"I think it's a delicious place," he retorted, teasing her, "I've a mind

to bring you here for our honeymoon."

"Martin, you'd never I You told me you were taking me to foreign parts,

and I've told Mrs. Southland and Mrs. Furnese and Maudie Vine and half a

dozen more all about my going to Paris and seeing the sights and

hearing French spoken."

"Yes--perhaps it would be better to go abroad; Broomhill is wonderful,

but you in Paris will be more wonderful than Broomhill--even in the days

before the flood."

"I want to see the Eiffel Tower--where they make the lemonade--and I

want to buy myself something really chick in the way of hats."

"Joanna--do you know the hat which suits you best?"

"Which?" she asked eagerly, with some hope for the feathers.

"The straw hat you tie on over your hair when you go out to the chickens

first thing in the morning."

"That old thing I Why I My! Lor! Martin! That's an old basket that I tie

under my chin with a neckerchief of poor father's."

"It suits you better than any hat in the Rue St. Honoré--it's brown and

golden like yourself, and your hair comes creeping and curling from

under it, and there's a shadow on your face, over your eyes--the shadow

stops just above your mouth--your mouth is all of your face that I can

see dearly, and it's your mouth that I love most ..."

He suddenly kissed it, ignoring her business with the reins and the

chances of the road, pulling her round in her seat and covering her face

with his, so that his eyelashes stroked her cheek. She drew her hands up

sharply to her breast, and with the jerk the horse stopped.

For a few moments they stayed so, then he released her and they moved

on. Neither of them spoke; the tears were in Joanna's eyes and in her

heart was a devouring tenderness that made it ache. The trap lurched in

the deep ruts of the road, which now had become a mass of shingle and

gravel, skirting the beach. Queer sea plants grew in the ruts, the

little white sea-campions with their fat seed-boxes filled the furrows

of the road as with a foam--it seemed a pity and a shame to crush them,

and one could tell by their fresh growth how long it was since wheels

had passed that way.

At Jury's Gap, a long white-daubed coastguard station marked the end of

the road. Only a foot-track ran out to the Ness. They left the horse and

trap at the station and went afoot.

"I told you it was a tedious place," said Joanna. Like a great many busy

people she did not like walking, which she always looked upon as a waste

of time. Martin could seldom persuade her to come for a long walk.

It was a long walk up the Ness, and the going was bad, owing to the

shingle. The sea-campion grew everywhere, and in sunny corners the

yellow-horned poppy put little spots of colour into a landscape of

pinkish grey. The sea was the same colour as the land, for the sun had

sunk away into the low thick heavens, leaving the sea an unrelieved,

tossed dun waste.

The wind came tearing across Rye Bay with a moan, lifting all the waves

into little sharp bitter crests.

"We'll get the rain," said Joanna sagely.

"I don't care if we do," said Martin.

"You haven't brought your overcoat."

"Never mind that."

"I do mind."

His robust appearance--his broad back and shoulders, thick vigorous neck

and swarthy skin--only magnified his pathos in her eyes. It was pitiful

that this great thing should be so frail.... He could pick her up with

both hands on her waist, and hold her up before him, the big Joanna--and

yet she must take care of him.

§17

An hour's walking brought them to the end of the Ness--to a strange

forsaken country of coastguard stations and lonely taverns and shingle

tracks. The lighthouse stood only a few feet above the sea, at the end

of the point, and immediately before it the water dropped to sinister,

glaucous depths.

"Well, it ain't much to see," said Joanna.

"It's wonderful," said Martin--"it's terrible."

He stood looking out to sea, into the Channel streaked with green and

grey, as if he would draw France out of the southward fogs. He felt

half-way to France ... here on the end of this lonely crane, with water

each side of him and ahead, and behind him the shingle which was the

uttermost of Kent.

"Joanna--don't you feel it, too?"

"Yes--maybe I do. It's queer and lonesome--I'm glad I've got you,

Martin."

She suddenly came close to him and put out her arms, hiding her face

against his heart.

"Child--what is it?"

"I dunno. Maybe it's this place, but I feel scared. Oh, Martin, you'll

never leave me? You'll always be good to me?..."

"I ... oh, my own precious thing."

He held her close to him and they both trembled--she with her first fear

of those undefinable forces and associations which go to make the

mystery of place, he with the passion of his faithfulness, of his vows

of devotion, too fierce and sacrificial even to express.

"Let's go and have tea," she said, suddenly disengaging herself, "I'll

get the creeps if we stop out here on the beach much longer--reckon I've

got 'em now, and I never was the one to be silly like that. I told you

it was a tedious hole."

They went to the Britannia, on the eastern side of the bill. The inn

looked surprised to see them, but agreed to put the kettle on. They sat

together in a little queer, dim room, smelling of tar and fish, and

bright with the flames of wreckwood. Joanna had soon lost her fears--she

talked animatedly, telling him of the progress of her spring wheat; of

the dead owl that had fallen out of the beams of Brenzett church during

morning prayers last Sunday, of the shocking way they had managed their

lambing at Beggar's Bush, of King Edward's Coronation that was coming

off in June.

"I know of something else that's coming off in June," said Martin.

"Our wedding?"

"Surelye."

"I'm going into Folkestone next week, to that shop where I bought my

party gown."

"And I'm going to Mr. Pratt to tell him to put up our banns, or we

shan't have time to be cried three times before the first of June."

"The first!--I told you the twenty-fourth."

"But I'm not going to wait till the twenty-fourth. You promised me

June."

"But I shan't have got in my hay, and the shearers are coming on the

fourteenth--you have to book weeks ahead, and that was the only date

Harmer had free."

"Joanna."

Her name was a summons, almost stern, and she looked up. She was still

sitting at the table, stirring the last of her tea. He sat under the

window on an old sea-chest, and had just lit his pipe.

"Come here, Joanna."

She came obediently, and sat beside him, and he put his arm round her.

The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day.

"I've been thinking a lot about this, and I know now--there is only one

thing between us, and that's Ansdore."

"How d'you mean? It ain't between us."

"It is--again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of

our love. What other woman on God's earth would put off her marriage to

fit in with the sheep-shearing?"

"I ain't putting it off. We haven't fixed the day yet, and I'm just

telling you to fix a day that's suitable and convenient."

"You know I always meant to marry you the first week in June."

"And you know as I've told you, that I can't take the time off then."

"The time off! You're not a servant. You can leave Ansdore any day you

choose."

"Not when the shearing's on. You don't understand, Martin--I can't have

all the shearers up and nobody to look after 'em."

"What about your looker?--or Broadhurst? You don't trust anybody but

yourself."

"You're just about right--I don't."

"Don't you trust me?"

"Not to shear sheep."

Martin laughed ruefully.

"You're very sensible, Joanna--unshakably so. But I'm not asking you to

trust me with the sheep, but to trust me with yourself. Don't

misunderstand me, dear. I'm not asking you to marry me at the beginning

of the month just because I haven't the patience to wait till the end.

It isn't that, I swear it. But don't you see that if you fix our

marriage to fit in with the farm-work, it'll simply be beginning things

in the wrong way? As we begin we shall have to go on, and we can't go on

settling and ordering our life according to Ansdore's requirements--it's

a wrong principle. Think, darling," and he drew her close against his

heart, "we shall want to see our children--and will you refuse, just

because that would mean that you would have to lie up and keep quiet and

not go about doing all your own business?"

Joanna shivered.

"Oh, Martin, don't talk of such things."

"Why not?"

She had given him some frank and graphic details about the accouchement

of her favourite cow, and he did not understand that the subject became

different when it was human and personal.

"Because I--because we ain't married yet."

"Joanna, you little prude!"

She saw that he was displeased and drew closer to him, slipping her arms

round his neck, so that he could feel the roughness of her work-worn

hands against it.

"I'm not shocked--only it's so wonderful--I can't abear talking of

it ... Martin, if we had one ... I should just about die of joy ..."

He gripped her to him silently, unable to speak. Somehow it seemed as if

he had just seen deeper into Joanna than during all the rest of his

courtship. He moved his lips over her bright straying hair--her face was

hidden in his sleeve.

"Then we'll stop at Mr. Pratt's on our way home and ask him to put up

the banns at once?"

"Oh no--" lifting herself sharply--"I didn't mean that."

"Why not?"

"Well, it won't make any difference to our marriage, being married three

weeks later--but it'll make an unaccountable difference to my wool

prices if the shearers don't do their job proper--and then there's the

hay."

"On the contrary, child--it will make a difference to our marriage. We

shall have started with Ansdore between us."

"What nonsense."

"Well, I can't argue with you--you must do as you like. My wife is a

very strong-willed person, who will keep her husband in proper order.

But he loves her enough to bear it."

He kissed her gently, and they both stood up. At the same time there was

a sharp scud of rain against the window.

§18

The journey home was quieter and dimmer than the journey out. Their

voices and footsteps were muffled in the roar of the wind, which had

risen from sorrow to anger. The rain beat in their faces as they walked

arm in arm over the shingle. They could not hurry, for at every step

their feet sank.

"I said it was a tedious hole," reiterated Joanna, "and now perhaps

you'll believe me--the folk here walk with boards on their feet, what

they call backstays. Our shoes will be just about ruined."

She was not quite happy, for she felt that Martin was displeased with

her, though he made no reproaches. He did not like her to arrange their

wedding day to fit in with the shearing. But what else could she do? If

she was away when the shearers came, there'd be no end to their goings

on with the girls, and besides, who'd see that the work was done proper

and the tegs not scared out of their lives?

It was only six o'clock, but a premature darkness was falling as the

clouds dropped over Dunge Marsh, and the rain hung like a curtain over

Rye Bay, blotting out all distances, showing them nothing but the

crumbling, uncertain track. In half an hour they were both wet through

to their shoulders, for the rain came down with all the drench of May.

Joanna could see that Martin was beginning to be worried about

himself--he was worried about her too, but he was more preoccupied with

his own health than other men she knew, the only way in which he

occasionally betrayed the weak foundations of his stalwart looks.

"The worst of it is, we'll have to sit for an hour in the dog-cart after

we get to Jury's Gap. You'll catch your death of cold, Joanna."

"Not I! I often say I'm like our Romney sheep--I can stand all winds and

waters. But you're not used to it like I am--you should ought to have

brought your overcoat."

"How was I to know it would turn out like this?"

"I told you it would rain."

"But not till after we'd started."

Joanna said nothing. She accepted Martin's rather unreasonable

displeasure without protest, for she felt guilty about other things. Was

he right, after all, when he said that she was putting Ansdore between

them?... She did not feel that she was, any more than she was putting

Ansdore between herself and Ellen. But she hated him to have the

thought. Should she give in and tell him he could call on Mr. Pratt on

their way home?... No, there was plenty of time to make up her mind

about that. To-day was only Tuesday, and any day up till Saturday would

do for putting in notice of banns ... she must think things over before

committing herself ... it wasn't only the shearers--there was the

hay....

Thus they came, walking apart in their own thoughts, to Jury's Gap. In a

few moments the horse was put to, and they were lurching in the ruts of

the road to Broomhill. The air was full of the sound of hissing rain, as

it fell on the shingle and in the sea and on the great brackish pools of

the old flood. Round the pools were thick beds of reeds, shivering and

moaning, while along the dykes the willows tossed their branches and the

thorn-trees rattled.

"It'll freshen up the grass," said Joanna, trying to cheer Martin.

"I was a fool not to bring my overcoat," he grumbled.

Then suddenly her heart went out to him more than ever, because he was

fractious and fretting about himself. She took one hand off the reins

and pressed his as it lay warm between her arm and her side.

"Reckon you're my own silly child," she said in a low voice.

"I'm sorry, Jo," he replied humbly, "I know I'm being a beast and

worrying you. But I'm worried about you too--you're as wet as I am."

"No, I'm not. I've got my coat. I'm not at all worried about myself--nor

about you, neither." She could not conceive of a man taking cold through

a wetting.

She had planned for him to come back to supper with her at Ansdore, but

with that fussiness which seemed so strange and pathetic, he insisted on

going straight back to North Farthing to change his clothes.

"You get into a hot bath with some mustard," he said to her, meaning

what he would do himself.

"Ha! ha!" laughed Joanna, at such an idea.

§19

She did not see Martin for the next two days. He had promised to go up

to London for the first night of a friend's play, and was staying till

Friday morning. She missed him very much--he used to come to Ansdore

every day, sometimes more than once, and they always had at least one

meal together. She brooded about him too, for she could not rid herself

of the thought that she had failed him in her refusal to be married

before the shearing. He was disappointed--he could not understand....

She looked round on Ansdore almost distrustfully ... was it true that

she loved it too much? The farm looked very lonely and bare, with the

mist hanging in the doorways, and the rain hissing into the midden,

while the bush--as the trees were called which sheltered nearly every

marsh dwelling--sighed and tossed above the barn-roofs. She suddenly

realized that she did not love it as much as she used.

The knowledge came like a slap. She suddenly knew that for the last four

months her love for Martin had been eating into her love for Ansdore....

It was like the sun shining on a fire and putting it out--now that the

sun had gone she saw that her hearth was cold. It was for Martin she

had sown her spring wheat, for Martin she had broken up twelve acres of

pasture by the Kent Ditch, for Martin she would shear her sheep and cut

her hay....

Then since it was all for Martin, what an owl she was to sacrifice him

to it, to put it before his wants and needs. He wanted her, he needed

her, and she was offering him bales of wool and cocks of hay. Of course

in this matter she was right and he was wrong--it would be much better

to wait just a week or two till after the shearing and the

hay-making--but for the first time Joanna saw that even right could

surrender. Even though she was right, she could give way to him, bend

her will to his. After all, nothing really mattered except his love, his

good favour--better that she should muddle her shearing and her crops

than the first significant weeks of their married life. He should put

his dear foot upon her neck--for the last of her pride was gone in that

discovery of the dripping day, the discovery that her plans, her

ambitions, her life, herself, had their worth only in the knowledge that

they belonged to him.

It was on Thursday afternoon that Joanna finally beat Ansdore out of her

love. She cried a little, for she wished that it had happened earlier,

before Martin went away. Still, it was his going that had shown her at

last clearly where she belonged. She thought of writing and telling him

of her surrender, but like most of her kind she shrank from writing

letters except when direly necessary; and she would see Martin

to-morrow--he had promised to come to Ansdore straight from the station.

So instead of writing her letter, she went and washed the tears off her

face over the sink and sat down to a cup of tea and a piece of bread and

dripping with Mrs. Tolhurst and Milly Pump. When Ellen was at home

Joanna was lofty and exclusive, and had her meals in the

dining-room--she did not think it right that her little sister, with all

her new accomplishments and elegancies, should lead the common, kitchen

life--also, of course, when Martin came they sat down in state, with

pink wine-glasses beside their tumblers. But when she was alone she much

preferred a friendly meal with Milly and Mrs. Tolhurst--she even joined

them in pouring her tea into her saucer, and sat with it cooling on her

spread fingers, her elbow on the cloth. She unbent from mistress to

fellow-worker, and they talked the scandal of a dozen farms.

"It's as I said, at Yokes Court," said Mrs. Tolhurst--"there's no good

young Mus' Southland saying as the girl's mother sent for her--_I_ know

better."

"I saw Mrs. Lambarde after church on Sunday," said Joanna, "and she

wasn't expecting Elsie then."

"Elsie went before her box did," said Milly Pump, "Bill Piper fetched it

along after her, as he told me himself."

"I'm sure it's Tom Southland," said Joanna.

"Surelye," said Mrs. Tolhurst, "and all the more as he's been saying at

the Woolpack that the Old Squire's been hanging around after the

girl--which reminds me, Miss Joanna, as I hear Mus' Martin's back this

afternoon."

"This afternoon! He said to-morrow morning."

"Well, he's come this afternoon. Broadhurst met him driving from Rye

station."

"Then he's sure to be over to-night. You get the wine-glasses out, Mrs.

Tolhurst, and spread in the dining-room."

She rose up from table, once more apart from her servants. Her brain was

humming with surprised joy--Martin was back, she would soon see him, he

would be sure to come to her. And then she would tell him of her

surrender, and the cloud would be gone from their love.

With beating heart she ran upstairs to change her dress and tidy

herself, for he might come at any moment. There was a red-brown velvet

dress he particularly liked--she pulled it out of her drawer and

smoothed its folds. Her drawers were crammed and heavy with the garments

she was to wear as Martin's wife; there were silk blouses bought at

smart shops in Folkestone and Marlingate; there was a pair of buckled

shoes--size eight; there were piles of neat longcloth and calico

underclothing, demure nightdresses buttoning to the chin, stiff

petticoats, and what she called "petticoat bodies," fastening down the

front with linen buttons, and with tiny, shy frills of embroidery at the

neck and armholes.

She put on the brown dress, and piled up her hair against the big comb.

She looked at herself in the glass by the light of the candles she had

put to light up the rainy evening. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes

bright, and her hair and her dress were the same soft, burning

colour.... When would Martin come?

Then suddenly she thought of something even better than his coming. She

thought of herself going over to North Farthing House and telling him

that she had changed her mind and that she was his just as soon as ever

he wanted her.... Her breath came fast at the inspiration--it would be

better than waiting for him here; it gave to her surrender the

spectacular touch which hitherto it had lacked and her nature demanded.

The rain was coming down the wind almost as fiercely and as fast as it

had come on Tuesday night, but Joanna the marsh-born had never cared for

weather. She merely laced on her heavy boots and bundled into her

father's overcoat. Then she put out a hand for an old hat, and suddenly

she remembered the hat Martin had said he liked her in above all others.

It was an old rush basket, soft and shapeless with age, and she tied it

over her head with her father's red and white spotted handkerchief.

She was now ready, and all she had to do was to run down and tell Mrs.

Tolhurst that if Mr. Martin called while she was out he was to be asked

to wait. She was not really afraid of missing him, for there were few

short cuts on the Marsh, where the long way round of the road was often

the only way--but she hoped she would reach North Farthing before he

left it; she did not want anything to be taken from her surrender, it

must be absolute and complete ... the fires of her own sacrifice were

kindled and were burning her heart.

§20

She did not meet Martin on the Brodnyx Road; only the wind was with her,

and the rain. She turned aside to North Farthing between the Woolpack

and the village, and still she did not meet him--and now she really

thought that she would arrive in time. On either side of the track she

followed, Martin's sheep were grazing--that was his land, those were his

dykes and willows, ahead of her were the lighted windows of his house.

She wondered what he would say when he saw her. Would he be much

surprised? She had come to North Farthing once or twice before, but not

very often. If he was not surprised to see her, he would be surprised

when she told him why she had come. She pictured how he would receive

her news--with his arms round her, with his kisses on her mouth.

Her arrival was a check--the formalities of her betrothed's house never

failed to upset her. To begin with she had to face that impertinent

upstart of a Nell Raddish, all tricked out in a black dress and white

apron and cap and collar and cuffs, and she only a cowman's daughter

with a face like a plum, and no sense or notions at all till she came to

Farthing, since when, as everyone knew, her skirts had grown shorter and

her nose whiter and her hair frizzier and her ways more knowing.

"Good evening, Nell," said Joanna, covering her embarrassment with

patronage, "is Mr. Martin at home?"

"Yes, he is," said Nell, "he came back this afternoon."

"I know that, of course. I want to see him, please."

"I'm not sure if he's gone up to bed. Come in, and I'll go and look."

"Up to bed!"

"Yes, he's feeling poorly. That's why he came home."

"Poorly, what's the matter?" Joanna pushed past Nell into the house.

"I dunno, a cold or cough. He told me to bring him some tea and put a

hot brick in his bed. Sir Harry ain't in yet."

Joanna marched up the hall to the door of Martin's study. She stopped

and listened for a moment, but could hear nothing, except the beating of

her own heart. Then, without knocking, she went in. The room was ruddy

and dim with firelight, and at first she thought it was empty, but the

next minute she saw Martin huddled in an armchair, a tea-tray on a low

stool beside him.

"Martin!"

He started up out of a kind of sleep, and blinked at her.

"Jo! Is that you?"

"Yes. I've come over to tell you I'll marry you whenever you want.

Martin dear, what's the matter? Are you ill?"

"It's nothing much--I've caught cold, and thought I'd better come home.

Colds always make me feel wretched."

She could see that he was anxious about himself, and in her pity she

forgave him for having ignored her surrender. She knelt down beside him

and took both his restless hands.

"Have you had your tea, dear?"

"No. I asked her to bring it, and then I sort of fell asleep ..."

"I'll give it to you."

She poured out his tea, giving him a hot black cup, with plenty of

sugar, as they liked it on the Marsh. He drank it eagerly, and felt

better.

"Jo, how good of you to come over and see me. Who told you I was back?"

"I heard it from Milly Pump, and she heard it from Broadhurst."

"I meant to send a message round to you. I hope I'll be all right

to-morrow."

"Reckon you will, dear.... Martin, you heard what I said--about marrying

you when you want?"

"Do you mean it?"

"Of course I mean it--I came over a-purpose to tell you. While you was

away I did some thinking, and I found that Ansdore doesn't matter to me

what it used. It's only you that matters now."

She was crouching at his feet, and he stooped over her, taking her in

his arms, drawing her back between his knees.

"You noble, beloved thing ..."

The burning touch of his lips and face reminded her that he was ill, so

the consecration of her sacrifice lost a little of its joy.

"You're feverish--you should ought to go to bed."

"I'm going--when I've had another cup of tea. Will you give me another,

child?"

"I've a mind to go home through Brodnyx and ask Dr. Taylor to call

round."

"Oh, I don't think I'm bad enough for a doctor--I catch cold easily,

and I was wet through the other night."

"Was it that!" Her voice shook with consternation.

"I expect so--but don't fret, darling Jo. It's nothing. I'll be quite

right to-morrow--I feel better already."

"I think you should ought to see a doctor, though. I'll call in on my

way back. I'll can in on Mr. Pratt, too, and tell him to start crying us

next Sunday."

"That's my business--I'll go to-morrow. But are you sure, darling, you

can make such a sacrifice? I'm afraid I've been a selfish beast, and I'm

spoiling your plans."

"Oh no, you ain't. I feel now as if I wanted to get married more'n

anything wotsumever. The shearing ull do proper--the men know their

job--and Broadhurst ull see to the hay. They dursn't muck things up,

knowing as I'll be home to see to it by July."

"To say nothing of me," said Martin, pinching her ear.

"To say nothing of you."

"Joanna, you've got on the old hat ..."

"I put it on special."

"Bless you."

He pulled her down to the arm of his chair, and for a moment they

huddled together, cheek on cheek. The opening of the door made Joanna

spring virtuously upright. It was Sir Harry.

"Hullo, Joanna!--you here. Hullo, Martin! The lovely Raddish says you've

come home middling queer. I hope that doesn't mean anything serious."

"I've got some sort of a chill, and I feel a beast. So I thought I'd

better come home."

"I've given him his tea," said Joanna, "and now he should ought to go to

bed."

Sir Harry looked at her. She struck him as an odd figure, in her velvet

gown and basket hat, thick boots and man's overcoat. The more he saw of

her, the less could he think what to make of her as a daughter-in-law;

but to-night he was thankful for her capable managing--mentally and

physically he was always clumsy with Martin in illness. He found it hard

to adapt himself to the occasional weakness of this being who dominated

him in other ways.

"Do you think he's feverish?"

Joanna felt Martin's hands again.

"I guess he is. Maybe he wants a dose--or a cup of herb tea does good,

they say. But I'll ask Doctor to come around. Martin, I'm going now this

drackly minute, and I'll call in at Dr. Taylor's and at Mr. Pratt's."

"Wait till to-morrow, and I'll see Pratt," said Martin, unable to rid

himself of the idea that a bride should find such an errand

embarrassing.

"I'd sooner go myself to-night. Anyways you mustn't go traipsing around,

even if you feel better to-morrow. I'll settle everything, so don't you

fret."

She took his face between her hands, and kissed him as if he were a

child.

"Good night, my duck. You get off to bed and keep warm."

§21

She worked off her fears in action. Having given notice of the banns to

Mr. Pratt, sent off Dr. Taylor to North Farthing, put up a special

petition for Martin in her evening prayers, she went to bed and slept

soundly. She was not an anxious soul, and a man's illness never struck

her as particularly alarming. Men were hard creatures--whose weaknesses

were of mind and character rather than of body--and though Martin was

softer than some, she could not quite discount his broad back and

shoulders, his strong, swinging arms.

She drove over to North Farthing soon after breakfast, expecting to find

him, in spite of her injunctions, about and waiting for her.

"The day's warm and maybe he won't hurt if he drives on with me to

Honeychild"--the thought of him there beside her was so strong that she

could almost feel his hand lying pressed between her arm and her heart.

But when she came to the house she found only Sir Harry, prowling in the

hall.

"I'm glad you've come, Joanna. I'm anxious about Martin."

"What's the matter? What did the doctor say?"

"He said there's congestion of the lung or something. Martin took a fit

of the shivers after you'd gone, and of course it made him worse when

the doctor said the magic word 'lung.' He's always been hipped about

himself, you know."

"I'd better go and see him."

She hitched the reins, and climbed down out of the trap--stumbling

awkwardly as she alighted, for she had begun to tremble.

"You don't think he's very bad, do you?"

"Can't say. I wish Taylor ud come. He said he'd be here again this

morning."

His voice was sharp and complaining, for anything painful always made

him exasperated. Martin lying ill in bed, Martin shivering and in pain

and in a funk was so unlike the rather superior being whom he liked to

pretend bullied him, that he felt upset and rather shocked. He gave a

sigh of relief as Joanna ran upstairs--he told himself that she was a

good practical sort of woman, and handsome when she was properly

dressed.

She had never been upstairs in North Farthing House before, but she

found Martin's room after only one false entry--which surprised the

guilty Raddish sitting at Sir Harry's dressing-table and smarming his

hair-cream on her ignoble head. The blinds in Martin's room were down,

and he was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, with his head turned away

from her.

"That you, father?--has Taylor come?"

"No, it's me, dearie. I've come to see what I can do for you."

The sight of him huddled there in the pillows, restless, comfortless,

neglected, wrung her heart. Hitherto her love for Martin had been

singularly devoid of intimacy. They had kissed each other, they had

eaten dinner and tea and supper together, they had explored the Three

Marshes in each other's company, but she had scarcely ever been to his

house, never seen him asleep, and in normal circumstances would have

perished rather than gone into his bedroom. To-day when she saw him

there, lying on his wide, tumbled bed, among his littered

belongings--his clothes strewn untidily on the floor, his books on their

shelves, his pictures that struck her rigidity as indecent, his

photographs of people who had touched his life, some perhaps closely,

but were unknown to her, she had a queer sense of the revelation of

poor, pathetic secrets. This, then, was Martin when he was away from

her--untidy, sensual, forlorn, as all men were ... she bent down and

kissed him.

"Lovely Jo," ... he yielded childish, burning lips, then drew away--"No,

you mustn't kiss me--it might be bad for you."

"Gammon, dear. 'Tis only a chill."

She saw that he was in a bate about himself, so after her tender

beginnings, she became rough. She made him sit up while she shook his

pillows, then she made him lie flat and tucked the sheet round him

strenuously; she scolded him for leaving his clothes lying about on the

floor. She felt as if her love for him was only just beginning--the last

four months seemed cold and formal compared with these moments of warm,

personal service. She brought him water for his hands, and scrubbed his

face with a sponge to his intense discomfort. She was bawling downstairs

to the unlucky Raddish to put the kettle on for some herb tea--since an

intimate cross-examination revealed that he had not had the recommended

dose--when the doctor arrived and came upstairs with Sir Harry.

He undid a good deal of Joanna's good work--he ordered the blind to be

let down again, and he refused to back her up in her injunctions to the

patient to lie flat--on the contrary he sent for more pillows, and

Martin had to confess to feeling easier when he was propped up against

them with a rug round his shoulders. He then announced that he would

send for a nurse from Rye.

"Oh, but I can manage," cried Joanna--"let me nurse him. I can come and

stop here, and nurse him day and night."

"I am sure there is no one whom he'd rather have than you, Miss Godden,"

said Dr. Taylor gallantly, "but of course you are not professional, and

pneumonia wants thoroughly experienced nursing--the nurse counts more

than the doctor in a case like this."

"Pneumonia! Is that what's the matter with him?"

They had left Martin's room, and the three of them were standing in the

hall.

"I'm afraid that's it--only in the right lung so far."

"But you can stop it--you won't let him get worse. Pneumonia!..."

The word was full of a sinister horror to her, suggesting

suffocation--agony. And Martin's chest had always been weak--the weak

part of his strong body. She should have thought of that ... thought of

it three nights ago when, all through her, he had been soaked with the

wind-driven rain ... just like a drowned rat he had looked when they

came to Ansdore, his cap dripping, the water running down his neck....

No, no, it could not be that--he couldn't have caught pneumonia just

through getting wet that time--she had got wet a dunnamany times and not

been tuppence the worse ... his lungs were not weak in that way--it was

the London fogs that had disagreed with them, the doctor had said so,

and had sent him away from town, to the Marsh and the rain.... He had

been in London for the last two days, and the fog had got into his poor

chest again,--that was all, and now that he was home on the Marsh he

would soon be well--of course he would soon be well--she was a fool to

fret. And now she would go upstairs and sit with him till the nurse

came; it was her last chance of doing those little tender, rough,

intimate things for him ... till they were married--oh, she wouldn't let

him fling his clothes about like that when they were married! Meantime

she would go up, and see that he swallowed every drop of the herb

tea--that was the stuff to give anyone who was ill on the Marsh, no

matter what the doctor said ... rheumatism, bronchitis, colic, it cured

them all.

§22

Martin was very ill. The herb tea did not cure him, nor did the stuff

the doctor gave him. Nor did the starched crackling nurse, who turned

Joanna out of the room and exasperatingly spoke of Martin as "my

patient."

Joanna had lunch with Sir Harry, who in the stress of anxiety was

turning into something very like a father, and afterwards drove off in

her trap to Rye, having forgotten all about the Honeychild errand. She

went to the fruiterers, and ordered grapes and peaches.

"But you won't get them anywhere now, Miss Godden. It's just between

seasons--in another month ..."

"I must have 'em now," said Joanna truculently, "I don't care what I

pay."

It ended in the telephone at the Post Office being put into hysteric

action, and a London shop admonished to send down peaches and grapes to

Rye station by passenger train that afternoon.

The knowledge of Martin's illness was all over Walland Marsh by the

evening. All the Marsh knew about the doctor and the nurse and the

peaches and grapes from London. The next morning they knew that he was

worse, and that his brother had been sent for--Father Lawrence arrived

on Saturday night, driving in the carrier's cart from Rye station. On

Sunday morning people met on their way to church, and shook their heads

as they told each other the latest news from North Farthing--double

pneumonia, an abscess on the lung.... Nell Raddish said his face was

blue ... the Old Squire was quite upset ... the nurse was like a

heathen, raging at the cook.... Joanna Godden?--she sat all day in Mr.

Martin's study, waiting to be sent for upstairs, but she'd only seen him

once....

Then, when tongues at last were quiet in church, just before the second

lesson, Mr. Pratt read out--

"I publish the banns of marriage between Martin Arbuthnot Trevor,

bachelor, of this parish, and Joanna Mary Godden, spinster, of the

parish of Pedlinge. This is for the first time of asking. If any of you

know any just cause or impediment why these persons should not be joined

together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it."

§23

Martin died early on Monday morning. Joanna was with him at the last,

and to the last she did not believe that he would die--because he had

given up worrying about himself, so she was sure he must feel better.

Three hours before he died he held both her hands and looked at her

once more like a man out of his eyes ... "Lovely Jo," he said.

She had lain down in most of her clothes as usual, in the little spare

room, and between two and three o'clock in the morning the nurse had

roused her.

"You're wanted ... but I'm not sure if he'll know you."

He didn't. He knew none of them--his mind seemed to have gone away and

left his body to fight its last fight alone.

"He doesn't feel anything," they said to her, when Martin gasped and

struggled--"but don't stay if you'd rather not."

"I'd rather stay," said Joanna, "he may know me. Martin ..." she called

to him. "Martin--I'm here--I'm Jo--" but it was like calling to someone

who is already far away down a long road.

There was a faint sweet smell of oil in the room--Father Lawrence had

administered the last rites of Holy Church. His romance and Martin's had

met at his brother's death-bed ... "Go forth, Christian soul, from this

world, in the Name of God--in the name of the Angels and Archangels--in

the name of the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs,

Confessors, Virgins, and of all the Saints of God; let thine habitation

to-day be in peace and thine abode in Holy Sion" ... "Martin, it's only

me, it's only Jo" ... Thus the two voices mingled, and he heard neither.

The cold morning lit up the window square, and the window rattled with

the breeze of Rye Bay. Joanna felt someone take her hand and lead her

towards the door. "He's all right now," said Lawrence's voice--"it's

over ..."

Somebody was giving her a glass of wine--she was sitting in the

dining-room, staring unmoved at Nell Raddish's guilt revealed in a

breakfast-table laid over night. Lawrence and Sir Harry were both with

her, being kind to her, forgetting their own grief in trying to comfort

her. But Joanna only wanted to go home. Suddenly she felt lonely and

scared in this fine house, with its thick carpets and mahogany and

silver--now that Martin was not here to befriend her in it. She did not

belong--she was an outsider, she wanted to go away.

She asked for the trap, and they tried to persuade her to stay and have

some breakfast, but she repeated doggedly, "I want to go." Lawrence went

and fetched the trap round, for the men were not about yet. The morning

had not really come--only the cold twilight, empty and howling with

wind, with a great drifting sky of fading stars.

Lawrence went with her to the door, and kissed her--"Good-bye, dear Jo.

Father or I will come and see you soon." She was surprised at the kiss,

for he had never kissed her before, though the Squire had taken full

advantage of their relationship--she had supposed it wasn't right for

Jesoots.

She did not know what she said to him--probably nothing. There was a

terrible silence in her heart. She heard Smiler's hoofs upon the

road--clop, clop, clop. But they did not break the silence within ...

oh, Martin, Martin, put your hand under my arm, against my heart--maybe

that'll stop it aching.

Thoughts of Martin crowding upon her, filling her empty heart with

memories.... Martin sitting on the tombstone outside Brodnyx church on

Christmas day, Martin holding her in his arms on the threshold of

Ansdore ... Martin kissing her in New Romney church, bending her back

against the pillar stained with the old floods ... that drive through

Broomhill--how he had teased her!--"we'll come here for our honeymoon"

... Dunge Ness, the moaning sea, the wind, her fear, his arms ... the

warm kitchen of the Britannia, with the light of the wreckwood fire, the

teacups on the table, "we shall want to see our children".... No, no,

you mustn't say that--not _now_, not _now_.... Remember instead how we

quarrelled, how he tried to get between me and Ansdore, so that I forgot

Ansdore, and gave it up for his sake; but it's all I've got now. I gave

up Ansdore to Martin, and now I've lost Martin and got Ansdore. I've got

three hundred acres and four hundred sheep and three hundred pounds at

interest in Lewes Old Bank. But I've lost Martin. I've done valiant for

Ansdore, better'n ever I hoped--poor father ud be proud of me. But my

heart's broken. I don't like remembering--it hurts--I must forget.

Colour had come into the dawn. The Marsh was slowly turning from a

strange papery grey to green. The sky changed from white to blue, and

suddenly became smeared with ruddy clouds. At once the watercourses lit

up, streaking across the green in fiery slats--the shaking boughs of the

willows became full of fire, and at the turn of the road the windows of

Ansdore shone as if it were burning.

There it stood at the road's bend. Its roofs a fiery yellow with the

swarming sea-lichen, its solid walls flushed faintly pink in the

sunrise, its windows squares of amber and flame. It was as a house lit

up and welcoming. It seemed to shout to Joanna as she came to it clop,

clop along the road.

"Come back--come home to me--I'm glad to see you again. You forgot me

for five days, but you won't forget me any more--for I'm all that you've

got now."

_PART III_

THE LITTLE SISTER

§1

For many months Ansdore was a piece of wreckage to which a drowning

woman clung. Joanna's ship had foundered--the high-castled, seaworthy

ship of her life--and she drifted through the dark seas, clinging only

to this which had once been so splendid in the midst of her decks, but

was now mere wreckage, the least thing saved. If she let go she would

drown. So she trailed after Ansdore, and at last it brought her a kind

of anchorage, not in her native land, but at least in no unkind country

of adoption. During the last weeks of Martin's wooing, she had withdrawn

herself a little from the business of the farm into a kind of

overlordship, from which she was far more free to detach herself than

from personal service. Now she went back to work with her hands--she did

not want free hours, either for his company or for her own dreams; she

rose early, because she waked early and must rise when she waked, and

she went round waking the girls, hustling the men, putting her own hand

to the milking or the cooking, more sharp-tongued than ever, less

tolerant, but more terribly alive, with a kind of burning, consuming

life that vexed all those about her.

"She spicks short wud me," said old Stuppeny, "and I've töald her as she

mun look around fur a new head man. This time I'm going."

"She's a scold," said Broadhurst, "and reckon the young chap säaved

himself a tedious life by dying."

"Reckon her heart's broke," said Mrs. Tolhurst.

"Her temper's broke," said Milly Pump.

They were unsympathetic, because she expressed her grief in terms of

fierce activity instead of in the lackadaisical ways of tradition. If

Joanna had taken to her bed on her return from North Farthing House that

early time, and had sent for the doctor, and shown all the credited

symptoms of a broken heart, they would have pitied her and served her

and borne with her. But, instead, she had come back hustling and

scolding, and they could not see that she did so because not merely her

heart but her whole self was broken, and that she was just flying and

rattling about like a broken thing. So instead of pitying her, they

grumbled and threatened to leave her service--in fact, Milly Pump

actually did so, and was succeeded by Mene Tekel Fagge, the daughter of

Bibliolatious parents at Northlade.

Ansdore throve on its mistress's frenzy. That autumn Joanna had four

hundred pounds in Lewes Old Bank, the result of her splendid markets and

of her new ploughs, which had borne eight bushels to the acre. She had

triumphed gloriously over everyone who had foretold her ruin through

breaking up pasture; strong-minded farmers could scarcely bear to drive

along that lap of the Brodnyx road which ran through Joanna's wheat,

springing slim and strong and heavy-eared as from Lothian soil--if there

had been another way from Brodnyx to Rye market they would have taken

it; indeed it was rumoured that on one occasion Vine had gone by train

from Appledore because he couldn't abear the sight of Joanna Godden's

ploughs.

This rumour, when it reached her, brought her a faint thrill. It was the

beginning of a slow process of reidentification of herself with her own

activities, which till then had been as some furious raging outside the

house. She began to picture new acts of discomfiting adventure, new

roads which should be shut to Vine through envy. Ansdore was all she

had, so she must make it much. When she had given it and herself to

Martin she had had all the Marsh and all the world to plant with her

love; but since he was gone and had left her gifts behind him, she had

just a few acres to plant with wheat--and her harvest should be bread

alone.

§2

Her black months had changed her--not outwardly very much, but leaving

wounds in her heart. Martin had woken in her too many needs for her to

be able to go back quietly into the old life of unfulfilled content. He

had shown her a vision of herself as complete woman, mother and wife, of

a Joanna Godden bigger than Ansdore. She could no longer be the Joanna

Godden whose highest ambition was to be admitted member of the Farmers'

Club. He had also woken in her certain simple cravings--for a man's

strong arm round her and his shoulder under her cheek. She had now to

make the humiliating discovery that the husk of such a need can remain

after the creating spirit had left it. In the course of the next year

she had one or two small, rather undignified flirtations with

neighbouring farmers--there was young Gain over at Botolph's Bridge, and

Ernest Noakes of Belgar. They did not last long, and she finally

abandoned both in disgust, but a side of her, always active

unconsciously, was now disturbingly awake, requiring more concrete

satisfactions than the veiled, self-deceiving episode of Socknersh.

She was ashamed of this. And it made her withdraw from comforts she

might have had. She never went to North Farthing House, where she could

have talked about Martin with the one person who--as it happened--would

have understood her treacheries. Lawrence came to see her once at the

end of September, but she was gruff and silent. She recoiled from his

efforts to break the barriers between life and death; he wanted her to

give Martin her thoughts and her prayers just as if he were alive. But

she "didn't hold with praying for the dead"--the Lion and the Unicorn

would certainly disapprove of such an act; and Martin was now robed in

white, with a crown on his head and a harp in his hand and a new song in

his mouth--he had no need of the prayers of Joanna Godden's unfaithful

lips. As for her thoughts, by the same token she could not think of him

as he was now; that radiant being in glistening white was beyond the

soft approaches of imagination--robed and crowned, he could scarcely be

expected to remember himself in a tweed suit and muddy boots kissing a

flushed and hot Joanna on the lonely innings by Beggar's Bush. No,

Martin was gone--gone beyond thought and prayer--gone to sing hymns for

ever and ever--he who could never abide them on earth--gone to forget

Joanna in the company of angels--pictured uncomfortably by her as

females, who would be sure to tell him that she had let Thomas Gain kiss

her in the barn over at Botolph's Bridge....

She could not think of him as he was now, remote and white, and she

could bear still less to think of him as he had been once, warm and

loving, with his caressing hands and untidy hair, with his flushed cheek

pressed against hers, and the good smell of his clothes--with his living

mouth closing slowly down on hers ... no, earth was even sharper than

heaven. All she had of him in which her memory and her love could find

rest were those few common things they keep to remember their dead by on

the Marsh--a memorial card, thickly edged with black, which she had had

printed at her own expense, since apparently such things were no part of

the mourning of North Farthing House; his photograph in a black frame;

his grave in Brodnyx churchyard, in the shadow of the black,

three-hooded tower, and not very far from the altar-tomb on which he had

sat and waited for her that Christmas morning.

§3

In the fall of the next year, she found that once again she had

something to engross her outside Ansdore. Ellen was to leave school that

Christmas. The little sister was now seventeen, and endowed with all the

grace; and learning that forty pounds a term can buy. During the last

year she and Joanna had seen comparatively little of each other. She had

received one or two invitations from her school friends to spend her

holidays with them--a fine testimonial, thought Joanna, to her manners

and accomplishments--and her sister had been only too glad that she

should go, that she should be put out of the shadow of a grief which had

grown too black even for her sentimental schoolgirl sympathy, so

gushing and caressing, in the first weeks of her poor Joanna's mourning.

But things were different now--Martin's memory was laid. She told

herself that it was because she was too busy that she had not gone as

usual to the Harvest Festival at New Romney, to sing hymns beside the

pillar marked with the old floods. She was beginning to forget. She

could think and she could love. She longed to have Ellen back again, to

love and spoil and chasten. She was glad that she was leaving school,

and would make no fugitive visit to Ansdore. Immediately her mind leapt

to preparations--her sister was too big to sleep any more in the little

bed at the foot of her own, she must have a new bed ... and suddenly

Joanna thought of a new room, a project which would mop up all her

overflowing energies for the next month.

It should be a surprise for Ellen. She sent for painters and

paper-hangers, and chose a wonderful new wall-paper of climbing

chrysanthemums, rose and blue in colour, and tied with large bows of

gold ribbon--real, shining gold. The paint she chose was a delicate

fawn, picked out with rose and blue. She bought yards of flowered

cretonne for the bed and window curtains, and had the mahogany furniture

moved in from the spare bedroom. The carpet she bought brand new--it was

a sea of stormy crimson, with fawn-coloured islands rioted over with

roses and blue tulips. Joanna had never enjoyed herself so much since

she lost Martin, as she did now, choosing all the rich colours, and

splendid solid furniture. The room cost her nearly forty pounds, for she

had to buy new furniture for the spare bedroom, having given Ellen the

mahogany.

As a final touch she hung the walls with pictures. There was a large

photograph of Ventnor church, Isle of Wight, and another of Furness

Abbey in an Oxford frame; there was "Don't Touch" and "Mother's Boy"

from "Pears' Christmas Annual," and two texts, properly expounded with

robins. To crown all, there was her father's certificate of enrolment in

the Ancient Order of Buffaloes, sacrificed from her own room, and hung

proudly in the place of honour over Ellen's bed.

§4

Her sister came at Thomas-tide, and Joanna drove in to meet her at Rye.

Brodnyx had now a station of its own on the new light railway from

Appledore to Lydd, but Joanna was still faithful to Rye. She loved the

spanking miles, the hard white lick of road that flew under her wheels

as she drove through Pedlinge, and then, swinging round the throws,

flung out on the Straight Mile. She trotted under the Land Gate, feeling

pleasantly that all the town was watching her from shop and street. Her

old love of swagger had come back, with perhaps a slight touch of

defiance.

At the station she had to wake old Stuppeny out of his slumber on the

back seat, and put him in his proper place at Smiler's head, while she

went on the platform. The train was just due, and she had not passed

many remarks with the ticket-collector--a comely young fellow whom she

liked for his build and the sauciness of his tongue--before it arrived.

As it steamed in, her heart began to beat anxiously--she bit her lip,

and actually looked nervous. Ellen was the only person in the world who

could make her feel shy and ill at ease, and Ellen had only lately

acquired this power; but there had been a constraint about their

meetings for the last year. During the last year Ellen had become

terribly good-mannered and grown up, and somehow that first glimpse of

the elegant maiden whom her toil and sacrifice had built out of little

Ellen Godden of Ansdore, never failed to give Joanna a queer sense of

awkwardness and inferiority.

To-day Ellen was more impressive, more "different" than ever. She had

been allowed to buy new clothes before leaving Folkestone, and her long

blue coat and neat little hat made Joanna, for the first time in her

life, feel tawdry and savage in her fur and feathers. Her sister stepped

down from her third-class carriage as a queen from her throne, beckoned

to Rye's one porter, and without a word pointed back into the

compartment, from which he removed a handbag; whereat she graciously

gave him twopence and proceeded to greet Joanna.

"Dear Jo," she murmured, filling her embrace with a soft perfume of

hair, which somehow stifled the "Hello, duckie" on the other's tongue.

Joanna found herself turning to Rye's one porter with inquiries after

his wife and little boy, doing her best to take the chill off the

proceedings. She wished that Ellen wouldn't give herself these airs. It

is true that they always wore off as Ansdore reasserted itself in old

clothes and squabbles, but Joanna resented her first impressions.

However, her sister thawed a little on the drive home--she was curious

about the affairs of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, for her time in two worlds

was at an end, and Ansdore was henceforth to give her its horizons.

"Will there be any parties at Christmas?" she asked.

"Sure to be," said Joanna, "I'll be giving one myself, and Mrs. Vine was

telling me only yesterday as she's a mind to have some neighbours in for

whist."

"Won't there be any dancing?"

"Oh, it's that what you're after, is it?" said Joanna proudly.

"Mabel and Pauline are going to heaps of dances this Christmas--and Myra

West is coming out. Mayn't I come out, Joanna?"

"Come out o' what, dearie?"

"Oh, you know--put up my hair and go to balls."

"You can put your hair up any day you please--I put mine up at fifteen,

and you're turned seventeen now. As for balls ..."

She broke off, a little at a loss as to how she was to supply this

deficiency. It would scarcely be possible for her to break into the

enclosures of Dungemarsh Court--especially since she had allowed herself

to drop away from North Farthing House ... she had been a fool to do

that--Sir Harry might have helped her now. But then ... her lips

tightened.... Anyhow, he would not be at home for Christmas--since

Martin's death he had sub-let the farm and was a good deal away; people

said he had "come into" some money, left him by a former mistress, who

had died more grateful than he deserved.

"I'll do the best I can for you, duck," said Joanna, "you shall have

your bit of dancing--and anyways I've got a fine, big surprise for you

when we're home."

"What sort of a surprise?"

"That's telling."

Ellen, in spite of her dignity, was child enough to be intensely excited

at the idea of a secret, and the rest of the drive was spent in baffled

question and provoking answer.

"I believe it's something for me to wear," she said finally, as they

climbed out of the trap at the front door--"a ring, Joanna.... I've

always wanted a ring."

"It's better than a ring," said Joanna, "leastways it's bigger," and she

laughed to herself.

She led the way upstairs, while Mrs. Tolhurst and old Stuppeny waltzed

recriminatingly with Ellen's box.

"Where are you taking me?" asked her sister, pausing with her hand on

the door-knob of Joanna's bedroom.

"Never you mind--come on."

Would Mene Tekel, she wondered, have remembered to set the lamps, so

that the room should not depend on the faint gutter of sunset to display

its glories? She opened the door, and was reassured--a fury of light and

colour leapt out--rose, blue, green, buff, and the port-wine red of

mahogany. The pink curtains were drawn, but there was no fire in the

grate--for fires in bedrooms were unknown at Ansdore; however, a

Christmas-like effect was given by sprigs of holly stuck in the

picture-frames, and a string of paper flowers hung from the bed-tester

to the top of the big woolly bell-rope by the mantelpiece. Joanna heard

her sister gasp.

"It's yours, Ellen--your new room. I've given it to you--all to

yourself. There's the spare mahogany furniture, and the best pictures,

and poor father's Buffalo certificate."

The triumph of her own achievement melted away the last of her

uneasiness--she seized Ellen in her arms and kissed her, knocking her

hat over one ear.

"See, you've got new curtains--eighteenpence a yard ... and that's

mother's text--'Inasmuch....' and I've bought a new soap-dish at

Godfrey's--it doesn't quite go with the basin, but they've both got

roses on 'em ... and you won't mind there being a few of my gowns in the

wardrobe--only the skirts--I've got room for the bodies in my drawers

... that's the basket armchair out of the dining-room, with a new cover

that Mene Tekel fixed for it ... the clock's out of the spare room--it

don't go, but it looks fine on the mantelpiece.... Say, duckie, are you

pleased?--are you pleased with your old Jo?"

"Oh, Joanna ... thank you," said Ellen.

"Well, I'll have to be leaving you now--that gal's got a rabbit pie in

the oven for our tea, and I must go and have a look at her crust. You

unpack and clean yourself--and be careful not to spoil anything."

§5

Supper that night was rather a quiet meal. Something about Ellen drove

Joanna back into her old sense of estrangement. Her sister made her

think of a lily on a thundery day. She wore a clinging dress of dull

green stuff, which sheathed her delicate figure like a lily bract--her

throat rose out of it like a lily stalk, and her face, with its small

features and soft skin, was the face of a white flower. About her clung

a dim atmosphere of the languid and exotic, like the lily's scent which

is so unlike the lily.

"Ellen," broke out Joanna, with a glance down at her own high, tight

bosom, "don't you ever wear stays?"

"No. Miss Collins and the gym mistress both say it's unhealthy."

"Unhealthy! And don't they never wear none themselves?"

"Never. They look much better without--besides, small waists are going

out of fashion."

"But ... Ellen ... it ain't seemly--to show the natural shape of your

body as you're doing."

"I've been told my figure's a very good one."

"And whoever dared make such a remark to you?"

"It was a compliment."

"I don't call it any compliment to say such things to a young girl.

Besides, what right have you to go showing what you was meant to hide?"

"I'm not showing anything I was meant to hide. My figure isn't nearly so

pronounced as yours--if I had your figure, I couldn't wear this sort of

frock."

"My figure is as God made it"--which it certainly was not--"and I was

brought up to be the shape of a woman, in proper stays, and not the

shape of a heathen statue. I'd be ashamed for any of the folk around

here to see you like that--and if Arthur Alce, or any other man, came

in, I'd either have to send you out or wrap the table-cover round you."

Ellen took refuge in a haughty silence, and Joanna began to feel uneasy

and depressed. She thought that Ellen was "fast." Was this what she had

learned at school--to flout the standards of her home?

§6

The next morning Joanna overslept herself, in consequence of a restless

hour during the first part of the night. As a result, it had struck half

past seven before she went into her sister's room. She was not the kind

of person who knocks at doors, and burst in to find Ellen, inadequately

clothed in funny little garments, doing something very busily inside the

cupboard.

"Hullo, duckie! And how did you sleep in your lovely bed?"

She was once more aglow with the vitality and triumph of her own being,

but the next moment she experienced a vague sense of chill--something

was the matter with the room, something had happened to it. It had lost

its sense of cheerful riot, and wore a chastened, hangdog air. In a

spasm of consternation Joanna realized that Ellen had been tampering

with it.

"What have you done?--Where's my pictures?--Where've you put the window

curtains?" she cried at last.

Ellen stiffened herself and tried not to look guilty.

"I'm just trying to find room for my own things."

Joanna stared about her.

"Where's father's Buffalo certificate?"

"I've put it in the cupboard."

"In the cupboard!--father's ... and I'm blessed if you haven't taken

down the curtains."

"They clash with the carpet--it quite hurts me to look at them. Really,

Joanna, if this is my room, you oughtn't to mind what I do in it."

"Your room, indeed!--You've got some sass!--And I spending more'n forty

pound fixing it up for you. I've given you new wall paper and new carpet

and new curtains and all the best pictures, and took an unaccountable

lot of trouble, and now you go and mess it up."

"I haven't messed it up. On the contrary"--Ellen's vexation was breaking

through her sense of guilt--"I'm doing the best I can to make it look

decent. Since you say you've done it specially for me and spent all that

money on it, I think at least you might have consulted my taste a

little."

"And what is your taste, ma'am?"

"A bit quieter than yours," said Ellen saucily. "There are about six

different shades of red and pink in this room."

"And what shades would you have chosen, may I be so bold as to ask?"

Joanna's voice dragged ominously with patience--"the same shade as your

last night's gownd, which is the colour of the mould on jam? I'll have

the colours I like in my own house--I'm sick of your dentical, die-away

notions. You come home from school thinking you know everything, when

all you've learned is to despise my best pictures, and say my curtains

clash with the carpet, when I chose 'em for a nice match. I tell you

what, ma'am, you can just about put them curtains back, and them

pictures, and that certificate of poor father's that you're so ashamed

of."

"I want to put my own pictures up," said Ellen doggedly--"if I've got to

live with your carpet and wallpaper, I don't see why I shouldn't have my

own pictures."

Joanna swept her eye contemptuously over "The Vigil," "Sir Galahad,"

"The Blessed Damozel," and one or two other schoolgirl favourites that

were lying on the bed.

"You can stick those up as well--there ain't such a lot."

"But can't you see, Joanna, that there are too many pictures on the wall

already?--It's simply crowded with them. Really, you're an obstinate old

beast," and Ellen began to cry.

Joanna fought back in herself certain symptoms of relenting. She could

not bear to see Ellen cry, but on the other hand she had "fixed up" this

room for Ellen--she had had it furnished and decorated for her--and now

Ellen must and should appreciate it. She should not be allowed to

disguise and bowdlerize it to suit the unwelcome tastes she had acquired

at school. The sight of her father's Buffalo certificate, lying face

downwards on the cupboard floor, gave strength to her flagging purpose.

"You pick that up and hang it in its proper place."

"I won't."

"You will."

"I won't! Why should I have that hideous thing over my bed?"

"Because it was your father's, and you should ought to be proud of it."

"It's some low drinking society he belonged to, and I'm not proud--I'm

ashamed."

Joanna boxed her ears.

"You don't deserve to be his daughter, Ellen Godden, speaking so. It's

you that's bringing us all to shame--thank goodness you've left school,

where you learned all that tedious, proud nonsense. You hang those

pictures up again, and those curtains, and you'll keep this room just

what I've made it for you."

Ellen was weeping bitterly now, but her sacrilege had hardened Joanna's

heart. She did not leave the room till the deposed dynasty of curtains

and pictures was restored, with poor father's certificate once more in

its place of honour. Then she marched out.

§7

The days till Christmas were full of strain. Joanna had won her victory,

but she did not find it a satisfying one. Ellen's position in the

Ansdore household was that of a sulky rebel--resentful, plaintive, a

nurse of hard memories--too close to be ignored, too hostile to be

trusted.

The tyrant groaned under the heel of her victim. She was used to

quarrels, but this was her first experience of a prolonged estrangement.

It had been all very well to box Ellen's ears as a child, and have her

shins kicked in return, and then an hour or two later be nursing her on

her lap to the tune of "There was an Old Woman," or "Little Boy

Blue".... But this dragged out antagonism wore down her spirits into a

long sadness. It was the wrong start for that happy home she had

planned, in which Ellen, the little sister, was to absorb that

overflowing love which had once been Martin's, but which his memory

could not hold in all its power.

It seemed as if she would be forced to acknowledge Ellen's education as

another of her failures. She had sent her to school to be made a lady

of, but the finished article was nearly as disappointing as the

cross-bred lambs of Socknersh's unlucky day. If Ellen had wanted to lie

abed of a morning, never to do a hand's turn of work, or had demanded a

table napkin at all her meals, Joanna would have humoured her and

bragged about her. But, on the contrary, her sister had learned habits

of early rising at school, and if left to herself would have been busy

all day with piano or pencil or needle of the finer sort. Also she found

more fault with the beauties of Ansdore's best parlour than the rigours

of its kitchen; there lay the sting--her revolt was not against the

toils and austerities of the farm's life but against its glories and

comelinesses. She despised Ansdore for its very splendours, just as she

despised her sister's best clothes more than her old ones.

By Christmas Day things had righted themselves a little. Ellen was too

young to sulk more than a day or two, and she began to forget her

grievances in the excitement of the festival. There was the usual

communal midday dinner, with Arthur Alce back in his old place at

Joanna's right hand. Alce had behaved like a gentleman, and refused to

take back the silver tea set, his premature wedding gift. Then in the

evening, Joanna gave a party, at which young Vines and Southlands and

Furneses offered their sheepish admiration to her sister Ellen. Of

course everyone was agreed that Ellen Godden gave herself lamentable

airs, but she appealed to her neighbours' curiosity through her queer,

exotic ways, and the young men found her undeniably beautiful--she had a

thick, creamy skin, into which her childhood's roses sometimes came as a

dim flush, and the younger generation of the Three Marshes was inclined

to revolt from the standards of its fathers.

So young Stacey Vine kissed her daringly under the mistletoe at the

passage bend, and was rewarded with a gasp of sweet scent, which made

him talk a lot at the Woolpack. While Tom Southland, a man of few words,

went home and closed with his father's offer of a partnership in his

farm, which hitherto he had thought of setting aside in favour of an

escape to Australia. Ellen was pleased at the time, but a night's

thought made her scornful.

"Don't you know any really nice people?" she asked Joanna. "Why did you

send me to school with gentlemen's daughters if you just meant me to mix

with common people when I came out?"

"You can mix with any gentlefolk you can find to mix with. I myself have

been engaged to marry a gentleman's son, and his father would have come

to my party if he hadn't been away for Christmas."

She felt angry and sore with Ellen, but she was bound to admit that her

grievance had a certain justification. After all, she had always meant

her to be a lady, and now, she supposed, she was merely behaving like

one. She cast about her for means of introducing her sister into the

spheres she coveted ... if only Sir Harry Trevor would come home!--But

she gathered there was little prospect of that for some time. Then she

thought of Mr. Pratt, the rector.... It was the first time that she had

ever considered him as a social asset--his poverty, his inefficiency and

self-depreciation had quite outweighed his gentility in her ideas; he

had existed only as the Voice of the Church on Walland Marsh, and the

spasmodic respect she paid him was for his office alone. But now she

began to remember that he was an educated man and a gentleman, who might

supply the want in her sister's life without in any way encouraging

those more undesirable "notions" she had picked up at school.

Accordingly, Mr. Pratt, hitherto neglected, was invited to Ansdore with

a frequency and enthusiasm that completely turned his head. He spoiled

the whole scheme by misinterpreting its motive, and after about the

ninth tea-party, became buoyed with insane and presumptuous hopes, and

proposed to Joanna. She was overwhelmed, and did not scruple to

overwhelm him, with anger and consternation. It was not that she did not

consider the rectory a fit match for Ansdore, even with only two hundred

a year attached to it, but she was furious that Mr. Pratt should think

it possible that she could fancy him as a man--"a little rabbity chap

like him, turned fifty, and scarce a hair on him. If he wants another

wife at his age he should get an old maid like Miss Godfrey or a hopeful

widder like Mrs. Woods--not a woman who's had real men to love her, and

ud never look at anything but a real, stout feller."

However, she confided the proposal to Ellen, for she wanted her sister

to know that she had had an offer from a clergyman, and also that she

was still considered desirable--for once or twice Ellen had thrown out

troubling hints that she thought her sister middle-aged. Of course she

was turned thirty now, and hard weather and other hard things had made

her inclined to look older, by reddening and lining her face. But she

had splendid eyes, hair and teeth, and neither the grace nor the energy

of youth had left her body, which had coarsened into something rather

magnificent, tall and strong, plump without stoutness, clean-limbed

without angularity.

She could certainly now have had her pick among the unmarried

farmers--which could not have been said when she first set up her

mastership at Ansdore. Since those times men had learned to tolerate her

swaggering ways, also her love affair with Martin had made her more

normal, more of a soft, accessible woman. Arthur Alce was no longer the

only suitor at Ansdore--it was well known that Sam Turner, who had

lately moved from inland to Northlade, was wanting to have her, and Hugh

Vennal would have been glad to bring her as his second wife to Beggar's

Bush. Joanna was proud of these attachments and saw to it that they

were not obscure--also, one or two of the men, particularly Vennal, she

liked for themselves, for their vitality and "set-upness"; but she shied

away from the prospect of marriage. Martin had shown her all that it

meant in the way of renunciation, and she felt that she could make its

sacrifices for no one less than Martin. Also, the frustration of her

hopes and the inadequacy of her memories had produced in her a queer

antipathy to marriage--a starting aside. Her single state began to have

for her a certain worth in itself, a respectable rigour like a pair of

stays. For a year or so after Martin's death, she had maintained her

solace of secret kisses, but in time she had come to withdraw even from

these, and by now the full force of her vitality was pouring itself into

her life at Ansdore, its ambitions and business, her love for Ellen, and

her own pride.

§8

Ellen secretly despised Joanna's suitors, just as she secretly despised

all Joanna's best and most splendid things. They were a dull lot,

driving her sister home on market-day, or sitting for hours in the

parlour with Arthur Alce's mother's silver tea-set. It was always "Good

evening, Miss Godden," "Good evening, Mr. Turner"--"Fine weather for

roots"--"A bit dry for the grazing." It was not thus that Ellen Godden

understood love. Besides, these men looked oafs, in spite of the fine

build of some of them--they were not so bad in their working clothes,

with their leggings and velveteen breeches, but in their Sunday best,

which they always wore on these occasions, they looked clumsy and

ridiculous, their broad black coats in the cut of yester-year and

smelling of camphor, their high-winged collars scraping and reddening

their necks ... in their presence Ellen was rather sidling and sweet,

but away from them in the riotous privacy of her new bedroom, she

laughed to herself and jeered.

She had admirers of her own, but she soon grew tired of them--would have

grown tired sooner if Joanna had not clucked and shoo'd them away, thus

giving them the glamour of the forbidden thing. Joanna looked upon them

all as detrimentals, presumptuously lifting up their eyes to Ansdore's

wealth and Ellen's beauty.

"When you fall in love, you can take a stout yeoman with a bit of money,

if you can't find a real gentleman same as I did. Howsumever, you're too

young to go meddling with such things just yet. You be a good girl,

Ellen Godden, and keep your back straight, and don't let the boys kiss

you."

Ellen had no particular pleasure in letting the boys kiss her--she was a

cold-blooded little thing--but, she asked herself, what else was there

to do in a desert like Walland Marsh? The Marsh mocked her every morning

as she looked out of her window at the flat miles between Ansdore and

Dunge Ness. This was her home--this wilderness of straight dykes and

crooked roads, every mile of which was a repetition of the mile before

it. There was never any change in that landscape, except such as came

from the sky--cloud-shadows shaking like swift wings across the swamp of

buttercups and sunshine, mists lying in strange islands by the sewers,

rain turning all things grey, and the wind as it were made visible in a

queer flying look put on by the pastures when the storms came groaning

inland from Rye Bay ... with a great wail of wind and slash of rain and

a howl and shudder through all the house.

She found those months of spring and summer very dreary. She disliked

the ways of Ansdore; she met no one but common and vulgar people, who

took it for granted that she was just one of themselves. Of course she

had lived through more or less the same experiences during her holidays,

but then the contact had not been so close or so prolonged, and there

had always been the prospect of school to sustain her.

But now schooldays were over, and seemed very far away. Ellen felt cut

off from the life and interests of those happy years. She had hoped to

receive invitations to go and stay with the friends she had made at

school; but months went by and none came. Her school-friends were being

absorbed by a life very different from her own, and she was sensitive

enough to realize that parents who had not minded her associating with

their daughters while they were still at school, would not care for

their grown-up lives to be linked together. At first letters were

eagerly written and constantly received, but in time even this comfort

failed, as ways became still further divided, and Ellen found herself

faced with the alternative of complete isolation or such friendships as

she could make on the Marsh.

She chose the latter. Though she would have preferred the humblest seat

in a drawing-room to the place of honour in a farm-house kitchen, she

found a certain pleasure in impressing the rude inhabitants of Brodnyx

and Pedlinge with her breeding and taste. She accepted invitations to

"drop in after church," or to take tea, and scratched up rather

uncertain friendships with the sisters of the boys who admired her.

Joanna watched her rather anxiously. She tried to persuade herself that

Ellen was happy and no longer craved for the alien soil from which she

had been uprooted. But there was no denying her own disappointment. A

lady was not the wonderful being Joanna Godden had always imagined.

Ellen refused to sit in impressive idleness on the parlour sofa, not

because she disapproved of idleness, but because she disapproved of the

parlour and the sofa. She despised Joanna's admirers, those stout,

excellent men she was so proud of, who had asked her in marriage, "as no

one ull ever ask you, Ellen Godden, if you give yourself such airs." And

worst of all, she despised her sister ... her old Jo, on whose back she

had ridden, in whose arms she had slept.... Those three years of polite

education seemed to have wiped out all the fifteen years of happy,

homely childhood. Sometimes Joanna wished she had never sent her to a

grand school. All they had done there was to stuff her head with

nonsense. It would have been better, after all, if she had gone to the

National, and learned to say her Catechism instead of to despise her

home.

§9

One day early in October the Vines asked Ellen to go with them into Rye

and visit Lord John Sanger's menagerie.

Joanna was delighted that her sister should go--a wild beast show was

the ideal of entertainment on the Three Marshes.

"You can put on your best gown, Ellen--the blue one Miss Godfrey made

you. You've never been to Lord John Sanger's before, have you? I'd like

to go myself, but Wednesday's the day for Romney, and I just about can't

miss this market. I hear they're sending up some heifers from

Orgarswick, and there'll be sharp bidding.... I envy you going to a wild

beast show. I haven't been since Arthur Alce took me in '93. That was

the first time he asked me to marry him. I've never had the time to go

since, though Sanger's been twice since then, and they had Buffalo Bill

in Cadborough meadow.... I reckon you'll see some fine riding and some

funny clowns--and there'll be stalls where you can buy things, and maybe

a place where you can get a cup of tea. You go and enjoy yourself,

duckie."

Ellen smiled a wan smile.

On Monday night the news came to the Vines that their eldest son, Bill,

who was in an accountant's office at Maidstone, had died suddenly of

peritonitis. Of course Wednesday's jaunt was impossible, and Joanna

talked as if young Bill's untimely end had been an act of premeditated

spite.

"If only he'd waited till Thursday--even Wednesday morning ud have done

... the telegram wouldn't have got to them till after they'd left the

house, and Ellen ud have had her treat."

Ellen bore the deprivation remarkably well, but Joanna fumed and

champed. "I call it a shame," she said to Arthur Alce,--"an

unaccountable shame, spoiling the poor child's pleasure. It's seldom she

gets anything she likes, with all her refined notions, but here you

have, as you might say, amusement and instruction combined. If only I

hadn't got that tedious market ... but go I must; it's not a job I can

give to Broadhurst, bidding for them heifers--and I mean to have 'em. I

hear Furnese is after 'em, but he can't bid up to me."

"Would you like me to take Ellen to the wild beast show?" said Arthur

Alce.

"Oh, Arthur--that's middling kind of you, that's neighbourly. But aren't

you going into Romney yourself?"

"I've nothing particular to go for. I don't want to buy. If I went it

ud only be to look at stock."

"Well, I'd take it as a real kindness if you'd drive in Ellen to Rye on

Wednesday. The show's there only for the one day, and nobody else is

going up from these parts save the Cobbs, and I don't want Ellen to go

along with them 'cos of that Tom Cobb what's come back and up to no

good."

"I'm only too pleased to do anything for you, Joanna, as you know well."

"Yes, I know it well. You've been a hem good neighbour to me, Arthur."

"A neighbour ain't so good as I'd like to be."

"Oh, don't you git started on that again--I thought you'd done."

"I'll never have done of that."

Joanna looked vexed. Alce's wooing had grown stale, and no longer

gratified her. She could not help comparing his sandy-haired sedateness

with her memories of Martin's fire and youth--that dead sweetheart had

made it impossible for her to look at a man who was not eager and

virile; her admirers were now all, except for him, younger than herself.

She liked his friendship, his society, his ready and unselfish support,

but she could not bear to think of him as a suitor, and there was almost

disdain in her eyes.

"I don't like to hear such talk from you," she said coldly. Then she

remembered the silver tea-set which he had never taken back, and the

offer he had made just now.... "Not but that you ain't a good friend to

me, Arthur--my best."

A faint pink crept under his freckles and tan.

"Well, I reckon that should ought to be enough for me--to hear you say

that."

"I do say it. And now I'll go and tell Ellen you're taking her into Rye

for the show. She'll be a happy girl."

§10

Ellen was not quite so happy as her sister expected. Her sum of

spectacular bliss stood in Shakespearean plays which she had seen, and

in "Monsieur Beaucaire," which she had not. A wild beast show with its

inevitable accompaniment of dust and chokiness and noise would give her

no pleasure at all, and the slight interest which had lain in the escort

of the Vines with the amorous Stacey was now removed. She did not want

Arthur Alce's company. Her sister's admirer struck her as a dull dog.

"I won't trouble him," she said. "I'm sure he doesn't really want to

go."

"Reckon he does," said Joanna. "He wants to go anywhere that pleases

me."

This did not help to reconcile Ellen.

"Well, I don't want to be taken anywhere just to please you."

"It pleases you too, don't it?"

"No, it doesn't. I don't care twopence about fairs and shows, and Arthur

Alce bores me."

This double blasphemy temporarily deprived Joanna of speech.

"If he's only taking me to please you," continued Ellen, "he can just

leave me at home to please myself."

"What nonsense!" cried her sister--"here have I been racking around for

hours just to fix a way of getting you to the show, and now you say you

don't care about it."

"Well, I don't."

"Then you should ought to. I never saw such airs as you give yourself.

Not care about Sanger's World Wide Show!--I tell you, you just about

shall go to it, ma'am, whether you care about it or not, and Arthur Alce

shall take you."

Thus the treat was arranged, and on Wednesday afternoon Alce drove to

the door in his high, two-wheeled dog-cart, and Ellen climbed up beside

him, under the supervision of Mrs. Tolhurst, whom Joanna, before setting

out for market, had commissioned to "see as she went." Not that Joanna

could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying

she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer

contrariness might keep her away.

Ellen was wearing her darkest, demurest clothes, in emphatic contrast to

the ribbons and laces in which Brodnyx and Pedlinge usually went to the

fair. Her hair was neatly coiled under her little, trim black hat, and

she wore dark suède gloves and buckled shoes. Alce felt afraid of her,

especially as during the drive she never opened her mouth except in

brief response to some remark of his.

Ellen despised Arthur Alce--she did not like his looks, his

old-fashioned side-whiskers and Gladstone collars, or the amount of hair

and freckles that covered the exposed portions of his skin. She despised

him, too, for his devotion to Joanna; she did not understand how a man

could be inspired with a lifelong love for Joanna, who seemed to her

unattractive--coarse and bouncing. She also a little resented this

devotion, the way it was accepted as an established fact in the

neighbourhood, a standing sum to Joanna's credit. Of course she was fond

of her sister--she could not help it--but she would have forgiven her

more easily for her ruthless domineering, if she had not also had the

advantage in romance. An admirer who sighed hopelessly after you all

your life was still to Ellen the summit of desire. It was fortunate that

she could despise Alce so thoroughly in his person, or else she might

have found herself jealous of her sister.

They arrived at Sanger's in good time for the afternoon performance, and

their seats were the best in the tent. Alce, ever mindful of Joanna,

bought Ellen an orange and a bag of bull's-eyes. During the performance

he was too much engrossed to notice her much--the elephants, the clowns,

the lovely ladies, were as fresh and wonderful to him as to any child

present, though as a busy farmer he had long ago discarded such

entertainments and would not have gone to-day if it had not been for

Ellen, or rather for her sister. When the interval came, however, he had

time to notice his companion, and it seemed to him that she drooped.

"Are you feeling it hot in here?"

"Yes--it's very close."

He did not offer to take her out--it did not strike him that she could

want to leave.

"You haven't sucked your orange--that'll freshen you a bit."

Ellen looked at her orange.

"Let me peel it for you," said Alce, noticing her gloved hands.

"Thanks very much--but I can't eat it here; there's nowhere to put the

skin and pips."

"What about the floor? Reckon they sweep out the sawdust after each

performance."

"I'm sure I hope they do," said Ellen, whose next-door neighbour had

spat at intervals between his knees, "but really, I'd rather keep the

orange till I get home."

At that moment the ring-master came in to start the second half of the

entertainment, and Alce turned away from Ellen. He was unconscious of

her till the band played "God Save the King," and there was a great

scraping of feet as the audience turned to go out.

"We'll go and have a cup of tea," said Alce.

He took her into the refreshment tent, and blundered as far as offering

her a twopenny ice-cream at the ice-cream stall. He was beginning to

realize that she took her pleasures differently from most girls he knew;

he felt disappointed and ill at ease with her--it would be dreadful if

she went home and told Joanna she had not enjoyed herself.

"What would you like to do now?" he asked when they had emptied their

tea-cups and eaten their stale buns in the midst of a great steaming,

munching squash--"there's swings and stalls and a merry-go-round--and I

hear the Fat Lady's the biggest they've had yet in Rye; but maybe you

don't care for that sort of thing?"

"No, I don't think I do, and I'm feeling rather tired. We ought to be

starting back before long."

"Oh, not till you've seen all the sights. Joanna ud never forgive me if

I didn't show you the sights. We'll just stroll around, and then we'll

go to the George and have the trap put to."

Ellen submitted--she was a born submitter, whose resentful and watchful

submission had come almost to the pitch of art. She accompanied Alce to

the swings, though she would not go up in them, and to the

merry-go-round, though she would not ride in it.

"There's Ellen Godden out with her sister's young man," said a woman's

voice in the crowd.

"Maybe he'll take the young girl now he can't get the old 'un," a man

answered her.

"Oh, Arthur Alce ull never change from Joanna Godden."

"But the sister's a dear liddle thing, better worth having to my mind."

"Still, I'll never believe ..."

The voices were lost in the crowd, and Ellen never knew who had spoken,

but for the first time that afternoon her boredom was relieved. It was

rather pleasant to have anyone think that Arthur Alce was turning to her

from Joanna ... it would be a triumph indeed if he actually did turn ...

for the first time she began to take an interest in him.

The crowd was very thick, and Alce offered her his arm.

"Hook on to me, or maybe I'll lose you."

Ellen did as he told her, and after a time he felt her weight increase.

"Reckon you're middling tired."

He looked down on her with a sudden pity--her little hand was like a

kitten under his arm.

"Yes, I am rather tired." It was no pretence--such an afternoon, without

the stimulant and sustenance of enjoyment, was exhausting indeed.

"Then we'll go home--reckon we've seen everything."

He piloted her out of the crush, and they went to the George, where the

trap was soon put to. Ellen sat drooping along the Straight Mile.

"Lord, but you're hem tired," said Alce, looking down at her.

"I've got a little headache--I had it when I started."

"Then you shouldn't ought to have come."

"Joanna said I was to."

"You should have told her about your head."

"I did--but she said I must come all the same. I said I was sure you

wouldn't mind, but she wouldn't let me off."

"Joanna's valiant for getting her own way. Still, it was hard on you,

liddle girl, making you come--I shouldn't have taken offence."

"I know you wouldn't. But Jo's so masterful. She always wants me to

enjoy myself in her way, and being strong, she doesn't understand people

who aren't."

"That's so, I reckon. Still your sister's a fine woman, Ellen--the best

I've known."

"I'm sure she is," snapped Ellen.

"But she shouldn't ought to have made you come this afternoon, since you

were feeling poorly."

"Don't let out I said anything to you about it, Arthur--it might make

her angry. Oh, don't make her angry with me."

§11

During the next few weeks it seemed to Joanna that her sister was a

little more alert. She went out more among the neighbours, and when

Joanna's friends came to see her, she no longer sulked remotely, but

came into the parlour, and was willing to play the piano and talk and be

entertaining. Indeed, once or twice when Joanna was busy she had sat

with Arthur Alce after tea and made herself most agreeable--so he said.

The fact was that Ellen had a new interest in life. Those words sown

casually in her thoughts at the show were bearing remarkable fruit. She

had pondered them well, and weighed her chances, and come to the

conclusion that it would be a fine and not impossible thing to win

Arthur Alce from Joanna to herself.

She did not see why she should not be able to do so. She was prettier

than her sister, younger, more accomplished, better educated. Alce on

his side must be tired of wooing without response. When he saw there was

a chance of Ellen, he would surely take it; and then--what a triumph!

How people would talk and marvel when they saw Joanna Godden's life-long

admirer turn from her to her little sister! They would be forced to

acknowledge Ellen as a superior and enchanting person. Of course there

was the disadvantage that she did not particularly want Arthur Alce, but

her schemings did not take her as far as matrimony.

She was shrewd enough to see that the best way to capture Alce was to

make herself as unlike her sister as possible. With him she was like a

little soft cat, languid and sleek, or else delicately playful. She

appealed to his protecting strength, and in time made him realize that

she was unhappy in her home life and suffered under her sister's

tyranny. She had hoped that this might help detach him from Joanna, but

his affection was of that passive, tenacious kind which tacitly accepts

all the faults of the beloved. He was always ready to sympathize with

Ellen, and once or twice expostulated with Joanna--but his loyalty

showed no signs of wavering.

As time went on, Ellen began to like him more in himself. She grew

accustomed to his red hair and freckles, and when he was in his everyday

kit of gaiters and breeches and broadcloth, she did not find him

unattractive. Moreover she could not fail to appreciate his fundamental

qualities of generosity and gentleness--he was like a big, faithful,

gentle dog, a red-haired collie, following and serving.

§12

The weeks went by, and Ellen still persevered. But she was disappointed

in results. She had thought that Alce's subjection would not take very

long, she had not expected the matter to drag. It was the fault of his

crass stupidity--he was unable to see what she was after, he looked upon

her just as a little girl, Joanna's little sister, and was good to her

for Joanna's sake.

This was humiliating, and Ellen fretted and chafed at her inability to

make him see. She was no siren, and was without either the parts or the

experience for a definite attack on his senses. She worked as an amateur

and a schoolgirl, with only a certain fundamental shrewdness to guide

her; she was doubtless becoming closer friends with Alce--he liked to

sit and talk to her after tea, and often gave her lifts in his trap--but

he used their intimacy chiefly to confide in her his love and admiration

for her sister, which was not what Ellen wanted.

The first person to see what was happening was Joanna herself. She had

been glad for some time of Ellen's increased friendliness with Alce, but

had pat it down to nothing more than the comradeship of that happy day

at Lord John Sanger's show. Then something in Ellen's looks as she spoke

to Arthur, in her manner as she spoke of him, made her suspicious--and

one Sunday evening, walking home from church, she became sure. The

service had been at Pedlinge, in the queer barn-like church whose walls

inside were painted crimson; and directly it was over Ellen had taken

charge of Alce, who was coming back to supper with them. Alce usually

went to his parish church at Old Romney, but had accepted Ellen's

invitation to accompany the Goddens that day, and now Ellen seemed

anxious that he should not walk with her and Joanna, but had taken him

on ahead, leaving Joanna to walk with the Southlands.

The elder sister watched them--Alce a little oafish in his Sunday

blacks, Ellen wearing her new spring hat with the daisies. As she spoke

to him she lifted her face on her graceful neck like a swan, and her

voice was eager and rather secret. Joanna lost the thread of Mrs.

Southland's reminiscences of her last dairy-girl, and she watched Ellen,

watched her hands, watched the shrug of her shoulders under her

gown--the girl's whole body seemed to be moving, not restlessly or

jerkily, but with a queer soft ripple.

Then Joanna suddenly said to herself--"She loves him. Ellen wants Arthur

Alce." Her first emotion was of anger, a resolve to stop this impudence;

but the next minute she pitied instead--Ellen, with her fragile beauty,

her little die-away airs, would never be able to get Arthur Alce from

Joanna, to whom he belonged. He was hers, both by choice and habit, and

Ellen would never get him. Then from pity, she passed into

tenderness--she was sorry Ellen could not get Arthur, could not have him

when she wanted him, while Joanna, who could have him, did not want him.

It would be a good thing for her, too. Alce was steady and

well-established--he was not like those mucky young Vines and

Southlands. Ellen would be safe to marry him. It was a pity she hadn't a

chance.

Joanna looked almost sentimentally at the couple ahead--then she

suddenly made up her mind. "If I spoke to Arthur Alce, I believe I could

make him do it." She could make Arthur do most things, and she did not

see why he should stop at this. Of course she did not want Ellen to

marry him or anybody, but now she had once come to think of it she could

see plainly, in spite of herself, that marriage would be a good thing

for her sister. She was being forced up against the fact that her

schemes for Ellen had failed--school-life had spoiled her, home-life was

making both her and home miserable. The best thing she could do would be

to marry, but she must marry a good man and true--Alce was both good and

true, and moreover his marriage would set Joanna free from his hang-dog

devotion, of which she was beginning to grow heartily tired. She

appreciated his friendship and his usefulness, but they could both

survive, and she would at the same time be free of his sentimental

lapses, the constant danger of a declaration. Yes, Ellen should have

him--she would make a present of him to Ellen.

§13

"Arthur, I want a word with you."

They were alone in the parlour, Ellen having been dispatched resentfully

on an errand to Great Ansdore.

"About them wethers?"

"No--it's a different thing. Arthur, have you noticed that Ellen's sweet

on you?"

Joanna's approach to a subject was ever direct, but this time she seemed

to have taken the breath out of Arthur's body.

"Ellen ... sweet on me?" he gasped.

"Yes, you blind-eyed owl. I've seen it for a dunnamany weeks."

"But--Ellen? That liddle girl ud never care an onion for a dull, dry

chap lik me."

"Reckon she would. You ain't such a bad chap, Arthur, though I could

never bring myself to take you."

"Well, I must say I haven't noticed anything, or maybe I'd have spoken

to you about it. I'm unaccountable sorry, Jo, and I'll do all I can to

help you stop it."

"I'm not sure I want to stop it. I was thinking only to-day as it

wouldn't be a bad plan if you married Ellen."

"But, Jo, I don't want to marry anybody but you."

"Reckon that's middling stupid of you, for I'll never marry you, Arthur

Alce--_never_!"

"Then I don't want nobody."

"Oh, yes, you do. You'll be a fool if you don't marry and get a wife to

look after you and your house, which has wanted new window-blinds this

eighteen month. You can't have me, so you may as well have Ellen--she's

next best to me, I reckon, and she's middling sweet on you."

"Ellen's a dear liddle thing, as I've always said against them that said

otherwise--but I've never thought of marrying her, and reckon she don't

want to marry me, she'd sooner marry a stout young Southland or young

Vine."

"She ain't going to marry any young Vine. When she marries I'll see she

marries a steady, faithful, solid chap, and you're the best I know."

"It's kind of you to say it, but reckon it wouldn't be a good thing for

me to marry one sister when I love the other."

"But you'll never get the other, not till the moon's cheese, so there's

no sense in vrothering about that. And I want Ellen to marry you,

Arthur, since she's after you. I never meant her to marry yet awhiles,

but reckon I can't make her happy at home--I've tried and I can't--so

you may as well try."

"It ud be difficult to make Ellen happy--she's a queer liddle dentical

thing."

"I know, but marriage is a wonderful soberer-down. She'll be happy once

she gets a man and a house of her own."

"I'm not so sure. Anyways I'm not the man for her. She should ought to

marry a gentleman."

"Well, there ain't none for her to marry, nor likely to be none. She'll

go sour if she has to stand ... and she wants you, Arthur. I wouldn't be

asking you this if I hadn't seen she wanted you, and seen too as the

best thing as could happen to her would be for her to marry you."

"I'm sure she'll never take me."

"You can but ask her."

"She'll say 'No.'"

"Reckon she won't--but if she does, there'll be no harm in asking her."

"You queer me, Jo--it seems a foolish thing to marry Ellen when I want

to marry you."

"But I tell you, you can never marry me. You're a stupid man, Arthur,

who won't see things as they are. You go hankering after whom you can't

get, and all the time you might get someone who's hankering after you.

It's a lamentable waste, I say, and I'll never be pleased if you don't

ask Ellen. It ain't often I ask you to do anything to please me, and

this is no hard thing. Ellen's a fine match--a pretty girl, and clever,

and well-taught--she'll play the piano to your friends. And I'll see as

she has a bit of money with her. You'll do well for yourself by taking

her, and I tell you, Arthur, I'm sick and tired of your dangling after

me."

§14

Joanna had many more conversations with Arthur Alce, and in the end bore

down his objections. She used her tongue to such good purpose that by

next Sunday he had come to see that Ellen wanted him, and that for him

to marry her would be the best thing for everyone--Joanna, Ellen and

himself. After all, it wasn't as if he had the slightest chance of

Joanna--she had made that abundantly clear, and his devotion did not

feed on hope so much as on a stale content in being famous throughout

three marshes as her rejected suitor. Perhaps it was not amiss that her

sudden call should stir him into a more active and vital service.