him all right.
+
+
+
+
+§18
+
+When he had gone Joanna said to Ellen--
+
+"D'you think it would be seemly if I asked Mr. Hill here to stay?"
+
+"Of course it would be 'seemly,' Jo. I'm a married woman. But would he
+be able to come? He's in business somewhere, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, but he could get away for Whitsun."
+
+"Then ask him by all means. But ..."
+
+She looked at her quickly and teasingly.
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Jo, do you care about this man?"
+
+"What d'you mean? Why should I care? Or, leastways, why shouldn't I?"
+
+"No reason at all. He's a good bit younger than you are, but then I
+always fancied that if you married it ud be a man younger than
+yourself."
+
+"Who said I was going to marry him?"
+
+"No one. But if you care ..."
+
+"I never said I did."
+
+"Oh, you're impossible," said Ellen with a little shrug. She picked up a
+book from the table, but Joanna could not let the conversation drop.
+
+"What d'you think of Mr. Hill, Ellen? Does he remind you of anyone
+particular?"
+
+"No, not at the moment."
+
+"Hasn't it ever struck you he's a bit like my Martin Trevor?"
+
+Her tongue no longer stammered at the name.
+
+"Your Martin Trevor! Jo, what nonsense, he's not a bit like him."
+
+"He's the living image--the way his hair grows out of his forehead, and
+his dark, saucy eyes ..."
+
+"Well, I was only a little girl when you were engaged to Martin Trevor,
+but as I remember him he was quite different from Mr. Hill. He belonged
+to another class, for one thing.... He was a gentleman."
+
+"And you think Mr. Hill ain't a gentleman?"
+
+"My dear Joanna! Of course he's not--he doesn't profess to be."
+
+"He's got a good position as a clerk. Some clerks are gentlemen."
+
+"But this one isn't."
+
+"How do _you_ know?"
+
+"Because I happen to be engaged to someone who is."
+
+"That ain't any reason for miscalling my friends."
+
+"I'm not 'miscalling' anyone.... Oh, hang it all, Jo, don't let's
+quarrel about men at our time of life. I'm sorry if I said anything you
+don't like about Mr. Hill. Of course, I don't know him as well as you
+do."
+
+
+
+
+§19
+
+So Joanna wrote to Albert Hill in her big, cramped handwriting, on the
+expensive yet unostentatious note-paper which Ellen had decreed,
+inviting him to come and spend Whitsuntide at Ansdore.
+
+His answer did not come for three or four days, during which, as he
+meant she should, she suffered many doubts and anxieties. Was he coming?
+Did he care for her? Or had he just been fooling? She had never felt
+like this about a man before. She had loved, but love had never held her
+in the same bondage--perhaps because till now she had always had
+certainties. Her affair with Martin, her only real love affair, had been
+a certainty, Arthur Alce's devotion had been a most faithful certainty,
+the men who had comforted her bereavement had also in their different
+ways been certainties. Albert Hill was the only man who had ever eluded
+her, played with her or vexed her. She knew that she attracted him, but
+she also guessed dimly that he feared to bind himself. As for her, she
+was now determined. She loved him and must marry him. Characteristically
+she had swept aside the drawbacks of their different ages and
+circumstances, and saw nothing but the man she loved--the man who was
+for her the return of first love, youth and spring. A common little
+tawdry-minded clerk some might have called him, but to Joanna he was all
+things--fulfilment, lover and child, and also a Sign and a Second
+Coming.
+
+She could think of nothing else. Once again Ansdore was failing her, as
+it always failed her in any crisis of emotion--Ansdore could never be
+big enough to fill her heart. But she valued it because of the
+consequence it must give her in young Hill's eyes, and she was impressed
+by the idea that her own extra age and importance gave her the rights of
+approach normally belonging to the man.... Queens always invited their
+consorts to share their thrones, and she was a queen, opening her gates
+to the man she loved. There could be no question of her leaving her
+house for his--he was only a little clerk earning two pounds a week, and
+she was Squire of the Manor. Possibly this very fact made him hesitate,
+fear to presume.... Well, she must show him he was wrong, and this
+Whitsuntide was her opportunity. But she wished that she could feel more
+queenly in her mind--less abject, craving and troubled. In outward
+circumstances she was his queen, but in her heart she was his slave.
+
+She plunged into an orgy of preparation. Mrs. Tolhurst and Mene Tekel
+and the new girl from Windpumps who now reinforced the household were
+nearly driven off their legs. Ellen spared the wretched man much in the
+way of feather-beds--just one down mattress would be enough, town people
+weren't used to sleeping on feathers. She also chastened the scheme of
+decoration, and substituted fresh flowers for the pampas grasses which
+Joanna thought the noblest adornment possible for a spare bedroom. On
+the whole Ellen behaved very well about Albert Hill--she worked her best
+to give him a favourable impression of Ansdore as a household, and when
+he came she saw that he and her sister were as much alone together as
+possible.
+
+"He isn't at all the sort of brother-in-law I'd like you to have, my
+dear," she said to Tip, "but if you'd seen some of the men Joanna's
+taken up with you'd realize it might have been much worse. I'm told she
+once had a most hectic romance with her own shepherd ... she's
+frightfully impressionable, you know."
+
+"Is she really?" said Tip in his slow, well-bred voice. "I shouldn't
+have thought that."
+
+"No, because--dear old Jo! it's so funny--she's quite without art. But
+she's always been frightfully keen on men, though she never could
+attract the right sort; and for some reason or other--to do with the
+farm, I suppose--she's never been keen on marriage. Now lately I've been
+thinking she really ought to marry--lately she's been getting quite
+queer--_détraquée_--and I do think she ought to settle down."
+
+"But Hill's much younger than she is."
+
+"Joanna would never care for anyone older. She's always liked boys--it's
+because she wants to be sure of being boss, I suppose. I know for a fact
+she's turned down nearly half a dozen good, respectable, well-to-do
+farmers of her own age or older than herself. And yet I've sometimes
+felt nervous about her and Peter Crouch, the groom.... Oh, I tell you,
+Jo's queer, and I'll be thankful if she marries Bertie Hill, even though
+he is off the mark. After all, Tip"--and Ellen looked charming--"Jo and
+I aren't real ladies, you know."
+
+
+
+
+§20
+
+Albert was able to get off on the Friday afternoon, and arrived at
+Ansdore in time for the splendours of late dinner and a bath in the new
+bathroom. There was no doubt about it, thought he, that he was on a good
+thing, whichever way it ended. She must have pots of money ...
+everything of the very best ... and her sister marrying no end of a
+swell--Ernley, who played for Sussex, and was obviously top-notch in
+every other way. Perhaps he wouldn't be such a fool, after all, if he
+married her. He would be a country gentleman with plenty of money and a
+horse to ride--better than living single till, with luck, he got a rise,
+and married inevitably one of his female acquaintances, to live in the
+suburbs on three hundred a year.... And she was such a splendid
+creature--otherwise he would not have thought of it--but in attraction
+she could give points to any girl, and her beauty, having flowered late,
+would probably last a good while longer....
+
+But--. That night as he sat at his bedroom window, smoking a succession
+of Gold Flake cigarettes, he saw many other aspects of the situation.
+The deadly quiet of Ansdore in the night, with all the blackness of the
+Marsh waiting for the unrisen moon, was to him a symbol of what his life
+would be if he married Joanna. He would perish if he got stuck in a hole
+like this, and yet--he thus far acknowledged her queenship--he could
+never ask her to come out of it. He could not picture her living in
+streets--she wouldn't fit--but then, neither would he fit down here. He
+liked streets and gaiety and noise and picture-palaces.... If she'd been
+younger he might have risked it, but at her age--thirteen years older
+than he (she had told him her age in an expansive moment) it was really
+impossible. But, damn it all! She was gorgeous--and he'd rather have her
+than any younger woman. He couldn't make her out--she must see the folly
+of marriage as well as he ... then why was she encouraging him like
+this?--Leading him on into an impossible situation? Gradually he was
+drifting back into his first queer moment of antagonism--he felt urged
+to conquest, not merely for the gratification of his vanity nor even for
+the attainment of his desire, but for the satisfaction of seeing her
+humbled, all her pride and glow and glory at his feet, like a tiger-lily
+in the dust.
+
+The next day Joanna drove him into Lydd, and in the afternoon took him
+inland, to Ruckinge and Warehorne. These drives were another
+reconstruction of her life with Martin, though now she no longer loved
+Albert only in his second-coming aspect. She loved him passionately and
+childishly for himself--the free spring of his hair from his forehead,
+not merely because it had also been Martin's but because it was his--the
+impudence as well as the softness of his eyes, the sulkiness as well as
+the sensitiveness of his mouth, the unlike as well as the like. She
+loved his quick, Cockney accent, his Cockney oaths when he forgot
+himself--the way he always said "Yeyss" instead of "Yes"--his little
+assumptions of vanity in socks and tie. She loved a queer blend of
+Albert and Martin, the real and the imaginary, substance and dream.
+
+As for him, he was enjoying himself. Driving about the country with a
+fine woman like Joanna, with privileges continually on the increase, was
+satisfactory even if no more than an interlude. "Where shall we go
+to-morrow?" he asked her, as they sat in the parlour after dinner,
+leaving the garden to Ellen and Tip.
+
+"To-morrow? Why, that's Sunday."
+
+"But can't we go anywhere on Sunday?"
+
+"To church, of course."
+
+"But won't you take me out for another lovely drive? I was hoping we
+could go out all day to-morrow. It's going to be ever so fine."
+
+"Maybe, but I was brought up to go to church on Sundays, and on Whit
+Sunday of all other Sundays."
+
+"But this Sunday's going to be different from all other Sundays--and
+from all other Whit Sundays...."
+
+He looked at her meaningly out of his bold, melting eyes, and she
+surrendered. She could not deny him in this matter any more than in most
+others.... She could not disappoint him any more than she could
+disappoint a child. He should have his drive--she would take him over to
+New Romney, even though it was written "Neither thou nor thine ox nor
+thine ass nor the stranger that is within thy gates."
+
+
+
+
+§21
+
+So the next morning when Brodnyx bells were ringing in the east she
+drove off through Pedlinge on her way to Broomhill level. She felt
+rather uneasy and ashamed, especially when she passed the church-going
+people. It was the first time in her life that she had voluntarily
+missed going to church--for hundreds of Sundays she had walked along
+that flat white lick of road, her big Prayer Book in her hand, and had
+gone under that ancient porch to kneel in her huge cattle-pen pew with
+its abounding hassocks. Even the removal of the Lion and the Unicorn,
+and the transformation of her comfortable, Established religion into a
+disquieting mystery had not made her allegiance falter. She still loved
+Brodnyx church, even now when hassocks were no longer its chief
+ecclesiastical ornament. She thought regretfully of her empty place and
+shamefully of her neighbours' comments on it.
+
+It was a sunless day, with grey clouds hanging over a dull green marsh,
+streaked with channels of green water. The air was still and heavy with
+the scent of may and meadowsweet and ripening hayseed. They drove as far
+as the edges of Dunge Marsh, then turned eastward along the shingle road
+which runs across the root of the Ness to Lydd. The little mare's
+chocolate flanks were all a-sweat, and Joanna thought it better to bait
+at Lydd and rest during the heat of the day.
+
+"You'd never think it was Whitsun," said Albert, looking out of the inn
+window at the sunny, empty street. "You don't seem to get much of a
+crowd down here. Rum old place, ain't it?"
+
+Already Joanna was beginning to notice a difference between his outlook
+and Martin's.
+
+"What d'you do with yourself out here all day?" he continued.
+
+"I've plenty to do."
+
+"Well, it seems to agree with you--I never saw anyone look finer. You're
+reelly a wonder, old thing."
+
+He picked up the large hand lying on the table-cloth and kissed it back
+and palm. From any other man, even from Martin himself, she would have
+received the caress quite simply, been proud and contented, but now it
+brought her into a strange trouble. She leaned towards him, falling
+upon his shoulder, her face against his neck. She wanted his kisses, and
+he gave them to her.
+
+At about three o'clock they set out again. The sun was high now, but the
+air was cooler, for it had lost its stillness and blew in rippling gusts
+from the sea. Joanna resolved not to go on to New Romney, as they had
+waited too long at Lydd; so she took the road that goes to Ivychurch,
+past Midley chapel, one of the ruined shrines of the monks of
+Canterbury--grey walls huddled against a white tower of hawthorn in
+which the voices of the birds tinkled like little bells.
+
+She was now beginning to feel more happy and self-confident but she was
+still preoccupied, though with a new situation. They had now been alone
+together for five hours, and Albert had not said a word about the
+marriage on which her hopes were set. Her ideas as to her own right of
+initiative had undergone a change. He was in all matters of love so
+infinitely more experienced than she was that she could no longer
+imagine herself taking the lead. Hitherto she had considered herself as
+experienced and capable in love as in other things--had she not been
+engaged for five months? Had she not received at least half a dozen
+offers of marriage? But Albert had "learned her different." His sure,
+almost careless, touch abashed her, and the occasional fragments of
+autobiography which he let fall, showed her that she was a limited and
+ignorant recluse compared to this boy of twenty-five. In matters of
+money and achievement she might brag, but in matters of love she was
+strangely subservient to him, because in such matters he had everything
+to teach her.
+
+They stopped for tea at Ivychurch; the little inn and the big church
+beside the New Sewer were hazed over in a cloud of floating sunshine and
+dust. She had been here before with Martin, and after tea she and Albert
+went into the church and looked around them. But his interest in old
+places was not the same as Martin's. He called things "quaint" and
+"rummy," and quoted anything he had read about them in the guide-book,
+but he could not make them come alive in a strange re-born youth--he
+could not make her feel the beauty of the great sea on which the French
+ships had ridden, or the splendours of the Marsh before the Flood, with
+all its towns and taverns and steeples. Unconsciously she missed this
+appeal to her sleeping imagination, and her bringing of him into the
+great church, which could have held an the village in its aisles, was an
+effort to supply what was lacking.
+
+But Albert's attitude towards the church was critical and
+unsatisfactory. It was much too big for the village. It was ridiculous
+... that little clump of chairs in all the huge emptiness ... what a
+waste of money, paying a parson to idle away his time among a dozen
+people.... "How Dreadful is this Place" ran the painted legend over the
+arches.... Joanna trembled.
+
+They came out on the farther side of the churchyard, where a little path
+leads away into the hawthorns of the New Sewer. A faint sunshine was
+spotting it through the branches, and suddenly Joanna's heart grew warm
+and heavy with love. She wanted some sheltered corner where she could
+hold his hand, feel his rough coat-sleeve against her cheek--or, dearer
+still, carry his head on her bosom, that heavenly weight of a man's
+head, with the coarse, springing hair to pull and stroke.... She put her
+arm into his.
+
+"Bertie, let's go and sit over there in the shade."
+
+He smiled at the innocence of her contrivance.
+
+"Shall we?" he said, teasing her--"won't it make us late for dinner?"
+
+"We don't have dinner on Sundays--we have supper at eight, so as to let
+the gals go to church."
+
+Her eyes looked, serious and troubled, into his. He pressed her hand.
+
+"You darling thing."
+
+They moved away out of the shadow of the church, following the little
+path down to the channel's bank. The water was of a clear, limpid green,
+new-flushed with the tide, with a faint stickle moving down it, carrying
+the white, fallen petals of the may. The banks were rich with
+loosestrife and meadowsweet, and as they walked on, the arching of
+hawthorn and willow made of the stream and the path beside it a little
+tunnel of shade and scent.
+
+The distant farmyard sounds which spoke of Ivychurch behind them
+gradually faded into a thick silence.
+
+Joanna could feel Bertie leaning against her as they walked, he was
+playing with her hand, locking and unlocking her fingers with his.
+Weren't men queer ... the sudden way they melted at a touch? Martin had
+been like that--losing his funny sulks.... And now Bertie was just the
+same. She felt convinced that in one moment ... in two ... he would ask
+her to be his wife....
+
+"Let's sit down for a bit," she suggested.
+
+They sat down by the water side, crushing the meadowsweet till its
+sickliness grew almost fierce with bruising. She sidled into his arms,
+and her own crept round him. "Bertie ..." she whispered. Her heart was
+throbbing quickly, and, as it were, very high--in her throat--choking
+her. She began to tremble. Looking up she saw his eyes above her, gazing
+down at her out of a mist--everything seemed misty, trees and sky and
+sunshine and his dear face.... She was holding him very tight, so tight
+that she could feel his collar-bones bruising her arms. He was kissing
+her now, and his kisses were like blows. She suddenly became afraid, and
+struggled.
+
+"Jo, Jo--don't be a fool--don't put me off, now ... you can't, I tell
+you."
+
+But she had come to herself.
+
+"No--let me go. I ... it's late--I've got to go home."
+
+She was strong enough to push him from her, and scrambled to her feet.
+They both stood facing each other in the trodden streamside flowers.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said at last.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter."
+
+She was ashamed.
+
+
+
+
+§22
+
+She was frightened, too--never in her life had she imagined that she
+could drift so far as she had drifted in those few seconds. She was
+still trembling as she led the way back to the church. She could hear
+him treading after her, and as she thought of him her heart smote her.
+She felt as if she had hurt him--oh, what had she done to him? What had
+she denied him? What had she given him to think?
+
+As they climbed into the trap she could tell that he was sulking. He
+looked at her half-defiantly from under his long lashes, and the corners
+of his mouth were turned down like a child's. The drive home was
+constrained and nearly silent. Joanna tried to talk about the grazings
+they had broken at Yokes Court, in imitation of her own successful
+grain-growing, about her Appeal to the High Court which was to be heard
+that summer, and the motor-car she would buy if it was successful--but
+it was obvious that they were both thinking of something else. For the
+last part of the drive, from Brodnyx to Ansdore, neither of them spoke a
+word.
+
+The sunset was scattering the clouds ahead and filling the spaces with
+lakes of gold. The dykes turned to gold, and a golden film lay over the
+pastures and the reeds. The sun wheeled slowly north, and a huge,
+shadowy horse and trap began to run beside them along the embankment of
+the White Kemp Sewer. They turned up Ansdore's drive, now neatly
+gravelled and gated, and a flood of light burst over the gables of the
+house, pouring on Joanna as she climbed down over the wheel. She
+required no help, and he knew it, but she felt his hands pressing her
+waist; she started away, and she saw him laugh--mocking her. She nearly
+cried.
+
+The rest of that evening was awkward and unhappy. She had a vague
+feeling in her heart that she had treated Albert badly, and yet ... the
+strange thing was that she shrank from an explanation. It had always
+been her habit to "have things out" on all occasions, and many a
+misunderstanding had been strengthened thereby. But to-night she could
+not bear the thought of being left alone with Albert. For one thing, she
+was curiously vague as to the situation--was she to blame or was he? Had
+she gone too far or not far enough? What was the matter, after all?
+There was nothing to lay hold of.... Joanna was unused to this nebulous
+state of mind; it made her head ache, and she was glad when the time
+came to go to bed.
+
+With a blessed sense of relief she felt the whitewashed thickness of her
+bedroom walls between her and the rest of the house. She did not trouble
+to light her candle. Her room was in darkness, except for one splash of
+light reflected from her mirror which held the moon. She went over to
+the window and looked out. The marsh swam in a yellow, misty lake of
+moonlight. There was a strange air of unsubstantiality about it--the
+earth was not the solid earth, the watercourses were moonlight rather
+than water, the light was water rather than light, the trees were
+shadows....
+
+"Ah-h-h," said Joanna Godden.
+
+She lifted her arms to her head with a gesture of weariness--as she took
+out the pins her hair fell on her shoulders in great hanks and masses,
+golden and unsubstantial as the moon.
+
+Slowly and draggingly she began to unfasten her clothes--they fell off
+her, and lay like a pool round her feet. She plunged into her stiff
+cotton nightgown, buttoning it at neck and wrists. Then she knelt by her
+bed and said her prayers--the same prayers that she had said ever since
+she was five.
+
+The moonlight was coming straight into the room--showing its familiar
+corners. There was no trace of Ellen in this room--nothing that was
+"artistic" or "in good taste." A lively pattern covered everything that
+could be so covered, but Joanna's sentimental love of old associations
+had spared the original furniture--the wide feather bed, the oaken chest
+of drawers, the wash-stand which was just a great chest covered with a
+towel. Over her bed hung Poor Father's Buffalo Certificate, the
+cherished symbol of all that was solid and prosperous and reputable in
+life.
+
+She lay in bed. After she got in she realized that she had forgotten to
+plait her hair, but she felt too languid for the effort. Her hair spread
+round her on the pillow like a reproach. For some mysterious reason her
+tears began to fall. Her life seemed to reproach her. She saw all her
+life stretching behind her for a moment--the moment when she had stood
+before Socknersh her shepherd, seeing him dark against the sky, between
+the sun and moon. That was when Men, properly speaking, had begun for
+her--and it was fifteen years since then--and where was she now? Still
+at Ansdore, still without her man.
+
+Albert had not asked her to marry him, nor, she felt desperately, did he
+mean to. If he did, he would surely have spoken to-day. And now
+besides, he was angry with her, disappointed, estranged. She had upset
+him by turning cold like that all of a sudden.... But what was she
+saying? Why, of course she had been quite right. She should ought to
+have been cold from the start. That was her mistake--letting the thing
+start when it could have no seemly ending ... a boy like that, nearly
+young enough to be her son ... and yet she had been unable to deny him,
+she had let him kiss her and court her--make love to her.... Worse than
+that, she had made love to him, thrown herself at him, pursued him with
+her love, refused to let him go ... and all the other things she had
+done--changing for his sake from her decent ways ... breaking the
+Sabbath, taking off her neck-band. She had been getting irreligious and
+immodest, and now she was unhappy, and it served her right.
+
+The house was quite still; everyone had gone to bed, and the moon filled
+the middle of the window, splashing the bed, and Joanna in it, and the
+walls, and the sagging beams of the ceiling. She thought of getting up
+to pull down the blind, but had no more energy to do that than to bind
+her hair. She wanted desperately to go to sleep. She lay on her side,
+her head burrowed down into the pillow, her hands clenched under her
+chin. Her bed was next the door, and beyond the door, against the wall
+at right angles to it, was her chest of drawers, with Martin's
+photograph in its black frame, and the photograph of his tombstone in a
+frame with a lily worked on it. Her eyes strained towards them in the
+darkness ... oh, Martin--Martin, why did I ever forget you?... But I
+never forgot you ... Martin, I've never had my man.... I've got money,
+two farms, lovely clothes--I'm just as good as a lady ... but I've never
+had my man.... Seemingly I'll go down into the grave without him ...
+but, oh, I do want ... the thing I was born for....
+
+Sobs shook her broad shoulders as she lay there in the moonlight. But
+they did not relieve her--her sobs ploughed deep into her soul ... they
+turned strange furrows.... Oh, she was a bad woman, who deserved no
+happiness. She'd always known it.
+
+She lifted her head, straining her eyes through the darkness and tears
+to gaze at Martin's photograph as if it were the Serpent in the
+Wilderness. Perhaps all this had come upon her because she had been
+untrue to his memory--and yet what had so appealed to her about Bertie
+was that he was like Martin, though Ellen said he wasn't--well, perhaps
+he wasn't.... But what was happening now? Something had come between her
+and the photograph on the chest of drawers. With a sudden chill at her
+heart, she realized that it was the door opening.
+
+"Who's there?" she cried in a hoarse angry whisper.
+
+"Don't be frightened, dear--don't be frightened, my sweet Jo--" said
+Bertie Hill.
+
+
+
+
+§23
+
+She could not think--she could only feel. It was morning--that white
+light was morning, though it was like the moon. Under it the Marsh lay
+like a land under the sea--it must have looked like this when the keels
+of the French boats swam over it, high above Ansdore, and Brodnyx, and
+Pedlinge, lying like red apples far beneath, at the bottom of the sea.
+That was nonsense ... but she could not think this morning, she could
+only feel.
+
+He had not been gone an hour, but she must find him. She must be with
+him--just feel him near her. She must see his head against the window,
+hear the heavy, slow sounds of his moving. She slipped on her clothes
+and twisted up her hair, and went down into the empty, stir-less house.
+No one was about--even her own people were in bed. The sun was not yet
+up, but the white dawn was pouring into the house, through the windows,
+through the chinks. Joanna stood in the midst of it. Then she opened the
+door and went out into the yard, which was a pool of cold light, ringed
+round with barns and buildings and reed-thatched haystacks. It was queer
+how this cold, still, trembling dawn hurt her--seemed to flow into her,
+to be part of herself, and yet to wound.... She had never felt like this
+before--she could never have imagined that love would make her feel like
+this, would make her see beauty in her forsaken yard at dawn--not only
+see but feel that beauty, physically, as pain. Her heart wounded
+her--her knees were failing--she went back into the house.
+
+A wooden chair stood in the passage outside the kitchen door, and she
+sat down on it. She was still unable to think, and she knew now that she
+did not want to think--it might make her afraid. She wanted only to
+remember.... He had called her the loveliest, sweetest, most beautiful
+woman in the world.... She repeated his words over and over again,
+calling up the look with which he had said them ... oh, those eyes of
+his--slanty, saucy, secret, loving eyes....
+
+She wondered why he did not come down. She could not imagine that he had
+turned into bed and gone to sleep--that he did not know she was sitting
+here waiting for him in the dawn. For a moment she thought of going up
+and knocking at his door--then she heard a thud of footsteps and
+creaking of boards, which announced that Mene Tekel and Nan Gregory of
+Windpumps were stirring in their bedroom. In an incredibly short time
+they were coming downstairs, tying apron-strings and screwing up hair as
+they went, and making a terrific stump past the door behind which they
+imagined their mistress was in bed. It was a great shock to them to find
+that she was downstairs before them--they weren't more than five minutes
+late.
+
+"Hurry up, gals," said Joanna, "and get that kettle boiling for the men.
+I hear Broadhurst about the yard. Mene Tekel, see as there's no clinkers
+left in the grate; Mrs. Alce never got her bath yesterday evening before
+dinner as she expects it. When did you do the flues last?"
+
+She set her household about its business--her dreams could not live in
+the atmosphere of antagonistic suspicion in which she had always viewed
+the younger members of her own sex. She was firmly convinced that
+neither Nan nor Mene would do a stroke of work if she was not "at them";
+the same opinion applied in a lesser degree to the men in the yard. So
+till Ansdore's early breakfast appeared amid much hustling and scolding,
+Joanna had no time to think about her lover, or continue the dreams so
+strangely and gloriously begun in the sunless dawn.
+
+Bertie was late for breakfast, and came down apologising for having
+overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him
+which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy--her little boy ...
+she dropped her eyelids over her tears.
+
+After breakfast, as soon as they were alone, she stole into his arms and
+held close to him, without embrace, her hands just clasped over her
+breast on which her chin had fallen. He tried to raise her burning,
+blushing face, but she turned it to his shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+§24
+
+Albert Hill went back to London on Tuesday, but he came down again the
+following week-end, and the next, and the next, and then his engagement
+to Joanna was made public.
+
+In this respect the trick was hers. The affair had ended in a committal
+which he had not expected, but his own victory was too substantial for
+him to regret any development of it to her advantage. Besides, he had
+seen the impossibility of conducting the affair on any other lines, both
+on account of the circumstances in which she lived and of her passionate
+distress when she realized that he did not consider marriage an
+inevitable consequence of their relation. It was his only way of keeping
+her--and he could not let her go. She was adorable, and the years
+between them meant nothing--her beauty had wiped them out. He could
+think of her only as the ageless woman he loved, who shared the passion
+of his own youth and in it was for ever young.
+
+On the practical side, too, he was better reconciled. He felt a pang
+of regret when he thought of London and its work and pleasures, of his
+chances of a "rise"--which his superiors had hinted was now
+imminent--of a head clerkship, perhaps eventually of a partnership and
+a tight marriage into the business--since his Whitsuntide visit to
+Ansdore he had met the junior partner's daughter and found her as
+susceptible to his charms as most young women. But after all, his
+position as Joanna Godden's husband would be better even than that of
+a partner in the firm of Sherwood and Son. What was Sherwood's but a
+firm of carpet-makers?--a small firm of carpet-makers. As Joanna's
+husband he would be a Country Gentleman, perhaps even a County
+Gentleman. He saw himself going out with his gun ... following the
+hounds in a pink coat.... He forgot that he could neither shoot nor
+ride.
+
+Meantime his position as Joanna's lover was not an unenviable one. She
+adored him and spoiled him like a child. She poured gifts upon him--a
+gold wrist-watch, a real panama hat, silk socks in gorgeous colours,
+boxes and boxes of the best Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes--she could
+not give him enough to show her love and delight in him.
+
+At first he had been a little embarrassed by this outpouring, but he was
+used to receiving presents from women, and he knew that Joanna had
+plenty of money to spend and really got as much pleasure out of her
+gifts as he did. They atoned for the poverty of her letters. She was no
+letter-writer. Her feelings were as cramped as her handwriting by the
+time she had got them down on paper; indeed, Joanna herself was
+wondrously expressed in that big, unformed, constricted handwriting,
+black yet uncertain, sprawling yet constrained, in which she recorded
+such facts as "Dot has calved at last," or "Broadhurst will be 61 come
+Monday," or--as an utmost concession--"I love you, dear."
+
+However, too great a strain was not put on this frail link, for he came
+down to Ansdore almost every week-end, from Saturday afternoon to early
+Monday morning. He tried to persuade her to come up to London and stay
+at his mother's house--he had vague hopes that perhaps an experience of
+London might persuade her to settle there (she could afford a fine house
+over at Blackheath, or even in town itself, if she chose). But Joanna
+had a solid prejudice against London--the utmost she would consent to
+was a promise to come up and stay with Albert's mother when her appeal
+was heard at the High Court at the beginning of August. Edward Huxtable
+had done his best to convince her that her presence was unnecessary, but
+she did not trust either him or the excellent counsel he had engaged.
+She had made up her mind to attend in person, and look after him
+properly.
+
+
+
+
+§25
+
+The attitude of Brodnyx and Pedlinge towards this new crisis in Joanna
+Godden's life was at first uncertain. The first impression was that she
+had suddenly taken fright at the prospect of old-maidenhood, and had
+grabbed the first man she could get, even though he was young enough to
+be her son.
+
+"He ain't twenty-one till Michaelmas," said Vine at the Woolpack.
+
+"She's always liked 'em young," said Furnese.
+
+"Well, if she'd married Arthur Alce when she fust had the chance,
+instead of hanging around and wasting time the way she's done, by now
+she could have had a man of her intended's age for a son instead of a
+husband."
+
+"Reckon it wouldn't have been the same thing."
+
+"No--it would have been a better thing," said Vine.
+
+When it became known that Joanna's motive was not despair but love,
+public opinion turned against her, Albert's manner among the Marsh
+people was unfortunate. In his mind he had always stressed his bride's
+connexions through Ellen--the Ernleys, a fine old county family; he
+found it very satisfying to slap Tip Ernley on the back and call him
+"Ole man." He had deliberately shut his eyes to the other side of her
+acquaintance, those Marsh families, the Southlands, Furneses, Vines,
+Cobbs and Bateses, to whom she was bound by far stronger, older ties
+than any which held her to Great Ansdore. He treated these people as her
+and his inferiors--unlike Martin Trevor, he would not submit to being
+driven round and shown off to Misleham, Picknye Bush, or Slinches.... It
+was small wonder that respectable families became indignant at such
+airs.
+
+"What does he think himself, I'd like to know? He's nothing but a
+clerk--such as I'd never see my boy."
+
+"And soon he won't be even that--he'll just be living on Joanna."
+
+"She's going to keep him at Ansdore?"
+
+"Surelye. She'll never move out now."
+
+"But what's she want to marry for, at her age, and a boy like that?"
+
+"She's getting an old fool, I reckon."
+
+
+
+
+§26
+
+The date of the wedding was not yet fixed, though September was spoken
+of rather vaguely, and this time the hesitation came from the
+bridegroom. As on the occasion of her first engagement Joanna had made
+difficulties with the shearing and hay-making, so now Albert contrived
+and shifted in his anxiety to fit in his marriage with other plans.
+
+He had, it appeared, as far back as last Christmas, arranged for a
+week's tour in August with the Polytechnic to Lovely Lucerne. In vain
+Joanna promised him a liberal allowance of "Foreign Parts" for their
+honeymoon--Bertie's little soul hankered after the Polytechnic, his pals
+who were going with him, and the kindred spirits he would meet at the
+chalets. Going on his honeymoon as Joanna Godden's husband was a
+different matter and could not take the place of such an excursion.
+
+Joanna did not press him. She was terribly afraid of scaring him off. It
+had occurred to her more than once that his bonds held him far more
+lightly than she was held by hers. And the prospect of marriage was now
+an absolute necessity if she was to endure her memories. Marriage alone
+could hallow and remake Joanna Godden. Sometimes, as love became less of
+a drug and a bewilderment, her thoughts awoke, and she would be
+overwhelmed by an almost incredulous horror at herself. Could this be
+Joanna Godden, who had turned away her dairy-girl for loose behaviour,
+who had been so shocked at the adventures of her sister Ellen? She could
+never be shocked at anyone again, seeing that she herself was just as
+bad and worse than anyone she knew.... Oh, life was queer--there was no
+denying. It took you by surprise in a way you'd never think--it made you
+do things so different from your proper notions that afterwards you
+could hardly believe it was you that had done them--it gave you joy that
+should ought to have been sorrow ... and pain as you'd never think.
+
+As the summer passed and the time for her visit to town drew near,
+Joanna began to grow nervous and restless. She did not like the idea of
+going to a place like London, though she dared not confess her fears to
+the travelled Ellen or the metropolitan Bertie. She felt vaguely that
+"no good would come of it"--she had lived thirty-eight years without
+setting foot in London, and it seemed like tempting Providence to go
+there now....
+
+However she resigned herself to the journey--indeed, when the time came
+she undertook it more carelessly than she had undertaken the venture of
+Marlingate. Her one thought was of Albert, and she gave over Ansdore
+almost nonchalantly to her carter and her looker, and abandoned Ellen to
+Tip Ernley with scarcely a doubt as to her moral welfare.
+
+Bertie met her at Charing Cross, and escorted her the rest of the way.
+He found it hard to realize that she had never been to London before,
+and it annoyed him a little. It would have been all very well, he told
+himself, in a shy village maiden of eighteen, but in a woman of Joanna's
+age and temperament it was ridiculous. However, he was relieved to find
+that she had none of the manners of a country cousin. Her
+self-confidence prevented her being flustered by strange surroundings;
+her clothes were fashionable and well-cut, though perhaps a bit too
+showy for a woman of her type, she tipped lavishly, and was not afraid
+of porters. Neither did she, as he had feared at first, demand a
+four-wheeler instead of a taxi. On the contrary, she insisted on driving
+all the way to Lewisham, instead of taking another train, and enlarged
+on the five-seater touring car she would buy when she had won her Case.
+
+"I hope to goodness you will win it, ole girl," said Bertie, as he
+slipped his arm round her--"I've a sort of feeling that you ought to
+touch wood."
+
+"I'll win it if there's justice in England."
+
+"But perhaps there ain't."
+
+"I _must_ win," repeated Joanna doggedly. "You see, it was like
+this ..."
+
+Not for the first time she proceeded to recount the sale of Donkey
+Street and the way she had applied the money. He wished she wouldn't
+talk about that sort of thing the first hour they were together.
+
+"I quite see, darling," he exclaimed in the middle of the narrative, and
+shut her mouth with a kiss.
+
+"Oh, Bertie, you mustn't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"We're in a cab--people will see."
+
+"They won't--they can't see in--and I'm not going to drive all this way
+without kissing you."
+
+He took hold of her.
+
+"I won't have it--it ain't seemly."
+
+But he had got a good hold of her, and did as he liked.
+
+Joanna was horrified and ashamed. A motor-bus had just glided past the
+cab and she felt that the eyes of all the occupants were upon her. She
+managed to push Albert away, and sat very erect beside him, with a red
+face.
+
+"It ain't seemly," she muttered under her breath.
+
+Bertie was vexed with her. He assumed an attitude intended to convey
+displeasure. Joanna felt unhappy, and anxious to conciliate him, but she
+was aware that any reconciliation was bound to lead to a repetition of
+that conduct so eminently shocking to the occupants of passing
+motor-buses. "I don't like London folk to think I don't know how to
+behave when I come up to town," she said to herself.
+
+Luckily, just as the situation was becoming unbearable, and her
+respectability on the verge of collapsing in the cause of peace, they
+stopped at the gate of The Elms, Raymond Avenue, Lewisham. Bertie's
+annoyance was swallowed up in the double anxiety of introducing her to
+his family and his family to her. On both counts he felt a little
+gloomy, for he did not think much of his mother and sister and did not
+expect Joanna to think much of them. At the same time there was no
+denying that Jo was and looked a good bit older than he, and his mother
+and sister were quite capable of thinking he was marrying her for her
+money. She was looking rather worn and dragged this afternoon, after her
+unaccustomed railway journey--sometimes you really wouldn't take her for
+more than thirty, but to-day she was looking her full age.
+
+"Mother--Agatha--this is Jo."
+
+Joanna swooped down on the old lady with a loud kiss.
+
+"Pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Hill in a subdued voice. She was very
+short and small and frail-looking, and wore a cap--for the same reason
+no doubt that she kept an aspidistra in the dining-room window, went to
+church at eleven o'clock on Sundays, and had given birth to Agatha and
+Albert.
+
+Agatha was evidently within a year or two of her brother's age, and she
+had his large, melting eyes, and his hair that sprang in a dark
+semicircle from a low forehead. She was most elegantly dressed in a
+peek-a-boo blouse, hobble skirt, and high-heeled shoes.
+
+"Pleased to meet you," she said, and Joanna kissed her too.
+
+"Is tea ready?" asked Bertie.
+
+"It will be in a minute, dear--I can hear Her getting it."
+
+They could all do that, but Bertie seemed annoyed that they should be
+kept waiting.
+
+"You might have had it ready," he said, "I expect you're tired, Jo."
+
+"Oh, not so terrible, thanks," said Joanna, who felt sorry for her
+future mother-in-law being asked to keep tea stewing in the pot against
+the uncertain arrival of travellers. But, as it happened, she did feel
+rather tired, and was glad when the door was suddenly kicked open and a
+large tea-tray was brought in and set down violently on a side table.
+
+"Cream _and_ sugar?" said Mrs. Hill nervously.
+
+"Yes, thank you," said Joanna. She felt a little disconcerted by this
+new household of which she found herself a member. She wondered what
+Bertie's mother and sister thought of his middle-aged bride.
+
+For a time they all sat round in silence. Joanna covertly surveyed the
+drawing-room. It was not unlike the parlour at Ansdore, but everything
+looked cheaper--they couldn't have given more than ten pound for their
+carpet, and she knew those fire-irons--six and eleven-three the set at
+the ironmongers. These valuations helped to restore her self-confidence
+and support the inspection which Agatha was conducting on her side.
+"Reckon the price of my clothes ud buy everything in this room," she
+thought to herself.
+
+"Did you have a comfortable journey, Miss Godden?" asked Mrs. Hill.
+
+"You needn't call her Miss Godden, ma," said Albert, "she's going to be
+one of the family."
+
+"I had a fine journey," said Joanna, drowning Mrs. Hill's apologetic
+twitter, "the train came the whole of sixty miles with only one stop."
+
+Agatha giggled, and Bertie stabbed her with a furious glance.
+
+"Did you make this tea?" he asked.
+
+"No--She made it."
+
+"I might have thought as much. That girl can't make tea any better than
+the cat. You reelly might make it yourself when we have visitors."
+
+"I hadn't time. I've only just come in."
+
+"You seem to be out a great deal."
+
+"I've my living to get."
+
+Joanna played with her teaspoon. She felt ill at ease, though it would
+be difficult to say why. She had quarrelled too often with Ellen to be
+surprised at any family disagreements--it was not ten years since she
+had thought nothing of smacking Ellen before a disconcerted public.
+
+What was there different--and there was something different--about this
+wrangle between a brother and sister, that it should upset her so--upset
+her so much that for some unaccountable reason she should feel the tears
+running out of her eyes.
+
+On solemn ceremonial occasions Joanna always wore a veil, and this was
+now pushed up in several folds, to facilitate tea-drinking. She could
+feel the tears wetting it, so that it stuck to her cheeks under her
+eyes. She was furious with herself, but she could not stop the
+tears--she felt oddly weak and shaken. Agatha had flounced off with the
+teapot to make a fresh brew, Albert was leaning gloomily back in his
+chair with his hands in his pockets, Mrs. Hill was murmuring--"I hope
+you like fancy-work--I am very fond of fancy-work--I have made a worsted
+kitten." Joanna could feel the tears soaking through her veil, running
+down her cheeks--she could not stop them--and the next moment she heard
+Bertie's voice, high and aggrieved--"What are you crying for, Jo?"
+
+Directly she heard it, it seemed to be the thing she had been dreading
+most. She could bear no more, and burst into passionate weeping.
+
+They all gathered round her, Agatha with the new teapot, Mrs. Hill with
+her worsted, Bertie patting her on the back and asking what was the
+matter.
+
+"I don't know," she sobbed--"I expect I'm tired, and I ain't used to
+travelling."
+
+"Yes, I expect you must be tired--have a fresh cup of tea," said Agatha
+kindly.
+
+"And then go upstairs and have a good lay down," said Mrs. Hill.
+
+Joanna felt vaguely that Albert was ashamed of her. She was certainly
+ashamed of herself and of this entirely new, surprising conduct.
+
+
+
+
+§27
+
+By supper that night she had recovered, and remembered her breakdown
+rather as a bad dream, but neither that evening nor the next day could
+she quite shake off the feeling of strangeness and depression. She had
+never imagined that she would like town life, but she had thought that
+the unpleasantness of living in streets would be lost in the
+companionship of the man she loved--and she was disappointed to find
+that this was not so. Bertie, indeed, rather added to than took away
+from her uneasiness. He did not seem to fit into the Hill household any
+better than she did--in fact, none of the members fitted. Bertie and
+Agatha clashed openly, and Mrs. Hill was lost. The house was like a
+broken machine, full of disconnected parts, which rattled and fell
+about. Joanna was used to family quarrels, but she was not used to
+family disunion--moreover, though she would have allowed much between
+brother and sister, she had certain very definite notions as to the
+respect due to a mother. Both Bertie and Agatha were continually
+suppressing and finding fault with Mrs. Hill, and of the two Bertie was
+the worst offender. Joanna could not excuse him, even to her own
+all-too-ready heart. The only thing she could say was that it was most
+likely Mrs. Hill's own fault--her not having raised him properly.
+
+Every day he went off to his office in Fetter Lane, leaving Joanna to
+the unrelieved society of his mother, for which he apologised profusely.
+Indeed, she found her days a little dreary, for the old lady was not
+entertaining, and she dared not go about much by herself in so
+metropolitan a place as Lewisham. Every morning she and her future
+mother-in-law went out shopping--that is to say they bought half-pounds
+and quarter-pounds of various commodities which Joanna at Ansdore would
+have laid in by the bushel and the hundredweight. They would buy tea at
+one grocer's, and then walk down two streets to buy cocoa from another,
+because he sold it cheaper than the shop where they had bought the tea.
+The late Mr. Hill had left his widow very badly off--indeed she could
+not have lived at all except for what her children gave her out of their
+salaries. To her dismay, Joanna discovered that while Agatha, in spite
+of silk stockings and Merry Widow hats, gave her mother a pound out of
+the weekly thirty shillings she earned as a typist, Albert gave her only
+ten shillings a week--his bare expenses.
+
+"He says he doesn't see why he should pay more for living at home than
+he'd pay in digs--though, as a matter of fact I don't know anyone who'd
+take him for as little as that, even for only bed and breakfast."
+
+"But what does he do with the rest of the money?"
+
+"Oh, he has a lot of expenses, my dear--belongs to all sorts of grand
+clubs, and goes abroad every year with the Polytechnic, or even Cook's.
+Besides, he has lady friends that he takes about--used to, I should say,
+for, of course, he's done with all that now--but he was always the boy
+for taking ladies out--and never would demean himself to anything less
+than a Corner House."
+
+"But he should ought to treat you proper, all the same," said Joanna.
+
+She felt sorry and angry, and also, in some vague way, that it was her
+part to set matters right--that the wound in her love would be healed if
+she could act where Bertie was remiss. But Mrs. Hill would not let her
+open her fat purse on her account. "No, dear; we never let a friend
+oblige us." Joanna, who was not tactful, persisted, and the old lady
+became very frozen and genteel.
+
+Bertie's hours were not long at the office. He was generally back at
+six, and took Joanna out--up to town, where they had dinner and then
+went on to some theatre or picture-palace, the costs of the expedition
+being defrayed out of her own pocket. She had never had so much
+dissipation in her life--she saw "The Merry Widow," "A Persian
+Princess," and all the musical comedies. Albert did not patronise the
+more serious drama, and for Joanna the British stage became synonymous
+with fluffy heads and whirling legs and jokes she could not understand.
+The late hours made her feel very tired, and on their way home Albert
+would find her sleepy and unresponsive. They always went by taxi from
+Lewisham station, and instead of taking the passionate opportunities of
+the darkness, she would sink her heavy head against his breast, holding
+his arm with both her tired hands. "Let me be, dear, let me be," she
+would murmur when he tried to rouse her--"this is what I love best."
+
+She told herself that it was because she was so tired that she often
+felt depressed and wakeful at nights. Raymond Avenue was not noisy,
+indeed it was nearly as quiet as Ansdore, but on some nights Joanna lay
+awake from Bertie's last kiss till the crashing entrance of the Girl to
+pull up her blinds in the morning. At nights, sometimes, a terrible
+clearness came to her. This visit to her lover's house was showing her
+more of his character than she had learned in all the rest of their
+acquaintance. She could not bear to realize that he was selfish and
+small-minded, though, now she came to think of it, she had always been
+aware of it in some degree. She had never pretended to herself that he
+was good and noble--she had loved him for something quite
+different--because he was young and had brought her back her own youth,
+because he had a handsome face and soft, dark eyes, because in spite of
+all his cheek and knowingness he had in her sight a queer, appealing
+innocence.... He was like a child, even if it was a spoilt, selfish
+child. When she held his dark head in the crook of her arm, he was her
+child, her little boy.... And perhaps one day she would hold, through
+her love for him, a real child there, a child who was really innocent
+and helpless and weak--a child without grossness to scare her or
+hardness to wound her--her own child, born of her own body.
+
+But though she loved him, this constant expression of his worst points
+could not fail to give her a feeling of chill. Was this the way he would
+behave in their home when they were married? Would he speak to her as he
+spoke to his mother? Would he speak to their children so?... She could
+not bear to think it, and yet she could not believe that marriage would
+change him all through. What if their marriage made them both
+miserable?--made them like some couples she had known on the Marsh,
+nagging and hating each other. Was she a fool to think of marrying
+him?--all that difference in their age ... only perfect love could make
+up for it ... and he did not like the idea of living in the country--he
+was set on his business--his "career," as he called it.... She did not
+think he wanted to marry her as much as she wanted to marry him.... Was
+it right to take him away from his work, which he was doing so well at,
+and bring him to live down at Ansdore? My, but he would probably scare
+her folk with some of his ways. However, it was now too late to draw
+back. She must go on with what she had begun. At all costs she must
+marry--not merely because she loved him, but because only marriage could
+hallow and silence the past. With all the traditions of her race and
+type upon her, Joanna could not face the wild harvest of love. Her wild
+oats must be decently gathered into the barn, even if they gave her
+bitter bread to eat.
+
+
+
+
+§28
+
+The case of "Godden _versus_ Inland Revenue Commissioners" was heard at
+the High Court when Joanna had been at Lewisham about ten days. Albert
+tried to dissuade her from being present.
+
+"I can't go with you, and I don't see how you can go alone."
+
+"I shall be right enough."
+
+"Yet you won't even go down the High Street by yourself--I never met
+anyone so inconsistent."
+
+"It's my Appeal," said Joanna.
+
+"But there's no need for you to attend. Can't you trust anyone to do
+anything without you?"
+
+"Not Edward Huxtable," said Joanna decidedly.
+
+"Then why did you choose him for your lawyer?"
+
+"He's the best I know."
+
+Bertie opened his mouth to carry the argument further, but laughed
+instead.
+
+"You _are_ a funny ole girl--so silly and so sensible, so hard and so
+soft, such hot stuff and so respectable ..." He kissed her at each item
+of the catalogue--"I can't half make you out."
+
+However, he agreed to take her up to town when he went himself, and
+deposited her at the entrance of the Law Courts--a solid, impressive
+figure in her close-fitting tan coat and skirt and high, feathered
+toque, with the ceremonial veil pulled down over her face.
+
+Beneath her imposing exterior she felt more than a little scared and
+lost. Godden seemed a poor thing compared to all this might of Inland
+Revenue Commissioners, spreading about her in passage and hall and
+tower.... The law had suddenly become formidable, as it had never been
+in Edward Huxtable's office.... However, she was fortunate in finding
+him, with the help of one or two policemen, and the sight of him
+comforted her with its suggestion of home and Watchbell Street, and her
+trap waiting in the sunshine outside the ancient door of the Huxtable
+dwelling.
+
+Her Appeal was not heard till the afternoon, and in the luncheon
+interval he took her to some decorous dining-rooms--such as Joanna had
+never conceived could exist in London, so reminiscent were they of the
+George and the Ship and the New and the Crown and other of her
+market-day haunts. They ate beef and cabbage and jam roly poly, and
+discussed the chances of the day. Huxtable said he had "a pretty case--a
+very pretty case--you'll be surprised, Miss Joanna, to see what I've
+made of it."
+
+And so she was. Indeed, if she hadn't heard the opening she would never
+have known it was her case at all. She listened in ever-increasing
+bewilderment and dismay. In spite of her disappointment in the matter of
+the Commissioners and their Referee, she had always looked upon her
+cause as one so glaringly righteous that it had only to be pleaded
+before any just judge to be at once established. But now ... the horror
+was, that it was no longer her cause at all. This was not Joanna Godden
+coming boldly to the Law of England to obtain redress from her grievous
+oppression by pettifogging clerks--it was just a miserable dispute
+between the Commissioners of Inland Revenue and the Lessor of Property
+under the Act. It was full of incomprehensible jargon about Increment
+Value, Original Site Value, Assessable Site Value, Land Value Duty,
+Estate Duty, Redemption of Land Tax, and many more such terms among
+which the names of Donkey Street and Little Ansdore appeared
+occasionally and almost frivolously, just to show Joanna that the matter
+was her concern. In his efforts to substantiate an almost hopeless case
+Edward Huxtable had coiled most of the 1910 Finance Act round himself,
+and the day's proceedings consisted of the same being uncoiled and
+stripped off him, exposing his utter nakedness in the eyes of the law.
+When the last remnant of protective jargon had been torn away, Joanna
+knew that her Appeal had been dismissed--and she would have to pay the
+Duty and also the expenses of the action.
+
+The only comfort that remained was the thought of what she would say to
+Edward Huxtable when she could get hold of him. They had a brief,
+eruptive interview in the passage.
+
+"You take my money for making a mess like that," stormed Joanna. "I tell
+you, you shan't have it--you can amuse yourself bringing another action
+for it."
+
+"Hush, my dear lady--hush! Don't talk so loud. I've done my best for
+you, I assure you. I warned you not to bring the action in the first
+instance, but when I saw you were determined to bring it, I resolved to
+stand by you, and get you through if possible. I briefed excellent
+counsel, and really made out a very pretty little case for you."
+
+"Ho! Did you? And never once mentioned my steam plough. I tell you when
+I heard all the rubbish your feller spoke I'd have given the case
+against him myself. It wasn't my case at all. My case is that I'm a
+hard-working woman, who's made herself a good position by being a bit
+smarter than other folk. I have a gentleman friend who cares for me
+straight and solid for fifteen years, and when he dies he leaves me his
+farm and everything he's got. I sell the farm, and get good money for
+it, which I don't spend on motor-cars like some folk, but on more
+improvements on my own farm. I make my property more valuable, and
+_I've_ got to pay for it, if you please. Why, they should ought to pay
+me. What's farming coming to, I'd like to know, if we've got to pay for
+bettering ourselves? The Government ud like to see all farmers in the
+workhouse--and there we'll soon be, if they go on at this rate. And it's
+the disrespectfulness to Poor Arthur, too--he left Donkey Street to
+me--not a bit to me and the rest to them. But there they go, wanting to
+take most of it in Death Duty. The best Death Duty I know is to do what
+the dead ask us and not what they'd turn in their graves if they knew
+of. And poor Arthur who did everything in the world for me, even down to
+marrying my sister Ellen ..."
+
+Edward Huxtable managed to escape.
+
+"Drat that woman," he said to himself--"she's a terror. However, I
+suppose I've got to be thankful she didn't try to get any of that off
+her chest in Court--she's quite capable of it. Damn it all! She's a
+monstrosity--and going to be married too ... well, there are some heroes
+left in the world."
+
+
+
+
+§29
+
+Bertie was waiting for Joanna outside the Law Courts. In the stillness
+of the August evening and the yellow dusty sunshine, he looked almost
+contemplative, standing there with bowed head, looking down at his hands
+which were folded on his stick, while one or two pigeons strutted about
+at his feet. Joanna's heart melted at the sight of him. She went up to
+him, and touched his arm.
+
+"Hullo, ole girl. So here you are. How did it go off?"
+
+"I've lost."
+
+"Damn! That's bad."
+
+She saw that he was vexed, and a sharp touch of sorrow was added to her
+sense of outrage and disappointment.
+
+"Yes, it was given against me. It's all that Edward Huxtable's fault.
+Would you believe me, but he never made out a proper case for me at all,
+but just a lawyer's mess, what the judge was quite right not to hold
+with."
+
+"Have you lost much money?"
+
+"A proper lot--but I shan't let Edward Huxtable get any of it. If he
+wants his fees he'll just about have to bring another action."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Joanna--you'll have to pay the costs if they've been
+given against you. You'll only land yourself in a worse hole by making a
+fuss."
+
+They were walking westward towards the theatres and the restaurants.
+Joanna felt that Bertie was angry with her--he was angry with her for
+losing her case, just as she was angry with Edward Huxtable. This was
+too much--the tears rose in her eyes.
+
+"Will it do you much damage?" he asked. "In pocket, I mean."
+
+"Oh, I--I'll have to sell out an investment or two, but it won't do any
+real hurt to Ansdore. Howsumever, I'll have to go without my motor-car."
+
+"It was really rather silly of you to bring the action."
+
+"How, silly?"
+
+"Well, you can't have had much of a case, or you wouldn't have lost it
+like this in an hour's hearing."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense! I'd a valiant case, if only that fool, Edward
+Huxtable, hadn't been anxious to show how many hard words he knew,
+instead of just telling the judge about my improvements and that."
+
+"Really, Joanna, you might give up talking about your improvements.
+They've nothing to do with the matter at all. Can't you see that, as the
+Government wanted the money, it's nothing to them if you spent it on a
+steam plough or on a new hat. As a matter of fact, you might just as
+well have bought your motor-car--then at least we'd have that. Now you
+say you've given up the idea."
+
+"Unless you make some money and buy it"--pain made Joanna snap.
+
+"Yes--that's right, start twitting me because it's you who have the
+money. I know you have, and you've always known I haven't--I've never
+deceived you. I suppose you think I'm glad to be coming to live on you,
+to give up a fine commercial career for your sake. I tell you, any other
+man with my feelings would have made you choose between me and
+Ansdore--but I give up everything for your sake, and that's how you pay
+me--by despising me."
+
+"Oh, don't, Bertie," said Joanna. She felt that she could bear no more.
+
+They had come into Piccadilly, and the light was still warm--it was not
+yet dinner-time, but Joanna, who had had no tea, felt suddenly weak and
+faint.
+
+"Let's go in there, dear," she said, as they reached the Popular Café,
+"and have a cup of tea. And don't let's quarrel, for I can't bear it."
+
+He looked down at her drawn face and pity smote him.
+
+"Pore ole girl--aren't you feeling well?"
+
+"Not very--I'm tired, like--sitting listening to all that rubbish."
+
+"Well, let's have an early dinner, and then go to a music-hall. You've
+never been to one yet, have you?"
+
+"No," said Joanna. She would have much rather gone straight home, but
+this was not the time to press her own wishes. She was only too glad to
+have Bertie amicable and smiling again--she realized that they had only
+just escaped a serious quarrel.
+
+The dinner, and the wine that accompanied it, made her feel better and
+more cheerful. She talked a good deal--even too much, for half a glass
+of claret had its potent effect on her fatigue. She looked flushed and
+untidy, for she had spent a long day in her hat and outdoor clothes, and
+her troubles had taken her thoughts off her appearance--she badly needed
+a few minutes before the looking-glass. As Albert watched her, he gave
+up his idea of taking her to the Palace, which he told himself would be
+full of smart people, and decided on the Alhambra Music Hall--then from
+the Alhambra he changed to the Holborn Empire.... Really it was
+annoying of Jo to come out with him looking like this--she ought to
+realize that she was not a young girl who could afford to let things
+slip. He had told her several times that her hat was on one side, ...
+And those big earrings she wore ... she ought to go in for something
+quieter at her age. Her get-up had always been too much on the showy
+side, and she was too independent of those helps to nature which much
+younger and better-looking women than herself were only too glad to
+use.... He liked to see a woman take out a powder-puff and flick it over
+her face in little dainty sweeps....
+
+These reflections did not put him in a good humour for the evening's
+entertainment. They went by 'bus to the Holborn Empire where the first
+house had already started. Joanna felt a little repulsed by the big,
+rowdy audience, smoking and eating oranges and joining in the choruses
+of the songs. Her brief experience of the dress circle at Daly's or the
+Queen's had not prepared her for anything so characteristic as an
+English music-hall, with its half-participating audience. "Hurrah for
+Maudie!" as some favourite took the boards to sing, with her shoulders
+hunched up to the brim of her enormous hat, a heartrending song about
+her mother.
+
+Joanna watched Bertie as he lounged beside her. She knew that he was
+sulking--the mere fact that he was entertaining her cheaply, by 'bus and
+music-hall instead of taxi and theatre, pointed to his displeasure. She
+wondered if he was enjoying this queer show, which struck her
+alternately as inexpressibly beautiful and inexpressibly vulgar. The
+lovely ladies like big handsome barmaids, who sang serious songs in
+evening dress and diamonds, apparently in the vicinity of Clapham High
+Street or the Monument, were merely incomprehensible. She could not
+understand what they were doing. The comedians she found amusing, when
+they did not shock her--Bertie had explained to her one or two of the
+jokes she could not understand. The "song-scenas" and acrobatic displays
+filled her with rapture. She would have liked that sort of thing the
+whole time.... Albert said it was a dull show, he grumbled at
+everything, especially the turns Joanna liked. But gradually the warm,
+friendly, vulgar atmosphere of the place infected him--he joined in one
+or two of the choruses, and seemed almost to forget about Joanna.
+
+She watched him as he leaned back in his seat, singing--
+
+    "Take me back to Pompeii--
+     To Pompey-ompey-i--"
+
+In the dim red light of the place, he looked incredibly young. She could
+see only his profile--the backward sweep of glistening, pomaded hair,
+the little short straight nose, the sensual, fretful lips--and as she
+watched him she was smitten with a queer sense of pity. This was no
+strong man, no lover and husband--just a little clerk she was going to
+shut up in prison--a little singing clerk. She felt a brute--she put
+out her hand and slid it under his arm, against his warm side.
+
+    "To Pompey-ompey-i"
+
+sang Bert.
+
+
+
+
+§30
+
+The curtain came down and the lights went up for the interval. A brass
+band played very loud. Joanna was beginning to have a bit of a headache,
+but she said nothing--she did not want him to leave on her account--or
+to find that he did not think of leaving.... She felt very hot, and
+fanned herself with her programme. Most of the audience were hot.
+
+"Joanna," said Bert, "don't you ever use powder?"
+
+"Powder? What d'you mean?"
+
+"Face-powder--what most girls use. Your skin wouldn't get red and shiny
+like that if you had some powder on it."
+
+"I'd never dream of using such a thing. I'd be ashamed."
+
+"Why be ashamed of looking decent?"
+
+"I wouldn't look decent--I'd look like a hussy. Sometimes when I see
+these gals' faces I--"
+
+"Really, Jo, to hear you speak one ud think you were the only virtuous
+woman left in England. But there are just one or two things in your
+career, my child, which don't quite bear out that notion."
+
+Joanna's heart gave a sudden bound, then seemed to freeze.
+
+She leaned forward in her chair, staring at the advertisements on the
+curtain. Bertie put his arm round her--"I say, ole girl, you ain't angry
+with me, are you?" She made no reply--she could not speak; too much was
+happening in her thoughts--had happened, rather, for her mind was now
+quite made up. A vast, half-conscious process seemed suddenly to have
+settled itself, leaving her quite clear-headed and calm.
+
+"You ain't angry with me, are you?" repeated Bert.
+
+"No," said Joanna--"I'm not angry with you."
+
+He had been cruel and selfish when she was in trouble, he had shown no
+tenderness for her physical fatigue, and now at last he had taunted her
+with the loss of her respectability for his sake. But she was not angry
+with him.... It was only that now she knew she could never, never marry
+him.
+
+
+
+
+§31
+
+That night she slept heavily--the deep sleep of physical exhaustion and
+mental decision. The unconscious striving of her soul no longer woke her
+to ask her hard questions. Her mind was made up, and her conflict was at
+an end.
+
+She woke at the full day, when down on Walland Marsh all the world was
+awake, but here the city and the house still slept, and rose with her
+eyes and heart full of tragic purpose. She dressed quickly, then packed
+her box--all the gay, grand things she had brought to make her lover
+proud of her. Then she sat down at her dressing-table, and wrote--
+
+     "DEAR BERTIE,--When you get this I shall have gone for good. I see
+     now that we were not meant for each other. I am very sorry if this
+     gives you pain. But it is all for the best.--Your sincere friend,
+
+     "JOANNA GODDEN."
+
+By this time it was half-past seven by the good gold watch which Poor
+Father had left her. Joanna's plan was to go downstairs, put her letter
+on the hall table, and bribe the girl to help her down with her box and
+call a cab, before any of the others appeared. She did not want to have
+to face Albert, with inevitable argument and possible reproaches. Her
+bruised heart ached too much to be able to endure any more from
+him--angry and wounded, it beat her side.
+
+She carried out her scheme quite successfully as far as the cab itself,
+and then was betrayed. Poor Father's watch, that huge emblem of worth
+and respectability, hanging with its gold chain and seals upon her
+breast, had a rare but embarrassing habit of stopping for half an hour
+or so, as if to rest its ancient works. This is what it had done
+to-day--instead of half-past seven, the time was eight, and as the girl
+and the cabman carried Joanna's box out of the door, Bertie appeared at
+the head of the steep little stairs.
+
+"Hullo, Joanna!" he called out in surprise--"Where on earth are you
+going?"
+
+Here was trouble. For a moment Joanna quailed, but she recovered herself
+and answered--
+
+"I'm going home."
+
+"Home! What d'you mean? Whatever for?"
+
+The box was on the taxi, and the driver stood holding the door open.
+
+"I made up my mind last night. I can't stay here any longer. Thank you,
+Alice, you needn't wait." She put a sovereign into the girl's hand.
+
+"Come into the dining-room," said Albert.
+
+He opened the door for her and they both went in.
+
+"It's no good, Bertie--I can't stand it any longer," said Joanna, "it's
+as plain as a pike as you and me were never meant to marry, and the best
+thing to do is to say good-bye before it's too late."
+
+He stared at her in silence.
+
+"I made up my mind last night," she continued, "but I wouldn't say
+anything about it till this morning, and then I thought I'd slip off
+quiet. I've left a letter to you that I wrote."
+
+"But why--why are you going?"
+
+"Well, it's pretty plain, ain't it, that we haven't been getting along
+so well as we should ought since I came here. You and me were never
+meant for each other--we don't fit--and the last few days it's been all
+trouble--and there's been things I could hardly bear ..."
+
+Her voice broke.
+
+"I'm sorry I've offended you"--he spoke stiffly--"but since you came
+here it's struck me, too, that things were different. I must say,
+Joanna, you don't seem to have considered the difficulties of my
+position."
+
+"I have--and that's one reason why I'm going. I don't want to take you
+away from your business and your career, as you say; I know you don't
+want to come and live at Ansdore ..."
+
+"If you reelly loved me, and still felt like that about my prospects,
+you'd rather give up Ansdore than turn me down as you're doing."
+
+"I do love you"--she said doggedly, "but I couldn't give up my farm for
+you and come and live with you in London--because if I did, reckon I
+shouldn't love you much longer. These last ten days have shown me more
+than anything before that you'd make anyone you lived with miserable,
+and if I hadn't my farm to take my thoughts off I'd just about die of
+shame and sorrow."
+
+He flushed angrily.
+
+"Reelly, Joanna--what do you mean? I've given you as good a time as I
+knew how."
+
+"Most likely. But all the while you were giving me that good time you
+were showing me how little you cared for me. Oh, it isn't as if I hadn't
+been in love before and seen how good a man can be.... I don't want to
+say hard things to you, my dear, but there's been times when you've hurt
+me as no man could hurt a woman he really loved. And I've lived in your
+home and seen how you treat your poor mother and your sister--and I tell
+you the truth, though it hurts me--you ain't man enough for me."
+
+"Well, if that's how you feel about me, we had certainly better not go
+on."
+
+"Don't be angry with me, dear. Reckon it was all a mistake from the
+start--I'm too old for you."
+
+"Then it's a pity we went as far as this. What'll mother and Agatha
+think when they hear you've turned me down? They're cats enough to
+imagine all sorts of things. Why do you dash off like this as if I was
+the plague? If you must break off our engagement, you must, though I
+don't want you to--I love you, even though you don't love me--but you
+might at least do it decently. Think of what they'll say when they come
+down and find you've bolted."
+
+"I'm sorry, Bertie. But I couldn't bear to stick on here another hour.
+You may tell them any story about me you like. But I can't stay. I must
+think of myself a bit, since I've no one else to do it for me."
+
+His face was like a sulky child's. He looked at the floor, and kicked
+the wainscot.
+
+"Well, I think you're treating me very badly, Joanna. Hang it all, I
+love you--and I think you're a damn fine woman--I reelly do--and I don't
+care if you are a bit older--I don't like girls."
+
+"You won't think me fine in another ten years--and as for loving me,
+don't talk nonsense; you don't love me, or I shouldn't be going. Now let
+me go."
+
+Her voice was hard, because her self-control was failing her. She tore
+open the door, and pushed him violently aside when he tried to stand in
+her way.
+
+"Let me go--I'm shut of you. I tell you, you ain't man enough for me."
+
+
+
+
+§32
+
+She had told the cabman to drive to Charing Cross station, as she felt
+unequal to the complications of travelling from Lewisham. It was a long
+drive, and all the way Joanna sat and cried. She seemed to have cried a
+great deal lately--her nature had melted in a strange way, and the tears
+she had so seldom shed as a girl were now continually ready to fall--but
+she had never cried as much as she cried this morning. By the time she
+reached Charing Cross she was in desperate need of that powder-puff
+Bertie had urged her to possess.
+
+So this was the end--the end of the great romance which should have
+given her girlhood back to her, but which instead seemed to have shut
+her into a lonely and regretful middle-age. All her shining pride in
+herself was gone--she saw herself as one who has irrevocably lost all
+that makes life worth living ... pride and love. She knew that Bertie
+did not love her--in his heart he was glad that she was going--all he
+was sorry for was the manner of it, which might bring him disgrace. But
+he would soon get over that, and then he would be thankful he was free,
+and eventually he would marry some younger woman than herself ... and
+she? Yes, she still loved him--but it would not be for long. She could
+feel her love for him slowly dying in her heart. It was scarcely more
+than pity now--pity for the little singing clerk whom she had caught and
+would have put in a cage if he had not fluttered so terribly in her
+hands.
+
+When she arrived at Charing Cross a feeling of desolation was upon her.
+A porter came to fetch her box, but Joanna--the great Joanna Godden, who
+put terror into the markets of three towns--shrank back into the taxi,
+loath to leave its comfortable shelter for the effort and racket of the
+station. A dark, handsome, rather elderly man, was coming out of one of
+the archways. Their eyes met and he at once turned his away, but Joanna
+leapt for him--
+
+"Sir Harry! Sir Harry Trevor! Don't you know me?"
+
+Only too well, but he had not exactly expected her to claim
+acquaintance. He felt bewildered when Joanna pushed her way to him
+through the crowd and wrung his hand as if he was her only friend.
+
+"Oh, Sir Harry, reckon I'm glad to see you!"
+
+"I--I--" stuttered the baronet.
+
+He looked rather flushed and sodden, and the dyeing of his hair was more
+obvious than it had been.
+
+"Fancy meeting you!" gasped Joanna.
+
+"Er--how are you, Miss Godden?"
+
+"Do you know when there's a train to Rye?"
+
+"I'm sorry, I don't. I've just been saying good-bye to my son
+Lawrence--he's off to Africa or somewhere, but I couldn't wait till his
+train came in. I've got to go over to St. Pancras and catch the 10.50
+for the north."
+
+"Lawrence!"
+
+Thank goodness, that had put her on another scent--now she would let him
+go.
+
+"Yes--he's in the station. You'll see him if you're quick."
+
+Joanna turned away, and he saw that the tears were running down her
+face. The woman had been drinking, that accounted for it all ... well,
+he wished Lawrence joy of her. It would do him good to have a drunken
+woman falling on his neck on a public platform.
+
+The porter said there was not a train for Rye for another hour. He
+suggested that Joanna should put her luggage in the cloak-room and go
+and get herself a cup of tea--the porter knew the difference between a
+drunken woman and one who is merely faint from trouble and want of her
+breakfast. But Joanna's mind was somehow obsessed by the thought of
+Lawrence--her brother-in-law as she still called him in her heart--she
+wanted to see him--she remembered his kindness long ago ... and in her
+sorrow she was going back to the sorrow of those days ... somehow she
+felt as if Martin had just died, as if she had just come out of North
+Farthing House, alone, as she had come then--and now Lawrence was here,
+as he had been then, to kiss her and say "Dear Jo"....
+
+"What platform does the train for Africa start from?" she asked the
+porter.
+
+"Well, lady, I can't rightly say. The only boat-train from here this
+morning goes to Folkestone, and that's off--but most likely the
+gentleman ud be going from Waterloo, and the trains for Waterloo start
+from number seven."
+
+The porter took her to number seven, and at the barrier she caught sight
+of a familiar figure sitting on a bench. Father Lawrence's bullet head
+showed above the folds of his cloak; by his side was a big shapeless
+bundle and his eyes were fixed on the station roof. He started violently
+when a large woman suddenly sat down beside him and burst into tears.
+
+"Lawrence!" sobbed Joanna--"Lawrence!"
+
+"Joanna!"
+
+He was too startled to say anything more, but the moment did not admit
+of much conversation. Joanna sat beside him, bent over her knees, her
+big shoulders shaking with sobs which were not always silent. Lawrence
+made himself as large as he could, but he could not hide her from the
+public stare, for nature had not made her inconspicuous, and her taste
+in clothes would have defeated nature if it had. Her orange toque had
+fallen sideways on her tawny hair--she was like a big, broken sunflower.
+
+"My dear Jo," he said gently, after a time--"let me go and get you a
+drink of water."
+
+"No--don't leave me."
+
+"Then let me ask someone to go."
+
+"No--no.... Oh, I'm all right--it's only that I felt so glad at seeing
+you again."
+
+Lawrence was surprised.
+
+"It makes me think of that other time when you were kind--I remember
+when Martin died ... oh, I can't help wishing sometimes he was
+dead--that he'd died right at the start--or I had."
+
+"My dear ..."
+
+"Oh, when Martin died, at least it was finished; but this time it ain't
+finished--it's like something broken." She clasped her hands, in their
+brown kid gloves, against her heart.
+
+"Won't you tell me what's happened? This isn't Martin you're talking
+about?"
+
+"No. But I thought he was like Martin--that's what made me take to him
+at the start. I looked up and I saw him, and I said to myself 'That's
+Martin'--it gave me quite a jump."
+
+The Waterloo train was in the station and the people on the platform
+surged towards it, leaving Lawrence and Joanna stranded on their seat.
+Lawrence looked at the train for a minute, then shook his head, as if in
+answer to some question he had asked himself.
+
+"Look here, Jo," he said, "won't you tell me what's happened? I can't
+quite understand you as it is. Don't tell me anything you'd rather not."
+
+Joanna sat upright and swallowed violently.
+
+"It's like this," she said. "I've just broken off my engagement to
+marry--maybe you didn't know I was engaged to be married?"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"Well, I was. I was engaged to a young chap--a young chap in an office.
+I met him at Marlingate, when I was staying there that time. I thought
+he was like Martin--that's what made me take to him at the first. But he
+wasn't like Martin--not really in his looks and never in his ways. And
+at last it got more'n I could bear, and I broke with him this morning
+and came away--and I reckon he ain't sorry, neither.... I'm thirteen
+year older than him."
+
+Her tears began to flow again, but the platform was temporarily
+deserted. Lawrence waited for her to go on--he suspected a tragedy which
+had not yet been revealed.
+
+"Oh, my heart's broke," she continued--"reckon I'm done for, and there's
+nothing left for me."
+
+"But, Jo--is this--this affair quite finished? Perhaps ... I mean to
+say, quarrels can be made up, you know."
+
+"Not this one," said Joanna. "It's been too much. For days I've watched
+him getting tired of me, and last night he turned on me because for his
+sake I'd done what no woman should do."
+
+The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she was dismayed. She had
+not meant to say them. Would Lawrence understand? What would he think of
+her?--a clergyman.... She turned on him a face crimson and suffused with
+tears, to meet a gaze as serene as ever. Then suddenly a new feeling
+came to her--something apart from horror at herself and shame at his
+knowing, and yet linked strangely with them both--something which was
+tenderer than any shame and yet more ruthless.... Her last guard broke
+down.
+
+"Lawrence, I've been wicked, I've been bad--I'm sorry--Lawrence."...
+
+"Tell me as little or as much as you like, dear Jo."
+
+Joanna gripped his arm; she had driven him into the corner of the seat,
+where he sat with his bundle on his lap, his ear bent to her mouth,
+while she crowded up against him, pouring out her tale. Every now and
+then he said gently--"Sh-sh-sh"--when he thought that her confession was
+penetrating the further recesses of Charing Cross....
+
+"Oh, Lawrence, I feel so bad--I feel so wicked--I never should have
+thought it of myself. I didn't feel wicked at first, but I did
+afterwards. Oh, Lawrence, tell me what I'm to do."
+
+His professional instinct taught him to treat the situation with
+simplicity, but he guessed that Joanna would not appreciate the quiet
+dealings of the confessional. He had always liked Joanna, always admired
+her, and he liked and admired her no less now, but he really knew very
+little of her--her life had crossed his only on three different brief
+occasions, when she was engaged to his brother, when she was anxious to
+appoint a Rector to the living in her gift, and now when as a
+broken-hearted woman she relieved herself of a burden of sorrow.
+
+"Lawrence--tell me what to do."
+
+"Dear Jo--I'm not quite sure.... I don't know what you want, you see.
+What I should want first myself would be absolution."
+
+"Oh, don't you try none of your Jesoot tricks on me--I couldn't bear
+it."
+
+"Very well. Then I think there's only one thing you can do, and that is
+to go home and take up your life where you left it, with a very humble
+heart. 'I shall go softly all my days in the bitterness of my soul.'"
+
+Joanna gulped.
+
+"And be very thankful, too."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For your repentance."
+
+"Well, reckon I do feel sorry--and reckon, too, I done something to be
+sorry for.... Oh, Lawrence, what a wicked owl I've been! If you'd told
+me six year ago as I'd ever have come to this I'd have had a fit on the
+ground."
+
+Lawrence looked round him nervously. Whatever Joanna's objections to
+private penance, she was curiously indifferent to confessing her sins to
+all mankind in Charing Cross station. The platform was becoming crowded
+again, and already their confessional had been invaded--a woman with a
+baby was sitting on the end of it.
+
+"Your train will be starting soon," said Lawrence--"let's go and find
+you something to eat."
+
+
+
+
+§33
+
+Joanna felt better after she had had a good cup of coffee and a poached
+egg. She was surprised afterwards to find she had eaten so much.
+Lawrence sat with her while she ate, then took her to find her porter,
+her luggage and her train.
+
+"But won't you lose your train to Africa?" asked Joanna.
+
+"I'm only going as far as Waterloo this morning, and there's a train
+every ten minutes."
+
+"When do you start for Africa?"
+
+"I think to-night."
+
+"I wish you weren't going there. Why are you going?"
+
+"Because I'm sent."
+
+"When will you come back?"
+
+"I don't know--perhaps never."
+
+"I'm middling sorry you're going. What a place to send you to!--all
+among niggers."
+
+She was getting more like herself. He stood at the carriage door,
+talking to her of indifferent things till the train started. The whistle
+blew, and the train began to glide out of the station. Joanna waved her
+hand to the grey figure standing on the platform beside the tramp's
+bundle which was all that would go with it to the ends of the earth. She
+did not know whether she pitied Lawrence or envied him.
+
+"Reckon he's got some queer notions," she said to herself.
+
+She leaned back in the carriage, feeling more at ease than she had felt
+for weeks. She was travelling third class, for one of Lawrence's notions
+was that everybody did so, and when Joanna had given him her purse to
+buy her ticket it had never struck him that she did not consider
+third-class travel "seemly" in one of her sex and position. However, the
+carriage was comfortable, and occupied only by two well-conducted
+females. Yes--she was certainly feeling better. She would never have
+thought that merely telling her story to Lawrence would have made such a
+difference. But a great burden had been lifted off her heart.... He was
+a good chap, Lawrence, for all his queer ways--such as ud make you think
+he wasn't gentry if you didn't know who his father was and his brother
+had been--and no notion how to behave himself as a clergyman,
+neither--anyway she hoped he'd get safe to Africa and that the niggers
+wouldn't eat him ... though she'd heard of such things....
+
+She'd do as he said, too. She'd go home and take up things where she'd
+put them down. It would be hard--much harder than he thought. Perhaps he
+didn't grasp all that she was doing in giving up marriage, the one thing
+that could ever make her respect herself again. Well, she couldn't help
+that--she must just do without respecting herself--that's all. Anything
+would be better than shutting up herself and Albert together in prison,
+till they hated each other. It would be very hard for her, who had
+always been so proud of herself, to live without even respecting
+herself. But she should have thought of that earlier. She remembered
+Lawrence's words--"I will go softly all my days in the bitterness of my
+soul".... Well, she'd do her best, and perhaps God would forgive her,
+and then when she died she'd go to heaven, and be with Martin for ever
+and ever, in spite of all the bad things she'd done....
+
+She got out at Appledore and took the light railway to Brodnyx. She did
+not feel inclined for the walk from Rye. The little train was nearly
+empty, and Joanna had a carriage to herself. She settled herself
+comfortably in a corner--it was good to be coming home, even as things
+were. The day was very sunny and still. The blue sky was slightly
+misted--a yellow haze which smelt of chaff and corn smudged together the
+sky and the marsh and the distant sea. The farms with their red and
+yellow roofs were like ripe apples lying in the grass.
+
+Yes, the Marsh was the best place to live on, and the Marsh ways were
+the best ways, and the man who had loved her on the Marsh was the best
+man and the best lover.... She wondered what Ellen would say when she
+heard she had broken off her engagement. Ellen had never thought much of
+Bertie--she had thought Joanna was a fool to see such a lot in him; and
+Ellen had been right--her eyes and her head were clearer than her poor
+sister's.... She expected she would be home in time for tea--Ellen would
+be terrible surprised to see her; if she'd had any sense she'd have sent
+her a telegram.
+
+The little train had a strange air of friendliness as it jogged across
+Romney Marsh. It ran familiarly through farmyards and back gardens, it
+meekly let the motor-cars race it and pass it as it clanked beside the
+roads. The line was single all the way, except for a mile outside
+Brodnyx station, where it made a loop to let the up-train pass. The
+up-train was late--they had been too long loading up the fish at
+Dungeness, or there was a reaping machine being brought from Lydd. For
+some minutes Joanna's train stayed halted in the sunshine, in the very
+midst of the Three Marshes. Miles of sun-swamped green spread on either
+side--the carriage was full of sunshine--it was bright and stuffy like a
+greenhouse. Joanna felt drowsy, she lay back in her corner blinking at
+the sun--she was all quiet now. A blue-bottle droned against the window,
+and the little engine droned, like an impatient fly--it was all very
+still, very hot, very peaceful....
+
+Then suddenly something stirred within her--stirred physically. In some
+mysterious way she seemed to come alive. She sat up, pressing her hand
+to her side. A flood of colour went up into her face--her body trembled,
+and the tears started in her eyes ... she felt herself choking with wild
+fear, and wild joy.
+
+
+
+
+§34
+
+Oh, she understood now. She understood, and she was certain. She knew
+now--she knew, and she was frightened ... oh, she was frightened ... now
+everything was over with her indeed.
+
+Joanna nearly fainted. She fell in a heap against the window, looking
+more than ever, as the sunshine poured on her, like a great golden,
+broken flower. She felt herself choking and managed to right
+herself--the window was down, and a faint puff of air came in from the
+sea, lifting her hair as she leaned back against the wooden wall of the
+carriage, her mouth a little open.... She felt better now, but still so
+frightened.... She was done for, she was finished--there would not be
+any more talk of going back and picking up things where she had let them
+drop. She would have to marry Bertie--there was no help for it, she
+would send him a telegram from Brodnyx station. Oh, that this should
+have happened!... And she had been feeling so much easier in her
+mind--she had almost begun to feel happy again, thinking of the old home
+and the old life. And now she knew that they had gone for ever--the old
+home and the old life. She had cut herself away from both--she would
+have to marry Albert, to shut her little clerk in prison after all, and
+herself with him. She would have to humble herself before him, she would
+have to promise to go and live with him in London, do all she possibly
+could to make his marriage easy for him. He did not want to marry her,
+and she did not want to marry him, but there was no help for it, they
+must marry now, because of what their love had given them before it
+died.
+
+She had no tears for this new tragedy. She leaned forward in her seat,
+her hands clasped between her knees, her eyes staring blankly at the
+carriage wall as if she saw there her future written ... herself and
+Albert growing old together, or rather herself growing old while Albert
+lived through his eager, selfish youth--herself and Albert shut up
+together ... how he would scold her, how he would reproach her--he would
+say "You have brought me to this," and in time he would come to hate
+her, his fellow-prisoner who had shut the door on both of them--and he
+would hate her child ... they would never have married except for the
+child, so he would hate her child, scold it, make it miserable ... it
+would grow up in an unhappy home, with parents who did not love each
+other, who owed it a grudge for coming to them--her child, her precious
+child....
+
+Still in her heart, alive under all the fear, was that thrill of divine
+joy which had come to her in the first moment of realization. Terror,
+shame, despair--none of them could kill it, for that joy was a part of
+her being, part of the new being which had quickened in her. It belonged
+to them both--it was the secret they shared ... joy, unutterable joy.
+Yes, she was glad she was going to have this child--she would still be
+glad even in the prison-house of marriage, she would still be glad even
+in the desert of no-marriage, every tongue wagging, every finger
+pointing, every heart despising. Nothing could take her joy from
+her--make her less than joyful mother....
+
+Then as the joy grew and rose above the fear, she knew that she could
+never let fear drive her into bondage. Nothing should make a sacrifice
+of joy to shame--to save herself she would not bring up her child in the
+sorrow and degradation of a loveless home.... If she had been strong
+enough to give up the thought of marriage for the sake of Bertie's
+liberty and her own self-respect, she could be strong enough now to turn
+from her only hope of reputation for the sake of the new life which was
+joy within her. It would be the worst, most shattering thing she had
+ever yet endured, but she would go through with it for the love of the
+unborn. Joanna was not so unsophisticated as to fail to realize the
+difficulties and complications of her resolve--how much her child would
+suffer for want of a father's name; memories of lapsed dairymaids had
+stressed in her experience the necessity of a marriage no matter how
+close to the birth. But she did not rate these difficulties higher than
+the misery of such a home as hers and Albert's would be. Better anything
+than that. Joanna had no illusions about Albert now--he'd have led her a
+dog's life if she had married him in the first course of things; now it
+would be even worse, and her child should not suffer that.
+
+No, she would do her best. Possibly she could arrange things so as to
+protect, at least to a certain extent, the name her baby was to bear.
+She would have to give up Ansdore, of course--leave Walland Marsh ...
+her spirit quailed, but she braced it fiercely. She was going through
+with this--it was the only thing Lawrence had told her that she could
+do--go softly all her days--to the very end. That end was farther and
+bitterer than either he or she had imagined then, but she would not have
+to go all the way alone. A child--that was what she had always wanted;
+she had tried to fill her heart with other things, with Ansdore, with
+Ellen, with men ... but what she had always wanted had been a child--she
+saw that now. Her child should have been born in easy, honourable
+circumstances, with a kind father--Arthur Alce, perhaps, since it could
+not be Martin Trevor. But the circumstances of its birth were her doing,
+and it was she who would face them. The circumstances only were her sin
+and shame, her undying regret--since she knew she could not keep them
+entirely to herself--the rest was joy and thrilling, vital peace.
+
+The little train pulled itself together, and ran on into Brodnyx
+station. Joanna climbed down on the wooden platform, and signalled to
+the porter-stationmaster to take out her box.
+
+"What, you back, Miss Godden!" he said, "we wasn't expecting you."
+
+"No, I've come back pretty sudden. Do you know if there's any traps
+going over Pedlinge way?"
+
+"There's Mrs. Furnese come over to fetch a crate of fowls. Maybe she'd
+give you a lift."
+
+"I'll ask her," said Joanna.
+
+Mrs. Furnese, too, was much surprised to see her back, but she said
+nothing about it, partly because she was a woman of few words, and
+partly because they'd all seen in the paper this morning that Joanna had
+lost her case--and reckon she must be properly upset. Maybe that was why
+she had come back....
+
+"Would you like to drive?" she asked Joanna, when they had taken their
+seats in Misleham's ancient gig, with the crate of fowls behind them.
+She felt rather shy of handling the reins under Joanna Godden's eye, for
+everyone knew that Joanna drove like a Jehu, something tur'ble.
+
+But the great woman shook her head. She felt tired, she said, with the
+heat. So Mrs. Furnese drove, and Joanna sat silently beside her,
+watching her thick brown hand on the reins, with the wedding ring
+embedded deep in the gnarled finger.
+
+"Reckon she's properly upset with that case," thought the married woman
+to herself, "and sarve her right for bringing it. She could easily have
+paid them missionaries, with all the money she had. But it was ever
+Joanna's way to make a terrification."
+
+They jogged on over the winding, white ribbon of road--through Brodnyx
+village, past the huge barn-like church which had both inspired and
+reproached her faith, with its black, caped tower canting over it, on to
+Walland Marsh, to the cross roads at the Woolpack--My, how they would
+talk at the Woolpack!... but she would be far away by then ... where?...
+She didn't know, she would think of that later--when she had told
+Ellen. Oh, there would be trouble--there would be the worst she'd ever
+have to swallow--when she told Ellen....
+
+
+
+
+§35
+
+Joanna saw Ansdore looking at her through the chaffy haze of the August
+afternoon. It stewed like an apple in the sunshine, and a faint smell of
+apples came from it, as its great orchard dragged its boughs in the
+grass. They were reaping the Gate Field close to the house--the hum of
+the reaper came to her, and seemed in some mysterious way to be the
+voice of Ansdore itself, droning in the sunshine and stillness. She felt
+her throat tighten, and winked the tears from her eyes.
+
+She could see Ellen coming down the drive, a cool, white, belted figure,
+with trim white feet. From her bedroom window Ellen had seen the
+Misleham gig turn in at the gate, and had at once recognized the golden
+blot beside Mrs. Furnese as her sister Joanna.
+
+"Hullo, Jo! I never expected you back to-day. Did you send a wire? For
+if you did, I never got it."
+
+"No, I didn't telegraph. Where's Mene Tekel? Tell her to come around
+with Nan and carry up my box. Mrs. Furnese, ma'am, I hope you'll step in
+and drink a cup of tea."
+
+Joanna climbed down and kissed Ellen--her cheek was warm and moist, and
+her hair hung rough about her ears, over one of which the orange toque,
+many times set right, had come down in a final confusion. Ellen on the
+other hand was as cool as she was white--and her hair lay smooth under a
+black velvet fillet. Of late it seemed as if her face had acquired a
+brooding air; it had lost its exotic look, it was dreamy, almost
+virginal. Joanna felt her sister's kiss like snow.
+
+"Is tea ready?"
+
+"No--it's only half-past three. But you can have it at once. You look
+tired. Why didn't you send a wire, and I'd have had the trap to meet
+you."
+
+"I never troubled, and I've managed well enough. Ain't you coming in,
+Mrs. Furnese?"
+
+"No, thank you, Miss Godden--much obliged all the same. I've my man's
+tea to get, and these fowls to see to."
+
+She felt that the sisters would want to be alone. Joanna would tell
+Ellen all about her failure, and Mene Tekel and Nan would overhear as
+much as they could, and tell Broadhurst and Crouch and the other men,
+who would tell the Woolpack bar, where Mr. Furnese would hear it and
+bring it home to Mrs. Furnese.... So her best way of learning the truth
+about the Appeal and exactly how many thousands Joanna had lost depended
+on her going home as quickly as possible.
+
+Joanna, was glad to be alone. She went with Ellen into the cool
+parlour, drinking in the relief of its solid comfort compared with the
+gimcrackiness of the parlour at Lewisham.
+
+"I'm sorry about your Appeal," said Ellen--"I saw in to-day's paper that
+you've lost it."
+
+Joanna had forgotten all about the Appeal--it seemed twenty-four years
+ago instead of twenty-four hours that she had come out of the Law Courts
+and seen Bertie standing there with the pigeons strutting about his
+feet--but she welcomed it as a part explanation of her appearance, which
+she saw now was deplorable, and her state of mind, which she found
+impossible to disguise.
+
+"Yes, it's terrible--I'm tedious upset."
+
+"I suppose you've lost a lot of money."
+
+"Not more than I can afford to pay"--the old Joanna came out and boasted
+for a minute.
+
+"That's one comfort."
+
+Joanna looked at her sister and opened her mouth, but shut it as Mene
+Tekel came in with the tea tray and Arthur Alce's good silver service.
+
+Mene set the tea as silently as the defects of her respiratory apparatus
+would admit, and once again Joanna sighed with relief as she thought of
+the clatter made by Her at Lewisham.... Oh, there was no denying that
+she had a good house and good servants and had done altogether well for
+herself until in a fit of wickedness she had bust it all.
+
+She would not tell Ellen to-night. She would wait till to-morrow
+morning, when she'd had a good sleep. She felt tired now, and would cry
+the minute Ellen began.... But she'd let her know about the breaking
+off of her engagement--that would prepare the way, like.
+
+"Ellen," she said, after she had drunk her tea--"one reason I'm so upset
+is that I've just broken off my marriage with my intended."
+
+"Joanna!"
+
+Ellen put down her cup and stared at her. In her anxiety to hide her
+emotion, Joanna had spoken more in anger than in sorrow, so her sister's
+pity was checked.
+
+"What ever made you do that!"
+
+"We found we didn't suit."
+
+"Well, my dear, I must say the difference in your age made me rather
+anxious. Thirteen years on the woman's side is rather a lot, you know.
+But I knew you'd always liked boys, so I hoped for the best."
+
+"Well, it's all over now."
+
+"Poor old Joanna, it must have been dreadful for you--on the top of your
+failure in the courts, too; but I'm sure you were wise to break it off.
+Only the most absolute certainty could have justified such a marriage."
+
+She smiled to herself. When she said "absolute certainty" she was
+thinking of Tip.
+
+"Well, I've got a bit of a headache," said Joanna rising--"I think I'll
+go and have a lay down."
+
+"Do, dear. Would you like me to come up with you and help you undress?"
+
+"No thanks. I'll do by myself. You might ask the girl to bring me up a
+jug of hot water. Reckon I shan't be any worse for a good wash."
+
+
+
+
+§36
+
+Much as Joanna was inclined to boast of her new bathroom at Ansdore, she
+did not personally make much use of it, having perhaps a secret fear of
+its unfriendly whiteness, and a love of the homely, steaming jug which
+had been the fount of her ablutions since her babyhood's tub was given
+up. This evening she removed the day's grime from herself by a gradual
+and excessively modest process, and about one and a half pints of hot
+water. Then she twisted her hair into two ropes, put on a clean
+night-gown, and got into bed.
+
+Her body's peace between the cool, coarse sheets seemed to thrill to her
+soul. She felt at home and at rest. It was funny being in bed at that
+time in the afternoon--scarcely past four o'clock--it was funny, but it
+was good. The sunshine was coming into the room, a spill of misty gold
+on the floor and furniture, and from where she lay she could see the
+green boundaries of the Marsh. Oh, it would be terrible when she saw
+that Marsh no more ... the tears rose, and she turned her face to the
+pillow. It was all over now--all her ambition, all her success, all the
+greatness of Joanna Godden. She had made Ansdore great and prosperous
+though she was a woman, and then she had lost it because she was a
+woman.... Words that she had uttered long ago came back into her mind.
+She saw herself standing in the dairy, in front of Martha Tilden, whose
+face she had forgotten. She was saying: "It's sad to think you've kept
+yourself straight for years and then gone wrong at last...."
+
+Yes, it was sad ... and now she was being punished for it; but wrapped
+up in her punishment, sweetening its very heart, was a comfort she did
+not deserve. Ansdore was slowly fading in her thoughts, as it had
+always faded in the presence of any vital instinct, whether of love or
+death. Ansdore could never be to her what her child would be--none of
+her men, except perhaps Martin, could have been to her what her child
+would be.... "If it's a boy I'll call it Martin--if it's a girl I'll
+call it Ellen," he said to herself. Then she doubted whether Ellen
+would appreciate the compliment ... but she would not let herself
+think of Ellen to-night. That was to-morrow's evil.
+
+"I'll have to make some sort of a plan, though--I'll have to sell this
+place and give Ellen a share of it. And me--where ull I go?"
+
+She must go pretty far, so that when the child came Brodnyx and Pedlinge
+would not get to know about it. She would have to go at least as far as
+Brighton ... then she remembered Martha Relf and her lodgings at
+Chichester--"that wouldn't be bad, to go to Martha just for a start. Me
+leaving Ansdore for the same reason as she left it thirteen year ago ...
+that's queer. The mistress who got shut of her, coming to her and
+saying--'Look here, Martha, take me in, so's I can have my child in
+peace same as you had yours' ... I should ought to get some stout money
+for this farm--eight thousand pounds if it's eightpence--though reckon
+the Government ull want about half of it and we'll have all that
+terrification started again ... howsumever, I guess I'll get enough of
+it to live on, even when Ellen has her bit ... and maybe the folk around
+here ull think I'm sold up because my case has bust me, and that'll save
+me something of their talk."
+
+Well, well, she was doing the best she could--though Lawrence on his
+blind, obedient way to Africa was scarcely going on a farther, lonelier
+journey than that on which Joanna was setting out.
+
+"Oh, Martin," she whispered, lifting her eyes to his picture on her
+chest of drawers--"I wish I could feel you close."
+
+It was years since she had really let herself think of him, but now
+strange barriers of thought had broken down, and she seemed to go to and
+fro quite easily into the past. Whether it was her love for Bertie whom
+in her blindness she had thought like him, or her meeting with Lawrence,
+or the new hope within her, she did not trouble to ask--but that
+strange, long forbidding was gone. She was free to remember all their
+going out and coming in together, his sweet fiery kisses, the ways of
+the Marsh that he had made wonderful. Throughout her being there was a
+strange sense of release--broken, utterly done and finished as she was
+from the worldly point of view, there was in her heart a springing hope,
+a sweet softness--she could indeed go softly at last.
+
+The tears were in her eyes as she climbed out of bed and knelt down
+beside it. It was weeks since she had said her prayers--not since that
+night when Bertie had come into her room. But now that her heart was
+quite melted she wanted to ask God to help her and forgive her.
+
+"Oh, please God, forgive me. I know I been wicked, but I'm unaccountable
+sorry. And I'm going through with it. Please help my child--don't let it
+get hurt for my fault. Help me to do my best and not grumble, seeing as
+it's all my own wickedness; and I'm sorry I broke the Ten Commandments.
+'Lord have mercy upon us and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we
+beseech thee.'"
+
+This liturgical outburst seemed wondrously to heal Joanna--it seemed to
+link her up again with the centre of her religion--Brodnyx church, with
+the big pews, and the hassocks, and the Lion and the Unicorn over the
+north door--she felt readmitted into the congregation of the faithful,
+and her heart was full of thankfulness and loyalty. She rose from her
+knees, climbed into bed, and curled up on her side. Ten minutes later
+she was sound asleep.
+
+
+
+
+§37
+
+The next morning after breakfast, Joanna faced Ellen in the dining-room.
+
+"Ellen," she said--"I'm going to sell Ansdore."
+
+"You're what?"
+
+"I'm going to put up this place for auction in September."
+
+"Joanna!"
+
+Ellen stared at her in amazement, alarm, and some sympathy.
+
+"I'm driving in to tell Edward Huxtable about it this morning. Not that
+I trust him, after the mess he made of my case; howsumever, I can look
+after him in this business, and the auctioneer, too."
+
+"But, my dear, I thought you said you'd plenty of money to meet your
+losses."
+
+"So I have. That's not why I'm selling."
+
+"Then why on earth ..."
+
+The colour mounted to Joanna's face. She looked at her sister's
+delicate, thoughtful face, with its air of quiet happiness. The room was
+full of sunshine, and Ellen was all in white.
+
+"Ellen, I'm going to tell you something ... because you're my sister.
+And I trust you not to let another living soul know what I've told you.
+As I kept your secret four years ago, so now you can keep mine."
+
+Ellen's face lost a little of its repose--suddenly, for a moment, she
+looked like the Ellen of "four years ago."
+
+"Really, Joanna, you might refrain from raking up the past."
+
+"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to rake up nothing. I've no right--seeing as
+what I want to tell you is that I'm just the same as you."
+
+Ellen turned white.
+
+"What do you mean?" she cried furiously.
+
+"I mean--I'm going to have a child."
+
+Ellen stared at her without speaking, her mouth fell open; then her face
+began working in a curious way.
+
+"I know I been wicked," continued Joanna, in a dull, level voice--"but
+it's too late to help that now. The only thing now is to do the best I
+can, and that is to get out of here."
+
+"Do you know what you're talking about?" said Ellen.
+
+"Yes--I know right enough. It's true what I'm telling you. I didn't know
+for certain till yesterday."
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Certain sure."
+
+"But--" Ellen drummed with her fingers on the table, her hands were
+shaking, her colour came and went.
+
+"Joanna--is it Albert's child?"
+
+"Of course it is."
+
+"Then why--why in God's name did you break off the engagement?"
+
+"I tell you I didn't know till yesterday. I'd been scared once or twice,
+but he told me it was all right."
+
+"Does he know?"
+
+"He doesn't."
+
+"Then he must be told"--Ellen sprang to her feet--"Joanna, what a fool
+you are! You must send him a wire at once and tell him to come down
+here. You must marry him."
+
+"That I won't!"
+
+"But you're mad--really, you've no choice in the matter. You must marry
+him at once."
+
+"I tell you I'll never do that."
+
+"If you don't ... can't you see what'll happen?--are you an absolute
+fool? If you don't marry this man, your child will be illegitimate,
+you'll be kicked out of decent society, and you'll bring us all to ruin
+and disgrace."
+
+Ellen burst into tears. Joanna fought back her own.
+
+"Listen to me, Ellen."
+
+But Ellen sobbed brokenly on. It was as if her own past had risen from
+its grave and laid cold hands upon her, just when she thought it was
+safely buried for ever.
+
+"Don't you see what'll happen if you refuse to marry this man?--It'll
+ruin me--it'll spoil my marriage. Tip ... Good God! he's risen to a good
+deal, seeing the ideas most Englishmen have ... but now you--you--"
+
+"Ellen, you don't mean as Tip ull get shut of you because of me?"
+
+"No, of course I don't. But it's asking too much of him--it isn't fair
+to him ... he'll think he's marrying into a fine family!"--and Ellen's
+tears broke into some not very pleasant laughter--"both of us ... Oh, he
+was sweet about me, he understood--but now you--you!--Whatever made you
+do it, Joanna?"
+
+"I dunno ... I loved him, and I was mad."
+
+"I think it's horrible of you--perfectly horrible. I'd absolutely no
+idea you were that sort of woman--I thought at least you were decent and
+respectable.... A man you were engaged to, too. Oh, I know what you're
+thinking--you're thinking I'm in the same boat as you are, but I tell
+you I'm not. I was a married woman--I couldn't have married my lover,
+I'd a right to take what I could get. But you could have married
+yours--you were going to marry him. But you lost your head--like a
+common servant--like the girl you sacked years ago when you thought I
+was too young to understand anything about it. And I never landed myself
+with a child--at least there was some possibility of wiping out what I'd
+done when it proved a mistake, some chance of living it down--and I've
+done it, I've won my way back, and now you come along and disgrace me
+all over again, and the man I love ..."
+
+Never had Ellen's voice been so like Joanna's. It had risen to a hoarse
+note where it hung suspended--anyone now would know that they were
+sisters.
+
+"I tell you I'm sorry, Ellen. But I can't do nothing bout it."
+
+"Yes, you can. You can marry this man, Hill--then no one need ever know,
+Tip need never know--"
+
+"Reckon that wouldn't keep them from knowing. They'd see as I was
+getting married in a hurry--not an invitation out and my troossoo not
+half ready--and then they'd count the months till the baby came. No, I
+tell you, it'll be much better if I go away. Everyone ull think as I'm
+bust, through having lost my case, and I'll go right away--Chichester,
+I'd thought of going to, where Martha Relf is--and when the baby comes,
+no one till be a bit the wiser."
+
+"Of course they will. They'll know all about it--everything gets known
+here, and you've never in your life been able to keep a secret. If you
+marry, people won't talk in the same way--it'll be only guessing,
+anyhow. You needn't be down here when the baby's born--and at least Tip
+needn't know. Joanna, if you love me, if you ever loved me, you'll send
+a wire to this man and tell him that you've changed your mind and must
+see him--you can easily make up the quarrel, whatever it was."
+
+"Maybe he wouldn't marry me now, even if I did wire."
+
+"Nonsense--he'd have to."
+
+"Well, he won't be asked."
+
+Joanna was stiffening with grief. She had not expected to have this
+battle with Ellen; she had been prepared for abuse and upbraiding, but
+not for argument--it had not struck her that her sister would demand the
+rehabilitation she herself refused.
+
+"You're perfectly shameless," sobbed Ellen. "My God! It ud take a woman
+like you to brazen through a thing like this. Swanking, swaggering,
+you've always been ... well, I bet you'll find this too much even for
+your swagger--you don't know what you're letting yourself in for.... I
+can tell you a little, for I've known, I've felt, what people can be....
+I've had to face them--when you wouldn't let Arthur give me my divorce."
+
+"Well, I'll just about have to face 'em, that's all. I done wrong, and I
+don't ask not to be punished."
+
+"You're an absolute fool. And if you won't do anything for your own
+sake, you might at least do something for mine. I tell you, I'm not like
+you--I do think of other people--and for Tip's sake I can't have
+everyone talking about you, and may be my own story raked up again. I
+won't have him punished for his goodness. If you won't marry and be
+respectable, I tell you, you needn't think I'll ever let you see me
+again."
+
+"But, Ellen, supposing even there is talk--you and Tip won't be here to
+hear it. You'll be married by then and away in Wiltshire. Tip need never
+know."
+
+"How can he help knowing, as long as you've got a tongue in your head?
+And what'll he think you're doing at Chichester?--No, I tell you,
+Joanna, unless you marry Hill, you can say good-bye to me"--she was
+speaking quite calmly now--"I don't want to be hard and unsisterly, but
+I happen to love the man who's going to be my husband better than anyone
+in the world. He's been good, and I'm not going to have his goodness put
+upon. He's marrying a woman who's had trouble and scandal in her life,
+but at least he's not going to have the shame of that woman's sister. So
+you can choose between me and yourself."
+
+"It ain't between you and myself. It's between you and my child. It's
+for my child's sake I won't marry Bertie Hill."
+
+"My dear Joanna, are you quite an ass? Can't you see that the person who
+will suffer most for all this is your child? I didn't bring in that
+argument before, as I didn't think it would appeal to you--but surely
+you see that the position of an illegitimate child ..."
+
+"Is much better than the child of folk who don't love each other, and
+have only married because it was coming. I'm scared myself, and I can
+scare Bert, and we can get married--but what'll that be? He don't love
+me--I don't love him. He don't want to marry me--I don't want to marry
+him. He'll never forgive me, and all our lives he'll be throwing it up
+to me--and he'll be hating the child, seeing as it's only because of it
+we're married, and he'll make it miserable. Oh, you don't know Bertie as
+I know him--I don't say as it's all his fault, poor boy, I reckon his
+mother didn't raise him properly--but you should hear him speak to his
+mother and sister, and know what he'd be as a husband and father. I tell
+you, he ain't fit to be the father of a child."
+
+"And are you fit to be the mother?" Ellen sneered.
+
+"Maybe I ain't. But the point is, I am the mother, nothing can change
+that. And reckon I can fight, and keep the worst off. Oh, I know it
+ain't easy, and it ain't right; and I'll suffer for it, and the worst
+till be that my child ull have to suffer too. But I tell you it shan't
+suffer more than I can help. Reckon I shan't manage so badly. I'll raise
+it among strangers, and I'll have a nice little bit of money to live on,
+coming to me from the farm, even when I've paid you a share, as I shall,
+as is fitting. I'll give my child every chance I can."
+
+"Then it's a choice between your child and me. If you do this mad
+thing, Joanna, you'll have to go. I can't have you ever coming near me
+and Tip--it isn't only for my own sake--it's for his."
+
+"Reckon we're both hurting each other for somebody else's sake. But I
+ain't angry with you, Ellen, same as you're angry with me."
+
+"I am angry with you--I can't help it. You go and do this utterly silly
+and horrible thing, and then instead of making the best you can of it
+for everybody's sake, you go on blundering worse and worse. Such utter
+ignorance of the world ... such utter ignorance of your own self ... how
+d'you think you're going to manage without Ansdore? Why, it's your very
+life--you'll be utterly lost without it. Think of yourself, starting an
+entirely new life at your age--nearly forty. It's impossible. You don't
+know what you're letting yourself in for. But you'll find out when it's
+too late, and then both you and your unfortunate child ull have to
+suffer."
+
+"If I married Bert I couldn't keep on Ansdore. He wouldn't marry me
+unless I came to London--I know that now. He's set on business. I'd have
+to go and live with him in a street ... then we'd both be miserable, all
+three be miserable. Now if I go off alone, maybe later on I can get a
+bit of land, and run another farm in foreign parts--by Chichester or
+Southampton--just a little one, to keep me busy. Reckon that ud be fine
+and healthy for my child ..."
+
+"Your child seems to be the only thing you care about. Really to hear
+you talk, one ud almost think you were glad."
+
+"I am glad."
+
+Ellen sprang to her feet.
+
+"There's no good going on with this conversation. You're quite without
+feeling and quite without shame. I don't know if you'll come to your
+senses later, and not perhaps feel quite so _glad_ that you have ruined
+your life, disgraced your family, broken my heart, brought shame and
+trouble into the life of a good and decent man. But at present I'm sick
+of you."
+
+She walked towards the door.
+
+"Ellen," cried Joanna--"don't go away like that--don't think that of me.
+I ain't glad in that way."
+
+But Ellen would not turn or speak. She went out of the door with a
+queer, white draggled look about her.
+
+"Ellen," cried Joanna a second time, but she knew it was no good....
+
+Well, she was alone now, if ever a woman was.
+
+She stood staring straight in front of her, out of the little flower-pot
+obscured window, into the far distances of the Marsh. Once more the
+Marsh wore its strange, occasional look of being under the sea, but this
+time it was her own tears that had drowned it.
+
+"Child--what if the old floods came again?" she seemed to hear Martin's
+voice as it had spoken in a far-off, half forgotten time.... He had
+talked to her about those old floods, he had said they might come again,
+and she had said they couldn't.... My! How they used to argue together
+in those days. He had said that if the floods came back to drown the
+Marsh, all the church bells would ring under the sea....
+
+She liked thinking of Martin in this way--it comforted her. It made her
+feel as if, now that everything had been taken from her, the past so
+long lost had been given back. And not the past only, for if her
+memories lived, her hopes lived too--not even Ellen's bitterness could
+kill them.... There she stood, nearly forty years old, on the threshold
+of an entirely new life--her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her
+good name, all lost. But the past and the future still were hers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Joanna Godden, by Sheila Kaye-Smith
+
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