§4
That October the Farmers' Club Dinner was held as usual at the Woolpack. There had been some controversy about asking Joanna—there was controversy every year, but this year the difference lay in the issue, for the ayes had it.
The reasons for this change were indefinite—on the whole, no doubt, it was because people liked her better. They had grown used to her at Ansdore, where at first her mastership had shocked them; the scandal and contempt aroused by the Socknersh episode were definitely dead, and men took off their hats to the strenuousness with which she had pulled the farm together, and faced a crisis that would have meant disaster to many of her neighbours. Ansdore was one of the largest farms of the district, and it was absurd that it should never be represented at the Woolpack table merely on the ground that its master was a woman.
Of course many women wondered how Joanna could face such a company of males, and suggestions were made for admitting farmers' wives on this occasion. But Joanna was not afraid, and when approached as to whether she would like other women invited, or to bring a woman friend, she declared that she would be quite satisfied with the inevitable presence of the landlord's wife.
She realized that she would be far more imposing as the only woman guest, and made great preparations for a proper display. Among these was included the buying of a new gown at Folkestone. She thought that Folkestone, being a port for the channel steamers, would be more likely to have the latest French fashions than the nearer towns of Bulverhythe and Marlingate. My I But she would make the Farmers' Club sit up.
The dressmaker at Folkestone tried to persuade her not to have her sleeves lengthened or an extra fold of lace arranged along the top of her bodice.
"Madam has such a lovely neck and arms—it's a pity to cover them up—and it spoils the character of the gown. Besides, madam, this gown is not at all extreme—demi-toilet is what it really is."
"I tell you it won't do—I'm going to dine alone with several gentlemen, and it wouldn't be seemly to show such a lot of myself."
It ended, to the dressmaker's despair, in her draping her shoulders in a lace scarf and wearing kid gloves to her elbow; but though these pruderies might have spoilt her appearance at Dungemarsh Court, there was no doubt as to its effectiveness at the Woolpack. The whole room held its breath as she sailed in, with a rustle of amber silk skirts. Her hair was piled high against a tortoise-shell comb, making her statelier still.
Furnese of Misleham, who was chairman that year, came gaping to greet her. The others stared and stood still. Most of them were shocked, in spite of the scarf and the long gloves, but then it was just like Joanna Godden to swing bravely through an occasion into which most women would have crept. She saw that she had made a sensation, which she had expected and desired, and her physical modesty being appeased, she had no objection to the men's following eyes. She saw that Sir Harry Trevor was in the room, with his son Martin.
It was the first time that the Squire had been to the Farmers' Club Dinner. Up till then no one had taken him seriously as a farmer. For a year or two after his arrival in the neighbourhood he had managed the North Farthing estate through a bailiff, and on the latter's turning out unsatisfactory, had dismissed him, and at the same time let off a good part of the land, keeping only a few acres for cow-grazing round the house. Now, on his son's coming home and requiring an outdoor life, he had given a quarter's notice to the butcher-grazier to whom he had sub-let his innings, had bought fifty head of sheep, and joined the Farmers' Club—which he knew would be a practical step to his advantage, as it brought certain privileges in the way of marketing and hiring. Joanna was glad to see him at the Woolpack, because she knew that there was now a chance of the introduction she had unfortunately missed in Pedlinge village a few weeks ago. She had a slight market-day acquaintance with the Old Squire—as the neighbourhood invariably called him, to his intense annoyance—and now she greeted him with her broad smile.
"Good evening, Sir Harry."
"Good evening, Miss Godden. I'm pleased to see you here. You're looking very well."
His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified than by all the bulging glances of the other men.
"I'm pleased to see you, too, Sir Harry. I hear you've joined the Club."
"Surelye—as a real farmer ought to say; and so has my son Martin—he's going to do most of the work. Martin, you've never met Miss Godden. Let me introduce you."
Joanna's welcoming grin broke itself on the young man's stiff bow. There was a moment's silence.
"He doesn't look as if a London doctor had threatened him with consumption," said the Squire banteringly. "Sometimes I really don't, think I believe it—I think he's only come down here so as he can look after me."
Martin made some conventional remark. He was a tall, broadly built young man, with a dark healthy skin and that generally robust air which sometimes accompanies extreme delicacy in men.
"The doctor says he's been overworking," continued his father, "and that he ought to try a year's outdoor life and sea air. If you ask me, I should say he's overdone a good many things besides work—" he threw the boy a defiant, malicious glance, rather like a child who gets a thrust into an elder—"but Walland Marsh is as good a cure for over-play as for over-work. Not much to keep him up late hereabouts, is there, Miss Godden?"
"I reckon it'll be twelve o'clock before any of us see our pillows to-night," said Joanna.
"Tut! Tut I What terrible ways we're getting into, just when I'm proposing the place as a rest-cure. How do you feel, Miss Godden, being the only woman guest?"
"I like it."
"Bet you do—so do we."
Joanna laughed and bridled. She felt proud of her position—she pictured every farmer's wife on the Marsh lying awake that night so that she could ask her husband directly he came upstairs how Joanna Godden had looked, what she had said, and what she had worn.
§5
At dinner she sat on the Chairman's right. On her other side, owing to some accident of push and shuffle, sat young Martin Trevor. At first she had not thought his place accidental, in spite of his rather stiff manner before they sat down, but after a while she realized with a pang of vexation that he was not particularly pleased to find himself next her. He replied without interest to her remarks and then entered into conversation with his right-hand neighbour. Joanna was annoyed—she could not put down his constraint to shyness, for he did not at all strike her as a shy young man. Nor was he being ungracious to Mr. Turner of Beckett's House, though the latter could not talk of turnips half so entertainingly as Joanna would have done. He obviously did not want to speak to her. Why? Because of what had happened in Pedlinge all that time ago? She remembered how he had drawn back ... he had not liked the way she had spoken to Mr. Pratt. She had not liked it herself by the time she got to the road's turn. But to think of him nursing his feelings all this time ... and something she had said to Mr. Pratt ... considering that she had bought them all a new harmonium ... the lazy, stingy louts with their half-crowns....
She had lost her serenity, her sense of triumph—she felt vaguely angry with the whole company, and snapped at Arthur Alce when he spoke to her across the table. He had asked after Ellen, knowing she had been to Folkestone.
"Ellen's fine—and learning such good manners as it seems a shame to bring her into these parts at Christmas for her to lose 'em."
"On the other hand. Miss Godden, she might impart them to us," said the Squire from a little farther down.
"She's learning how to dance and make curtsies right down to the floor," said Joanna.
"Then she's fit to see the Queen. You really mustn't keep her away from us at Christmas—on the contrary, we ought to make some opportunities for watching her dance; she must be as pretty as a sprite."
"That she is," agreed Joanna, warming and mollified, "and I've bought her a new gown that pulls out like an accordion, so as she can wave her skirts about when she dances."
"Well, the drawing-room at North Farthing would make an excellent ball-room ... we must see about that—eh, Martin?"
"It'll want a new floor laid down—there's rot under the carpet," was his son's disheartening reply. But Joanna had lost the smarting of her own wound in the glow of her pride for Ellen, and she ate the rest of her dinner in good-humoured contempt of Martin Trevor.
When the time for the speeches came her health was proposed by the Chairman.
"Gentlemen," he said, "let us drink to—the Lady."
The chivalry of the committee had prompted them to offer her Southland to respond to this toast. But Joanna had doubts of his powers as an orator, whereas she had none of her own. She stood up, a glow of amber brightness above all the black coats, and spoke of her gratification, of her work at Ansdore and hopes for south-country farming. Her speech, as might have been expected, was highly dogmatic. She devoted her last words to the Marsh as a grain-bearing district—on one or two farms, where pasture had been broken, the yield in wheat had been found excellent. Since that was so, why had so few farms hitherto shown enterprise in this direction? There was no denying that arable paid better than pasture, and the only excuse for neglecting it was poverty of soil. It was obvious that no such poverty existed here—on the contrary, the soil was rich, and yet no crops were grown in it except roots and here and there a few acres of beans or lucerne. It was the old idea, she supposed, about breaking up grass. It was time that old idea was bust—she herself would lead the way at Ansdore next spring.
As she was the guest of the evening, they heard her with respect, which did not, however, survive her departure at the introduction of pipes and port.
"Out on the rampage again, is she?" said Southland to his neighbour.
"Well, if she busts that 'old idea' same as she bust the other 'old idea' about crossing Kent sheep, all I can say is that it's Ansdore she'll bust next."
"Whosumdever breaks pasture shall himself be broke," said Vine oracularly.
"Surelye—surelye," assented the table.
"She's got pluck all the same," said Sir Harry.
But he was only an amateur.
"I don't hold for a woman to have pluck," said Vennal of Beggar's Bush, "what do you say, Mr. Alce?"
"I say nothing, Mr. Vennal."
"Pluck makes a woman think she can do without a man," continued Vennal, "when everyone knows, and it's in Scripture, that she can't. Now Joanna Godden should ought to have married drackly minute Thomas Godden died and left her Ansdore, instead of which she's gone on plunging like a heifer till she must be past eight and twenty as I calculate—"
"Now, now, Mr. Vennal, we mustn't start anything personal of our lady guest," broke in Furnese from the Chair, "we may take up her ideas or take 'em down, but while she's the guest of this here Farmers' Club, which is till eleven-thirty precise, we mustn't start arguing about her age or matrimonious intentions. Anyways, I take it, that's a job for our wives."
"Hear, hear," and Joanna passed out of the conversation, for who was going to waste time either taking up or taking down a silly, tedious, foreign, unsensible notion like ploughing grass?...
Indeed, it may be said that her glory had gone up in smoke—the smoke of twenty pipes.
She had been obliged to leave the table just when it was becoming most characteristic and convivial, and to retire forlorn and chilly in her silken gown to the Woolpack parlour, where she and the landlady drank innumerable cups of tea. It was an unwelcome reminder of the fact that she was a woman, and that no matter how she might shine and impress the company for an hour, she did not really belong to it. She was a guest, not a member, of the Farmers' Club, and though a guest has more honour, he has less fellowship and fun. It was for fellowship and fun that she hungrily longed as she sat under the green lamp-shade of the Woolpack's parlour, and discoursed on servants and the price of turkeys with Mrs. Jupp, who was rather constrained and absent-minded owing to her simultaneous efforts to price Miss Godden's gown. Now and then a dull roar of laughter came to her from the Club room. What were they talking about, Joanna wondered. Had there been much debate over her remarks on breaking pasture?...
§6
On the whole, the Farmers' Club Dinner left behind it a rankling trail—for one thing, it was not followed as she had hoped and half expected by an invitation to join the Farmers' Club. No, they would never have a woman privileged among them—she realized that, in spite of her success, certain doors would always be shut on her. The men would far rather open those doors ceremonially now and then than allow her to go freely in and out. After all, perhaps they were right—hadn't she got her own rooms that they were shut out of?... Women were always different from men, even if they did the same things ... she had heard people talk of "woman's sphere." What did that mean? A husband and children, of course—any fool could tell you that. When you had a husband and children you didn't go round knocking at the men's doors, but shut yourself up snugly inside your own ... you were warm and cosy, and the firelight played on the ceiling.... But if you were alone inside your room—with no husband or child to keep you company ... then it was terrible, worse than being outside ... and no wonder you went round to the men's doors, and knocked on them and begged them to give you a little company, or something to do to help you to forget your empty room....
"Well, I could marry Arthur Alce any day I liked," she thought to herself.
But somehow that did not seem any solution to the problem.
She thought of one or two other men who had approached her, but had been scared off before they had reached any definite position of courtship. They were no good either—young Cobb of Slinches had married six months ago, and Jack Abbot of Stock Bridge belonged to the Christian Believers, who kept Sunday on Saturday, and in other ways fathered confusion. Besides, she didn't want to marry just anyone who would have her—some dull yeoman who would take her away from Ansdore, or else come with all his stupid, antiquated, man-made notions to sit for ever on her enterprising acres. She wanted her marriage to be some big, neighbour-startling adventure—she wanted either to marry someone above herself in birth and station, or else very much below. She had touched the fringe of the latter experience and found it disappointing, so she felt that she would now prefer the other—she would like to marry some man of the upper classes, a lawyer or a parson or a squire. The two first were represented in her mind by Mr. Huxtable and Mr. Pratt, and she did not linger over them, but the image she had put up for the third was Martin Trevor—dark, tall, well-born, comely and strong of frame, and yet with that hidden delicacy, that weakness which Joanna must have in a man if she was to love him....
She had been a fool about Martin Trevor—she had managed to put him against her at the start. Of course it was silly of him to mind what she said to Mr. Pratt, but that didn't alter the fact that she had been stupid herself, that she had failed to make a good impression just when she most wanted to do so. Martin Trevor was the sort of man she felt she could "take to," for in addition to his looks he had the quality she prized in males—the quality of inexperience; he was not likely to meddle with her ways, since he was only a beginner and would probably be glad of her superior knowledge and judgment. He would give her what she wanted—his good name and his good looks and her neighbours' envious confusion—and she would give him what he wanted, her prosperity and her experience. North Farthing House was poorer than Ansdore in spite of late dinners and drawing-rooms—the Trevors could look down on her from the point of view of birth and breeding but not from any advantage more concrete.
As for herself, for her own warm, vigorous, vital person—with that curious simplicity which was part of her unawakened state, it never occurred to her to throw herself into the balance when Ansdore was already making North Farthing kick the beam. She thought of taking a husband as she thought of taking a farm hand—as a matter of bargaining, of offering substantial benefits in exchange for substantial services. If in a secondary way she was moved by romantic considerations, that was also true of her engagement of her male servants. Just as she saw her future husband in his possibilities as a farm-hand, in his relations to Ansdore, so she could not help seeing every farm-hand in his possibilities as a husband, in his relations to herself.
§7
Martin Trevor would have been surprised had he known himself the object of so much attention. His attitude towards Joanna was one of indifference based on dislike—her behaviour towards Mr. Pratt had disgusted him at the start, but his antipathy was not all built on that foundation. During the weeks he had been at home, he had heard a good deal about her—indeed he had found her rather a dominant personality on the Marsh—and what he had heard had not helped turn him from his first predisposition against her.
As a young boy he had shared his brother's veneration of the Madonna, and though, when he grew up, his natural romanticism had not led him his brother's way, the boyish ideal had remained, and unconsciously all his later attitude towards women was tinged with it. Joanna was certainly not the Madonna type, and all Martin's soul revolted from her broad, bustling ways—everywhere he went he heard stories of her busyness and her bluff, of "what she had said to old Southland," or "the sass she had given Vine." She seemed to him to be an arrant, pushing baggage, running after notoriety and display. Her rudeness to Mr. Pratt was only part of the general parcel. He looked upon her as sexless, too, and he hated women to be sexless—his Madonna was not after Memling but after Raphael. Though he heard constant gossip about her farming activities and her dealings at market, he heard none about her passions, the likelier subject. All he knew was that she had been expected for years to marry Arthur Alce, but had not done so, and that she had also been expected at one time to marry her looker, but had not done so. The root of such romances must be poor indeed if this was all the flower that gossip could give them.
Altogether he was prejudiced against Joanna Godden, and the prejudice did not go deep enough to beget interest. He was not interested in her, and did not expect her to be interested in him; therefore it was with great surprise, not to say consternation, that one morning at New Romney Market he saw her bearing down upon him with the light of battle in her eye.
"Good morning, Miss Godden."
"Fine weather."
"Fine weather."
He would have passed on, but she barred the way, rather an imposing figure in her bottle-green driving coat, with a fur toque pressed down over the flying chestnut of her hair. Her cheeks were not so much coloured as stained deep with the sun and wind of Walland Marsh, and though it was November, a mass of little freckles smudged and scattered over her skin. It had not occurred to him before that she was even a good-looking creature.
"I'm thinking, Mr. Trevor," she said deliberately, "that you and me aren't liking each other as much as we should ought."
"Really, Miss Godden. I don't see why you need say that."
"Well, we don't like each other, do we? Leastways, you don't like me. Now"—lifting a large, well-shaped hand—"you needn't gainsay me, for I know what you think. You think I was middling rude to Mr. Pratt in Pedlinge street that day I first met you—and so I think myself, and I'm sorry, and Mr. Pratt knows it. He came around two weeks back to ask about Milly Pump, my chicken-gal, getting confirmed, and I told him I liked him and his ways so much that he could confirm the lot, gals and men—even old Stuppeny who says he's been done already, but I say it don't matter, since he's so old that it's sure to have worn off by this time."
Martin stared at her with his mouth open.
"So I say as I've done proper by Mr. Pratt," she continued, her voice rising to a husky flurry, "for I'll have to give 'em all a day off to get confirmed in, and that'll be a tedious affair for me. However, I don't grudge it, if it'll make things up between us—between you and me, I'm meaning."
"But, I—I—that is, you've made a mistake—your behaviour to Mr. Pratt is no concern of mine."
He was getting terribly embarrassed—this dreadful woman, what would she say next? Unconsciously yielding to a nervous habit, he took off his cap and violently rubbed up his hair the wrong way. The action somehow appealed to Joanna.
"But it is your concern, I reckon—you've shown me plain that it is. I could see you were offended at the Farmers' Dinner."
A qualm of compunction smote Martin.
"You're showing me that I've been jolly rude."
"Well, I won't say you haven't," said Joanna affably. "Still you've had reason. I reckon no one ud like me better for behaving rude to Mr. Pratt ..."
"Oh, damn Mr. Pratt!" cried Martin, completely losing his head—"I tell you I don't care tuppence what you or anyone says or does to him."
"Then you should ought to care, Mr. Trevor," said Joanna staidly, "not that I've any right to tell you, seeing how I've behaved. But at least I gave him a harmonium first—it's only that I couldn't abide the fuss he made of his thanks. I like doing things for folks, but I can't stand their making fools of themselves and me over it."
Trevor had become miserably conscious that they were standing in the middle of the road, that Joanna was not inconspicuous, and if she had been, her voice would have made up for it. He could see people—gaitered farmers, clay-booted farm-hands—staring at them from the pavement. He suddenly felt himself—not without justification—the chief spectacle of Romney market-day.
"Please don't think about it any more, Miss Godden," he said hurriedly. "I certainly should never presume to question anything you ever said or did to Mr. Pratt or anybody else. And, if you'll excuse me, I must go on—I'm a farmer now, you know," with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "and I've plenty of business in the market."
"Reckon you have," said Joanna, her voice suddenly falling flat.
He snatched off his cap and left her standing in the middle of the street.
§8
He did not let himself think of her for an hour or more—the episode struck him as grotesque and he preferred not to dwell on it. But after he had done his business of buying a farm horse, with the help of Mr. Southland who was befriending his inexperience, he found himself laughing quietly, and he suddenly knew that he was laughing over the interview with Joanna. And directly he had laughed, he was smitten with a sense of pathos—her bustle and self-confidence which hitherto had roused his dislike, now showed as something rather pathetic, a mere trapping of feminine weakness which would deceive no one who saw them at close quarters. Under her loud voice, her almost barbaric appearance, her queerly truculent manner, was a naïve mixture of child and woman—soft, simple, eager to please. He knew of no other woman who would have given herself away quite so directly and naturally as she had ... and his manhood was flattered. He was far from suspecting the practical nature of her intentions, but he could see that she liked him, and wanted to stand in his favour. She was not sexless, after all.
This realization softened and predisposed him; he felt a little contrite, too—he remembered how her voice had suddenly dragged and fallen flat at his abrupt farewell.... She was disappointed in his reception of her offers of peace—she had been incapable of appreciating the attitude his sophistication was bound to take up in the face of such an outburst. She had proved herself, too, a generous soul—frankly owning herself in the wrong and trying by every means to make atonement.... Few women would have been at once so frank and so practical in their repentance. That he suspected the repentance was largely for his sake did not diminish his respect of it. When he met Joanna Godden again, he would be nice to her.
The opportunity was given him sooner than he expected. Walking up the High Street in quest of some quiet place for luncheon—every shop and inn seemed full of thick smells of pipes and beer and thick noises of agricultural and political discussion conducted with the mouth full—he saw Miss Godden's trap waiting for her outside the New Inn. He recognized her equipage, not so much from its make or from the fat cob in the shafts, as from the figure of old Stuppeny dozing at Smiler's head. Old Stuppeny went everywhere with Miss Godden, being now quite unfit for work on the farm. His appearance was peculiar, for he seemed, like New Romney church tower, to be built in stages. He wore, as a farm-labourer of the older sort, a semi-clerical hat, which with his long white beard gave him down to the middle of his chest a resemblance to that type still haunting the chapels of marsh villages and known as Aged Evangelist—from his chest to his knees, he was mulberry coat and brass buttons, Miss Joanna Godden's coachman, though as the vapours of the marsh had shaped him into a shepherd's crook, his uniform lost some of its effect. Downwards from the bottom of his coat he was just a farm-labourer, with feet of clay and corduroy trousers tied with string.
His presence showed that Miss Godden was inside the New Inn, eating her dinner, probably finishing it, or he would not have brought the trap round. It was just like her, thought Martin, with a tolerant twist to his smile, to go to the most public and crowded place in Romney for her meal, instead of shrinking into the decent quiet of some shop. But Joanna Godden had done more for herself in that interview than she had thought, for though she still repelled she was no longer uninteresting. Martin gave up searching for that quiet meal, and walked into the New Inn.
He found Joanna sitting at a table by herself, finishing a cup of tea. The big table was edged on both sides with farmers, graziers and butchers, while the small tables were also occupied, so there was not much need for his apologies as he sat down opposite her. Her face kindled at once—
"I'm sorry I'm so near finished."
She was a grudgeless soul, and Martin almost liked her.
"Have you done much business to-day?"
"Not much. I'm going home as soon as I've had my dinner. Are you stopping long?"
"Till I've done a bit of shopping"—he found himself slipping into the homeliness of her tongue—"I want a good spade and some harness."
"I'll tell you a good shop for harness ..." Joanna loved enlightening ignorance and guiding inexperience, and while Martin's chop and potatoes were being brought she held forth on different makes of harness and called spades spades untiringly. He listened without rancour, for he was beginning to like her very much. His liking was largely physical—he wouldn't have believed a month ago that he should ever find Joanna Godden attractive, but to-day the melting of his prejudice seemed to come chiefly from her warm beauty, from the rich colouring of her face and the flying sunniness of her hair, from her wide mouth with its wide smile, from the broad, strong set of her shoulders, and the sturdy tenderness of her breast.
She saw that he had changed. His manner was different, more cordial and simple—the difference between his coldness and his warmth was greater than in many, for like most romantics he had found himself compelled at an early age to put on armour, and the armour was stiff and disguising in proportion to the lightness and grace of the body within. Not that he and Joanna talked of light and graceful things ... they talked, after spades and harness, of horses and sheep, and of her ideas on breaking up grass, which was to be a practical scheme at Ansdore that spring in spite of the neighbours, of the progress of the new light railway from Lydd to Appledore, of the advantages and disadvantages of growing lucerne. But the barrier was down between them, and he knew that they were free, if they chose, to go on from horses and sheep and railways and crops to more daring, intimate things, and because of that same freedom they stuck to the homely topics, like people who are free to leave the fireside but wait till the sun is warmer on the grass.
He had begun his apple-tart before she rose.
"Well, I must be getting back now. Good-bye, Mr. Trevor. If you should ever happen to pass Ansdore, drop in and I'll give you a cup of tea."
He was well aware that the whole room had heard this valediction. He saw some of the men smiling at each other, but he was not annoyed. He rose and went with her to the door, where she hugged herself into her big driving coat. Something about her made him feel big enough to ignore the small gossip of the Marsh.
§9
He liked her now—he told himself that she was good common stuff. She was like some sterling homespun piece, strong and sweet-smelling—she was like a plot of the marsh earth, soft and rich and alive. He had forgotten her barbaric tendency, the eccentricity of looks and conduct which had at first repelled him—that aspect had melted in the unsuspected warmth and softness he had found in her. He had been mistaken as to her sexlessness—she was alive all through. She was still far removed from his type, but her fundamental simplicity had brought her nearer to it, and in time his good will would bring her the rest of the way. Anyhow, he would look forward to meeting her again—perhaps he would call at Ansdore, as she had proposed.
Joanna was not blind to her triumph, and it carried her beyond her actual attainment into the fulfilment of her hopes. She saw Martin Trevor already as her suitor—respectful, interested, receptive of her wisdom in the matter of spades. She rejoiced in her courage in having taken the first step—she would not have much further to go now. Now that she had overcome his initial dislike, the advantages of the alliance must be obvious to him. She looked into the future, and between the present moment and the consummated union of North Farthing and Ansdore, she saw thrilling, half-dim, personal adventures for Martin and Joanna ... the touch of his hands would be quite different from the touch of Arthur Alce's ... and his lips—she had never wanted a man's lips before, except perhaps Socknersh's for one wild, misbegotten minute ... she held in her heart the picture of Martin's well-cut, sensitive mouth, so unlike the usual mouths of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, which were either coarse-lipped or no-lipped.... Martin's mouth was wonderful—it would be like fire on hers....
Thus Joanna rummaged in her small stock of experience, and of the fragments built a dream. Her plans were not now all concrete—they glowed a little, though dimly, for her memory held no great store, and her imagination was the imagination of Walland Marsh, as a barndoor fowl to the birds that fly. She might have dreamed more if her mind had not been occupied with the practical matter of welcoming Ellen home for her Christmas holidays.
Ellen, who arrived on Thomas-day, already seemed in some strange way to have grown apart from the life of Ansdore. As Joanna eagerly kissed her on the platform at Rye, there seemed something alien in her soft cool cheek, in the smoothness of her hair under the dark boater hat with its deviced hat-band.
"Hullo, Joanna," she said.
"Hullo, dearie. I've just about been pining to get you back. How are you?—how's your dancing?"—This as she bundled her up beside her in the trap, while the porter helped old Stuppeny with her trunk.
"I can dance the waltz and the polka."
"That's fine—I've promised the folks around here that you shall show 'em what you can do."
She gave Ellen another warm, proud hug, and this time the child's coolness melted a little. She rubbed her immaculate cheek against her sister's sleeve—
"Good old Jo ..."
Thus they drove home at peace together.
The peace was shattered many times between that day and Christmas. Ellen had forgotten what it was like to be slapped and what it was like to receive big smacking kisses at odd encounters in yard or passage—she resented both equally. "You're like an old bear, Jo—an awful old bear." She had picked up at school a new vocabulary, of which the word "awful," used to express every quality of pleasure or pain, was a fair sample. Joanna sometimes could not understand her—sometimes she understood too well.
"I sent you to school to be made a little lady of, and here you come back speaking worse than a National child."
"All the girls talk like that at school."
"Then seemingly it was a waste to send you there, since you could have learned bad manners cheaper at home."
"But the mistresses don't allow it," said Ellen, in hasty fear of being taken away, "you get a bad mark if you say 'damn.'"
"I should just about think you did, and I'd give you a good spanking too. I never heard such language—no, not even at the Woolpack."
Ellen gave her peculiar, alien smile.
"You're awfully old-fashioned, Jo."
"Old-fashioned, am I, because I don't go against my Catechism and take the Lord's name in vain?"
"Yes, you do—every time you say 'Lord sakes' you take the Lord's name in vain, and it's common into the bargain."
Here Joanna lost her temper and boxed Ellen's ears.
"You dare say I'm common! So that's what you learn at school?—to come home and call your sister common. Well, if I'm common, you're common too, since we're the same blood."
"I never said you were common," sobbed Ellen—"and you really are a beast, hitting me about. No wonder I like school better than home if that's how you treat me."
Joanna declared with violence if that was how she felt she should never see school again, whereupon Ellen screamed and sobbed herself into a pale, quiet, tragic state—lying back in her chair, her face patchy with crying, her head falling queerly sideways like a broken doll's—till Joanna, scared and contrite, assured her that she had not meant her threat seriously, and that Ellen should stop at school as long as she was a good girl and minded her sister.
This sort of thing had happened every holiday, but there were also brighter aspects, and on the whole Joanna was proud of her little sister and pleased with the results of the step she had taken. Ellen could not only dance and drop beautiful curtsies, but she could play tunes on the piano, and recite poetry. She could ask for things in French at table, could give startling information about the Kings of England and the exports and imports of Jamaica, and above all these accomplishments, she showed a welcome alacrity to display them, so that her sister could always rely on her for credit and glory.
"When Martin Trevor comes I'll make her say her piece."
§10
Martin came on Christmas Day. He knew that the feast would lend a special significance to the visit, but he did not care; for in absence he had idealized Joanna into a fit subject for flirtation. He had no longer any wish to meet her on the level footing of friendship—besides, he was already beginning to feel lonely on the Marsh, to long for the glow of some romance to warm the fogs that filled his landscape. In spite of his father's jeers, he was no monk, and generally had some sentimental adventure keeping his soul alive—but he was fastidious and rather bizarre in his likings, and since he had come to North Farthing, no one, either in his own class or out of it, had appealed to him, except Joanna Godden.
She owed part of her attraction to the surviving salt of his dislike. There was still a savour of antagonism in his liking of her. Also his curiosity was still unsatisfied. Was that undercurrent of softness genuine? Was she really simple and tender under her hard flaunting? Was she passionate under her ignorance and naïveté? Only experiment could show him, and he meant to investigate, not merely for the barren satisfaction of his curiosity, but for the satisfaction of his manhood which was bound up with a question.
When he arrived, Joanna was still in church—on Christmas Day as on other selected festivals, she always "stayed the Sacrament," and did not come out till nearly one. He went to meet her, and waited for her some ten minutes in the little churchyard which was a vivid green with the Christmas rains. The day was clear and curiously soft for the season, even on the Marsh where the winters are usually mild. The sky was a delicate blue, washed with queer, flat clouds—the whole country of the Marsh seemed faintly luminous, holding the sunshine in its greens and browns. Beside the dyke which flows by Brodnyx village stood a big thorn tree, still bright with haws. It made a vivid red patch in the foreground, the one touch of Christmas in a landscape which otherwise suggested October—especially in the sunshine, which poured in a warm shower on to the altar-tomb where Martin sat.
He grew dreamy with waiting—his thoughts seemed to melt into the softness of the day, to be part of the still air and misty sunshine, just as the triple-barned church with its grotesque tower was part.... He could feel the great Marsh stretching round him, the lonely miles of Walland and Dunge and Romney, once the sea's bed, now lately inned for man and his small dwellings, his keepings and his cares, perhaps one day to return to the same deep from which it had come. People said that the bells of Broomhill church—drowned in the great floods which had changed the Rother's mouth—still rang under the sea. If the sea came to Brodnyx, would Brodnyx bells ring on?—And Pedlinge? And Brenzett? And Fairfield? And all the little churches of Thomas à Becket on their mounds?—What a ringing there would be.
He woke out of his daydream at the sound of footsteps—the people were coming out, and glancing up he saw Joanna a few yards off. She looked surprised to see him, but also she made no attempt to hide her pleasure.
"Mr. Trevor! You here?"
"I came over to Ansdore to wish you a happy Christmas, and they told me you were still in church."
"Yes—I stopped for Communion—" her mouth fell into a serious, reminiscent line, "you didn't come to the first service, neither?"
"No, my brother's at home, and he took charge of my father's spiritual welfare—they went off to church at Udimore, and I was too lazy to follow them."
"I'm sorry you didn't come here—they used my harmonium, and it was valiant."
He smiled at her adjective.
"I'll come another day and hear your valiant harmonium. I suppose you think everybody should go to church?"
"My father went, and I reckon I'll keep on going."
"You always do as your father did?"
"In most ways."
"But not in all?—I hear startling tales of new-shaped waggons and other adventures, to say nothing of your breaking up grass next spring."
"Well, if you don't see any difference between breaking up grass and giving up church ..."
"They are both a revolt from habit."
"Now, don't you talk like that—it ain't seemly. I don't like hearing a man make a mock of good things, and going to church is a good thing, as I should ought to know, having just come out of it."
"I'm sorry," said Martin humbly, and for some reason he felt ashamed. They were walking now along the Pedlinge road, and the whole Marsh, so broad and simple, seemed to join in her rebuke of him.
She saw his contrite look, and repented of her sharpness.
"Come along home and have a bit of our Christmas dinner."
Martin stuttered—he had not expected such an invitation, and it alarmed him.
"We all have dinner together on Christmas Day," continued Joanna, "men and gals, old Stuppeny, Mrs. Tolhurst, everybody—we'd take it kindly if you'd join us. But—I'm forgetting—you'll be having your own dinner at home."
"We shan't have ours till the evening."
"Oh—late dinner"—her tone became faintly reverential—"it ud never do if we had that. The old folk, like Stuppeny and such, ud find their stomachs keep them awake. We've got two turkeys and a goose and plum puddings and mince pies, to say nothing of the oranges and nuts—that ain't the kind of food to go to bed with."
"I agree," said Martin, smiling.
"Then you'll come and have dinner at Ansdore?"
They had reached the first crossing of the railway line, and if he was going back to North Farthing he should turn here. He could easily make an excuse—no man really wanted to eat two Christmas dinners—but his flutter was gone, and he found an attraction in the communal meal to which she was inviting him. He would like to see the old folk at their feast, the old folk who had been born on the Marsh, who had grown wrinkled with its sun and reddened with its wind and bent with their labours in its damp soil. There would be Joanna too—he would get a close glimpse of her. It was true that he would be pulling the cord between them a little tighter, but already she was drawing him and he was coming willingly. To-day he had found in her an unsuspected streak of goodness, a sound, sweet core which he had not looked for under his paradox of softness and brutality.... It would be worth while committing himself with Joanna Godden.
§11
Dinner on Christmas Day was always in the kitchen at Ansdore. When Joanna reached home with Martin, the two tables, set end to end, were laid—with newly ironed cloths and newly polished knives, but with the second-best china only, since many of the guests were clumsy. Joanna wished there had been time to get out the best china, but there was not.
Ellen came flying to meet them, in a white serge frock tied with a red sash.
"Arthur Alce has come, Jo—we're all waiting. Is Mr. Trevor coming too?" and she put her head on one side, looking up at him through her long fringe.
"Yes, duckie. Mr. Trevor's dropped in to taste our turkey and plum pudding—to see if they ain't better than his own to-night."
"Is he going to have another turkey and plum pudding to-night? How greedy!"
"Be quiet, you sassy little cat"—and Joanna's hand swooped, missing Ellen's head only by the sudden duck she gave it.
"Leave me alone, Joanna—you might keep your temper just for Christmas Day."
"I won't have you sass strangers."
"I wasn't sassing."
"You was."
"I wasn't."
Martin felt scared.
"I hope you don't mean me by the stranger," he said, taking up lightness as a weapon, "I think I know you well enough to be sassed—not that I call that sassing."
"Well, it's good of you not to mind," said Joanna, "personally I've great ideas of manners, and Ellen's brought back some queer ones from her school, though others she's learned are beautiful. Fancy, she never sat down to dinner without a serviette."
"Never," said Ellen emphatically.
Martin appeared suitably impressed. He thought Ellen a pretty little thing, strangely exotic beside her sister.
Dinner was ready in the kitchen, and they all went in, Joanna having taken off her coat and hat and smoothed her hair. Before they sat down there were introductions to Arthur Alce and to Luck and Broadhurst and Stuppeny and the other farm people. The relation between employer and employed was at once more patriarchal and less sharply defined at Ansdore than it was at North Farthing—Martin tried to picture his father sitting down to dinner with the carter and the looker and the housemaid ... it was beyond imagination, yet Joanna did it quite naturally. Of course there was a smaller gulf between her and her people—the social grades were inclined to fuse on the Marsh, and the farmer was only just better than his looker—but on the other hand, she seemed to have far more authority....
"Now, hold your tongues while I say grace," she cried.
Joanna carved the turkeys, refusing to deputise either to Martin or to Alce. At the same time she led a general kind of conversation. The Christmas feast was to be communal in spirit as well as in fact—there were to be no formalities above the salt or mutterings below it. The new harmonium provided a good topic, for everyone had heard it, except Mrs. Tolhurst who had stayed to keep watch over Ansdore, cheering herself with the prospect of carols in the evening.
"It sounded best in the psalms," said Wilson, Joanna's looker since Socknersh's day—"oh, the lovely grunts it made when it said—'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee!"
"So it did," said Broadhurst, "but I liked it best in the Herald Angels."
"I liked it all through," said Milly Pump, the chicken-girl. "And I thought Mr. Elphick middling clever to make it sound as if it wur playing two different tunes at the same time."
"Was that how it sounded?" asked Mrs. Tolhurst wistfully, "maybe they'll have it for the carols to-night."
"Surelye," said old Stuppeny, "you'd never have carols wudout a harmonister. I'd lik myself to go and hear it, but doubt if I ull git so far wud so much good victual inside me."
"No, you won't—not half so far," said Joanna briskly, "you stop at home and keep quiet after this, or you'll be having bad dreams to-night."
"I never do but have one kind o' dream," said old Stuppeny, "I dream as I'm setting by the fire and a young gal brings me a cup of cocoa. 'Tis but an old dream, but reckon the Lord God sends the old dreams to the old folk—all them new dreams that are about on the Marsh, they goes to the young uns."
"Well, you've no call to complain of your dreams, Stuppeny," said Wilson, "'tisn't everyone who has the luck to dream regular of a pretty young gal. Leastways, I guess she's pretty, though you äun't said it."
"I döan't take much count on her looks—'tis the cocoa I'm after, though it äun't often as the Lord God lets the dream stay till I've drunk my cup. Sometimes 'tis my daughter Nannie wot brings it, but most times 'tis just some unacquainted female."
"Oh, you sorry old dog," said Wilson, and the table laughed deep-throatedly, or giggled, according to sex. Old Stuppeny looked pleased. His dream, for some reason unknown to himself, never failed to raise a laugh, and generally produced a cup of cocoa sooner or later from one of the girls.
Martin did not join in the discussion—he felt that his presence slightly damped the company, and for him to talk might spoil their chances of forgetting him. He watched Miss Godden as she ate and laughed and kept the conversation rolling—he also watched Arthur Alce, trying to use this man's devotion as a clue to what was left of Joanna's mystery. Alce struck him as a dull fellow, and he put down his faithfulness to the fact that having once fallen into love as into a rut he had lain there ever since like a sheep on its back. He could see that Alce did not altogether approve of his own choice—her vigour and flame, her quick temper, her free airs—she was really too big for these people; and yet she was so essentially one of them ... their roots mingled in the same soil, the rich, damp, hardy soil of the Marsh.
His attitude towards her was undergoing its second and final change. Now he knew that he would never want to flirt with her. He did not want her tentatively or temporarily. He still wanted her adventurously, but her adventure was not the adventure of siege and capture but of peaceful holding. Like the earth, she would give her best not to the man who galloped over her, but to the man who chose her for his home and settlement. Thus he would hold her, or not at all. Very likely after to-day he would renounce her—he had not yet gone too far, his eyes were still undazzled, and he could see the difficulties and limitations in which he was involving himself by such a choice. He was a gentleman and a townsman—he trod her country only as a stranger, and he knew that in spite of the love which the Marsh had made him give it in the few months of his dwelling, his thoughts still worked for years ahead, when better health and circumstances would allow him to go back to the town, to a quick and crowded life. Could he then swear himself to the slow blank life of the Three Marshes, where events move deliberately as a plough? To the empty landscape, to the flat miles? He would have to love her enough to endure the empty flatness that framed her. He could never take her away, any more than he could take away Ansdore or North Farthing. He must make a renunciation for her sake—could he do so? And after all, she was common stuff—a farmer's daughter, bred at the National School. By taking her he would be making just a yokel of himself.... Yet was it worth clinging to his simulacrum of gentility—boosted up by his father's title and a few dead rites, such as the late dinner which had impressed her so much. The only real difference between the Goddens and the Trevors was that the former knew their job and the latter didn't.
All this thinking did not make either for much talk or much appetite, and Joanna was disappointed. She let fall one or two remarks on farming and outside matters, thinking that perhaps the conversation was too homely and intimate for him, but he responded only languidly.
"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Trevor," said Ellen pertly.
"You eat your pudding," said Joanna.
It occurred to her that perhaps Martin was disgusted by the homeliness of the meal—after all, he was gentry, and it was unusual for gentry to sit down to dinner with a crowd of farm-hands.... No doubt at home he had wine-glasses, and a servant-girl to hand the dishes. She made a resolution to ask him again and provide both these luxuries. To-day she would take him into the parlour and make Ellen show off her accomplishments, which would help put a varnish of gentility on the general coarseness of the entertainment. She wished she had asked Mr. Pratt—she had thought of doing so, but finally decided against it.
So when the company had done shovelling the Stilton cheese into their mouths with their knives, she announced that she and Mr. Trevor would have their cups of tea in the parlour, and told Milly to go quick and light the fire.
Ellen was most satisfactorily equal to this part of the occasion. She recited "Curfew shall not Ring Tonight," and played Haydn's "Gipsy Rondo." Joanna began to feel complacent once more.
"I made up my mind she should go to a good school," she said when her sister had run back to what festivities lingered in the kitchen, "and really it's wonderful what they've taught her. She'll grow up to be a lady."
It seemed to Martin that she stressed the last word rather wistfully, and the next moment she added—
"There's not many of your sort on the Marsh."
"How do you mean—my sort?"
"Gentlefolk."
"Oh, we don't trouble to call ourselves gentlefolk. My father and I are just plain farmers now."
"But you don't really belong to us—you're the like of the Savilles at Dungemarsh Court, and the clergy families."
"Is that where you put us?—We'd find our lives jolly dull if we shut ourselves up in that set. I can tell you that I've enjoyed myself far more here to-day than ever at the Court or the Rectory. Besides, Miss Godden, your position on Walland Marsh is very much better than ours. You're a great personage, you know."
"Reckon folks talk about me," said Joanna proudly. "Maybe you've heard 'em."
He nodded.
"You've heard about me and Arthur Alce?"
"I've heard some gossip."
"Don't you believe it. I'm fond of Arthur, but he ain't my style—and I could do better for myself ..."
She paused—her words seemed to hang in the flickering warmth of the room. She was waiting for him to speak, and he felt a little shocked and repelled. She was angling for him—he had never suspected that.
"I must go," he said, standing up.
"So soon?"
"Yes—tradition sends one home on Christmas Day."
He moved towards the door, and she followed him, glowing and majestic in the shadows of the firelit room. Outside, the sky was washed with a strange, fiery green, in which the new kindled stars hung like lamps.
They stood for a moment on the threshold, the warm, red house behind them, before them the star-hung width and emptiness of the Marsh. Martin blocked the sky for Joanna, as he turned and held out his hand. Then, on the brink of love, she hesitated. A memory smote her—of herself standing before another man who blocked the sky, and in whose eyes sat the small, enslaved image of herself. Was she just being a fool again?—Ought she to draw back while she had still the power, before she became his slave, his little thing, and all her bigness was drowned in his eyes. She knew that whatever she gave him now could never be taken back. Here stood the master of the mistress of Ansdore.
As for Martin, his thoughts were of another kind.
"Good-bye," he said, renouncing her—for her boldness and her commonness and all that she would mean of change and of foregoing—"Good-bye, Joanna."
He had not meant to say her name, but it had come, and with it all the departing adventure of love. She seemed to fall towards him, to lean suddenly like a tree in a gale—he smelt a fresh, sweet smell of clean cotton underclothing, of a plain soap, of free unperfumed hair ... then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her warm, shy mouth, feeling that for this moment he had been born.
§12
"Well, where have you been?" asked Sir Harry, as his son walked in at the hall door soon after six.
"I've been having dinner with Joanna Godden."
"The deuce you have."
"I looked in to see her this morning and she asked me to stay."
"You've stayed long enough—your saintly brother's had to do the milking."
"Where's Dennett?"
"Gone to the carols with the rest. Confounded nuisance, these primitive religious impulses of an elemental people—always seem to require an outlet at an hour when other people want their meals."
"They'll be back in time for dinner."
"I doubt it, and cook's gone too—and Tom Saville's coming, you know."
"Well, I'd better go and see after the milking."
"Don't worry. I've finished," and a dark round head came round the door, followed by a hunched figure in a cloak, from the folds of which it deprecatingly held out a pint jug.
"What's that?"
"The results of half an hour's milking. I know I should have got more, but I think the cows found me unsympathetic."
Martin burst out laughing. Ordinarily he would have felt annoyed at the prospect of having to go milking at this hour, but to-night he was expansive and good-humoured towards all beasts and men.
He laughed again—
"I don't know that the cows have any particular fancy for me, but I'll go and see what I can do."
"I'm sorry not to have succeeded better," said his brother.
The elder Trevor was only two years older than Martin, but his looks gave him more. His features were blunter, more humorous, and his face was already lined, while his hands looked work-worn. He wore a rough grey cassock buttoned up to his chin.
"You should have preached to them," said Sir Harry, "like St. Francis of something or other. You should have called them your sisters and they'd have showered down their milk in gallons. What's the good of being a monk if you can't work miracles?"
"I leave that to St. Francis Dennett—I'm quite convinced that cows are milked only supernaturally, and I find it very difficult even to be natural with them. Perhaps Martin will take me in hand and show me that much."
"I don't think I need. I hear the servants coming in."
"Thank God," exclaimed Sir Harry, "now perhaps we shall get our food cooked. Martin's already had dinner, Lawrence—he had it with Joanna Godden. Martin, I don't know that I like your having dinner with Joanna Godden. It marks you—they'll talk about it at the Woolpack for weeks, and it'll probably end in your having to marry her to make her an honest woman."
"That's what I mean to do—to marry her."
The words broke out of him. He had certainly not meant to tell his father anything just yet. Apart from his natural reserve, Sir Harry was not the man he would have chosen for such confidences till they became inevitable. The fact that his father was still emotionally young and had love affairs of his own gave him feelings of repugnance and irritation—he could have endured the conventionally paternal praise or blame, but he was vaguely outraged by the queer basis of equality from which Sir Harry dealt with his experiences. But now the truth was out. What would they say, these two?—The old rake who refused to turn his back on youth and love, and the triple-vowed religious who had renounced both before he had enjoyed either.
Sir Harry was the first to speak.
"Martin, I am an old man, who will soon be forced to dye his hair, and really my constitution is not equal to these shocks. What on earth makes you think you want to marry Joanna Godden?"
"I love her."
"A most desperate situation. But surely marriage is rather a drastic remedy."
"Well, don't let's talk about it any longer. I'm going to dress—Saville will be here in a quarter of an hour."
"But I must talk about it. Hang it all, I'm your father—I'm the father of both of you, though you don't like it a bit and would rather forget it. Martin, you mustn't marry Joanna Godden however much you love her. It would be a silly mistake—she's not your equal, and she's not your type. Have you asked her?"
"Practically."
"Oh that's all right, then. It doesn't matter asking a woman practically as long as you don't ask her literally."
"Father, please don't talk about it."
"I will talk about it. Lawrence, do you know what this idiot's letting himself in for? Have you seen Joanna Godden? Why, she'd never do for him? She's a big, bouncing female, and her stays creak."
"Be quiet, father. You make me furious."
"Yes, you'll be disrespectful to me in a minute. That would be very sad, and the breaking of a noble record. Of course it's presumptuous of me to want a lady for my daughter-in-law, and perhaps you're right to chuck away the poor remains of our dignity—they were hardly worth keeping."
"I've thought over that," said Martin. He saw now that having recklessly started the subject he could not put it aside till it had been fought out. "I've thought over that, and I've come to the conclusion that Joanna's worth any sacrifice I can make for her."
"But not marriage—why must you ask her to marry you? You don't really know her. You'll cool off."
"I shan't."
"What about your health, Martin?" asked Lawrence, "are you fit and able to marry? You know what the doctor said."
"He said I might go off into consumption if I hung on in town—that beastly atmosphere at Wright's and all the racket.... But there's nothing actually wrong with me, I'm perfectly fit down here. I'll last for ever in this place, and I tell you it's been a ghastly thought till now—knowing that I must either stop here, away from all my friends and interests, or else shorten my life. But now, I don't care—when I marry Joanna Godden I'll take root, I'll belong to the Marsh, I'll be at home. You don't know Joanna Godden, Lawrence—if you did I believe you'd like her. She's so sane and simple—she's so warm and alive; and she's good, too—when I met her to-day, she had just been to Communion. She'll help me to live—at last I'll be able to live the best life for me, body and soul, down here in the sea air, with no town rubbish ..."
"It sounds a good thing," said Lawrence. "After all, father, there really isn't much use trying to keep up the state of the Trevors and all that now ..."
"No, there isn't—especially when this evening's guest will arrive in two minutes to find us sitting round in dirt and darkness and dissension, all because we've been too busy discussing our heir's betrothal to a neighbouring goose-girl to trouble about such fripperies as dressing for dinner. Of course now Lawrence elects to take Martin's part there's no good my trying to stand against the two of you. I've always been under your heels, ever since you were old enough to boss me. Let the state of the Trevors go—Martin, marry Joanna Godden and we will come to you for our mangolds—Lawrence, if you were not hindered by your vows, I should suggest your marrying one of the Miss Southlands or the Miss Vines, and then we could have a picturesque double wedding. As for me, I will build on more solid foundations than either of you, and marry my cook."
With which threat he departed to groom himself.
"He'll be all right," said Martin, "he likes Joanna Godden really."
"So do I. She sounds a good sort. Will you take me to see her before I go?"
"Certainly. I want you to meet her. When you do you'll see that I'm not doing anything rash, even from the worldly point of view. She comes of fine old yeoman stock, and she's of far more consequence on the Marsh than any of us."
"I can't see that the social question is of much importance. As long as your tastes and your ideas aren't too different ..."
"I'm afraid they are, rather. But somehow we seem to complement each other. She's so solid and so sane—there's something barbaric about her too ... it's queer."
"I've seen her. She's a fine-looking girl—a bit older than you, isn't she?"
"Five years. Against it, of course—but then I'm so much older than she is in most ways. She's a practical woman of business—knows more about farming than I shall ever know in my life—but in matters of life and love, she's a child ..."
"I should almost have thought it better the other way round—that you should know about the business and she about the love. But then in such matters I too am a child."
He smiled disarmingly, but Martin felt ruffled—partly because his brother's voluntary abstention from experience always annoyed him, and partly because he knew that in this case the child was right and the man wrong.
§13
In the engagement of Joanna Godden to Martin Trevor Walland Marsh had its biggest sensation for years. Indeed it could be said that nothing so startling had happened since the Rother changed its mouth. The feelings of those far-back marsh-dwellers who had awakened one morning to find the Kentish river swirling past their doors at Broomhill might aptly be compared with those of the farms round the Woolpack, who woke to find that Joanna Godden was not going just to jog on her final choice between Arthur Alce and old maidenhood, but had swept aside to make an excellent, fine marriage.
"She's been working for this all along," said Prickett disdainfully.
"I don't see that she's had the chance to work much," said Vine, "she hasn't seen the young chap more than three or four times."
"Bates's looker saw them at Romney once," said Southland, "having their dinner together; but that time at the Farmers' Club he'd barely speak to her."
"Well she's got herself talked about over two men that she hasn't took, and now she's took a man that she hasn't got herself talked about over."
"Anyways, I'm glad of it," said Furnese, "she's a mare that's never been präaperly broken in, and now at last she's got a man to do it."
"Poor feller, Alce. I wonder how he'll take it."
Alce took it very well. For a week he did not come to Ansdore, then he appeared with Joanna's first wedding present in the shape of a silver tea-service which had belonged to his mother.
"Maybe it's a bit early yet for wedding presents. They say you won't be married till next fall. But I've always wanted you to have this tea-set of mother's—it's real silver, as you can see by the lion on it—a teapot and milk jug and sugar bowl; many's the time I've seen you in my mind's eye, setting like a queen and pouring my tea out of it. Since it can't be my tea, it may as well be another's."
"There'll always be a cup for you, Arthur," said Joanna graciously.
"Thanks," said Arthur in a stricken voice.
Joanna could not feel as sorry for Alce as she ought and would have liked. All her emotions, whether of joy or sorrow, seemed to be poured into the wonderful new life that Martin had given her. A new life had begun for her on Christmas Day—in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition—she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender. She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing—but he had stripped her of Ansdore, and she was just Joanna Godden who had waited twenty-eight years for love.
Yet, perhaps because she had waited so long, she was now a little afraid. She had hitherto met love only in the dim forms of Arthur Alce and Dick Socknersh, with still more hazy images in the courtships of Abbot and Cobb. Now Martin was showing her love as no dim flicker or candlelight or domestic lamplight but as a bright, eager fire. She loved his kisses, the clasp of his strong arms, the stability of his chest and shoulders—but sometimes his passion startled her, and she had queer, shy withdrawals. Yet these were never more than temporary and superficial; her own passions were slowly awaking, and moreover had their roots in a sweet, sane instinct of vocation and common sense.
On the whole, though, she was happiest in the quieter ways of love—the meals together, the fireside talks, the meetings in lonely places, the queer, half-laughing secrets, the stolen glances in company. She made a great fuss of his bodily needs—she was convinced that he did not get properly fed or looked after at home, and was always preparing him little snacks and surprises. For her sake Martin swallowed innumerable cups of milk and wrapped his chin in choky mufflers.
She had prouder moments too. On her finger glittered a gorgeous band of diamonds and sapphires which she had chosen for her engagement ring, and it was noticed that Joanna Godden now always drove with her gloves off. She had insisted on driving Martin round the Marsh to call on her friends—to show him to Mrs. Southland, Mrs. Vine, and Mrs. Prickett, to say nothing of their husbands who had always said no man in his senses would marry Joanna Godden. Well, not merely a man but a gentleman was going to do it—a gentleman who had his clothes made for him at a London tailor's instead of buying them ready-made at Lydd or Romney or Rye, who had—he confessed it, though he never wore it—a top hat in his possession, who ate late dinner and always smelt of good tobacco and shaving soap ... such thoughts would bring the old Joanna back, for one fierce moment of gloating.
Her reception by North Farthing House had done nothing to spoil her triumph. Martin's father and brother had both accepted her—the latter willingly, since he believed that she would be a sane and stabilizing influence in Martin's life, hitherto over-restless and mood-ridden. He looked upon his brother as a thwarted romantic, whose sophistication had debarred him from finding a natural outlet in religion. He saw in his love for Joanna the chance of a return to nature and romance, since he loved a thing at once simple and adventurous, homely and splendid—which was how religion appeared to Father Lawrence. He had liked Joanna very much on their meeting, and she liked him too, though as she told him frankly she "didn't hold with Jesoots."
As for Sir Harry, he too liked Joanna, and was too well-bred and fond of women to show himself ungracious about that which he could not prevent.
"I've surrendered, Martin. I can't help myself. You'll bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, but I am all beautiful resignation. Indeed I think I shall offer myself as best man, and flirt dutifully with Ellen Godden, who I suppose will be chief bridesmaid. Your brother shall himself perform the ceremony. What could your family do more?"