believe a word of what she says about going as lady's maid--she hasn't
got the grit--nor the character neither, though she doesn't seem to
think of that."
"It ud be unaccountable awkward, Jo--and it ud set Ellen against both of
us, and bring you trouble. Maybe if I go she'll take a different view of
things. I shan't let off the place for longer than three year ... it'll
give her a chance to think different, and then maybe we can fix up
something...."
Joanna fastened on to these words, both for her own comfort in Arthur's
loss, and for the quieting of her conscience, which told her that it was
preposterous that he should leave Donkey Street so that she could keep
Ellen at Ansdore. Of course, if she did her duty she would pack Ellen
off to the Isle of Wight, so that Arthur could stay. The fact was,
however, that she wanted the guilty, ungracious Ellen more than she
wanted the upright, devoted Arthur--she was glad to know of any terms on
which her sister would consent to remain under her roof--it seemed
almost too good to be true, to think that once more she had the little
sister home....
So she signed the warrant for Arthur's exile, which was to do so much to
spread the more favourable opinion of Ellen Alce that had mysteriously
crept into being since her return. He let off Donkey Street on a three
years' lease to young Jim Honisett, the greengrocer's son at Rye, who
had recently married and whose wish to set up as farmer would naturally
be to the advantage of his father's shop. He let his furniture with it
too.... He himself would take nothing to his brother, who kept house in
a very big way, the same as he farmed.... "Reckon I should ought to
learn a thing or two about grain-growing that'll be useful to me when I
come back," said Arthur stoutly.
He had come to say good-bye to Joanna on a June evening just before the
quarter day. The hot scents of hay-making came in through the open
parlour window, and they were free, for Ellen had gone with Mr. and Mrs.
Southland to Rye for the afternoon--of late she had accepted one or two
small invitations from the neighbours. Joanna poured Arthur out a cup of
tea from the silver teapot he had given her as a wedding present six
years ago.
"Well, Arthur--reckon it'll be a long time before you and me have tea
again together."
"Reckon it will."
"Howsumever, I shall always think of you when I pour it out of your
teapot--which will be every day that I don't have it in the kitchen."
"Thank you, Jo."
"And you'll write and tell me how you're getting on?"
"Reckon I will."
"Maybe you'll send me some samples of those oats your brother did so
well with. I'm not over pleased with that Barbacklaw, and ud make a
change if I could find better."
"I'll be sure and send."
Joanna told him of an inspiration she had had with regard to the poorer
innings of Great Ansdore--she was going to put down fish-guts for
manure--it had done wonders with some rough land over by Botolph's
Bridge--"Reckon it'll half stink the tenants out, but they're at the
beginning of a seven years lease, so they can't help themselves much."
She held forth at great length, and Arthur listened, holding his cup and
saucer carefully on his knee with his big freckled hands. His eyes were
fixed on Joanna, on the strong-featured, high-coloured face he thought
so much more beautiful than Ellen's with its delicate lines and pale,
petal-like skin.... Yes, Joanna was the girl all along--the one for
looks, the one for character--give him Joanna every time, with her red
and brown face, and thick brown hair, and her high, deep bosom, and
sturdy, comfortable waist ... why couldn't he have had Joanna, instead
of what he'd got, which was nothing? For the first time in his life
Arthur Alce came near to questioning the ways of Providence. Reckon it
was the last thing he would ever do for her--this going away. He wasn't
likely to come back, though he did talk of it, just to keep up their
spirits. He would probably settle down in the shires--go into
partnership with his brother--run a bigger place than Donkey Street,
than Ansdore even.
"Well, I must be going now. There's still a great lot of things to be
tidied up."
He rose, awkwardly setting down his cup. Joanna rose too. The sunset,
rusty with the evening sea-mist, poured over her goodly form as she
stood against the window, making its outlines dim and fiery and her hair
like a burning crown.
"I shall miss you, Arthur."
He did not speak, and she held out her hand.
"Good-bye."
He could not say it--instead he pulled her towards him by the hand he
held.
"Jo--I must."
"Arthur--no!"
But it was too late--he had kissed her.
"That's the first time you done it," she said reproachfully.
"Because it's the last. You aren't angry, are you?"
"I?--no. But, Arthur, you mustn't forget you're married to Ellen."
"Am I like to forget it?--And seeing all the dunnamany kisses she's
given to another man, reckon she won't grudge me this one poor kiss I've
given the woman I've loved without clasp or kiss for fifteen years."
For the first time she heard in his voice both bitterness and passion,
and at that moment the man himself seemed curiously to come alive and to
compel.... But Joanna was not going to dally with temptation in the
unaccustomed shape of Arthur Alce. She pushed open the door.
"Have they brought round Ranger?--Hi! Peter Crouch!--Yes, there he is.
You'll have a good ride home, Arthur."
"But there'll be rain to-morrow."
"I don't think it. The sky's all red at the rims."
"The wind's shifted."
Joanna moistened her finger and held it up--
"So it has. But the glass is high. Reckon it'll hold off till you're in
the shires, and then our weather won't trouble you."
She watched him ride off, standing in the doorway till the loops of the
Brodnyx road carried him into the rusty fog that was coming from the
sea.
_PART IV_
LAST LOVE
§1
Time passed on, healing the wounds of the Marsh. At Donkey Street, the
neighbours were beginning to get used to young Honisett and his bride,
at Rye and Lydd and Romney the farmers had given up expecting Arthur
Alce to come round the corner on his grey horse, with samples of wheat
or prices of tegs. At Ansdore, too, the breach was healed. Joanna and
Ellen lived quietly together, sharing their common life without
explosions. Joanna had given up all idea of "having things out" with
Ellen. There was always a bit of pathos about Joanna's surrenders, and
in this case Ellen had certainly beaten her. It was rather difficult to
say exactly to what the younger sister owed her victory, but undoubtedly
she had won it, and their life was in a measure based upon it. Joanna
accepted her sister--past and all; she accepted her little calm
assumptions of respectability together with those more expected
tendencies towards the "French." When Ellen had first come back, she had
been surprised and resentful to see how much she took for granted in the
way of acceptance, not only from Joanna but from the neighbours.
According to her ideas, Ellen should have kept in shamed seclusion till
public opinion called her out of it, and she had been alarmed at her
assumptions, fearing rebuff, just as she had almost feared heaven's
lightning stroke for that demure little figure in her pew on Sunday,
murmuring "Lord have mercy" without tremor or blush.
But heaven had not smitten and the neighbours had not snubbed. In some
mysterious way Ellen had won acceptance from the latter, whatever her
secret relations with the former may have been. The stories about her
grew ever more and more charitable. The Woolpack pronounced that Arthur
Alce would not have gone away "if it had been all on her side," and it
was now certainly known that Mrs. Williams had been at San Remo....
Ellen's manner was found pleasing--"quiet but affable." Indeed, in this
respect she had much improved. The Southlands took her up, forgiving her
treatment of their boy, now comfortably married to the daughter of a big
Folkestone shopkeeper. They found her neither brazen nor shamefaced--and
she'd been as shocked as any honest woman at Lady Mountain's trial in
the Sunday papers ... if folk only knew her real story, they'd probably
find....
In fact, Ellen was determined to get her character back.
She knew within herself that she owed a great deal to Joanna's
protection--for Joanna was the chief power in the parishes of Brodnyx
and Pedlinge, both personally and territorially. Ellen had been wise
beyond the wisdom of despair when she came home. She was not unhappy in
her life at Ansdore, for her escapade had given her a queer advantage
over her sister, and she now found that she could to a certain extent,
mould the household routine to her comfort. She was no longer entirely
dominated, and only a small amount of independence was enough to satisfy
her, a born submitter, to whom contrivance was more than rule. She
wanted only freedom for her tastes and pleasures, and Joanna did not now
strive to impose her own upon her. Occasionally the younger woman
complained of her lot, bound to a man whom she no longer cared for,
wearing only the fetters of her wifehood--she still hankered after a
divorce, though Arthur must be respondent. This always woke Joanna to
rage, but Ellen's feelings did not often rise to the surface, and on the
whole the sisters were happy in their life together--more peaceful
because they were more detached than in the old days. Ellen invariably
wore black, hoping that strangers and newcomers would take her for a
widow.
This she actually became towards the close of the year 1910. Arthur did
a fair amount of hunting with his brother in the shires, and one day his
horse came down at a fence, throwing him badly and fracturing his skull.
He died the same night without regaining consciousness--death had
treated him better on the whole than life, for he died without pain or
indignity, riding to hounds like any squire. He left a comfortable
little fortune, too--Donkey Street and its two hundred acres--and he
left it all to Joanna.
Secretly he had made his will anew soon after going to the shires, and
in it he had indulged himself, ignoring reality and perhaps duty.
Evidently he had had no expectations of a return to married life with
Ellen, and in this new testament he ignored her entirely, as if she had
not been. Joanna was his wife, inheriting all that was his, of land and
money and live and dead stock--"My true, trusty friend, Joanna Godden."
Ellen was furious, and Joanna herself was a little shocked. She
understood Arthur's motives--she guessed that one of his reasons for
passing over Ellen had been his anxiety to leave her sister dependent on
her, knowing her fear that she would take flight. But this exaltation of
her by his death to the place she had refused to occupy during his life,
gave her a queer sense of smart and shame. For the first time it struck
her that she might not have treated Arthur quite well....
However, she did not sympathize with Ellen's indignation--
"You shouldn't ought to have expected a penny, the way you treated him."
"I don't see why he shouldn't have left me at least some furniture,
seeing there was about five hundred pounds of my money in that farm.
He's done rather well out of me on the whole--making me no allowance
whatever when he was alive."
"Because I wouldn't let him make it--I've got some pride if you
haven't."
"Your pride doesn't stop you taking what ought to have been mine."
"'Ought to'.... I never heard such words. Not that I'm pleased he should
make it all over to me, but it ain't my doing."
Ellen looked at her fixedly out of her eyes which were like the shallow
floods.
"Are you quite sure? Are you quite sure, Joanna, that you honestly
played a sister's part by me while I was away?"
"What d'you mean?"
"I mean, Arthur seems to have got a lot fonder of you while I was away
than he--er--seemed to be before."
Joanna gaped at her.
"Of course it was only natural," continued Ellen smoothly--"I know I
treated him badly--but don't you think you needn't have taken advantage
of that?"
"Well, I'm beat ... look here, Ellen ... that man was mine from the
first, and I gave him over to you, and I never took him back nor wanted
him, neither."
"How generous of you, Jo, to have 'given him over' to me."
A little maddening smile twisted the corners of her mouth, and Joanna
remembered that now Arthur was dead and there was no hope of Ellen going
back to him she need not spare her secret.
"Yes, I gave him to you," she said bluntly--"I saw you wanted him, and I
didn't want him myself, so I said to him 'Arthur, look here, you take
her'--and he said to me--'I'd sooner have you, Jo'--but I said 'you
won't have me even if you wait till the moon's cheese, so there's no
good hoping for that. You take the little sister and please me'--and he
said 'I'll do it to please you, Jo.' That's the very thing that
happened, and I'm sorry it happened now--and I never told you before,
because I thought it ud put you against him, and I wanted you to go back
to him, being his wife; but now he's dead, and you may as well know,
seeing the upstart notions you've got."
She looked fiercely at Ellen, to watch the effect of the blow, but was
disconcerted to see that the little maddening smile still lingered.
There were dimples at the flexing corners of her sister's mouth, and now
they were little wells of disbelieving laughter. Ellen did not believe
her--she had told her long-guarded secret and her sister did not believe
it. She thought it just something Joanna had made up to salve her
pride--and nothing would ever make her believe it, for she was a woman
who had been loved and knew that she was well worth loving.
§2
Both Ellen and Joanna were a little afraid that Arthur's treatment of
his widow might disestablish her in public opinion. People would think
that she must have behaved unaccountable badly to be served out like
that. But the effects were not so disastrous as might have been
expected. Ellen, poor and forlorn, in her graceful weeds, without
complaining or resentful words, soon won the neighbours' compassion. It
wasn't right of Alce to have treated her so--showed an unforgiving
nature--if only the real story could be known, most likely folks would
see.... There was also a mild scandal at his treatment of Joanna. "Well,
even if he loved her all the time when he was married to her sister, he
needn't have been so brazen about it.... Always cared for Joanna more'n
he ought and showed it more'n he ought."
Joanna was not worried by these remarks--she brushed them aside. Her
character was gossip-proof, whereas Ellen's was not, therefore it was
best that the stones should be thrown at her rather than at her sister.
She at once went practically to work with Donkey Street. She did not
wish to keep it--it was too remote from Ansdore to be easily workable,
and she was content with her own thriving estate. She sold Donkey Street
with all its stock, and decided to lay out the money in improvements of
her land. She would drain the waterlogged innings by the Kent Ditch, she
would buy a steam plough and make the neighbourhood sit up--she would
start cattle-breeding. She had no qualms in thus spending the money on
the farm, instead of on Ellen. Her sister rather plaintively pointed out
that the invested capital would have brought her in a comfortable small
income--"and then I needn't be such a burden to you, Joanna, dear."
"You ain't a burden to me," said Joanna.
She could not bear to think of Ellen's becoming independent and leaving
her. But Ellen was far better contented with her life at home than she
wisely let it appear. Ansdore was a manor now--the largest estate not
only in Brodnyx and Pedlinge, but on Walland Marsh; indeed the whole of
the Three Marshes had little to beat it with. Moreover, Ellen was
beginning to get her own way in the house--her bedroom was no longer a
compulsory bower of roses, but softly cream-coloured and purple-hung.
She had persuaded Joanna to have a bathroom fitted up, with hot and cold
water and other glories, and though she had been unable to induce her to
banish her father's Bible and the stuffed owls from the parlour, she had
been allowed to supplement--and practically annihilate--them with the
notorious black cushions from Donkey Street. Joanna was a little proud
to have these famous decorations on the premises, to be indoors what her
yellow waggons were outdoors, symbols of daring and progress.
On the whole, this substantial house, with its wide lands, respectable
furniture and swarming servants, was one to be proud of. Ellen's
position as Squire Joanna Godden's sister was much better than if she
were living by herself in some small place on a small income. Her brief
adventure into what she thought was a life of fashionable gaiety had
discouraged and disillusioned her--she was slowly slipping back into the
conventions of her class and surroundings. Ansdore was no longer either
a prison or a refuge, it was beginning to be a home--not permanent, of
course, for she was now a free woman and would marry again, but a good
home to rest in and re-establish herself.
Thanks to Ellen's contrivance and to the progress of Joanna's own
ambition--rising out of its fulfilment in the sphere of the material
into the sphere of style and manners--the sisters now lived the lives of
two well-to-do ladies. They had late dinner every night--only soup and
meat and pudding, still definitely neither supper nor high tea. Joanna
changed for it into smart, stiff silk blouses, with a great deal of lace
and guipure about them, while Ellen wore a rest-gown of drifting black
charmeuse. Mene Tekel was promoted from the dairy to be Ansdore's first
parlourmaid, and wore a cap and apron, and waited at table. Ellen would
have liked to keep Mene Tekel in her place and engage a smart town
girl, whose hands were not the colour of beetroots and whose breathing
could not be heard through a closed door; but Joanna stood firm--Mene
had been her faithful servant for more than seven years, and it wasn't
right that she should have a girl from the town promoted over her.
Besides, Joanna did not like town girls--with town speech that rebuked
her own, and white hands that made her want to put her own large brown
ones under the table.
§3
Early the next year Mr. Pratt faded out. He could not be said to have
done anything so dramatic as to die, though the green marsh-turf of
Brodnyx churchyard was broken to make him a bed, and the little bell
rocked in the bosom of the drunken Victorian widow who was Brodnyx
church steeple, sending a forlorn note out over the Marsh. Various aunts
in various stages of resigned poverty bore off his family to separate
destinations, and the great Rectory house which had for so long mocked
his two hundred a year, stood empty, waiting to swallow up its next
victim.
Only in Joanna Godden's breast did any stir remain. For her at least the
fading out of Mr. Pratt had been drama, the final scene of her
importance; for it was now her task to appoint his successor in the
living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge. Ever since she had found out that she
could not get rid of Mr. Pratt she had been in terror lest this crowning
triumph might be denied her, and the largeness of her funeral wreath and
the lavishness of her mourning--extinguishing all the relations in their
dyed blacks--had testified to the warmth of her gratitude to the late
rector for so considerately dying.
She felt exceedingly important, and the feeling was increased by the
applications she received for the living. Clergymen wrote from different
parts of the country; they told her that they were orthodox--as if she
had imagined a clergyman could be otherwise--that they were acceptable
preachers, that they were good with Boy Scouts. One or two she
interviewed and disliked, because they had bad teeth or large
families--one or two turned the tables on her and refused to have
anything to do with a living encumbered by so large a rectory and so
small an endowment. Joanna felt insulted, though she was not responsible
for either. She resolved not to consider any applicants, but to make her
own choice outside their ranks. This was a difficult matter, for her
sphere was hardly clerical, and she knew no clergy except those on the
Marsh. None of these she liked, because they were for the most part
elderly and went about on bicycles--also she wanted to dazzle her
society with a new importation.
The Archdeacon wrote to her, suggesting that she might be glad of some
counsel in filling the vacancy, and giving her the names of two men whom
he thought suitable. Joanna was furious--she would brook no interference
from Archdeacons, and wrote the gentleman a letter which must have been
unique in his archidiaconal experience. All the same she began to feel
worried--she was beginning to doubt if she had the same qualifications
for choosing a clergyman as she had for choosing a looker or a
dairy-girl. She knew the sort of man she liked as a man, and more
vaguely the sort of man she liked as a parson, she also was
patriotically anxious to find somebody adequate to the honours and
obligations of the living. Nobody she saw or heard of seemed to come up
to her double standard of man and minister, and she was beginning to
wonder to what extent she could compromise her pride by writing--not to
the Archdeacon, but over his head to the Bishop--when she saw in the
local paper that Father Lawrence, of the Society of Sacred Pity, was
preaching a course of sermons in Marlingate.
Immediately memories came back to her, so far and pale that they were
more like the memories of dreams than of anything which had actually
happened. She saw a small dark figure standing with its back to the
awakening light and bidding godspeed to all that was vital and beautiful
and more-than-herself in her life.... "Go, Christian soul"--while she in
the depths of her broken heart had cried "Stay, stay!" But he had obeyed
the priest rather than the lover, he had gone and not stayed ... and
afterwards the priest had tried to hold him for her in futurity--"think
of Martin, pray for Martin," but the lover had let him slip, because she
could not think and dared not pray, and he had fallen back from her into
his silent home in the past.
The old wound could still hurt, for a moment it seemed as if her whole
body was pain because of it. Successful, important, thriving Joanna
Godden could still suffer because eight years ago she had not been
allowed to make the sacrifice of all that she now held so triumphantly.
This mere name of Martin's brother had pricked her heart, and she
suddenly wanted to get closer to the past than she could get with her
memorial-card and photograph and tombstone. Even Sir Harry Trevor,
ironic link with faithful love, was gone now--there was only Lawrence.
She would like to see him--not to talk to him of Martin, she couldn't
bear that, and there would be something vaguely improper about it--but
he was a clergyman, for all he disguised the fact by calling himself a
priest, and she would offer him the living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge and
let the neighbourhood sit up as much as it liked.
§4
Father Lawrence came to see her one April day when the young lambs were
bleating on the sheltered innings and making bright clean spots of white
beside the ewes' fog-soiled fleeces, when the tegs had come down from
their winter keep inland, and the sunset fell in long golden slats
across the first water-green grass of spring. The years had aged him
more than they had aged Joanna--the marks on her face were chiefly
weather marks, tokens of her exposure to marsh suns and winds, and of
her own ruthless applications of yellow soap. Behind them was a little
of the hardness which comes when a woman has to fight many battles and
has won her victories largely through the sacrifice of her resources.
The lines on his face were mostly those of his own humour and other
people's sorrows, he had exposed himself perhaps not enough to the
weather and too much to the world, so that where she had fine lines and
a fundamental hardness, he had heavy lines like the furrows of a
ploughshare, and a softness beneath them like the fruitful soil that the
share turns up.
Joanna received him in state, with Arthur Alce's teapot and her best
pink silk blouse with the lace insertion. Ellen, for fairly obvious
reasons, preferred not to be present. Joanna was terrified lest he
should begin to talk of Martin, so after she had conformed to local
etiquette by inquiring after his health and abusing the weather, she
offered him the living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge and a slice of cake
almost in the same breath.
She was surprised and a little hurt when he refused the former. As a
member of a religious community he could not hold preferment, and he had
no vocation to settled Christianity.
"I shouldn't be at all good as a country clergyman. Besides, Jo"--he had
at once slipped into the brotherliness of their old relations--"I know
you; you wouldn't like my ways. You'd always be up at me, teaching me
better, and then I should be up at you, and possibly we shouldn't stay
quite such good friends as we are now."
"I shouldn't mind your ways. Reckon it might do the folks round here a
proper lot of good to be prayed over same as you--I mean I'd like to see
a few of 'em prayed over when they were dying and couldn't help
themselves. Serve them right, I say, for not praying when they're alive,
and some who won't put their noses in church except for a harvest
thanksgiving. No, if you'll only come here, Lawrence, you may do what
you like in the way of prayers and such. I shan't interfere as long as
you don't trouble us with the Pope, whom I never could abide after all
I've heard of him, wanting to blow up the Established Church in London,
and making people kiss his toe, which I'd never do, not if he was to
burn me alive."
"Well, if that's the only limit to your toleration I think I could help
you, even though I can't come myself. I know one or two excellent
priests who would do endless good in a place like this."
Joanna suddenly felt her imagination gloat and kindle at the thought of
Brodnyx and Pedlinge compelled to holiness--all those wicked old men who
wouldn't go to church, but expected their Christmas puddings just the
same, those hobbledehoys who loafed against gate-posts the whole of
Sunday, those vain hussies who giggled behind their handkerchiefs all
the service through--it would be fine to see them hustled about and
taught their manners ... it would be valiant sport to see them made to
behave, as Mr. Pratt had never been able to make them. She with her
half-crown in the plate and her quarterly communion need have no qualms,
and she would enjoy seeing the fear of God put into other folk.
So Lawrence's visit was fruitful after all--a friend of his had been
ordered to give up his hard work in a slum parish and find a country
vocation. He promised that this friend should write to Joanna.
"But I must see him, too," she said.
They were standing at the open door, and the religious in his black
habit was like a cut paper silhouette against the long streaks of fading
purple cloud.
"I remember," he said, "that you always were particular about a man's
looks. How Martin's must have delighted you!"
His tongue did not falter over the loved, forbidden name--he spoke it
quite naturally and conversationally, as if glad that he could introduce
it at last into their business.
Joanna's body stiffened, but he did not see it, for he was gazing at the
young creeper's budding trail over the door.
"I hope you have a good photograph of him," he continued--"I know that a
very good photograph was taken of him a year before he died--much better
than any of the earlier ones. I hope you have one of those."
"Yes, I have," said Joanna gruffly. From shock she had passed into a
thrilling anger. How calmly he had spoken the dear name, how
unblushingly he had said the outrageous word "died!" How brazen,
thoughtless, cruel he was about it all!--tearing the veil from her
sorrow, talking as if her dead lived ... she felt exposed, indecent, and
she hated him, all the more because mixed with her hatred was a kind of
disapproving envy, a resentment that he should be free to remember
where she was bound to forget....
He saw her hand clench slowly at her side, and for the first time became
aware of her state of mind.
"Good-bye, Jo," he said kindly--"I'll tell Father Palmer to write to
you."
"Thanks, but I don't promise to take him," was her ungracious fling.
"No--why should you? And of course he may have already made his plans.
Good-bye, and thank you for your great kindness in offering the living
to me--it was very noble of you, considering what your family has
suffered from mine."
He had carefully avoided all reference to his father, but he now
realized that he had kept the wrong silence. It was the man who had
brought her happiness, not the man who had brought her shame, that she
was unable to speak of.
"Oh, don't you think of that--it wasn't your doing"--she melted towards
him now she had a genuine cause for indignation--"and we've come through
it better than we hoped, and some of us deserved."
Lawrence gave her an odd smile, which made his face with its innumerable
lines and pouches look rather like a gargoyle's. Then he walked off
bare-headed into the twilight.
§5
Ellen was intensely relieved when she heard that he had refused the
living, and a little indignant with Joanna for having offered it to him.
"You don't seem to realize how very awkward it would have been for me--I
don't want to have anything more to do with that family."
"I daresay not," said Joanna grimly, "but that ain't no reason why this
parish shouldn't have a good parson. Lawrence ud have made the people
properly mind their ways. And it ain't becoming in you, Ellen Alce, to
let your own misdoings stand between folk and what's good for 'em."
Ellen accepted the rebuke good-humouredly. She had grown more mellow of
late, and was settling into her life at Ansdore as she had never settled
since she went to school. She relished her widowed state, for it
involved the delectable business of looking about for a second husband.
She was resolved to act with great deliberation. This time there should
be no hustling into matrimony. It seemed to her now as if that
precipitate taking of Arthur Alce had been at the bottom of all her
troubles; she had been only a poor little schoolgirl, a raw contriver,
hurling herself out of the frying-pan of Ansdore's tyranny into the fire
of Donkey Street's dullness. She knew better now--besides, the increased
freedom and comfort of her conditions did not involve the same urgency
of escape.
She made up her mind that she would not take anyone of the farming
classes; this time she would marry a gentleman--but a decent sort. She
did not enjoy all her memories of Sir Harry Trevor. She would not take
up with that kind of man again, any more than with a dull fellow like
poor Arthur.
She had far better opportunities than in the old days. The exaltation of
Ansdore from farm to manor had turned many keys, and Joanna now received
calls from doctors' and clergymen's wives, who had hitherto ignored her
except commercially. It was at Fairfield Vicarage that Ellen met the
wife of a major at Lydd camp, and through her came to turn the heads of
various subalterns. The young officers from Lydd paid frequent visits to
Ansdore, which was a novelty to both the sisters, who hitherto had had
no dealings with military society. Ellen was far too prudent to engage
herself to any of these boys; she waited for a major or a captain at
least. But she enjoyed their society, and knew that their visits gave
her consequence in the neighbourhood. She was invariably discreet in her
behaviour, and was much reproached by them for her coldness, which they
attributed to Joanna, who watched over her like a dragon, convinced that
the moment she relaxed her guard her sister would inevitably return to
her wicked past.
Ellen would have felt sore and insulted if she had not the comfort of
knowing in her heart that Joanna was secretly envious--a little hurt
that these personable young men came to Ansdore for Ellen alone. They
liked Joanna, in spite of her interference; they said she was a good
sort, and spoke of her among themselves as "the old girl" and "Joanna
God-dam." But none of them thought of turning from Ellen to her
sister--she was too weather-beaten for them, too big and
bouncing--over-ripe. Ellen, pale as a flower, with wide lips like
rose-leaves and narrow, brooding eyes, with her languor, and faint
suggestions of the exotic, all the mystery with which fate had chosen to
veil the common secret which was Ellen Alce.... She could now have the
luxury of pitying her sister, of seeing herself possessed of what her
tyrant Joanna had not, and longed for.... Slowly she was gaining the
advantage, her side of the wheel was mounting while Joanna's went down;
in spite of the elder woman's success and substance the younger was
unmistakably winning ascendancy over her.
§6
Her pity made her kind. She no longer squabbled, complained or resented.
She took Joanna's occasionally insulting behaviour in good part. She
even wished that she would marry--not one of the subalterns, for they
were not her sort, but some decent small squire or parson. When the new
rector first came to Brodnyx she had great hopes of fixing a match
between him and Jo--for Ellen was now so respectable that she had become
a match-maker. But she was disappointed--indeed, they both were, for
Joanna had liked the looks of Mr. Pratt's successor, and though she did
not go so far as to dream of matrimony--which was still below her
horizons--she would have much appreciated his wooing.
But it soon became known that the new rector had strange views on the
subject of clerical marriage--in fact, he shocked his patron in many
ways. He was a large, heavy, pale-faced young man, with strange, sleek
qualities that appealed to her through their unaccustomedness. But he
was scarcely a sleek man in office, and under his drawling, lethargic
manner there was an energy that struck her as shocking and out of
place. He was like Lawrence, speaking forbidden words and of hidden
things. In church he preached embarrassing perfections--she could no
longer feel that she had attained the limits of churchmanship with her
weekly half-crown and her quarterly communion. He turned her young
people's heads with strange glimpses of beauty and obligation.
In fact, poor Joanna was deprived of the spectacle she had looked
forward to with such zest--that of a parish made to amend itself while
she looked on from the detachment of her own high standard. She was made
to feel just as uncomfortable as any wicked old man or giggling
hussy.... She was all the more aggrieved because, though Mr. Palmer had
displeased her, she could not get rid of him as she would have got rid
of her looker in the same circumstances. "If I take a looker and he
don't please me I can sack him--the gal I engage I can get shut of at a
month's warning, but a parson seemingly is the only kind you can put in
and not put out."
Then to crown all, he took away the Lion and the Unicorn from their
eternal dance above the Altar of God, and in their place he put tall
candles, casting queer red gleams into daylight.... Joanna could bear no
more; she swallowed the pride which for the first few months of
innovation had made her treat the new rector merely with distant
rudeness, and descended upon him in the three rooms of Brodnyx Rectory
which he inhabited with cheerful contempt for the rest of its howling
vastness.
She emerged from the encounter strangely subdued. Mr. Palmer had been
polite, even sympathetic, but he had plainly shown her the indifference
(to use no cruder term) that he felt for her as an ecclesiastical
authority. He was not going to put the Lion and the Unicorn back in
their old place, they belonged to a bygone age which was now forgotten,
to a bad old language which had lost its meaning. The utmost he would do
was to consent to hang them up over the door, so that they could bless
Joanna's going out and coming in. With this she had to be content.
Poor Joanna! The episode was more than a passing outrage and
humiliation--it was ominous, it gave her a queer sense of downfall.
With her beloved symbol something which was part of herself seemed also
to have been dispossessed. She became conscious that she was losing
authority. She realized that for long she had been weakening in regard
to Ellen, and now she was unable to stand up to this heavy, sleek young
man whom her patronage had appointed.... The Lion and the Unicorn had
from childhood been her sign of power--they were her theology in
oleograph, they stood for the Church of England as by law established,
large rectory houses, respectable and respectful clergymen, "dearly
beloved brethren" on Sunday mornings, and a nice nap after dinner. And
now they were gone, and in their place was a queer Jesuitry of kyries
and candles, and a gospel which kicked and goaded and would not allow
one to sleep....
§7
It began to be noticed at the Woolpack that Joanna was losing heart.
"She's lost her spring," they said in the bar--"she's got all she
wanted, and now she's feeling dull"--"she's never had what she wanted
and now she's feeling tired"--"her sister's beat her and parson's beat
her--she can't be properly herself." There was some talk about making
her an honorary member of the Farmers' Club, but it never got beyond
talk--the traditions of that exclusive body were too strong to admit her
even now.
To Joanna it seemed as if life had newly and powerfully armed itself
against her. Her love for Ellen was making her soft, she was letting her
sister rule. And not only at home but abroad she was losing her power.
Both Church and State had taken to themselves new arrogances. The Church
had lost its comfortable atmosphere of Sunday beef--and now the State,
which hitherto had existed only for that most excellent purpose of
making people behave themselves, had lifted itself up against Joanna
Godden.
Lloyd George's Finance Act had caught her in its toils, she was being
overwhelmed with terrible forms and schedules, searching into her
profits, making strange inquiries as to minerals, muddling her with long
words. Then out of all the muddle and welter finally emerged the
startling fact that the Government expected to have twenty per cent. of
her profits on the sale of Donkey Street.
She was indignant and furious. She considered that the Government had
been grossly treacherous, unjust, and disrespectful to poor Arthur's
memory. It was Arthur who had done so well with his land that she had
been able to sell it to Honisett at such a valiant price. She had spent
all the money on improvements, too--she was not like some people who
bought motor-cars and took trips to Paris. She had not bought a
motor-car but a motor-plough, the only one in the district--the
Government could come and see it themselves if they liked. It was well
worth looking at.
Thus she delivered herself to young Edward Huxtable, who now managed his
father's business at Rye.
"But I'm afraid it's all fair and square, Miss Joanna," said her
lawyer--"there's no doubt about the land's value or what you sold it
for, and I don't see that you are entitled to any exemption."
"Why not?--If I'm not entitled, who is?"
Joanna sat looking very large and flushed in the Huxtable office in
Watchbell Street. She felt almost on the verge of tears, for it seemed
to her that she was the victim of the grossest injustice which also
involved the grossest disrespect to poor Arthur, who would turn in his
grave if he knew that the Government were trying to take his legacy from
her.
"What are lawyers for?" she continued hotly. "You can turn most things
inside out--why can't you do this? Can't I go to County Court about it?"
Edward Huxtable consulted the Act.... "'Notice of objection may be
served on the Commissioners within sixty days. If they do not allow the
objection, the petitioner may appeal to a referee under the Act, and an
appeal by either the petitioner or the Commissioners lies from the
referee to the High Court, or where the site value does not exceed £500,
to the County Court.' I suppose yours is worth more than £500?"
"I should just about think it is--it's worth something more like five
thousand if the truth was known."
"Well, I shouldn't enlarge on that. Do you think it worth while to
serve an objection? No doubt there are grounds on which we could appeal,
but they aren't very good, and candidly I think we'd lose. It would cost
you a great deal of money, too, before you'd finished."
"I don't care about that. I'm not going to sit down quiet and have my
rightful belongings taken from me."
Edward Huxtable considered that he had done his duty in warning
Joanna--lots of lawyers wouldn't have troubled to do that--and after all
the old girl had heaps of money to lose. She might as well have her fun
and he his fee.
"Well, anyhow we'll go as far as the Commissioners. If I were you, I
shouldn't apply for total exemption, but for a rebate. We might do
something with allowances. Let me see, what did you sell for?"...
He finally prepared an involved case, partly depending on the death
duties that had already been paid when Joanna inherited Alce's farm, and
which he said ought to be considered in calculating increment value.
Joanna would not have confessed for worlds that she did not understand
the grounds of her appeal, though she wished Edward Huxtable would let
her make at least some reference to her steam tractor, and thus win her
victory on moral grounds, instead of just through some lawyer's mess.
But, moral appeal or lawyer's mess, her case should go to the
Commissioners, and if necessary to the High Court. Just because she knew
that in her own home and parish the fighting spirit was failing her,
Joanna resolved to fight this battle outside it without counting the
cost.
§8
That autumn she had her first twinge of rheumatism. The days of the
marsh ague were over, but the dread "rheumatiz" still twisted
comparatively young bones. Joanna had escaped till a later age than
many, for her work lay mostly in dry kitchens and bricked yards, and she
had had little personal contact with the soil, that odorous sponge of
the marsh earth, rank with the soakings of sea-fogs and land-fogs.
Like most healthy people, she made a tremendous fuss once she was laid
up. Mene Tekel and Mrs. Tolhurst were kept flying up and down stairs
with hot bricks and poultices and that particularly noxious brew of
camomile tea which she looked upon as the cure of every ill. Ellen would
come now and then and sit on her bed, and wander round the room playing
with Joanna's ornaments--she wore a little satisfied smile on her face,
and about her was a queer air of restlessness and contentment which
baffled and annoyed her sister.
The officers from Lydd did not now come so often to Ansdore. Ellen's
most constant visitor at this time was the son of the people who had
taken Great Ansdore dwelling-house. Tip Ernley had just come back from
Australia; he did not like colonial life and was looking round for
something to do at home. He was a county cricketer, an exceedingly
nice-looking young man, and his people were a good sort of people, an
old West Sussex family fallen into straightened circumstances.
On his account Joanna came downstairs sooner than she ought. She could
not get rid of her distrust of Ellen, the conviction that once her
sister was left to herself she would be up to all sorts of mischief.
Ellen had behaved impossibly once and therefore, according to Joanna,
there was no guarantee that she would not go on behaving impossibly to
the end of time. So she came down to play the dragon to Tip Ernley as
she had played the dragon to the young lieutenants of the summer. There
was not much for her to do--she saw at once that the boy was different
from the officers, a simple-minded creature, strong, gentle and
clean-living, with deferential eyes and manners. Joanna liked him at
first sight, and relented. They had tea together, and a game of
three-handed bridge afterwards--Ellen had taught her sister to play
bridge.
Then as the evening wore on, and the mists crept up from the White Kemp
Sewer to muffle the windows of Ansdore and make Joanna's bones twinge
and ache, she knew that she had come down too late. These young people
had had time enough to settle their hearts' business in a little less
than a week, and Joanna God-dam could not scare them apart. Of course
there was nothing to fear--this fine, shy man would make no assault on
Ellen Alce's frailty, it was merely a case of Ellen Alce becoming Ellen
Ernley, if he could be persuaded to overlook her "past"--a matter which
Joanna thought important and doubtful. But the elder sister's heart
twinged and ached as much as her bones. There was not only the thought
that she might lose Ellen once more and have to go back to her lonely
living ... her heart was sick to think that again love had come under
her roof and had not visited her. Love ... love ... for Ellen--no more
for Joanna Godden. Perhaps now it was too late. She was getting on, past
thirty-seven--romance never came as late as that on Walland Marsh,
unless occasionally to widows. Then, since it was too late, why did she
so passionately long for it?--Why had not her heart grown old with her
years?
§9
During the next few weeks Joanna watched the young romance grow and
sweeten. Ellen was becoming almost girlish again, or rather, girlish as
she had never been. The curves of her mouth grew softer and her voice
lost its even tones--she had moments of languor and moments of a queer
lightness. Great and Little Ansdore were now on very good terms, and
during that winter there was an exchange of dinners and bridge. Joanna
could now, as she expressed it, give a dinner-party with the best of
'em. Nothing more splendid could be imagined than Joanna Godden sitting
at the head of her table, wearing her Folkestone-made gown of apricot
charmeuse, adapted to her modesty by means of some rich gold lace; Ellen
had induced her to bind her hair with a gold ribbon, and from her ears
great gold ear-rings hung nearly to her shoulders, giving the usual
barbaric touch to her stateliness. Ellen, in contrast, wore iris-tinted
gowns that displayed nacreous arms and shoulders, and her hair passed in
great dark shining licks over her little unadorned ears.
Joanna was annoyed because Ellen never told her anything about herself
and Tip Ernley. She wanted to know in what declared relation they stood
to each other. She hoped Ellen was being straight with him, as she was
obviously not being straight with her. She did not think they were
definitely engaged--surely they would have let her know that. Perhaps he
was waiting till he had found some satisfactory job and could afford to
keep a wife. She told herself angrily that if only they would confide in
her, she would help the young pair ... they were spoiling their own
chances by keeping her out of their secrets. It never struck her that
Ernley would rather not be beholden to her, whatever Ellen might feel in
the matter.
His father and mother--well-bred, cordial people--and his maiden sister,
of about Joanna's age, never seemed to see anything remarkable in the
way Ellen and Tip always went off together after dinner, while the
others settled down to their bridge. It seemed to Joanna a grossly
improper proceeding if they were not engaged. But all Mr. and Mrs.
Ernley would say was--"Quite right too--it's just as well when young
people aren't too fond of cards." Joanna herself was growing to be quite
fond of cards, though in her heart she did not think that for sheer
excitement bridge was half as good as beggar-my-neighbour, which she
used to play with Mene Tekel, in the old days before she and Mene both
became dignified, the one as mistress, the other as maid. She enjoyed
her bridge--but often the game would be quite spoilt by the thought of
Ellen and Tip in some secluded corner. He must be making love to her, or
they wouldn't go off alone together like that ... I go no trumps ... if
they wanted just ordinary talk they could stay in here, we wouldn't
trouble them if they sat over there on the sofa ... me to play, is it?...
I wonder if she lets him kiss her ... oh, I beg your pardon, I'm
sure....
Joanna had no more returns of rheumatism that winter. Scared and
infuriated by her one experience, she took great care of herself, and
that winter was drier than usual, with crisp days of cold sunshine, and
a skin of ice on the sewers. Once or twice there was a fall of snow, and
even Joanna saw beauty in those days of a blue sky hanging above the
dazzling white spread of the three marshes, Walland, Dunge and Romney,
one huge white plain, streaked with the watercourses black under their
ice, like bars of iron. Somehow the sight hurt her; all beautiful things
hurt her strangely now--whether it was the snow-laden marsh, or the
first scents of spring in the evenings of February, or even Ellen's face
like a broad, pale flower.
She felt low-spirited and out of sorts that turn of the year. It was
worse than rheumatism.... Then she suddenly conceived the idea that it
was the rheumatism "driven inside her." Joanna had heard many terrible
tales of people who had perished through quite ordinary complaints, like
measles, being mysteriously "driven inside." It was a symptom of her low
condition that she should worry about her health, which till then had
never given her a minute's preoccupation. She consulted "The Family
Doctor," and realized the number of diseases she might be suffering from
besides suppressed rheumatics--cancer, consumption, kidney disease,
diabetes, appendicitis, asthma, arthritis, she seemed to have them all,
and in a fit of panic decided to consult a physician in the flesh.
So she drove off to see Dr. Taylor in her smart chocolate-coloured trap,
behind her chocolate-coloured mare, with her groom in chocolate-coloured
livery on the seat behind her. She intended to buy a car if she won her
case at the High Court--for to the High Court it had gone, both the
Commissioners and their referee having shown themselves blind to the
claims of justice.
The doctor listened respectfully to the long list of her symptoms and to
her own diagnosis of them. No, he did not think it was the rheumatism
driven inside her.... He asked her a great many questions, some of which
she thought indelicate.
"You're thoroughly run down," he said at last--"been doing too
much--you've done a lot, you know."
"Reckon I have," said Joanna--"but I'm a young woman yet"--there was a
slight touch of defiance in her last words.
"Oh, age has nothing to do with it. We're liable to overwork ourselves
at all ages. Overwork and worry.... What you need is a thorough rest of
mind and body. I recommend a change."
"You mean I should ought to go away?"
"Certainly."
"But I haven't been away for twenty year."
"That's just it. You've let yourself get into a groove. You want a
thorough change of air, scene and society. I recommend that you go away
to some cheerful gay watering-place, where there's plenty going on and
you'll meet new people."
"But what'll become of Ansdore?"
"Surely it can get on without you for a few weeks?"
"I can't go till the lambing's finished."
"When will that be?"
"Not till after Easter."
"Well, Easter is a very good time to go away. Do take my advice about
this, Miss Godden. You'll never be really well and happy if you keep in
a groove ..."
"Groove!" snorted Joanna.
§10
She was so much annoyed with him for having twice referred to Ansdore as
a "groove" that at first she felt inclined not to take his advice. But
even to Joanna this was unsatisfactory as a revenge--"If I stay at home,
maybe I'll get worse, and then he'll be coming over to see me in my
'groove' and getting eight-and-six each time for it." It would certainly
be better to go away and punish the doctor by a complete return to
health. Besides, she was awed by the magnitude of the prescription. It
was a great thing on the Marsh to be sent away for change of air,
instead of just getting a bottle of stuff to take three times daily
after meals.... She'd go, and make a splash of it.
Then the question arose--where should she go? She could go to her
cousins in the Isle of Wight, but they were a poor lot. She could go to
Chichester, where Martha Relf, the girl who had been with her when she
first took over Ansdore and had behaved so wickedly with the looker at
Honeychild, now kept furnished rooms as a respectable widow. Martha, who
was still grateful to Joanna, had written and asked her to come and try
her accommodation.... But by no kind of process could Chichester be
thought of as a "cheerful watering-place," and Joanna was resolved to
carry out her prescription to the letter.
"Why don't you go to a really good place?" suggested Ellen--"Bath or
Matlock or Leamington. You could stay at a hydro, if you liked."
But these were all too far--Joanna did not want to be beyond the summons
of Ansdore, which she could scarcely believe would survive her absence.
Also, to her horror, she discovered that nothing would induce Ellen to
accompany her.
"But I can't go without you!" she cried dismally--"it wouldn't be
seemly--it wouldn't be proper."
"What nonsense, Jo. Surely a woman of your age can stop anywhere by
herself."
"Oh, indeed, can she, ma'am? And what about a woman of your age?--It's
you I don't like leaving alone here."
"That's absurd of you. I'm a married woman, and quite able to look after
myself. Besides, I've Mrs. Tolhurst with me, and the Ernleys are quite
close."
"Oh, yes, the Ernleys!" sniffed Joanna with a toss of her head. She felt
that now was a fitting opportunity for Ellen to disclose her exact
relations with the family, but surprisingly her sister took no advantage
of the opening thus made.
"You'd much better go alone, Joanna--it won't do you half so much good
if I go with you. We're getting on each other's nerves, you know we are.
At least I'm getting on yours. You'll be much happier among entirely new
people."
It ended in Joanna's taking rooms at the Palace Hotel, Marlingate. No
persuasions would make her go farther off. She was convinced that
neither Ansdore nor Ellen could exist, at least decorously, without her,
and she must be within easy reach of both. The fortnight between the
booking of her room and her setting out she spent in mingled fretfulness
and swagger. She fretted about Ansdore, and nearly drove her carter and
her looker frantic with her last injunctions; she fretted about Ellen,
and cautioned Mrs. Tolhurst to keep a strict watch over her--"She's not
to go up to late dinner at Great Ansdore without you fetch her home." On
the other hand, she swaggered tremendously about the expensive and
fashionable trip she was making. Her room was on the first floor of the
hotel and would cost her twelve-and-six a night. She had taken it for a
week, "But I told them I'd stay a fortnight if I was satisfied, so
reckon they'll do all they can. I'll have breakfast in bed"--she added,
as a climax.
§11
In spite of this, Joanna could not help feeling a little nervous and
lonely when she found herself at the Palace Hotel. It was so very
different from the New Inn at Romney, or the George at Rye, or any other
substantial farmers' ordinary where she ate her dinner on market days.
Of course she had been to the Metropole at Folkestone--whatever place
Joanna visited, whether Brodnyx or Folkestone, she went to the best
hotel--so she was not uninitiated in the mysteries of hotel menus and
lifts and hall porters, and other phenomena that alarm the
simple-minded; but that was many years ago, and it was more years still
since she had slept away from Ansdore, out of her own big bed with its
feather mattress and flowered curtains, so unlike this narrow hotel
arrangement, all box mattress and brass knobs.
The first night she lay miserably awake, wishing she had never come. She
felt shy and lonely and scared and homesick. After the dead stillness of
Ansdore, a stillness which brooded unbroken till dawn, which was the
voice of a thick darkness, she found even this quiet seaside hotel full
of disturbing noise. The hum of the ascending lift far into the night,
the occasional wheels and footsteps on the parade, the restless heaving
roar of the sea, all disturbed the small slumbers that her sense of
alarm and strangeness would let her enjoy. She told herself she would
never sleep a wink in this rackety place, and would have sought comfort
in the resolution to go home the next morning, if she had not had Ellen
to face, and the servants and neighbours to whom she had boasted so
much.
However, when daylight came, and sunshine, and her breakfast-in-bed,
with its shining dish covers and appetizing smells, she felt quite
different, and ate her bacon and eggs with appetite and a thrilling
sense of her own importance. The waitress, for want of a definite order,
had brought her coffee, which somehow made her feel very rakish and
continental, though she would have much preferred tea. When she had
finished breakfast, she wrote a letter to Ellen describing all her
experiences with as much fullness as was compatible with that strange
inhibition which always accompanied her taking up of the pen, and
distinguished her letters so remarkably from the feats of her tongue.
When she had written the letter and posted it adventurously in the hotel
letter-box, she went out on the parade to listen to the band. It was
Easter week, and there were still a great many people about, couples
sitting round the bandstand, more deeply absorbed in each other than in
the music. Joanna paid twopence for a chair, having ascertained that
there were no more expensive seats to be had, and at the end of an hour
felt consumedly bored. The music was bright and popular enough, but she
was not musical, and soon grew tired of listening to "tunes." Also
something about the music made her feel uncomfortable--the same dim yet
searching discomfort she had when she looked at the young couples in the
sun ... the young girls in their shady hats and silk stockings, the
young men in their flannels and blazers. They were all part of a whole
to which she did not belong, of which the music was part ... and the
sea, and the sun, and the other visitors at the hotel, the very servants
of the hotel ... and Ellen at Ansdore ... all day she was adding fresh
parts to that great whole, outside which she seemed to exist alone.
"I'm getting fanciful," she thought--"this place hasn't done me a bit of
good yet."
She devoted herself to the difficult art of filling up her day.
Accustomed to having every moment occupied, she could hardly cope with
the vast stretch of idle hours. After a day or two she found herself
obliged to give up having breakfast in bed. From force of habit she woke
every morning at five, and could not endure the long wait in her room.
If the weather was fine she usually went for a walk on the sea-front,
from Rock-a-Nore to the Monypenny statue. Nothing would induce her to
bathe, though even at that hour and season the water was full of young
men and women rather shockingly enjoying themselves and each other.
After breakfast she wrote laborious letters to Broadhurst, Wilson, Mrs.
Tolhurst, Ellen, Mene Tekel--she had never written so many letters in
her life, but every day she thought of some fresh thing that would be
left undone if she did not write about it. When she had finished her
letters she went out and listened respectfully to the band. The
afternoon was generally given up to some excursion or charabanc drive,
and the day finished rather somnolently in the lounge.
She did not get far beyond civilities with the other visitors in the
hotel. More than one had spoken to her, attracted by this handsome,
striking, and probably wealthy woman--through Ellen's influence her
appearance had been purged of what was merely startling--but they either
took fright at her broad marsh accent ... "she must be somebody's cook
come into a fortune" ... or the more fundamental incompatibility of
outlook kept them at a distance. Joanna was not the person for the
niceties of hotel acquaintanceship--she was too garrulous, too
overwhelming. Also she failed to realize that all states of society are
not equally interested in the price of wheat, that certain details of
sheep-breeding seem indelicate to the uninitiated, and that strangers do
not really care how many acres one possesses, how many servants one
keeps, or the exact price one paid for one's latest churn.
§12
The last few days of her stay brought her a rather ignominious sense of
relief. In her secret heart she was eagerly waiting till she should be
back at Ansdore, eating her dinner with Ellen, sleeping in her own bed,
ordering about her own servants. She would enjoy, too, telling everyone
about her exploits, all the excursions she had made, the food she had
eaten, the fine folk she had spoken to in the lounge, the handsome
amount she had spent in tips.... They would all ask her whether she felt
much the better for her holiday, and she was uncertain what to answer
them. A complete recovery might make her less interesting; on the other
hand she did not want anyone to think she had come back half-cured
because of the expense ... that was just the sort of thing Mrs.
Southland would imagine, and Southland would take it straight to the
Woolpack.
Her own feelings gave her no clue. Her appetite had much improved, but,
against that, she was sleeping badly--which she partly attributed to the
"noise"--and was growing, probably on account of her idle days,
increasingly restless. She found it difficult to settle down to
anything--the hours in the hotel lounge after dinner, which used to be
comfortably drowsy after the day of sea-air, were now a long stretch of
boredom, from which she went up early to bed, knowing that she would not
sleep. The band played on the parade every evening, but Joanna
considered that it would be unseemly for her to go out alone in
Marlingate after dark. Though she would have walked out on the Brodnyx
road at midnight without putting the slightest strain on either her
courage or her decorum, the well-lighted streets of a town became to her
vaguely dangerous and indecorous after dusk had fallen. "It wouldn't be
seemly," she repeated to herself in the loneliness and dullness of the
lounge, and went desperately to bed.
However, three nights before going away she could bear it no longer.
After a warm April day, a purple starry evening hung over the sea. The
water itself was a deep, glaucous gray, holding strange lights besides
the golden path of the moon. Beachy Head stood out purple against the
fading amber of the west, in the east All Holland Hill was hung with a
crown of stars, which seemed to be mirrored in the lights of the
fisher-boats off Rock-a-Nore.... It was impossible to think of such an
evening spent in the stuffy, lonely lounge, with heavy curtains shutting
out the opal and the amethyst of night.
She had not had time to dress for dinner, having come home late from a
charabanc drive to Pevensey, and the circumstance seemed slightly to
mitigate the daring of a stroll. In her neat tailor-made coat and skirt
and black hat with the cock's plumes she might perhaps walk to and fro
just a little in front of the hotel. She went out, and was a trifle
reassured by the light which still lingered in the sky and on the
sea--it was not quite dark yet, and there was a respectable-looking lot
of people about--she recognized a lady staying in the hotel, and would
have joined her, but the lady, whom she had already scared, saw her
coming, and dodged off in the direction of the Marine Gardens.
The band began to play a waltz from "A Persian Princess." Joanna felt
once more in her blood the strange stir of the music she could not
understand. It would be nice to dance ... queer that she had so seldom
danced as a girl. She stood for a moment irresolute, then walked towards
the bandstand, and sat down on one of the corporation benches, outside
the crowd that had grouped round the musicians. It was very much the
same sort of crowd as in the morning, but it was less covert in its
ways--hands were linked, even here and there waists entwined.... Such
details began to stand out of the dim, purplescent mass of the twilight
people ... night was the time for love. They had come out into the
darkness to make love to each other--their voices sounded different from
in the day, more dragging, more tender....
She began to think of the times, which now seemed so far off, when she
herself had sought a man's kisses. Half-ashamed she went back to stolen
meetings--in a barn--behind a rick--in the elvish shadow of some
skew-blown thorn. Just kisses ... not love, for love had been dead in
her then.... But those kisses had been sweet, she remembered them, she
could feel them on her lips ... oh, she could love again now--she could
give and take kisses now.
The band was playing a rich, thick, drawling melody, full of the purple
night and the warm air. The lovers round the bandstand seemed to sway to
it and draw closer to each other. Joanna looked down into her lap, for
her eyes were full of tears. She regretted passionately the days that
were past--those light loves which had not been able to live in the
shadow of Martin's memory. Oh, why had he taught her to love and then
made it impossible for her ever to love again?--till it was too late,
till she was a middle-aged woman to whom no man came.... It was not
likely that anyone would want her now--her light lovers all lived now in
substantial wedlock, the well-to-do farmers who had proposed to her in
the respectful way of business had now taken to themselves other wives.
The young men looked to women of their own age, to Ellen's pale, soft
beauty ... once again she envied Ellen her loves, good and evil, and
shame was in her heart. Then she lifted her eyes and saw Martin coming
towards her.
§13
In the darkness, lit only now by the lamp-dazzled moonlight, and in the
mist of her own tears, the man before her was exactly like Martin, in
build, gait, colouring and expression. Her moment of recognition stood
out clear, quite distinct from the realization of impossibility which
afterwards engulfed it. She unclasped her hands and half rose in her
seat--the next minute she fell back. "Reckon I'm crazy," she thought to
herself.
Then she was startled to realize that the man had sat down beside her.
Her heart beat quickly. Though she no longer confused him with Martin,
the image of Martin persisted in her mind ... how wonderfully like him
he was ... the very way he walked....
"I saw you give me the glad eye ..." not the way he talked, certainly.
There was a terrible silence.
"Are you going to pretend you didn't?"
Joanna turned on him the tear-filled eyes he had considered glad. She
blinked the tears out recklessly on to her cheek, and opened her mouth
to reduce him to the level of the creeping things upon the earth.... But
the mouth remained open and speechless. She could not look him in the
face and still feel angry. Though now she would no longer have taken him
for Martin, the resemblance still seemed to her startling. He had the
same rich eyes--with an added trifle of impudence under the same
veiling, womanish lashes, the same black sweep of hair from a rather
low forehead, the same graceful setting of the head, though he had not
Martin's breadth of shoulder or deceiving air of strength.
Her hesitation gave him his opportunity.
"You aren't going to scold me, are you? I couldn't help it."
His unlovely, Cockney voice had in it a stroking quality. It stirred
something in the depths of Joanna's heart. Once again she tried to speak
and could not.
"It's such a lovely night--just the sort of night you feel lonely,
unless you've got someone very nice with you."
This was terribly true.
"And you did give me the glad eye, you know."
"I didn't mean to." She had found her voice at last. "I--I thought you
were someone else; at least I--"
"Are you expecting a friend?"
"Oh, no--no one. It was a mistake."
"Then mayn't I stay and talk to you--just for a bit. I'm here all alone,
you know--a fortnight's holiday. I don't know anyone."
By this time he had dragged all her features out of the darkness, and
saw that she was not quite what he had first taken her for. He had never
thought she was a girl--his taste was for maturity--but he had not
imagined her of the obviously well-to-do and respectable class to which
she evidently belonged. He saw now that her clothes were of a
fashionable cut, that she had about her a generally expensive air, and
at the same time he knew enough to tell that she was not what he called
a lady. He found her rather difficult to place. Perhaps she was a
wealthy milliner on a holiday ... but, her accent--you could lean up
against it ... well, anyhow she was a damn fine woman.
"What do you think of the band?" he asked, subtly altering the tone of
the conversation which he saw now had been pitched too low.
"I think it a proper fine band."
"So it is. They're going to play 'The Merry Widow' next--ever seen it?"
"No, never. I was never at a play but once, which they did at the
Monastery at Rye in aid of Lady Buller's Fund when we was fighting the
Boers. 'Our Flat' it was called, and all done by respectable people--not
an actor or an actress among 'em."
What on earth had he picked up?
"Do you live at Rye?"
"I live two mile out of it--Ansdore's the name of my place--Ansdore
Manor, seeing as now I've got both Great and Little Ansdore, and the
living's in my gift. I put in a new parson last year."
This must be a remarkable woman, unless she was telling him the tale.
"I went over to Rye on Sunday," he said. "Quaint old place, isn't it?
Funny to think it used to be on the seashore. They say there once was a
battle between the French and English fleets where it's all dry marsh
now."
Joanna thrilled again--that was like Martin, telling her things, old
things about the Marsh. The conversation was certainly being conducted
on very decorous lines. She began to lose the feeling of impropriety
which had disturbed her at first. They sat talking about the
neighbourhood, the weather, and--under Joanna's guidance--the prospects
of the harvest, for another ten minutes, at the end of which the band
went off for their "interval."
The cessation of the music and scattering of the crowd recalled Joanna
to a sense of her position. She realized also that it was quite
dark--the last redeeming ray had left the sky. She stood up--
"Well, I must be getting back."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Palace Hotel."
What ho! She must have some money.
"May I walk back with you?"
"Oh, thanks," said Joanna--"it ain't far."
They walked, rather awkwardly silent, the few hundred yards to the
hotel. Joanna stopped and held out her hand. She suddenly realized that
she did not want to say good-bye to the young man. Their
acquaintanceship had been most shockingly begun--Ellen must never
know--but she did not want it to end. She felt, somehow, that he just
meant to say good-bye and go off, without any plans for another meeting.
She must take action herself.
"Won't you come and have dinner--I mean lunch--with me to-morrow?"
She scanned his face eagerly as she spoke. It suddenly struck her what a
terrible thing it would be if he went out of her life now after having
just come into it--come back into it, she had almost said, for she could
not rid herself of that strange sense of Martin's return, of a second
spring.
But she need not have been afraid. He was not the man to refuse his
chances.
"Thanks no end--I'll be honoured."
"Then I'll expect you. One o'clock, and ask for Miss Godden."
§14
Joanna had a nearly sleepless night. The torment of her mind would not
allow her to rest. At times she was overwhelmed with shame at what she
had done--taken up with a strange man at the band, like any low servant
girl on her evening out--My! but she'd have given it to Mene Tekel if
she dared behave so! At other times she drifted on a dark sweet river of
thought ... every detail of the boy's appearance haunted her with
disturbing charm--his eyes, black and soft like Martin's--his mouth
which was coarser and sulkier than Martin's, yet made her feel all
disquieted ... the hair which rolled like Martin's hair from his
forehead--dear hair she used to tug.... Oh, he's the man I could
love--he's my sort--he's the kind I like.... And I don't even know his
name.... But he talks like Martin--knows all about old places when they
were new--queer he should talk about them floods.... Romney Church, you
can see the marks on the pillars.... I can't bear to think of that.... I
wonder what he'll say when he comes to-morrow?--Maybe he'll find me too
old--I'm ten year older than him if I'm a day.... I must dress myself up
smart--I'm glad I brought my purple body.... Martin liked me in the old
basket hat I fed the fowls in ... but I was slimmer then.... I'm getting
on now ... he won't like me as well by daylight as he did in the
dark--and properly I'll deserve it, carrying on like that. I've half a
mind not to be in--I'll leave a polite message, saying "Miss Godden's
compliments, but she's had to go home, owing to one of her cows having a
miscarriage." I'll be wise to go home to-morrow--reckon I ain't fit to
be trusted alone.
But a quarter to one the next day saw her in all the splendour of her
"purple body," standing before her mirror, trying to make up her mind
whether to wear her big hat or her little one. The little hat was
smarter and had cost more money, but the big hat put a becoming shadow
over her eyes, and hid those little lines that were straying from the
corners.... For the first time Joanna had begun to realize that clothes
should have other qualities besides mere splendour. Hitherto she had
never thought of clothes in any definite relation to herself, as
enhancing, veiling, suggesting, or softening the beauty which was Joanna
Godden. But to-day she chose warily--her hat for shadow, her shoes for
grace, her amber necklace because she must have that touch of barbarism
which suited her best--an unconscious process this--and her amber
earrings, because they matched her necklace, and because in the mirror
she could see the brighter colours of her hair swinging in them. At the
last minute she changed her "purple body" for one of rich
chestnut-coloured silk. This was so far her best inspiration, for it
toned not only with the amber beads, but with her skin and hair. As she
turned to leave the room she was like a great glowing amber bead
herself, all brown and gold, with rich red lights and gleams of yellow
... then just as she was going out she had her last and best inspiration
of all. She suddenly went back into the room, and before the mirror tore
off the swathe of cream lace she wore round her throat. The short thick
column of her neck rose out of her golden blouse. She burned to her
ears, but walked resolutely from the room.
Her young man was waiting for her in the lounge, and she saw his rather
blank face light up when she appeared. She had been successful, then ...
the realization gave her confidence, and more beauty. During the meal
which followed, he re-cast a little of that opinion he had formed of
her the night before. She was younger than he had thought, probably only
a little over thirty, and far better looking than he had gathered from a
first impression. Joanna was that rather rare type of woman who
invariably looks her best in sunshine--the dusk had hidden from him her
really lovely colouring of skin and eyes and hair; here at her little
table by the window her face seemed almost a condensation of the warm,
ruddy light which poured in from the sea. Her eyes, with the queer
childlike depths behind their feminine hardness, her eager mouth and
splendid teeth, the scatter of freckles over her nose, all combined to
hold him in a queer enchantment of youth. There was a curious,
delightful freshness about her ... and she was a damn fine woman, too.
The night before he had gathered that she was of overwhelming
respectability, but now he had his doubts about that also. She certainly
seemed of a more oncoming disposition than he had thought, though there
was something naïve and virginal about her forwardness. Her acquaintance
might prove more entertaining than he had supposed. He fixed his eyes on
her uncovered throat; she blushed deeply, and put her hand up.
Their talk was very much on the same lines as the night before. He
discovered that she had a zest for hearing him discourse on old
places--she drank in all he had to say about the old days of Marlingate,
when it was just a red fishing-village asleep between two hills. He told
her how the new town had been built northward and westward, in the days
of the great Monypenny, whose statue now stares blindly out to sea. He
was a man naturally interested in topography and generally "read up" the
places he visited, but he had never before found a woman who cared to
listen to that sort of stuff.
After luncheon, drinking coffee in the lounge, they became more personal
and intimate. He told her about himself. His name was Albert Hill--his
father was dead, and he lived with his mother and sister at Lewisham. He
had a good position as clerk in a firm of carpet-makers. He was
twenty-five years old, and doing well. Joanna became confidential in her
turn. Her confidences mostly concerned the prosperity of her farm, the
magnitude of its acreage, the success of this year's lambing and last
year's harvest, but they also included a few sentimental adventures--she
had had ever so many offers of marriage, including one from a clergyman,
and she had once been engaged to a baronet's son.
He wondered if she was pitching him a yarn, but did not think so; if she
was, she would surely do better for herself than a three hundred acre
farm, and an apparently unlimited dominion over the bodies and souls of
clergymen. By this time he was liking her very much, and as he
understood she had only two days more at Marlingate, he asked her to go
to the pier theatre with him the next evening.
Joanna accepted, feeling that she was committing herself to a desperate
deed. But she was reckless now--she, as well as Hill, thought of those
two poor days which were all she had left. She must do something in
those two days to bind him, for she knew that she could not let him go
from her--she knew that she loved again.
§15
She did not love as she had loved the first time. Then she had loved
with a calmness and an acceptance which were impossible to her now. She
had trusted fate and trusted the beloved, but now she was unsure of
both. She was restless and tormented, and absorbed as she had never been
in Martin. Her love consumed every other emotion, mental or physical--it
would not let her sleep or eat or listen to music. It kept her whole
being concentrated on the new force that had disturbed it--she could
think of nothing but Albert Hill, and her thoughts were haggard and
anxious, picturing their friendship at a standstill, failing, and
lost.... Oh, she must not lose him--she could not bear to lose him--she
must bind him somehow in the short time she had left.
There were intervals in which she became uneasily conscious of her
folly. He was thirteen years younger than she--it was ridiculous. She
was a fool, after all the opportunities she'd had, to fall in love with
a mere boy. But she knew in her heart that it was his youth she wanted
most, partly because it was Martin's youth, partly because it called to
something in her which was not youth, nor yet belonged to age--something
which was wise, tender and possessive--something which had never yet
been satisfied.
Luckily she had health robust enough to endure the preyings of her mind,
and did not bear her conflict on her face when Hill called for her the
next evening. She had been inspired to wear the same clothes as
before--having once pleased, she thought perhaps she would be wise not
to take any risks with the purple body, and as for an evening gown,
Joanna would have felt like a bad woman in a book if she had worn one.
But she was still guiltily without her collar.
He took her to a small restaurant on the sea-front, where half a dozen
couples sat at little rosily lit tables. Joanna was pleased--she was
beginning faintly to enjoy the impropriety of her existence ... dinner
in a restyrong--with wine--that would be something to hold in her heart
against Ellen, next time that young person became superior. Joanna did
not really like wine--a glass of stout at her meals, or pale ale in the
hot weather, was all she took as a rule--but there was a subtle
fascination in putting her lips to the red glass full of broken lights,
and feeling the wine like fire against them, while her eyes gazed over
the brim at Hill ... he gazed at her over the brim of his, and somehow
when their eyes met thus over their glasses, over the red wine, it was
more than when they just met across the table, in the pauses of their
talk. It seemed to her that he was more lover-like to-night--his words
seemed to hover round her, to caress her, and she was not surprised when
she felt his foot press hers under the table, though she hastily drew
her own away.
After dinner, he took her on the pier. "East Lynne" was being played in
the Pavilion, and they had two of the best seats. Joanna was terribly
thrilled and a little shocked--she was also, at the proper time,
overcome with emotion. When little Willie lay dying, it was more than
she could bear ... poor little chap, it made your heart ache to see
him--even though he was called Miss Maidie Masserene on the programme,
and when not in bed stuck out in parts of his sailor suit which little
boys do not usually stick out in. His poor mother, too ... the tears
rolled down Joanna's face, and her throat was speechless and swollen ...
something seemed to be tugging at her heart ... she grew ashamed, almost
frightened. It was a positive relief when the curtain came down, and
rose again to show that little Willie had done likewise and stood bowing
right and left in his night-shirt.
Still the tears would furtively trickle ... what a fool she was
getting--it must be the wine. My, but she had a weak head ... she must
never take another glass. Then suddenly, in the darkness, she felt a
hand take hers, pick it up, set it on a person's knee ... her hand lay
palm downwards on his knee, and his own lay over it--she began to
tremble and her heart turned to water. The tears ran on and on.
... They were outside, the cool sea wind blew over them, and in the wind
was the roar of the sea. Without a word they slipped out of the stream
of people heading for the pier gates, and went to the railing, where
they stood looking down on the black water.
"Why are you crying, dear?" asked Hill tenderly, as his arm crept round
her.
"I dunno--I'm not the one to cry. But that little chap ... and his poor
mother ..."
"You soft-hearted darling." ... He held her close, in all her gracious
and supple warmth, which even the fierceness of her stays could not
quite keep from him. Oh, she was the dearest thing, so crude and yet so
soft ... how glad he was he had not drawn back at the beginning, as he
had half thought of doing ... she was the loveliest woman,
adorable--mature, yet unsophisticated ... she was like a quince, ripe
and golden red, yet with a delicious tartness.
"Joanna," he breathed, his mouth close to the tawny, flying anthers of
her hair--"Do you think you could love me?"
He felt her hair stroke his lips, as she turned her head. He saw her
eyes bright with tears and passion. Then suddenly she broke from him--
"I can't--I can't ... it's more than I can bear."
He came after her, overtaking her just before the gate.
"Darling thing, what's the matter?--You ain't afraid?"
"No--no--it isn't that. Only I can't bear ... beginning to feel it ...
again."
"Again?"
"Yes--I told you a bit ... I can't tell you any more."
"But the chap's dead."
"Yes."
"Hang it all, we're alive ..." and she surrendered to his living mouth.
§16
That night she slept, and the next morning she felt calmer. Some queer,
submerged struggle seemed to be over. As a matter of fact, her affair
was more uncertain than ever. After Albert's kiss, they had had no
discussion and very little conversation. He had taken her back to the
hotel, and had kissed her again--this time on the warm, submissive mouth
she lifted to him. He had said--"I'll come and see you at Ansdore--I've
got another week." And she had said--nothing. She did not know if he
wanted to marry her, or even if she wanted to marry him. She did not
worry about how--or if--she should explain him to Ellen. All her
cravings and uncertainties were swallowed up in a great quiet, a strange
quiet which was somehow all the turmoil of her being expressed in
silence.
The next day he was true to his promise, and saw her off--sitting
decorously in her first-class carriage "For Ladies Only."
"You'll come and see me at Ansdore?" she said, as the moment of
departure drew near, and he said nothing about last night's promise.
"Do you really want me to come?"
"Reckon I do."
"I'll come, then."
"Which day?"
"Say Monday, or Tuesday."
"Come on Monday, by this train--and I'll meet you at the station in my
trap. I've got a fine stepper."
"Right you are. I'll come on Monday. It's kind of you to want me so
much."
"I do want you."
Her warm, glowing face in the frame of the window invited him, and they
kissed. Funny, thought Hill to himself, the fuss she had made at first,
and she was all over him now.... But women were always like
that--wantons by nature and prudes by grace, and it was wonderful what a
poor fight grace generally made of it.
Joanna, unaware that she had betrayed herself and womankind, leaned back
comfortably in the train as it slid out of the station. She was in a
happy dream, hardly aware of her surroundings. Mechanically she watched
the great stucco amphitheatre of Marlingate glide past the window--then
the red throbbing darkness of a tunnel ... and the town was gone, like a
bad dream, giving place to the tiny tilted fields and century-old hedges
of the south-eastern weald. Then gradually these sloped and lost
themselves in marsh--first only a green tongue running into the weald
along the bed of the Brede River, then spreading north and south and
east and west, from the cliff-line of England's ancient coast to the
sand-line of England's coast to-day, from the spires of the monks of
Battle to the spires of the monks of Canterbury.
Joanna was roused automatically by this return to her old surroundings.
She began to think of her trap waiting for her outside Rye station. She
wondered if Ellen would have come to meet her. Yes, there she was on the
platform ... wearing a green frock, too. She'd come out of her blacks.
Joanna thrilled to a faint shock. She wondered how many other
revolutions Ellen had carried out in her absence.
"Well, old Jo ..." It seemed to her that Ellen's kiss was warmer than
usual. Or was it that her own heart was so warm...?
Ellen found her remarkably silent. She had expected an outpouring of
Joanna's adventures, achievements and triumphs, combined with a
desperate catechism as to just how much ruin had befallen Ansdore while
she was away. Instead of which Joanna seemed for the first time in
Ellen's experience, a little dreamy. She had but little to say to Rye's
one porter, or to Peter Crouch, the groom. She climbed up on the front
seat of the trap, and took the reins.
"You're looking well," said Ellen--"I can see your change has done you
good."
"Reckon it has, my dear."
"Were you comfortable at the hotel?"
This, if anything, should have started Joanna off, but all she said
was--
"It wasn't a bad place."
"Well, if you don't want to talk about your own affairs," said Ellen to
herself--"you can listen to mine, for a change. Joanna,"--she added
aloud--"I came to meet you, because I've got something special to tell
you."
"What's that?"
"Perhaps you can guess."
Joanna dreamily shook her head.
"Well, I'm thinking of getting married again."
"Married!"
"Yes--it's eighteen months since poor Arthur died," sighed the devoted
widow, "and--perhaps you've noticed--Tip Ernley's been getting very fond
of me."
"Yes, I had noticed.... I was wondering why you didn't tell."
"There was nothing to tell. He couldn't propose to me till he had
something definite to do. Now he's just been offered the post of agent
on the Duke of Wiltshire's estate--a perfectly splendid position. Of
course, I told him all about my first marriage"--she glanced
challengingly at her sister--"but he's a perfect dear, and he saw at
once I'd been more sinned against than sinning. We're going to be
married this summer."
"I'm unaccountable glad."
Ellen gave her a queer look.
"You take it very calmly, Jo."
"Well, I'd been expecting it all along."
"You won't mind my going away and leaving you?"
"Reckon you'll have to go where your husband goes."
"What on earth's happened?" thought Ellen to herself--"She's positively
meek."
The next minute she knew.
"Ellen," said Joanna, as they swung into the Straight Mile, "I've got a
friend coming to spend the day on Monday--a Mr. Hill that I met in
Marlingate."
§17
For the next few days Joanna was restless and nervous; she could not be
busy with Ansdore, even after a fortnight's absence. The truth in her
heart was that she found Ansdore rather flat. Wilson's pride in the
growth of the young lambs, Broadhurst's anxiety about Spot's calving and
his preoccupation with the Suffolk dray-horse Joanna was to buy at
Ashford fair that year, all seemed irrelevant to the main purpose of
life. The main stream of her life had suddenly been turned
underground--it ran under Ansdore's wide innings--on Monday it would
come again to the surface, and take her away from Ansdore.
The outward events of Monday were not exciting. Joanna drove into Rye
with Peter Crouch behind her, and met Albert Hill with a decorous
handshake on the platform. During the drive home, and indeed during most
of his visit, his attitude towards her was scarcely more than ordinary
friendship. In the afternoon, when Ellen had gone out with Tip Ernley,
he gave her a few kisses, but without much passion. She began to feel
disquieted. Had he changed? Was there someone else he liked? At all
costs she must hold him--she must not let him go.
The truth was that Hill felt uncertain how he stood--he was bewildered
in his mind. What was she driving at? Surely she did not think of
marriage--the difference in their ages was far too great. But what else
could she be thinking of? He gathered that she was invincibly
respectable--and yet he was not sure.... In spite of her decorum, she
had queer, unguarded ways. He had met no one exactly like her, though he
was a man of wide and not very edifying experience. The tactics which
had started his friendship with Joanna he had learned at the shorthand
and typewriting college where he had learned his clerking job--and they
had brought him a rummage of adventures, some transient, some sticky,
some dirty, some glamorous. He had met girls of a fairly good
class--for his looks caused much to be forgiven him--as well as the
typists, shop-girls and waitresses of his more usual association. But he
had never met anyone quite like Joanna--so simple yet so swaggering, so
solid yet so ardent, so rigid yet so unguarded, so superior and yet, he
told himself, so lacking in refinement. She attracted him enormously ...
but he was not the sort of man to waste his time.
"When do you go back to London?" she asked.
"Wednesday morning."
She sighed deeply, leaning against him on the sofa.
"Is this all the holiday you'll get this year?"
"No--I've Whitsun coming--Friday to Tuesday. I might run down to
Marlingate ..."
He watched her carefully.
"Oh, that 'ud be fine. You'd come and see me here?"
"Of course--if you asked me?"
"If I asked you," she repeated in a sudden, trembling scorn.
Her head drooped to his breast, and he took her in his arms, holding her
across him--all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a
lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as
if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized
him--prude or rake, she should get her lesson from him all right.
§18
When he had gone Joanna said to Ellen--
"D'you think it would be seemly if I asked Mr. Hill here to stay?"
"Of course it would be 'seemly,' Jo. I'm a married woman. But would he
be able to come? He's in business somewhere, isn't he?"
"Yes, but he could get away for Whitsun."
"Then ask him by all means. But ..."
She looked at her quickly and teasingly.
"But what?"
"Jo, do you care about this man?"
"What d'you mean? Why should I care? Or, leastways, why shouldn't I?"
"No reason at all. He's a good bit younger than you are, but then I
always fancied that if you married it ud be a man younger than
yourself."
"Who said I was going to marry him?"
"No one. But if you care ..."
"I never said I did."
"Oh, you're impossible," said Ellen with a little shrug. She picked up a
book from the table, but Joanna could not let the conversation drop.
"What d'you think of Mr. Hill, Ellen? Does he remind you of anyone
particular?"
"No, not at the moment."
"Hasn't it ever struck you he's a bit like my Martin Trevor?"
Her tongue no longer stammered at the name.
"Your Martin Trevor! Jo, what nonsense, he's not a bit like him."
"He's the living image--the way his hair grows out of his forehead, and
his dark, saucy eyes ..."
"Well, I was only a little girl when you were engaged to Martin Trevor,
but as I remember him he was quite different from Mr. Hill. He belonged
to another class, for one thing.... He was a gentleman."
"And you think Mr. Hill ain't a gentleman?"
"My dear Joanna! Of course he's not--he doesn't profess to be."
"He's got a good position as a clerk. Some clerks are gentlemen."
"But this one isn't."
"How do _you_ know?"
"Because I happen to be engaged to someone who is."
"That ain't any reason for miscalling my friends."
"I'm not 'miscalling' anyone.... Oh, hang it all, Jo, don't let's
quarrel about men at our time of life. I'm sorry if I said anything you
don't like about Mr. Hill. Of course, I don't know him as well as you
do."
§19
So Joanna wrote to Albert Hill in her big, cramped handwriting, on the
expensive yet unostentatious note-paper which Ellen had decreed,
inviting him to come and spend Whitsuntide at Ansdore.
His answer did not come for three or four days, during which, as he
meant she should, she suffered many doubts and anxieties. Was he coming?
Did he care for her? Or had he just been fooling? She had never felt
like this about a man before. She had loved, but love had never held her
in the same bondage--perhaps because till now she had always had
certainties. Her affair with Martin, her only real love affair, had been
a certainty, Arthur Alce's devotion had been a most faithful certainty,
the men who had comforted her bereavement had also in their different
ways been certainties. Albert Hill was the only man who had ever eluded
her, played with her or vexed her. She knew that she attracted him, but
she also guessed dimly that he feared to bind himself. As for her, she
was now determined. She loved him and must marry him. Characteristically
she had swept aside the drawbacks of their different ages and
circumstances, and saw nothing but the man she loved--the man who was
for her the return of first love, youth and spring. A common little
tawdry-minded clerk some might have called him, but to Joanna he was all
things--fulfilment, lover and child, and also a Sign and a Second
Coming.
She could think of nothing else. Once again Ansdore was failing her, as
it always failed her in any crisis of emotion--Ansdore could never be
big enough to fill her heart. But she valued it because of the
consequence it must give her in young Hill's eyes, and she was impressed
by the idea that her own extra age and importance gave her the rights of
approach normally belonging to the man.... Queens always invited their
consorts to share their thrones, and she was a queen, opening her gates
to the man she loved. There could be no question of her leaving her
house for his--he was only a little clerk earning two pounds a week, and
she was Squire of the Manor. Possibly this very fact made him hesitate,
fear to presume.... Well, she must show him he was wrong, and this
Whitsuntide was her opportunity. But she wished that she could feel more
queenly in her mind--less abject, craving and troubled. In outward
circumstances she was his queen, but in her heart she was his slave.
She plunged into an orgy of preparation. Mrs. Tolhurst and Mene Tekel
and the new girl from Windpumps who now reinforced the household were
nearly driven off their legs. Ellen spared the wretched man much in the
way of feather-beds--just one down mattress would be enough, town people
weren't used to sleeping on feathers. She also chastened the scheme of
decoration, and substituted fresh flowers for the pampas grasses which
Joanna thought the noblest adornment possible for a spare bedroom. On
the whole Ellen behaved very well about Albert Hill--she worked her best
to give him a favourable impression of Ansdore as a household, and when
he came she saw that he and her sister were as much alone together as
possible.
"He isn't at all the sort of brother-in-law I'd like you to have, my
dear," she said to Tip, "but if you'd seen some of the men Joanna's
taken up with you'd realize it might have been much worse. I'm told she
once had a most hectic romance with her own shepherd ... she's
frightfully impressionable, you know."
"Is she really?" said Tip in his slow, well-bred voice. "I shouldn't
have thought that."
"No, because--dear old Jo! it's so funny--she's quite without art. But
she's always been frightfully keen on men, though she never could
attract the right sort; and for some reason or other--to do with the
farm, I suppose--she's never been keen on marriage. Now lately I've been
thinking she really ought to marry--lately she's been getting quite
queer--_détraquée_--and I do think she ought to settle down."
"But Hill's much younger than she is."
"Joanna would never care for anyone older. She's always liked boys--it's
because she wants to be sure of being boss, I suppose. I know for a fact
she's turned down nearly half a dozen good, respectable, well-to-do
farmers of her own age or older than herself. And yet I've sometimes
felt nervous about her and Peter Crouch, the groom.... Oh, I tell you,
Jo's queer, and I'll be thankful if she marries Bertie Hill, even though
he is off the mark. After all, Tip"--and Ellen looked charming--"Jo and
I aren't real ladies, you know."
§20
Albert was able to get off on the Friday afternoon, and arrived at
Ansdore in time for the splendours of late dinner and a bath in the new
bathroom. There was no doubt about it, thought he, that he was on a good
thing, whichever way it ended. She must have pots of money ...
everything of the very best ... and her sister marrying no end of a
swell--Ernley, who played for Sussex, and was obviously top-notch in
every other way. Perhaps he wouldn't be such a fool, after all, if he
married her. He would be a country gentleman with plenty of money and a
horse to ride--better than living single till, with luck, he got a rise,
and married inevitably one of his female acquaintances, to live in the
suburbs on three hundred a year.... And she was such a splendid
creature--otherwise he would not have thought of it--but in attraction
she could give points to any girl, and her beauty, having flowered late,
would probably last a good while longer....
But--. That night as he sat at his bedroom window, smoking a succession
of Gold Flake cigarettes, he saw many other aspects of the situation.
The deadly quiet of Ansdore in the night, with all the blackness of the
Marsh waiting for the unrisen moon, was to him a symbol of what his life
would be if he married Joanna. He would perish if he got stuck in a hole
like this, and yet--he thus far acknowledged her queenship--he could
never ask her to come out of it. He could not picture her living in
streets--she wouldn't fit--but then, neither would he fit down here. He
liked streets and gaiety and noise and picture-palaces.... If she'd been
younger he might have risked it, but at her age--thirteen years older
than he (she had told him her age in an expansive moment) it was really
impossible. But, damn it all! She was gorgeous--and he'd rather have her
than any younger woman. He couldn't make her out--she must see the folly
of marriage as well as he ... then why was she encouraging him like
this?--Leading him on into an impossible situation? Gradually he was
drifting back into his first queer moment of antagonism--he felt urged
to conquest, not merely for the gratification of his vanity nor even for
the attainment of his desire, but for the satisfaction of seeing her
humbled, all her pride and glow and glory at his feet, like a tiger-lily
in the dust.
The next day Joanna drove him into Lydd, and in the afternoon took him
inland, to Ruckinge and Warehorne. These drives were another
reconstruction of her life with Martin, though now she no longer loved
Albert only in his second-coming aspect. She loved him passionately and
childishly for himself--the free spring of his hair from his forehead,
not merely because it had also been Martin's but because it was his--the
impudence as well as the softness of his eyes, the sulkiness as well as
the sensitiveness of his mouth, the unlike as well as the like. She
loved his quick, Cockney accent, his Cockney oaths when he forgot
himself--the way he always said "Yeyss" instead of "Yes"--his little
assumptions of vanity in socks and tie. She loved a queer blend of
Albert and Martin, the real and the imaginary, substance and dream.
As for him, he was enjoying himself. Driving about the country with a
fine woman like Joanna, with privileges continually on the increase, was
satisfactory even if no more than an interlude. "Where shall we go
to-morrow?" he asked her, as they sat in the parlour after dinner,
leaving the garden to Ellen and Tip.
"To-morrow? Why, that's Sunday."
"But can't we go anywhere on Sunday?"
"To church, of course."
"But won't you take me out for another lovely drive? I was hoping we
could go out all day to-morrow. It's going to be ever so fine."
"Maybe, but I was brought up to go to church on Sundays, and on Whit
Sunday of all other Sundays."
"But this Sunday's going to be different from all other Sundays--and
from all other Whit Sundays...."
He looked at her meaningly out of his bold, melting eyes, and she
surrendered. She could not deny him in this matter any more than in most
others.... She could not disappoint him any more than she could
disappoint a child. He should have his drive--she would take him over to
New Romney, even though it was written "Neither thou nor thine ox nor
thine ass nor the stranger that is within thy gates."
§21
So the next morning when Brodnyx bells were ringing in the east she
drove off through Pedlinge on her way to Broomhill level. She felt
rather uneasy and ashamed, especially when she passed the church-going
people. It was the first time in her life that she had voluntarily
missed going to church--for hundreds of Sundays she had walked along
that flat white lick of road, her big Prayer Book in her hand, and had
gone under that ancient porch to kneel in her huge cattle-pen pew with
its abounding hassocks. Even the removal of the Lion and the Unicorn,
and the transformation of her comfortable, Established religion into a
disquieting mystery had not made her allegiance falter. She still loved
Brodnyx church, even now when hassocks were no longer its chief
ecclesiastical ornament. She thought regretfully of her empty place and
shamefully of her neighbours' comments on it.
It was a sunless day, with grey clouds hanging over a dull green marsh,
streaked with channels of green water. The air was still and heavy with
the scent of may and meadowsweet and ripening hayseed. They drove as far
as the edges of Dunge Marsh, then turned eastward along the shingle road
which runs across the root of the Ness to Lydd. The little mare's
chocolate flanks were all a-sweat, and Joanna thought it better to bait
at Lydd and rest during the heat of the day.
"You'd never think it was Whitsun," said Albert, looking out of the inn
window at the sunny, empty street. "You don't seem to get much of a
crowd down here. Rum old place, ain't it?"
Already Joanna was beginning to notice a difference between his outlook
and Martin's.
"What d'you do with yourself out here all day?" he continued.
"I've plenty to do."
"Well, it seems to agree with you--I never saw anyone look finer. You're
reelly a wonder, old thing."
He picked up the large hand lying on the table-cloth and kissed it back
and palm. From any other man, even from Martin himself, she would have
received the caress quite simply, been proud and contented, but now it
brought her into a strange trouble. She leaned towards him, falling
upon his shoulder, her face against his neck. She wanted his kisses, and
he gave them to her.
At about three o'clock they set out again. The sun was high now, but the
air was cooler, for it had lost its stillness and blew in rippling gusts
from the sea. Joanna resolved not to go on to New Romney, as they had
waited too long at Lydd; so she took the road that goes to Ivychurch,
past Midley chapel, one of the ruined shrines of the monks of
Canterbury--grey walls huddled against a white tower of hawthorn in
which the voices of the birds tinkled like little bells.
She was now beginning to feel more happy and self-confident but she was
still preoccupied, though with a new situation. They had now been alone
together for five hours, and Albert had not said a word about the
marriage on which her hopes were set. Her ideas as to her own right of
initiative had undergone a change. He was in all matters of love so
infinitely more experienced than she was that she could no longer
imagine herself taking the lead. Hitherto she had considered herself as
experienced and capable in love as in other things--had she not been
engaged for five months? Had she not received at least half a dozen
offers of marriage? But Albert had "learned her different." His sure,
almost careless, touch abashed her, and the occasional fragments of
autobiography which he let fall, showed her that she was a limited and
ignorant recluse compared to this boy of twenty-five. In matters of
money and achievement she might brag, but in matters of love she was
strangely subservient to him, because in such matters he had everything
to teach her.
They stopped for tea at Ivychurch; the little inn and the big church
beside the New Sewer were hazed over in a cloud of floating sunshine and
dust. She had been here before with Martin, and after tea she and Albert
went into the church and looked around them. But his interest in old
places was not the same as Martin's. He called things "quaint" and
"rummy," and quoted anything he had read about them in the guide-book,
but he could not make them come alive in a strange re-born youth--he
could not make her feel the beauty of the great sea on which the French
ships had ridden, or the splendours of the Marsh before the Flood, with
all its towns and taverns and steeples. Unconsciously she missed this
appeal to her sleeping imagination, and her bringing of him into the
great church, which could have held an the village in its aisles, was an
effort to supply what was lacking.
But Albert's attitude towards the church was critical and
unsatisfactory. It was much too big for the village. It was ridiculous
... that little clump of chairs in all the huge emptiness ... what a
waste of money, paying a parson to idle away his time among a dozen
people.... "How Dreadful is this Place" ran the painted legend over the
arches.... Joanna trembled.
They came out on the farther side of the churchyard, where a little path
leads away into the hawthorns of the New Sewer. A faint sunshine was
spotting it through the branches, and suddenly Joanna's heart grew warm
and heavy with love. She wanted some sheltered corner where she could
hold his hand, feel his rough coat-sleeve against her cheek--or, dearer
still, carry his head on her bosom, that heavenly weight of a man's
head, with the coarse, springing hair to pull and stroke.... She put her
arm into his.
"Bertie, let's go and sit over there in the shade."
He smiled at the innocence of her contrivance.
"Shall we?" he said, teasing her--"won't it make us late for dinner?"
"We don't have dinner on Sundays--we have supper at eight, so as to let
the gals go to church."
Her eyes looked, serious and troubled, into his. He pressed her hand.
"You darling thing."
They moved away out of the shadow of the church, following the little
path down to the channel's bank. The water was of a clear, limpid green,
new-flushed with the tide, with a faint stickle moving down it, carrying
the white, fallen petals of the may. The banks were rich with
loosestrife and meadowsweet, and as they walked on, the arching of
hawthorn and willow made of the stream and the path beside it a little
tunnel of shade and scent.