§17
For the next few days Joanna was restless and nervous; she could not be busy with Ansdore, even after a fortnight's absence. The truth in her heart was that she found Ansdore rather flat. Wilson's pride in the growth of the young lambs, Broadhurst's anxiety about Spot's calving and his preoccupation with the Suffolk dray-horse Joanna was to buy at Ashford fair that year, all seemed irrelevant to the main purpose of life. The main stream of her life had suddenly been turned underground—it ran under Ansdore's wide innings—on Monday it would come again to the surface, and take her away from Ansdore.
The outward events of Monday were not exciting. Joanna drove into Rye with Peter Crouch behind her, and met Albert Hill with a decorous handshake on the platform. During the drive home, and indeed during most of his visit, his attitude towards her was scarcely more than ordinary friendship. In the afternoon, when Ellen had gone out with Tip Ernley, he gave her a few kisses, but without much passion. She began to feel disquieted. Had he changed? Was there someone else he liked? At all costs she must hold him—she must not let him go.
The truth was that Hill felt uncertain how he stood—he was bewildered in his mind. What was she driving at? Surely she did not think of marriage—the difference in their ages was far too great. But what else could she be thinking of? He gathered that she was invincibly respectable—and yet he was not sure.... In spite of her decorum, she had queer, unguarded ways. He had met no one exactly like her, though he was a man of wide and not very edifying experience. The tactics which had started his friendship with Joanna he had learned at the shorthand and typewriting college where he had learned his clerking job—and they had brought him a rummage of adventures, some transient, some sticky, some dirty, some glamorous. He had met girls of a fairly good class—for his looks caused much to be forgiven him—as well as the typists, shop-girls and waitresses of his more usual association. But he had never met anyone quite like Joanna—so simple yet so swaggering, so solid yet so ardent, so rigid yet so unguarded, so superior and yet, he told himself, so lacking in refinement. She attracted him enormously ... but he was not the sort of man to waste his time.
"When do you go back to London?" she asked.
"Wednesday morning."
She sighed deeply, leaning against him on the sofa.
"Is this all the holiday you'll get this year?"
"No—I've Whitsun coming—Friday to Tuesday. I might run down to Marlingate ..."
He watched her carefully.
"Oh, that 'ud be fine. You'd come and see me here?"
"Of course—if you asked me?"
"If I asked you," she repeated in a sudden, trembling scorn.
Her head drooped to his breast, and he took her in his arms, holding her across him—all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized him—prude or rake, she should get her lesson from him all right.
§18
When he had gone Joanna said to Ellen—
"D'you think it would be seemly if I asked Mr. Hill here to stay?"
"Of course it would be 'seemly,' Jo. I'm a married woman. But would he be able to come? He's in business somewhere, isn't he?"
"Yes, but he could get away for Whitsun."
"Then ask him by all means. But ..."
She looked at her quickly and teasingly.
"But what?"
"Jo, do you care about this man?"
"What d'you mean? Why should I care? Or, leastways, why shouldn't I?"
"No reason at all. He's a good bit younger than you are, but then I always fancied that if you married it ud be a man younger than yourself."
"Who said I was going to marry him?"
"No one. But if you care ..."
"I never said I did."
"Oh, you're impossible," said Ellen with a little shrug. She picked up a book from the table, but Joanna could not let the conversation drop.
"What d'you think of Mr. Hill, Ellen? Does he remind you of anyone particular?"
"No, not at the moment."
"Hasn't it ever struck you he's a bit like my Martin Trevor?"
Her tongue no longer stammered at the name.
"Your Martin Trevor! Jo, what nonsense, he's not a bit like him."
"He's the living image—the way his hair grows out of his forehead, and his dark, saucy eyes ..."
"Well, I was only a little girl when you were engaged to Martin Trevor, but as I remember him he was quite different from Mr. Hill. He belonged to another class, for one thing.... He was a gentleman."
"And you think Mr. Hill ain't a gentleman?"
"My dear Joanna! Of course he's not—he doesn't profess to be."
"He's got a good position as a clerk. Some clerks are gentlemen."
"But this one isn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I happen to be engaged to someone who is."
"That ain't any reason for miscalling my friends."
"I'm not 'miscalling' anyone.... Oh, hang it all, Jo, don't let's quarrel about men at our time of life. I'm sorry if I said anything you don't like about Mr. Hill. Of course, I don't know him as well as you do."
§19
So Joanna wrote to Albert Hill in her big, cramped handwriting, on the expensive yet unostentatious note-paper which Ellen had decreed, inviting him to come and spend Whitsuntide at Ansdore.
His answer did not come for three or four days, during which, as he meant she should, she suffered many doubts and anxieties. Was he coming? Did he care for her? Or had he just been fooling? She had never felt like this about a man before. She had loved, but love had never held her in the same bondage—perhaps because till now she had always had certainties. Her affair with Martin, her only real love affair, had been a certainty, Arthur Alce's devotion had been a most faithful certainty, the men who had comforted her bereavement had also in their different ways been certainties. Albert Hill was the only man who had ever eluded her, played with her or vexed her. She knew that she attracted him, but she also guessed dimly that he feared to bind himself. As for her, she was now determined. She loved him and must marry him. Characteristically she had swept aside the drawbacks of their different ages and circumstances, and saw nothing but the man she loved—the man who was for her the return of first love, youth and spring. A common little tawdry-minded clerk some might have called him, but to Joanna he was all things—fulfilment, lover and child, and also a Sign and a Second Coming.
She could think of nothing else. Once again Ansdore was failing her, as it always failed her in any crisis of emotion—Ansdore could never be big enough to fill her heart. But she valued it because of the consequence it must give her in young Hill's eyes, and she was impressed by the idea that her own extra age and importance gave her the rights of approach normally belonging to the man.... Queens always invited their consorts to share their thrones, and she was a queen, opening her gates to the man she loved. There could be no question of her leaving her house for his—he was only a little clerk earning two pounds a week, and she was Squire of the Manor. Possibly this very fact made him hesitate, fear to presume.... Well, she must show him he was wrong, and this Whitsuntide was her opportunity. But she wished that she could feel more queenly in her mind—less abject, craving and troubled. In outward circumstances she was his queen, but in her heart she was his slave.
She plunged into an orgy of preparation. Mrs. Tolhurst and Mene Tekel and the new girl from Windpumps who now reinforced the household were nearly driven off their legs. Ellen spared the wretched man much in the way of feather-beds—just one down mattress would be enough, town people weren't used to sleeping on feathers. She also chastened the scheme of decoration, and substituted fresh flowers for the pampas grasses which Joanna thought the noblest adornment possible for a spare bedroom. On the whole Ellen behaved very well about Albert Hill—she worked her best to give him a favourable impression of Ansdore as a household, and when he came she saw that he and her sister were as much alone together as possible.
"He isn't at all the sort of brother-in-law I'd like you to have, my dear," she said to Tip, "but if you'd seen some of the men Joanna's taken up with you'd realize it might have been much worse. I'm told she once had a most hectic romance with her own shepherd ... she's frightfully impressionable, you know."
"Is she really?" said Tip in his slow, well-bred voice. "I shouldn't have thought that."
"No, because—dear old Jo! it's so funny—she's quite without art. But she's always been frightfully keen on men, though she never could attract the right sort; and for some reason or other—to do with the farm, I suppose—she's never been keen on marriage. Now lately I've been thinking she really ought to marry—lately she's been getting quite queer—détraquée—and I do think she ought to settle down."
"But Hill's much younger than she is."
"Joanna would never care for anyone older. She's always liked boys—it's because she wants to be sure of being boss, I suppose. I know for a fact she's turned down nearly half a dozen good, respectable, well-to-do farmers of her own age or older than herself. And yet I've sometimes felt nervous about her and Peter Crouch, the groom ... Oh, I tell you, Jo's queer, and I'll be thankful if she marries Bertie Hill, even though he is off the mark. After all, Tip"—and Ellen looked charming—"Jo and I aren't real ladies, you know."
§20
Albert was able to get off on the Friday afternoon, and arrived at Ansdore in time for the splendours of late dinner and a bath in the new bathroom. There was no doubt about it, thought he, that he was on a good thing, whichever way it ended. She must have pots of money ... everything of the very best ... and her sister marrying no end of a swell—Ernley, who played for Sussex, and was obviously top-notch in every other way. Perhaps he wouldn't be such a fool, after all, if he married her. He would be a country gentleman with plenty of money and a horse to ride—better than living single till, with luck, he got a rise, and married inevitably one of his female acquaintances, to live in the suburbs on three hundred a year.... And she was such a splendid creature—otherwise he would not have thought of it—but in attraction she could give points to any girl, and her beauty, having flowered late, would probably last a good while longer....
But—. That night as he sat at his bedroom window, smoking a succession of Gold Flake cigarettes, he saw many other aspects of the situation. The deadly quiet of Ansdore in the night, with all the blackness of the Marsh waiting for the unrisen moon, was to him a symbol of what his life would be if he married Joanna. He would perish if he got stuck in a hole like this, and yet—he thus far acknowledged her queenship—he could never ask her to come out of it. He could not picture her living in streets—she wouldn't fit—but then, neither would he fit down here. He liked streets and gaiety and noise and picture-palaces.... If she'd been younger he might have risked it, but at her age—thirteen years older than he (she had told him her age in an expansive moment) it was really impossible. But, damn it all! She was gorgeous—and he'd rather have her than any younger woman. He couldn't make her out—she must see the folly of marriage as well as he ... then why was she encouraging him like this?—Leading him on into an impossible situation? Gradually he was drifting back into his first queer moment of antagonism—he felt urged to conquest, not merely for the gratification of his vanity nor even for the attainment of his desire, but for the satisfaction of seeing her humbled, all her pride and glow and glory at his feet, like a tiger-lily in the dust.
The next day Joanna drove him into Lydd, and in the afternoon took him inland, to Ruckinge and Warehorne. These drives were another reconstruction of her life with Martin, though now she no longer loved Albert only in his second-coming aspect. She loved him passionately and childishly for himself—the free spring of his hair from his forehead, not merely because it had also been Martin's but because it was his—the impudence as well as the softness of his eyes, the sulkiness as well as the sensitiveness of his mouth, the unlike as well as the like. She loved his quick, Cockney accent, his Cockney oaths when he forgot himself—the way he always said "Yeyss" instead of "Yes"—his little assumptions of vanity in socks and tie. She loved a queer blend of Albert and Martin, the real and the imaginary, substance and dream.
As for him, he was enjoying himself. Driving about the country with a fine woman like Joanna, with privileges continually on the increase, was satisfactory even if no more than an interlude. "Where shall we go to-morrow?" he asked her, as they sat in the parlour after dinner, leaving the garden to Ellen and Tip.
"To-morrow? Why, that's Sunday."
"But can't we go anywhere on Sunday?"
"To church, of course."
"But won't you take me out for another lovely drive? I was hoping we could go out all day to-morrow. It's going to be ever so fine."
"Maybe, but I was brought up to go to church on Sundays, and on Whit Sunday of all other Sundays."
"But this Sunday's going to be different from all other Sundays—and from all other Whit Sundays...."
He looked at her meaningly out of his bold, melting eyes, and she surrendered. She could not deny him in this matter any more than in most others.... She could not disappoint him any more than she could disappoint a child. He should have his drive—she would take him over to New Romney, even though it was written "Neither thou nor thine ox nor thine ass nor the stranger that is within thy gates."
§21
So the next morning when Brodnyx bells were ringing in the east she drove off through Pedlinge on her way to Broomhill level. She felt rather uneasy and ashamed, especially when she passed the church-going people. It was the first time in her life that she had voluntarily missed going to church—for hundreds of Sundays she had walked along that flat white lick of road, her big Prayer Book in her hand, and had gone under that ancient porch to kneel in her huge cattle-pen pew with its abounding hassocks. Even the removal of the Lion and the Unicorn, and the transformation of her comfortable, Established religion into a disquieting mystery had not made her allegiance falter. She still loved Brodnyx church, even now when hassocks were no longer its chief ecclesiastical ornament. She thought regretfully of her empty place and shamefully of her neighbours' comments on it.
It was a sunless day, with grey clouds hanging over a dull green marsh, streaked with channels of green water. The air was still and heavy with the scent of may and meadowsweet and ripening hayseed. They drove as far as the edges of Dunge Marsh, then turned eastward along the shingle road which runs across the root of the Ness to Lydd. The little mare's chocolate flanks were all a-sweat, and Joanna thought it better to bait at Lydd and rest during the heat of the day.
"You'd never think it was Whitsun," said Albert, looking out of the inn window at the sunny, empty street. "You don't seem to get much of a crowd down here. Rum old place, ain't it?"
Already Joanna was beginning to notice a difference between his outlook and Martin's.
"What d'you do with yourself out here all day?" he continued.
"I've plenty to do."
"Well, it seems to agree with you—I never saw anyone look finer. You're reelly a wonder, old thing."
He picked up the large hand lying on the table-cloth and kissed it back and palm. From any other man, even from Martin himself, she would have received the caress quite simply, been proud and contented, but now it brought her into a strange trouble. She leaned towards him, falling upon his shoulder, her face against his neck. She wanted his kisses, and he gave them to her.
At about three o'clock they set out again. The sun was high now, but the air was cooler, for it had lost its stillness and blew in rippling gusts from the sea. Joanna resolved not to go on to New Romney, as they had waited too long at Lydd; so she took the road that goes to Ivychurch, past Midley chapel, one of the ruined shrines of the monks of Canterbury—grey walls huddled against a white tower of hawthorn in which the voices of the birds tinkled like little bells.
She was now beginning to feel more happy and self-confident but she was still preoccupied, though with a new situation. They had now been alone together for five hours, and Albert had not said a word about the marriage on which her hopes were set. Her ideas as to her own right of initiative had undergone a change. He was in all matters of love so infinitely more experienced than she was that she could no longer imagine herself taking the lead. Hitherto she had considered herself as experienced and capable in love as in other things—had she not been engaged for five months? Had she not received at least half a dozen offers of marriage? But Albert had "learned her different." His sure, almost careless, touch abashed her, and the occasional fragments of autobiography which he let fall, showed her that she was a limited and ignorant recluse compared to this boy of twenty-five. In matters of money and achievement she might brag, but in matters of love she was strangely subservient to him, because in such matters he had everything to teach her.
They stopped for tea at Ivychurch; the little inn and the big church beside the New Sewer were hazed over in a cloud of floating sunshine and dust. She had been here before with Martin, and after tea she and Albert went into the church and looked around them. But his interest in old places was not the same as Martin's. He called things "quaint" and "rummy," and quoted anything he had read about them in the guide-book, but he could not make them come alive in a strange re-born youth—he could not make her feel the beauty of the great sea on which the French ships had ridden, or the splendours of the Marsh before the Flood, with all its towns and taverns and steeples. Unconsciously she missed this appeal to her sleeping imagination, and her bringing of him into the great church, which could have held an the village in its aisles, was an effort to supply what was lacking.
But Albert's attitude towards the church was critical and unsatisfactory. It was much too big for the village. It was ridiculous ... that little clump of chairs in all the huge emptiness ... what a waste of money, paying a parson to idle away his time among a dozen people.... "How Dreadful is this Place" ran the painted legend over the arches.... Joanna trembled.
They came out on the farther side of the churchyard, where a little path leads away into the hawthorns of the New Sewer. A faint sunshine was spotting it through the branches, and suddenly Joanna's heart grew warm and heavy with love. She wanted some sheltered corner where she could hold his hand, feel his rough coat-sleeve against her cheek—or, dearer still, carry his head on her bosom, that heavenly weight of a man's head, with the coarse, springing hair to pull and stroke.... She put her arm into his.
"Bertie, let's go and sit over there in the shade."
He smiled at the innocence of her contrivance.
"Shall we?" he said, teasing her—"won't it make us late for dinner?"
"We don't have dinner on Sundays—we have supper at eight, so as to let the gals go to church."
Her eyes looked, serious and troubled, into his. He pressed her hand.
"You darling thing."
They moved away out of the shadow of the church, following the little path down to the channel's bank. The water was of a clear, limpid green, new-flushed with the tide, with a faint stickle moving down it, carrying the white, fallen petals of the may. The banks were rich with loosestrife and meadowsweet, and as they walked on, the arching of hawthorn and willow made of the stream and the path beside it a little tunnel of shade and scent.
The distant farmyard sounds which spoke of Ivychurch behind them gradually faded into a thick silence.
Joanna could feel Bertie leaning against her as they walked, he was playing with her hand, locking and unlocking her fingers with his. Weren't men queer ... the sudden way they melted at a touch? Martin had been like that—losing his funny sulks.... And now Bertie was just the same. She felt convinced that in one moment ... in two ... he would ask her to be his wife....
"Let's sit down for a bit," she suggested.
They sat down by the water side, crushing the meadowsweet till its sickliness grew almost fierce with bruising. She sidled into his arms, and her own crept round him. "Bertie ..." she whispered. Her heart was throbbing quickly, and, as it were, very high—in her throat—choking her. She began to tremble. Looking up she saw his eyes above her, gazing down at her out of a mist—everything seemed misty, trees and sky and sunshine and his dear face.... She was holding him very tight, so tight that she could feel his collar-bones bruising her arms. He was kissing her now, and his kisses were like blows. She suddenly became afraid, and struggled.
"Jo, Jo—don't be a fool—don't put me off, now ... you can't, I tell you."
But she had come to herself.
"No—let me go. I ... it's late—I've got to go home."
She was strong enough to push him from her, and scrambled to her feet. They both stood facing each other in the trodden streamside flowers.
"I beg your pardon," he said at last.
"Oh, it doesn't matter."
She was ashamed.
§22
She was frightened, too—never in her life had she imagined that she could drift so far as she had drifted in those few seconds. She was still trembling as she led the way back to the church. She could hear him treading after her, and as she thought of him her heart smote her. She felt as if she had hurt him—oh, what had she done to him? What had she denied him? What had she given him to think?
As they climbed into the trap she could tell that he was sulking. He looked at her half-defiantly from under his long lashes, and the corners of his mouth were turned down like a child's. The drive home was constrained and nearly silent. Joanna tried to talk about the grazings they had broken at Yokes Court, in imitation of her own successful grain-growing, about her Appeal to the High Court which was to be heard that summer, and the motor-car she would buy if it was successful—but it was obvious that they were both thinking of something else. For the last part of the drive, from Brodnyx to Ansdore, neither of them spoke a word.
The sunset was scattering the clouds ahead and filling the spaces with lakes of gold. The dykes turned to gold, and a golden film lay over the pastures and the reeds. The sun wheeled slowly north, and a huge, shadowy horse and trap began to run beside them along the embankment of the White Kemp Sewer. They turned up Ansdore's drive, now neatly gravelled and gated, and a flood of light burst over the gables of the house, pouring on Joanna as she climbed down over the wheel. She required no help, and he knew it, but she felt his hands pressing her waist; she started away, and she saw him laugh—mocking her. She nearly cried.
The rest of that evening was awkward and unhappy. She had a vague feeling in her heart that she had treated Albert badly, and yet ... the strange thing was that she shrank from an explanation. It had always been her habit to "have things out" on all occasions, and many a misunderstanding had been strengthened thereby. But to-night she could not bear the thought of being left alone with Albert. For one thing, she was curiously vague as to the situation—was she to blame or was he? Had she gone too far or not far enough? What was the matter, after all? There was nothing to lay hold of.... Joanna was unused to this nebulous state of mind; it made her head ache, and she was glad when the time came to go to bed.
With a blessed sense of relief she felt the whitewashed thickness of her bedroom walls between her and the rest of the house. She did not trouble to light her candle. Her room was in darkness, except for one splash of light reflected from her mirror which held the moon. She went over to the window and looked out. The marsh swam in a yellow, misty lake of moonlight. There was a strange air of unsubstantiality about it—the earth was not the solid earth, the watercourses were moonlight rather than water, the light was water rather than light, the trees were shadows....
"Ah-h-h," said Joanna Godden.
She lifted her arms to her head with a gesture of weariness—as she took out the pins her hair fell on her shoulders in great hanks and masses, golden and unsubstantial as the moon.
Slowly and draggingly she began to unfasten her clothes—they fell off her, and lay like a pool round her feet. She plunged into her stiff cotton nightgown, buttoning it at neck and wrists. Then she knelt by her bed and said her prayers—the same prayers that she had said ever since she was five.
The moonlight was coming straight into the room—showing its familiar corners. There was no trace of Ellen in this room—nothing that was "artistic" or "in good taste." A lively pattern covered everything that could be so covered, but Joanna's sentimental love of old associations had spared the original furniture—the wide feather bed, the oaken chest of drawers, the wash-stand which was just a great chest covered with a towel. Over her bed hung Poor Father's Buffalo Certificate, the cherished symbol of all that was solid and prosperous and reputable in life.
She lay in bed. After she got in she realized that she had forgotten to plait her hair, but she felt too languid for the effort. Her hair spread round her on the pillow like a reproach. For some mysterious reason her tears began to fall. Her life seemed to reproach her. She saw all her life stretching behind her for a moment—the moment when she had stood before Socknersh her shepherd, seeing him dark against the sky, between the sun and moon. That was when Men, properly speaking, had begun for her—and it was fifteen years since then—and where was she now? Still at Ansdore, still without her man.
Albert had not asked her to marry him, nor, she felt desperately, did he mean to. If he did, he would surely have spoken to-day. And now besides, he was angry with her, disappointed, estranged. She had upset him by turning cold like that all of a sudden.... But what was she saying? Why, of course she had been quite right. She should ought to have been cold from the start. That was her mistake—letting the thing start when it could have no seemly ending ... a boy like that, nearly young enough to be her son ... and yet she had been unable to deny him, she had let him kiss her and court her—make love to her.... Worse than that, she had made love to him, thrown herself at him, pursued him with her love, refused to let him go ... and all the other things she had done—changing for his sake from her decent ways ... breaking the Sabbath, taking off her neck-band. She had been getting irreligious and immodest, and now she was unhappy, and it served her right.
The house was quite still; everyone had gone to bed, and the moon filled the middle of the window, splashing the bed, and Joanna in it, and the walls, and the sagging beams of the ceiling. She thought of getting up to pull down the blind, but had no more energy to do that than to bind her hair. She wanted desperately to go to sleep. She lay on her side, her head burrowed down into the pillow, her hands clenched under her chin. Her bed was next the door, and beyond the door, against the wall at right angles to it, was her chest of drawers, with Martin's photograph in its black frame, and the photograph of his tombstone in a frame with a lily worked on it. Her eyes strained towards them in the darkness ... oh, Martin—Martin, why did I ever forget you?... But I never forgot you ... Martin, I've never had my man.... I've got money, two farms, lovely clothes—I'm just as good as a lady ... but I've never had my man.... Seemingly I'll go down into the grave without him ... but, oh, I do want ... the thing I was born for....
Sobs shook her broad shoulders as she lay there in the moonlight. But they did not relieve her—her sobs ploughed deep into her soul ... they turned strange furrows.... Oh, she was a bad woman, who deserved no happiness. She'd always known it.
She lifted her head, straining her eyes through the darkness and tears to gaze at Martin's photograph as if it were the Serpent in the Wilderness. Perhaps all this had come upon her because she had been untrue to his memory—and yet what had so appealed to her about Bertie was that he was like Martin, though Ellen said he wasn't—well, perhaps he wasn't.... But what was happening now? Something had come between her and the photograph on the chest of drawers. With a sudden chill at her heart, she realized that it was the door opening.
"Who's there?" she cried in a hoarse angry whisper.
"Don't be frightened, dear—don't be frightened, my sweet Jo—" said Bertie Hill.
§23
She could not think—she could only feel. It was morning—that white light was morning, though it was like the moon. Under it the Marsh lay like a land under the sea—it must have looked like this when the keels of the French boats swam over it, high above Ansdore, and Brodnyx, and Pedlinge, lying like red apples far beneath, at the bottom of the sea. That was nonsense ... but she could not think this morning, she could only feel.
He had not been gone an hour, but she must find him. She must be with him—just feel him near her. She must see his head against the window, hear the heavy, slow sounds of his moving. She slipped on her clothes and twisted up her hair, and went down into the empty, stir-less house. No one was about—even her own people were in bed. The sun was not yet up, but the white dawn was pouring into the house, through the windows, through the chinks. Joanna stood in the midst of it. Then she opened the door and went out into the yard, which was a pool of cold light, ringed round with barns and buildings and reed-thatched haystacks. It was queer how this cold, still, trembling dawn hurt her—seemed to flow into her, to be part of herself, and yet to wound.... She had never felt like this before—she could never have imagined that love would make her feel like this, would make her see beauty in her forsaken yard at dawn—not only see but feel that beauty, physically, as pain. Her heart wounded her—her knees were failing—she went back into the house.
A wooden chair stood in the passage outside the kitchen door, and she sat down on it. She was still unable to think, and she knew now that she did not want to think—it might make her afraid. She wanted only to remember.... He had called her the loveliest, sweetest, most beautiful woman in the world.... She repeated his words over and over again, calling up the look with which he had said them ... oh, those eyes of his—slanty, saucy, secret, loving eyes....
She wondered why he did not come down. She could not imagine that he had turned into bed and gone to sleep—that he did not know she was sitting here waiting for him in the dawn. For a moment she thought of going up and knocking at his door—then she heard a thud of footsteps and creaking of boards, which announced that Mene Tekel and Nan Gregory of Windpumps were stirring in their bedroom. In an incredibly short time they were coming downstairs, tying apron-strings and screwing up hair as they went, and making a terrific stump past the door behind which they imagined their mistress was in bed. It was a great shock to them to find that she was downstairs before them—they weren't more than five minutes late.
"Hurry up, gals," said Joanna, "and get that kettle boiling for the men. I hear Broadhurst about the yard. Mene Tekel, see as there's no clinkers left in the grate; Mrs. Alce never got her bath yesterday evening before dinner as she expects it. When did you do the flues last?"
She set her household about its business—her dreams could not live in the atmosphere of antagonistic suspicion in which she had always viewed the younger members of her own sex. She was firmly convinced that neither Nan nor Mene would do a stroke of work if she was not "at them"; the same opinion applied in a lesser degree to the men in the yard. So till Ansdore's early breakfast appeared amid much hustling and scolding, Joanna had no time to think about her lover, or continue the dreams so strangely and gloriously begun in the sunless dawn.
Bertie was late for breakfast, and came down apologising for having overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy—her little boy ... she dropped her eyelids over her tears.
After breakfast, as soon as they were alone, she stole into his arms and held close to him, without embrace, her hands just clasped over her breast on which her chin had fallen. He tried to raise her burning, blushing face, but she turned it to his shoulder.
§24
Albert Hill went back to London on Tuesday, but he came down again the following week-end, and the next, and the next, and then his engagement to Joanna was made public.
In this respect the trick was hers. The affair had ended in a committal which he had not expected, but his own victory was too substantial for him to regret any development of it to her advantage. Besides, he had seen the impossibility of conducting the affair on any other lines, both on account of the circumstances in which she lived and of her passionate distress when she realized that he did not consider marriage an inevitable consequence of their relation. It was his only way of keeping her—and he could not let her go. She was adorable, and the years between them meant nothing—her beauty had wiped them out. He could think of her only as the ageless woman he loved, who shared the passion of his own youth and in it was for ever young.
On the practical side, too, he was better reconciled. He felt a pang of regret when he thought of London and its work and pleasures, of his chances of a "rise"—which his superiors had hinted was now imminent—of a head clerkship, perhaps eventually of a partnership and a tight marriage into the business—since his Whitsuntide visit to Ansdore he had met the junior partner's daughter and found her as susceptible to his charms as most young women. But after all, his position as Joanna Godden's husband would be better even than that of a partner in the firm of Sherwood and Son. What was Sherwood's but a firm of carpet-makers?—a small firm of carpet-makers. As Joanna's husband he would be a Country Gentleman, perhaps even a County Gentleman. He saw himself going out with his gun ... following the hounds in a pink coat.... He forgot that he could neither shoot nor ride.
Meantime his position as Joanna's lover was not an unenviable one. She adored him and spoiled him like a child. She poured gifts upon him—a gold wrist-watch, a real panama hat, silk socks in gorgeous colours, boxes and boxes of the best Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes—she could not give him enough to show her love and delight in him.
At first he had been a little embarrassed by this outpouring, but he was used to receiving presents from women, and he knew that Joanna had plenty of money to spend and really got as much pleasure out of her gifts as he did. They atoned for the poverty of her letters. She was no letter-writer. Her feelings were as cramped as her handwriting by the time she had got them down on paper; indeed, Joanna herself was wondrously expressed in that big, unformed, constricted handwriting, black yet uncertain, sprawling yet constrained, in which she recorded such facts as "Dot has calved at last," or "Broadhurst will be 61 come Monday," or—as an utmost concession—"I love you, dear."
However, too great a strain was not put on this frail link, for he came down to Ansdore almost every week-end, from Saturday afternoon to early Monday morning. He tried to persuade her to come up to London and stay at his mother's house—he had vague hopes that perhaps an experience of London might persuade her to settle there (she could afford a fine house over at Blackheath, or even in town itself, if she chose). But Joanna had a solid prejudice against London—the utmost she would consent to was a promise to come up and stay with Albert's mother when her appeal was heard at the High Court at the beginning of August. Edward Huxtable had done his best to convince her that her presence was unnecessary, but she did not trust either him or the excellent counsel he had engaged. She had made up her mind to attend in person, and look after him properly.
§25
The attitude of Brodnyx and Pedlinge towards this new crisis in Joanna Godden's life was at first uncertain. The first impression was that she had suddenly taken fright at the prospect of old-maidenhood, and had grabbed the first man she could get, even though he was young enough to be her son.
"He ain't twenty-one till Michaelmas," said Vine at the Woolpack.
"She's always liked 'em young," said Furnese.
"Well, if she'd married Arthur Alce when she fust had the chance, instead of hanging around and wasting time the way she's done, by now she could have had a man of her intended's age for a son instead of a husband."
"Reckon it wouldn't have been the same thing."
"No—it would have been a better thing," said Vine.
When it became known that Joanna's motive was not despair but love, public opinion turned against her, Albert's manner among the Marsh people was unfortunate. In his mind he had always stressed his bride's connexions through Ellen—the Ernleys, a fine old county family; he found it very satisfying to slap Tip Ernley on the back and call him "Ole man." He had deliberately shut his eyes to the other side of her acquaintance, those Marsh families, the Southlands, Furneses, Vines, Cobbs and Bateses, to whom she was bound by far stronger, older ties than any which held her to Great Ansdore. He treated these people as her and his inferiors—unlike Martin Trevor, he would not submit to being driven round and shown off to Misleham, Picknye Bush, or Slinches.... It was small wonder that respectable families became indignant at such airs.
"What does he think himself, I'd like to know? He's nothing but a clerk—such as I'd never see my boy."
"And soon he won't be even that—he'll just be living on Joanna."
"She's going to keep him at Ansdore?"
"Surelye. She'll never move out now."
"But what's she want to marry for, at her age, and a boy like that?"
"She's getting an old fool, I reckon."
§26
The date of the wedding was not yet fixed, though September was spoken of rather vaguely, and this time the hesitation came from the bridegroom. As on the occasion of her first engagement Joanna had made difficulties with the shearing and hay-making, so now Albert contrived and shifted in his anxiety to fit in his marriage with other plans.
He had, it appeared, as far back as last Christmas, arranged for a week's tour in August with the Polytechnic to Lovely Lucerne. In vain Joanna promised him a liberal allowance of "Foreign Parts" for their honeymoon—Bertie's little soul hankered after the Polytechnic, his pals who were going with him, and the kindred spirits he would meet at the chalets. Going on his honeymoon as Joanna Godden's husband was a different matter and could not take the place of such an excursion.
Joanna did not press him. She was terribly afraid of scaring him off. It had occurred to her more than once that his bonds held him far more lightly than she was held by hers. And the prospect of marriage was now an absolute necessity if she was to endure her memories. Marriage alone could hallow and remake Joanna Godden. Sometimes, as love became less of a drug and a bewilderment, her thoughts awoke, and she would be overwhelmed by an almost incredulous horror at herself. Could this be Joanna Godden, who had turned away her dairy-girl for loose behaviour, who had been so shocked at the adventures of her sister Ellen? She could never be shocked at anyone again, seeing that she herself was just as bad and worse than anyone she knew.... Oh, life was queer—there was no denying. It took you by surprise in a way you'd never think—it made you do things so different from your proper notions that afterwards you could hardly believe it was you that had done them—it gave you joy that should ought to have been sorrow ... and pain as you'd never think.
As the summer passed and the time for her visit to town drew near, Joanna began to grow nervous and restless. She did not like the idea of going to a place like London, though she dared not confess her fears to the travelled Ellen or the metropolitan Bertie. She felt vaguely that "no good would come of it"—she had lived thirty-eight years without setting foot in London, and it seemed like tempting Providence to go there now....
However she resigned herself to the journey—indeed, when the time came she undertook it more carelessly than she had undertaken the venture of Marlingate. Her one thought was of Albert, and she gave over Ansdore almost nonchalantly to her carter and her looker, and abandoned Ellen to Tip Ernley with scarcely a doubt as to her moral welfare.
Bertie met her at Charing Cross, and escorted her the rest of the way. He found it hard to realize that she had never been to London before, and it annoyed him a little. It would have been all very well, he told himself, in a shy village maiden of eighteen, but in a woman of Joanna's age and temperament it was ridiculous. However, he was relieved to find that she had none of the manners of a country cousin. Her self-confidence prevented her being flustered by strange surroundings; her clothes were fashionable and well-cut, though perhaps a bit too showy for a woman of her type, she tipped lavishly, and was not afraid of porters. Neither did she, as he had feared at first, demand a four-wheeler instead of a taxi. On the contrary, she insisted on driving all the way to Lewisham, instead of taking another train, and enlarged on the five-seater touring car she would buy when she had won her Case.
"I hope to goodness you will win it, ole girl," said Bertie, as he slipped his arm round her—"I've a sort of feeling that you ought to touch wood."
"I'll win it if there's justice in England."
"But perhaps there ain't."
"I must win," repeated Joanna doggedly. "You see, it was like this ..."
Not for the first time she proceeded to recount the sale of Donkey Street and the way she had applied the money. He wished she wouldn't talk about that sort of thing the first hour they were together.
"I quite see, darling," he exclaimed in the middle of the narrative, and shut her mouth with a kiss.
"Oh, Bertie, you mustn't."
"We're in a cab—people will see."
"They won't—they can't see in—and I'm not going to drive all this way without kissing you."
He took hold of her.
"I won't have it—it ain't seemly."
But he had got a good hold of her, and did as he liked.
Joanna was horrified and ashamed. A motor-bus had just glided past the cab and she felt that the eyes of all the occupants were upon her. She managed to push Albert away, and sat very erect beside him, with a red face.
"It ain't seemly," she muttered under her breath.
Bertie was vexed with her. He assumed an attitude intended to convey displeasure. Joanna felt unhappy, and anxious to conciliate him, but she was aware that any reconciliation was bound to lead to a repetition of that conduct so eminently shocking to the occupants of passing motor-buses. "I don't like London folk to think I don't know how to behave when I come up to town," she said to herself.
Luckily, just as the situation was becoming unbearable, and her respectability on the verge of collapsing in the cause of peace, they stopped at the gate of The Elms, Raymond Avenue, Lewisham. Bertie's annoyance was swallowed up in the double anxiety of introducing her to his family and his family to her. On both counts he felt a little gloomy, for he did not think much of his mother and sister and did not expect Joanna to think much of them. At the same time there was no denying that Jo was and looked a good bit older than he, and his mother and sister were quite capable of thinking he was marrying her for her money. She was looking rather worn and dragged this afternoon, after her unaccustomed railway journey—sometimes you really wouldn't take her for more than thirty, but to-day she was looking her full age.
"Mother—Agatha—this is Jo."
Joanna swooped down on the old lady with a loud kiss.
"Pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Hill in a subdued voice. She was very short and small and frail-looking, and wore a cap—for the same reason no doubt that she kept an aspidistra in the dining-room window, went to church at eleven o'clock on Sundays, and had given birth to Agatha and Albert.
Agatha was evidently within a year or two of her brother's age, and she had his large, melting eyes, and his hair that sprang in a dark semicircle from a low forehead. She was most elegantly dressed in a peek-a-boo blouse, hobble skirt, and high-heeled shoes.
"Pleased to meet you," she said, and Joanna kissed her too.
"Is tea ready?" asked Bertie.
"It will be in a minute, dear—I can hear Her getting it."
They could all do that, but Bertie seemed annoyed that they should be kept waiting.
"You might have had it ready," he said, "I expect you're tired, Jo."
"Oh, not so terrible, thanks," said Joanna, who felt sorry for her future mother-in-law being asked to keep tea stewing in the pot against the uncertain arrival of travellers. But, as it happened, she did feel rather tired, and was glad when the door was suddenly kicked open and a large tea-tray was brought in and set down violently on a side table.
"Cream and sugar?" said Mrs. Hill nervously.
"Yes, thank you," said Joanna. She felt a little disconcerted by this new household of which she found herself a member. She wondered what Bertie's mother and sister thought of his middle-aged bride.
For a time they all sat round in silence. Joanna covertly surveyed the drawing-room. It was not unlike the parlour at Ansdore, but everything looked cheaper—they couldn't have given more than ten pound for their carpet, and she knew those fire-irons—six and eleven-three the set at the ironmongers. These valuations helped to restore her self-confidence and support the inspection which Agatha was conducting on her side. "Reckon the price of my clothes ud buy everything in this room," she thought to herself.
"Did you have a comfortable journey, Miss Godden?" asked Mrs. Hill.
"You needn't call her Miss Godden, ma," said Albert, "she's going to be one of the family."
"I had a fine journey," said Joanna, drowning Mrs. Hill's apologetic twitter, "the train came the whole of sixty miles with only one stop."
Agatha giggled, and Bertie stabbed her with a furious glance.
"Did you make this tea?" he asked.
"No—She made it."
"I might have thought as much. That girl can't make tea any better than the cat. You reelly might make it yourself when we have visitors."
"I hadn't time. I've only just come in."
"You seem to be out a great deal."
"I've my living to get."
Joanna played with her teaspoon. She felt ill at ease, though it would be difficult to say why. She had quarrelled too often with Ellen to be surprised at any family disagreements—it was not ten years since she had thought nothing of smacking Ellen before a disconcerted public.
What was there different—and there was something different—about this wrangle between a brother and sister, that it should upset her so—upset her so much that for some unaccountable reason she should feel the tears running out of her eyes.
On solemn ceremonial occasions Joanna always wore a veil, and this was now pushed up in several folds, to facilitate tea-drinking. She could feel the tears wetting it, so that it stuck to her cheeks under her eyes. She was furious with herself, but she could not stop the tears—she felt oddly weak and shaken. Agatha had flounced off with the teapot to make a fresh brew, Albert was leaning gloomily back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, Mrs. Hill was murmuring—"I hope you like fancy-work—I am very fond of fancy-work—I have made a worsted kitten." Joanna could feel the tears soaking through her veil, running down her cheeks—she could not stop them—and the next moment she heard Bertie's voice, high and aggrieved—"What are you crying for, Jo?"
Directly she heard it, it seemed to be the thing she had been dreading most. She could bear no more, and burst into passionate weeping.
They all gathered round her, Agatha with the new teapot, Mrs. Hill with her worsted, Bertie patting her on the back and asking what was the matter.
"I don't know," she sobbed—"I expect I'm tired, and I ain't used to travelling."
"Yes, I expect you must be tired—have a fresh cup of tea," said Agatha kindly.
"And then go upstairs and have a good lay down," said Mrs. Hill.
Joanna felt vaguely that Albert was ashamed of her. She was certainly ashamed of herself and of this entirely new, surprising conduct.
§27
By supper that night she had recovered, and remembered her breakdown rather as a bad dream, but neither that evening nor the next day could she quite shake off the feeling of strangeness and depression. She had never imagined that she would like town life, but she had thought that the unpleasantness of living in streets would be lost in the companionship of the man she loved—and she was disappointed to find that this was not so. Bertie, indeed, rather added to than took away from her uneasiness. He did not seem to fit into the Hill household any better than she did—in fact, none of the members fitted. Bertie and Agatha clashed openly, and Mrs. Hill was lost. The house was like a broken machine, full of disconnected parts, which rattled and fell about. Joanna was used to family quarrels, but she was not used to family disunion—moreover, though she would have allowed much between brother and sister, she had certain very definite notions as to the respect due to a mother. Both Bertie and Agatha were continually suppressing and finding fault with Mrs. Hill, and of the two Bertie was the worst offender. Joanna could not excuse him, even to her own all-too-ready heart. The only thing she could say was that it was most likely Mrs. Hill's own fault—her not having raised him properly.
Every day he went off to his office in Fetter Lane, leaving Joanna to the unrelieved society of his mother, for which he apologised profusely. Indeed, she found her days a little dreary, for the old lady was not entertaining, and she dared not go about much by herself in so metropolitan a place as Lewisham. Every morning she and her future mother-in-law went out shopping—that is to say they bought half-pounds and quarter-pounds of various commodities which Joanna at Ansdore would have laid in by the bushel and the hundredweight. They would buy tea at one grocer's, and then walk down two streets to buy cocoa from another, because he sold it cheaper than the shop where they had bought the tea. The late Mr. Hill had left his widow very badly off—indeed she could not have lived at all except for what her children gave her out of their salaries. To her dismay, Joanna discovered that while Agatha, in spite of silk stockings and Merry Widow hats, gave her mother a pound out of the weekly thirty shillings she earned as a typist, Albert gave her only ten shillings a week—his bare expenses.
"He says he doesn't see why he should pay more for living at home than he'd pay in digs—though, as a matter of fact I don't know anyone who'd take him for as little as that, even for only bed and breakfast."
"But what does he do with the rest of the money?"
"Oh, he has a lot of expenses, my dear—belongs to all sorts of grand clubs, and goes abroad every year with the Polytechnic, or even Cook's. Besides, he has lady friends that he takes about—used to, I should say, for, of course, he's done with all that now—but he was always the boy for taking ladies out—and never would demean himself to anything less than a Corner House."
"But he should ought to treat you proper, all the same," said Joanna.
She felt sorry and angry, and also, in some vague way, that it was her part to set matters right—that the wound in her love would be healed if she could act where Bertie was remiss. But Mrs. Hill would not let her open her fat purse on her account. "No, dear; we never let a friend oblige us." Joanna, who was not tactful, persisted, and the old lady became very frozen and genteel.
Bertie's hours were not long at the office. He was generally back at six, and took Joanna out—up to town, where they had dinner and then went on to some theatre or picture-palace, the costs of the expedition being defrayed out of her own pocket. She had never had so much dissipation in her life—she saw "The Merry Widow," "A Persian Princess," and all the musical comedies. Albert did not patronise the more serious drama, and for Joanna the British stage became synonymous with fluffy heads and whirling legs and jokes she could not understand. The late hours made her feel very tired, and on their way home Albert would find her sleepy and unresponsive. They always went by taxi from Lewisham station, and instead of taking the passionate opportunities of the darkness, she would sink her heavy head against his breast, holding his arm with both her tired hands. "Let me be, dear, let me be," she would murmur when he tried to rouse her—"this is what I love best."
She told herself that it was because she was so tired that she often felt depressed and wakeful at nights. Raymond Avenue was not noisy, indeed it was nearly as quiet as Ansdore, but on some nights Joanna lay awake from Bertie's last kiss till the crashing entrance of the Girl to pull up her blinds in the morning. At nights, sometimes, a terrible clearness came to her. This visit to her lover's house was showing her more of his character than she had learned in all the rest of their acquaintance. She could not bear to realize that he was selfish and small-minded, though, now she came to think of it, she had always been aware of it in some degree. She had never pretended to herself that he was good and noble—she had loved him for something quite different—because he was young and had brought her back her own youth, because he had a handsome face and soft, dark eyes, because in spite of all his cheek and knowingness he had in her sight a queer, appealing innocence.... He was like a child, even if it was a spoilt, selfish child. When she held his dark head in the crook of her arm, he was her child, her little boy.... And perhaps one day she would hold, through her love for him, a real child there, a child who was really innocent and helpless and weak—a child without grossness to scare her or hardness to wound her—her own child, born of her own body.
But though she loved him, this constant expression of his worst points could not fail to give her a feeling of chill. Was this the way he would behave in their home when they were married? Would he speak to her as he spoke to his mother? Would he speak to their children so?... She could not bear to think it, and yet she could not believe that marriage would change him all through. What if their marriage made them both miserable?—made them like some couples she had known on the Marsh, nagging and hating each other. Was she a fool to think of marrying him?—all that difference in their age ... only perfect love could make up for it ... and he did not like the idea of living in the country—he was set on his business—his "career," as he called it.... She did not think he wanted to marry her as much as she wanted to marry him.... Was it right to take him away from his work, which he was doing so well at, and bring him to live down at Ansdore? My, but he would probably scare her folk with some of his ways. However, it was now too late to draw back. She must go on with what she had begun. At all costs she must marry—not merely because she loved him, but because only marriage could hallow and silence the past. With all the traditions of her race and type upon her, Joanna could not face the wild harvest of love. Her wild oats must be decently gathered into the barn, even if they gave her bitter bread to eat.
§28
The case of "Godden versus Inland Revenue Commissioners" was heard at the High Court when Joanna had been at Lewisham about ten days. Albert tried to dissuade her from being present.
"I can't go with you, and I don't see how you can go alone."
"I shall be right enough."
"Yet you won't even go down the High Street by yourself—I never met anyone so inconsistent."
"It's my Appeal," said Joanna.
"But there's no need for you to attend. Can't you trust anyone to do anything without you?"
"Not Edward Huxtable," said Joanna decidedly.
"Then why did you choose him for your lawyer?"
"He's the best I know."
Bertie opened his mouth to carry the argument further, but laughed instead.
"You are a funny ole girl—so silly and so sensible, so hard and so soft, such hot stuff and so respectable ..." He kissed her at each item of the catalogue—"I can't half make you out."
However, he agreed to take her up to town when he went himself, and deposited her at the entrance of the Law Courts—a solid, impressive figure in her close-fitting tan coat and skirt and high, feathered toque, with the ceremonial veil pulled down over her face.
Beneath her imposing exterior she felt more than a little scared and lost. Godden seemed a poor thing compared to all this might of Inland Revenue Commissioners, spreading about her in passage and hall and tower.... The law had suddenly become formidable, as it had never been in Edward Huxtable's office.... However, she was fortunate in finding him, with the help of one or two policemen, and the sight of him comforted her with its suggestion of home and Watchbell Street, and her trap waiting in the sunshine outside the ancient door of the Huxtable dwelling.
Her Appeal was not heard till the afternoon, and in the luncheon interval he took her to some decorous dining-rooms—such as Joanna had never conceived could exist in London, so reminiscent were they of the George and the Ship and the New and the Crown and other of her market-day haunts. They ate beef and cabbage and jam roly poly, and discussed the chances of the day. Huxtable said he had "a pretty case—a very pretty case—you'll be surprised, Miss Joanna, to see what I've made of it."
And so she was. Indeed, if she hadn't heard the opening she would never have known it was her case at all. She listened in ever-increasing bewilderment and dismay. In spite of her disappointment in the matter of the Commissioners and their Referee, she had always looked upon her cause as one so glaringly righteous that it had only to be pleaded before any just judge to be at once established. But now ... the horror was, that it was no longer her cause at all. This was not Joanna Godden coming boldly to the Law of England to obtain redress from her grievous oppression by pettifogging clerks—it was just a miserable dispute between the Commissioners of Inland Revenue and the Lessor of Property under the Act. It was full of incomprehensible jargon about Increment Value, Original Site Value, Assessable Site Value, Land Value Duty, Estate Duty, Redemption of Land Tax, and many more such terms among which the names of Donkey Street and Little Ansdore appeared occasionally and almost frivolously, just to show Joanna that the matter was her concern. In his efforts to substantiate an almost hopeless case Edward Huxtable had coiled most of the 1910 Finance Act round himself, and the day's proceedings consisted of the same being uncoiled and stripped off him, exposing his utter nakedness in the eyes of the law. When the last remnant of protective jargon had been torn away, Joanna knew that her Appeal had been dismissed—and she would have to pay the Duty and also the expenses of the action.
The only comfort that remained was the thought of what she would say to Edward Huxtable when she could get hold of him. They had a brief, eruptive interview in the passage.
"You take my money for making a mess like that," stormed Joanna. "I tell you, you shan't have it—you can amuse yourself bringing another action for it."
"Hush, my dear lady—hush! Don't talk so loud. I've done my best for you, I assure you. I warned you not to bring the action in the first instance, but when I saw you were determined to bring it, I resolved to stand by you, and get you through if possible. I briefed excellent counsel, and really made out a very pretty little case for you."
"Ho! Did you? And never once mentioned my steam plough. I tell you when I heard all the rubbish your feller spoke I'd have given the case against him myself. It wasn't my case at all. My case is that I'm a hard-working woman, who's made herself a good position by being a bit smarter than other folk. I have a gentleman friend who cares for me straight and solid for fifteen years, and when he dies he leaves me his farm and everything he's got. I sell the farm, and get good money for it, which I don't spend on motor-cars like some folk, but on more improvements on my own farm. I make my property more valuable, and I've got to pay for it, if you please. Why, they should ought to pay me. What's farming coming to, I'd like to know, if we've got to pay for bettering ourselves? The Government ud like to see all farmers in the workhouse—and there we'll soon be, if they go on at this rate. And it's the disrespectfulness to Poor Arthur, too—he left Donkey Street to me—not a bit to me and the rest to them. But there they go, wanting to take most of it in Death Duty. The best Death Duty I know is to do what the dead ask us and not what they'd turn in their graves if they knew of. And poor Arthur who did everything in the world for me, even down to marrying my sister Ellen ..."
Edward Huxtable managed to escape.
"Drat that woman," he said to himself—"she's a terror. However, I suppose I've got to be thankful she didn't try to get any of that off her chest in Court—she's quite capable of it. Damn it all! She's a monstrosity—and going to be married too ...well, there are some heroes left in the world."
§29
Bertie was waiting for Joanna outside the Law Courts. In the stillness of the August evening and the yellow dusty sunshine, he looked almost contemplative, standing there with bowed head, looking down at his hands which were folded on his stick, while one or two pigeons strutted about at his feet. Joanna's heart melted at the sight of him. She went up to him, and touched his arm.
"Hullo, ole girl. So here you are. How did it go off?"
"I've lost."
"Damn! That's bad."
She saw that he was vexed, and a sharp touch of sorrow was added to her sense of outrage and disappointment.
"Yes, it was given against me. It's all that Edward Huxtable's fault. Would you believe me, but he never made out a proper case for me at all, but just a lawyer's mess, what the judge was quite right not to hold with."
"Have you lost much money?"
"A proper lot—but I shan't let Edward Huxtable get any of it. If he wants his fees he'll just about have to bring another action."
"Don't be a fool, Joanna—you'll have to pay the costs if they've been given against you. You'll only land yourself in a worse hole by making a fuss."
They were walking westward towards the theatres and the restaurants. Joanna felt that Bertie was angry with her—he was angry with her for losing her case, just as she was angry with Edward Huxtable. This was too much—the tears rose in her eyes.
"Will it do you much damage?" he asked. "In pocket, I mean."
"Oh, I—I'll have to sell out an investment or two, but it won't do any real hurt to Ansdore. Howsumever, I'll have to go without my motor-car."
"It was really rather silly of you to bring the action."
"How, silly?"
"Well, you can't have had much of a case, or you wouldn't have lost it like this in an hour's hearing."
"Stuff and nonsense! I'd a valiant case, if only that fool, Edward Huxtable, hadn't been anxious to show how many hard words he knew, instead of just telling the judge about my improvements and that."
"Really, Joanna, you might give up talking about your improvements. They've nothing to do with the matter at all. Can't you see that, as the Government wanted the money, it's nothing to them if you spent it on a steam plough or on a new hat. As a matter of fact, you might just as well have bought your motor-car—then at least we'd have that. Now you say you've given up the idea."
"Unless you make some money and buy it"—pain made Joanna snap.
"Yes—that's right, start twitting me because it's you who have the money. I know you have, and you've always known I haven't—I've never deceived you. I suppose you think I'm glad to be coming to live on you, to give up a fine commercial career for your sake. I tell you, any other man with my feelings would have made you choose between me and Ansdore—but I give up everything for your sake, and that's how you pay me—by despising me."
"Oh, don't, Bertie," said Joanna. She felt that she could bear no more.
They had come into Piccadilly, and the light was still warm—it was not yet dinner-time, but Joanna, who had had no tea, felt suddenly weak and faint.
"Let's go in there, dear," she said, as they reached the Popular Café, "and have a cup of tea. And don't let's quarrel, for I can't bear it."
He looked down at her drawn face and pity smote him.
"Pore ole girl—aren't you feeling well?"
"Not very—I'm tired, like—sitting listening to all that rubbish."
"Well, let's have an early dinner, and then go to a music-hall. You've never been to one yet, have you?"
"No," said Joanna. She would have much rather gone straight home, but this was not the time to press her own wishes. She was only too glad to have Bertie amicable and smiling again—she realized that they had only just escaped a serious quarrel.
The dinner, and the wine that accompanied it, made her feel better and more cheerful. She talked a good deal—even too much, for half a glass of claret had its potent effect on her fatigue. She looked flushed and untidy, for she had spent a long day in her hat and outdoor clothes, and her troubles had taken her thoughts off her appearance—she badly needed a few minutes before the looking-glass. As Albert watched her, he gave up his idea of taking her to the Palace, which he told himself would be full of smart people, and decided on the Alhambra Music Hall—then from the Alhambra he changed to the Holborn Empire.... Really it was annoying of Jo to come out with him looking like this—she ought to realize that she was not a young girl who could afford to let things slip. He had told her several times that her hat was on one side, ... And those big earrings she wore ... she ought to go in for something quieter at her age. Her get-up had always been too much on the showy side, and she was too independent of those helps to nature which much younger and better-looking women than herself were only too glad to use.... He liked to see a woman take out a powder-puff and flick it over her face in little dainty sweeps....
These reflections did not put him in a good humour for the evening's entertainment. They went by 'bus to the Holborn Empire where the first house had already started. Joanna felt a little repulsed by the big, rowdy audience, smoking and eating oranges and joining in the choruses of the songs. Her brief experience of the dress circle at Daly's or the Queen's had not prepared her for anything so characteristic as an English music-hall, with its half-participating audience. "Hurrah for Maudie!" as some favourite took the boards to sing, with her shoulders hunched up to the brim of her enormous hat, a heartrending song about her mother.
Joanna watched Bertie as he lounged beside her. She knew that he was sulking—the mere fact that he was entertaining her cheaply, by 'bus and music-hall instead of taxi and theatre, pointed to his displeasure. She wondered if he was enjoying this queer show, which struck her alternately as inexpressibly beautiful and inexpressibly vulgar. The lovely ladies like big handsome barmaids, who sang serious songs in evening dress and diamonds, apparently in the vicinity of Clapham High Street or the Monument, were merely incomprehensible. She could not understand what they were doing. The comedians she found amusing, when they did not shock her—Bertie had explained to her one or two of the jokes she could not understand. The "song-scenas" and acrobatic displays filled her with rapture. She would have liked that sort of thing the whole time.... Albert said it was a dull show, he grumbled at everything, especially the turns Joanna liked. But gradually the warm, friendly, vulgar atmosphere of the place infected him—he joined in one or two of the choruses, and seemed almost to forget about Joanna.