"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."