§17
Ellen's wedding was the most wonderful that Brodnyx and Pedlinge had seen for years. It was a pity that the law of the land required it to take place in Pedlinge church, which was comparatively small and mean, and which indeed Joanna could never feel was so Established as the church at Brodnyx, because it had only the old harmonium, and queer paintings of angels instead of the Lion and the Unicorn.
However, Mr. Elphick ground and sweated wonders out of "the old harmonister" as it was affectionately called by the two parishes, and everyone was too busy staring at the bride and the bride's sister to notice whether angels or King George the Third presided over the altar.
Joanna had all the success that she had longed for and expected. She walked down the aisle with Ellen white and drooping on her arm, like a sunflower escorting a lily. When Mr. Pratt said "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" she answered "I do" in a voice that rang through the church. Afterwards, she took her handkerchief out of her pocket and cried a little, as is seemly at weddings.
Turner of Northlade was Arthur Alce's best man, and there were four bridesmaids dressed in pink—Maudie Vine, Gertrude Prickett, Maggie Southland and Ivy Cobb. They carried bouquets of roses with lots of spiræa, and wore golden hearts "the gift of the bridegroom." Altogether the brilliance of the company made up for the deficiencies of its barn-like setting and the ineffectiveness of Mr. Pratt, who, discomposed by the enveloping presence of Joanna, blundered more helplessly than ever, so that, as Joanna said afterwards, she was glad when it was all finished without anyone getting married besides the bride and bridegroom.
After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Ansdore, with a wedding-cake and ices and champagne, and waiters hired from the George Hotel at Rye. Ellen stood at the end of the room shaking hands with a long procession of Pricketts, Vines, Furneses, Southlands, Bateses, Turners, Cobbs.... She looked a little tired and droopy, for she had had a trying day, with Joanna fussing and fighting her ever since six in the morning; and now she felt resentfully that her sister had snatched the splendours of the occasion from her to herself—it did not seem right that Joanna should be the most glowing, conspicuous, triumphant object in the room, and Ellen, unable to protest, sulked languishingly.
However, if the bride did not seem as proud and happy as she might, the bridegroom made up for it. There was something almost spiritual in the look of Arthur Alce's eyes, as he stood beside Ellen, his arm held stiffly for the repose of hers, his great choker collar scraping his chin, lilies of the valley and camellias sprouting from his buttonhole, a pair of lemon kid gloves—split at the first attempt, so he could only hold them—clutched in his moist hand. He looked devout, exalted, as he armed his little bride and watched her sister.
"Arthur Alce looks pleased enough," said Furnese to Mrs. Bates—"reckon he sees he's got the best of the family."
"Maybe he's thankful now that Joanna wouldn't take him."
Neither of them noticed that the glow was in Alce's eyes chiefly when they rested on Joanna.
He knew that to-day he had pleased her better than he had ever pleased her in his life. To-day she had said to him "God bless you, Arthur—you're the best friend I have, or am like to have, neither." To-day he had made himself her kinsman, with a dozen new opportunities of service. Chief among these was the dear little girl on his arm—how pretty and sweet she was! How he would love her and cherish her as he had promised Mr. Pratt! Well, thank God, he had done Joanna one good turn, and himself not such a bad one, neither. How clever she had been to think of his marrying Ellen! He would never have thought of it himself; yet now he saw clearly that it was a wonderful notion—nothing could be better. Joanna was valiant for notions.... Alce had had one glass of champagne.
At about four o'clock, Joanna dashed into the circle round the bride, and took Ellen away upstairs, to put on her travelling dress of saxe-blue satin—the last humiliation she would have to endure from Ansdore. The honeymoon was being spent at Canterbury, cautiously chosen by Arthur as a place he'd been to once and so knew the lie of a bit. Ellen had wanted to go to Wales, or to the Lakes, but Joanna had sternly forbidden such outrageous pinings—"Arthur's got two cows calving next week—what are you thinking of, Ellen Godden?"
The bridal couple drove away amidst much hilarity, inspired by the unaccustomed champagne and expressed in rice and confetti. After they had gone the guests still lingered, feasting at the littered tables or re-inspecting and re-valuing the presents which had been laid out, after the best style, in the dining-room. Sir Harry Trevor had sent Ellen a little pearl pendant, though he had been unable to accept Joanna's invitation and come to the wedding himself—he wrote from a London address and hinted vaguely that he might never come back to North Farthing House, which had been let furnished. His gift was the chief centre of interest—when Mrs. Vine had done comparing her electro-plated cruet most favourably with the one presented by Mrs. Furnese and the ignoble china object that Mrs. Cobb had had the meanness to send, and Mrs. Bates had recovered from the shock of finding that her tea-cosy was the exact same shape and pattern as the one given by Mrs. Gain. People thought it odd that the Old Squire should send pearls to Ellen Godden—something for the table would have been much more seemly.
Joanna had grown weary—her shoulders drooped under her golden gown, she tossed back her head and yawned against the back of her hand. She was tired of it all, and wanted them to go. What were they staying for? They must know the price of everything pretty well by this time and have eaten enough to save their suppers. She was no polished hostess, concealing her boredom, and the company began soon to melt away. Traps lurched over the shingle of Ansdore's drive, the Pricketts walked off across the innings to Great Ansdore, guests from Rye packed into two hired wagonettes, and the cousins from the Isle of Wight drove back to the George, where, as there were eight of them and they refused to be separated, Joanna was munificently entertaining them instead of under her own roof.
When the last was gone, she turned back into the house, where Mrs. Tolhurst stood ready with her broom to begin an immediate sweep-up after the waiters, whom she looked upon as the chief source of the disorder. A queer feeling came over Joanna, a feeling of loneliness, of craving, and she fell in all her glory of feathers and silk upon Mrs. Tolhurst's alpaca bosom. Gone were those arbitrary and often doubtful distinctions between them, and the mistress enjoyed the luxury of a good cry in her servant's arms.
§18
Ellen's marriage broke into Joanna's life quite as devastatingly as Martin's death. Though for more than three years her sister had been away at school, with an ever-widening gulf of temperament between herself and the farm, and though since her return she had been little better at times than a rebellious and sulky stranger, nevertheless she was a part of Ansdore, a part of Joanna's life there, and the elder sister found it difficult to adjust things to her absence.
Of course Ellen had not gone very far—Donkey Street was not five miles from Ansdore, though in a different parish and a different county. But the chasm between them was enormous—it was queer to think that a mere change of roof-tree could make such a difference. No doubt the reason was that with Ellen it had involved an entire change of habit. While she lived with Joanna she had been bound both by the peculiarities of her sister's nature and her own to accept her way of living. She had submitted, not because she was weak or gentle-minded but because submission was an effective weapon of her welfare; now, having no further use for it, she ruled instead and was another person. She was, besides, a married woman, and the fact made all the difference to Ellen herself. She felt herself immeasurably older and wiser than Joanna, her teacher and tyrant. Her sister's life seemed to her puerile.... Ellen had at last read the riddle of the universe and the secret of wisdom.
The sisters' relations were also a little strained over Arthur Alce. Joanna resented the authority that Ellen assumed—it took some time to show her that Arthur was no longer hers. She objected when Ellen made him shave off his moustache and whiskers; he looked ten years younger and a far handsomer man, but he was no longer the traditional Arthur Alce of Joanna's history, and she resented it. Ellen on her part resented the way Joanna still made use of him, sending him to run errands and make inquiries for her just as she used in the old days before his marriage. "Arthur, I hear there's some good pigs going at Honeychild auction—I can't miss market at Lydd, but you might call round and have a look for me." Or "Arthur, I've a looker's boy coming from Abbot's Court—you might go there for his characters, I haven't time, with the butter-making to-day and Mene Tekel such an owl."
Ellen rebelled at seeing her husband ordered about, and more than once "told off" her sister, but Joanna had no intention of abandoning her just claims in Arthur, and the man himself was pig-headed—"I mun do what I can for her, just as I used." Ellen could make him shave off his whiskers, she could even make him on occasion young and fond and frolicsome, but she could not make him stop serving Joanna, or, had she only known it, stop loving her. Arthur was perfectly happy as Ellen's husband, and made her, as Joanna had foretold, an exemplary one, but his love for Joanna seemed to grow rather than diminish as he cared for and worked for and protected her sister. It seemed to feed and thrive on his love for Ellen—it gave him a wonderful sense of action and effectiveness, and people said what a lot of good marriage had done for Arthur Alce, and that he was no longer the dull chap he used to be.
§19
It had done Ellen a lot of good too. During the next year she blossomed and expanded. She lost some of her white looks. The state of marriage suited her thoroughly well. Being her own mistress and at the same time having a man to take care of her, having an important and comfortable house of her own, ordering about her own servants and spending her husband's money, such things made her life pleasant, and checked the growth of peevishness that had budded at Ansdore.
During the first months of her marriage, Joanna went fairly often to see her, one reason being the ache which Ellen's absence had left in her heart—she wanted to see her sister, sit with her, hear her news. Another reason was the feeling that Ellen, a beginner in the ways of life and household management, still needed her help and guidance. Ellen soon undeceived her on this point. "I really know how to manage my own house, Joanna," she said once or twice when the other commented and advised, and Joanna had been unable to enforce her ideas, owing to the fact that she seldom saw Ellen above once or twice a week. Her sister could do what she liked in her absence, and it was extraordinary how definite and cocksure the girl was about things she should have approached in the spirit of meekness and dependence on her elders.
"I count my linen after it is aired—it comes in at such an inconvenient time that I can't attend to it then. The girls can easily hang it out on the horse—really, Joanna, one must trust people to do something."
"Well, then, don't blame me when you're a pillowcase short."
"I certainly shan't blame you," said Ellen coolly.
Joanna felt put out and injured. It hurt her to see that Ellen did not want her supervision—she had looked forward to managing Donkey Street as well as Ansdore. She tried to get a hold on Ellen through Arthur Alce.
"Arthur, it's your duty to see Ellen don't leave the bread-making to that cook-gal of hers. I never heard of such a notion—her laying on the sofa while the gal wastes coal and flour." ... "Arthur, Ellen needs a new churn—let her get a Wallis. It's a shame for her to be buying new cushions when her churn's an old butter-spoiler I wouldn't use if I was dead—Arthur, you're there with her, and you can make her do what I say."
But Arthur could not, any more than Joanna, make Ellen do what she did not want. He had always been a mild-mannered man, and he found Ellen, in her different way, quite as difficult to stand up to as her sister.
"I'm not going to have Jo meddling with my affairs," she would say with a toss of her head.
§20
Another thing that worried Joanna was the fact that the passing year brought no expectations to Donkey Street. One of her happiest anticipations in connexion with Ellen's marriage was her having a dear little baby whom Joanna could hug and spoil and teach. Perhaps it would be a little girl, and she would feel like having Ellen over again.
She was bitterly disappointed when Ellen showed no signs of obliging her quickly, and indeed quite shocked by her sister's expressed indifference on the matter.
"I don't care about children, Jo, and I'm over young to have one of my own."
"Young! You're rising twenty, and mother was but eighteen when I was born."
"Well, anyhow, I don't see why I should have a child just because you want one."
"I don't want one. For shame to say such things, Ellen Alce."
"You want me to have one, then, for your benefit."
"Don't you want one yourself?"
"No—not now. I've told you I don't care for children."
"Then you should ought to! Dear little mites! It's a shame to talk like that. Oh, what wouldn't I give, Ellen, to have a child of yours in my arms."
"Why don't you marry and have one of your own?"
Joanna coloured.
"I don't want to marry."
"But you ought to marry if that's how you feel. Why don't you take a decent fellow like, say, Sam Turner, even if you don't love him, just so that you may have a child of your own? You're getting on, you know, Joanna—nearly thirty-four—you haven't much time to waste."
"Well it ain't my fault," said Joanna tearfully, "that I couldn't marry the man I wanted to. I'd have been married more'n five year now if he hadn't been took. And it's sorter spoiled the taste for me, as you might say. I don't feel inclined to get married—it don't take my fancy, and I don't see how I'm ever going to bring myself to do it. That's why it ud be so fine for me if you had a little one, Ellen—as I could hold and kiss and care for and feel just as if it was my own."
"Thanks," said Ellen.
§21
The winding up of her plans for her sister made it necessary that Joanna should cast about for fresh schemes to absorb her energies. The farm came to her rescue in this fresh, more subtle collapse, and she turned to it as vigorously as she had turned after Martin's death, and with an increase of that vague feeling of bitterness which had salted her relations with it ever since.
A strong rumour was blowing on the Marsh that shortly Great Ansdore would come into the market. Joanna's schemes at once were given their focus. She would buy Great Ansdore if she had the chance. She had always resented its presence, so inaptly named, on the fringe of Little Ansdore's greatness. If she bought it, she would be adding more than fifty acres to her own, but it was good land—Prickett was a fool not to have made more of it—and the possession carried with it manorial rights, including the presentation of the living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge. When Joanna owned Great Ansdore in addition to her own thriving and established patrimony, she would be a big personage on the Three Marshes, almost "county." No tenant or yeoman from Dymchurch to Winchelsea, from Romney to the coast, would dare withhold his respect—she might even at last be admitted a member of the Farmers' Club....
It was characteristic of her that, with this purchase in view, she made no efforts to save money. She set out to make it instead, and her money-making was all of the developing, adventurous kind—she ploughed more grass, and decided to keep three times the number of cows and open a milk-round.
As a general practice only a few cows were kept on the Marsh farms, for, owing to the shallowness of the dykes, it was difficult to prevent their straying. However, Joanna boldly decided to fence all the Further Innings. She could spare that amount of grazing, and though she would have to keep down the numbers of her sheep till after she had bought Great Ansdore, she expected to make more money out of the milk and dairy produce—she might even in time open a dairy business in Rye. This would involve the engaging of an extra girl for the dairy and chickens, and an extra man to help Broadhurst with the cows, but Joanna was undaunted. She enjoyed a gamble, when it was not merely a question of luck, but also in part a matter of resource and planning and hard driving pace.
"There's Joanna Godden saving her tin to buy Great Ansdore," said Bates of Picknye Bush to Cobb of Slinches, as they watched her choosing her shorthorns at Romney. She had Arthur Alce beside her, and he was, as in the beginning, trying to persuade her to be a little smaller in her ideas, but, as in the beginning, she would not listen.
"Setting up cow-keeping now, is she?—Will she make as much a valiant wonder of that as she did with her sheep? Ha! ha!"
"Ha! ha!" The two men laughed and winked and rubbed their noses, for they liked to remember the doleful tale of Joanna's first adventure at Ansdore; it made them able to survey more equably her steady rise in glory ever since.
It was obvious to Walland Marsh that, on the whole, her big ideas had succeeded where the smaller, more cautious ones of her neighbours had failed. Of course she had been lucky—luckier than she deserved—but she was beginning to make men wonder if after all there wasn't policy in paying a big price for a good thing, rather than in obeying the rules of haggle which maintained on other farms. Ansdore certainly spent half as much again as Birdskitchen or Beggar's Bush or Misleham or Yokes Court, but then it had nearly twice as much to show for it. Joanna was not the woman who would fail to keep pace with her own prosperity—her swelling credit was not recorded merely in her pass-book; it was visible, indeed dazzling, to every eye.
She had bought a new trap and mare—a very smart turn-out, with rubber tires and chocolate-coloured upholstery, while the mare herself had blood in her, and a bit of the devil too, and upset the sleepy, chumbling rows of farmers' horses waiting for their owners in the streets of Lydd or Rye. Old Stuppeny had died in the winter following Ellen's marriage, and had been lavishly buried, with a tombstone, and an obituary notice in the Rye Observer, at Joanna's expense. In his place she had now one of those good-looking, rather saucy-eyed young men, whom she liked to have about her in a menial capacity. He wore a chocolate-coloured livery made by a tailor in Marlingate, and sat on the seat behind Joanna with his arms folded across his chest, as she spanked along the Straight Mile.
Joanna was now thirty-three years old, and in some ways looked older than her age, in others younger. Her skin, richly weather-beaten into reds and browns, and her strong, well-developed figure in its old-fashioned stays, made her look older than her eyes, which had an expectant, childish gravity in their brightness, and than her mouth, which was still a young woman's mouth, large, eager, full-lipped, with strong, little, white teeth. Her hair was beautiful—it had no sleekness, but, even in its coils, looked rough and abundant, and it had the same rich, apple-red colours in it as her skin.
She still had plenty of admirers, for the years had made her more rather than less desirable in herself, and men had grown used to her independence among them. Moreover, she was a "catch," a maid with money, and this may have influenced the decorous, well-considered offers she had about this time from farmers inland as well as on the Marsh. She refused them decidedly—nevertheless, it was obvious that she was well pleased to have been asked; these solid, estimable proposals testified to a quality in her life which had not been there before.
Yes—she had done well for herself on the whole, she thought. Looking back over her life, over the ten years she had ruled at Ansdore, she saw success consistently rewarding hard work and high ambition. She saw, too, strange gaps—parts of the road which had grown dim in her memory, parts where probably there had been a turning, where she might have left this well-laid, direct and beaten highway for more romantic field-paths. It was queer, when she came to think of it, that nothing in her life had been really successful except Ansdore, that directly she had turned off her high-road she had become at once as it were bogged and lantern-led. Socknersh ... Martin ... Ellen ... there had been by-ways, dim paths leading into queer unknown fields, a strange beautiful land, which now she would never know.
§22
Ellen watched her sister's thriving. "She's almost a lady," she said to herself, "and it's wasted on her." She was inclined to be dissatisfied with her own position in local society. When she had first married she had not thought it would be difficult to get herself accepted as "county" in the new neighbourhood, but she had soon discovered that she had had far more consequence as Joanna Godden's sister than she would ever have as Arthur Alce's wife. Even in those days Little Ansdore had been a farm of the first importance, and Joanna was at least notorious where she was not celebrated; but Donkey Street held comparatively humble rank in a district overshadowed by Dungemarsh Court, and Arthur was not the man to push himself into consideration, though Ellen had agreed that half her marriage portion should be spent on the improvement of his farm.
No one of any consequence had called upon her, though her drawing-room, with its black cushions and Watts pictures, was more fit to receive the well-born and well-bred than Joanna's disgraceful parlour of oleographs and aspidistras and stuffed owls. The Parson had "visited" Mrs. Alce a few weeks after her arrival, but a "visit" is not a call, and when at the end of three months his wife still ignored her existence, Ellen made Arthur come over with her to Brodnyx and Pedlinge on the Sundays she felt inclined to go to church, saying that she did not care for their ways at Romney, where they had a lot of ceremonial centering round the alms-dish.
It was bitter for her to have to watch Joanna's steady rise in importance—the only respect in which she felt bitter towards her sister, since it was the only respect in which she felt inferior to her. After a time, Joanna discovered this. At first she had enjoyed pouring out her triumphs to Ellen on her visits to Donkey Street, or on the rarer occasions when Ellen visited Ansdore.
"Yes, my dear, I've made up my mind. I'm going to give a dinner-party—a late dinner-party. I shall ask the people to come at seven, and then not have dinner till the quarter, so as there'll be no chance of the food being kept waiting. I shall have soup and meat and a pudding, and wine to drink."
"Who are you going to invite?" asked Ellen, with a curl of her lip.
"Why, didn't I tell you? Sir Harry Trevor's coming back to North Farthing next month. Mrs. Tolhurst got it from Peter Crouch, who had it from the Woolpack yesterday. He's coming down with his married sister, Mrs. Williams, and I'll ask Mr. Pratt, so as there'll be two gentlemen and two ladies. I'd ask you, Ellen, only I know Arthur hasn't got an evening suit."
"Thanks. I don't care about dinner-parties. Who's going to do your waiting?"
"Mene Tekel. She's going to wear a cap, and stand in the room all the time."
"I hope that you'll be able to hear yourselves talk through her breathing."
It struck Joanna that Ellen was not very cordial.
"I believe you want to come," she said, "and I tell you, duckie, I'll try and manage it. It doesn't matter about Arthur not having proper clothes—I'll put 'evening dress optional' on the invitations."
"I shouldn't do that," said Ellen, and laughed in a way that made Joanna feel uncomfortable. "I really don't want to come in the least—it would be very dreary driving to and fro."
"Then what's the matter, dearie?"
"Matter? There's nothing the matter."
But Joanna knew that Ellen felt sore, and failing to discover the reason herself at last applied to Arthur Alce.
"If you ask me," said Arthur, "it's because she's only a farmer's wife."
"Why should that upset her all of a sudden?"
"Well, folks don't give her the consequence she'd like; and now she sees you having gentry at your table ..."
"I'd have had her at it too, only she didn't want to come, and you haven't got the proper clothes. Arthur, if you take my advice, you'll go into Lydd this very day and buy yourself an evening suit."
"Ellen won't let me. She says I'd look a clown in it."
"Ellen's getting very short. What's happened to her these days?"
"It's only that she likes gentlefolk and is fit to mix with them; and after all, Jo, I'm nothing but a pore common man."
"I hope you don't complain of her, Arthur?"
"Oh, no—I've no complaints—don't you think it. And don't you go saying anything to her, Jo."
"Then what am I to do about it? I won't have her troubling you, nor herself, neither. I tell you what I'll do—look here!—I—I—" Joanna gave a loud sacrificial gulp—"I'll make it middle-day dinner instead of late, and then you won't have to wear evening dress, and Ellen can come and meet the Old Squire. She should ought to, seeing as he gave her a pearl locket when she was married. It won't be near so fine as having it in the evening, but I don't want neither her nor you to be upset—and I can always call it 'lunch' ..."
§23
As the result of Joanna's self-denial, Ellen and Arthur were able to meet Sir Harry Trevor and his sister at luncheon at Ansdore. The luncheon did not differ in any respect from the dinner as at first proposed. There was soup—much to Ellen's annoyance, as Arthur had never been able to master the etiquette of its consumption—and a leg of mutton and roast fowls, and a large fig pudding, washed down with some really good wine, for Joanna had asked the wine-merchant at Rye uncompromisingly for his best—"I don't mind what I pay so long as it's that"—and had been served accordingly. Mene Tekel waited, with creaking stays and shoes, and loud breaths down the visitors' necks as she thrust vegetable dishes and sauce-boats at perilous angles over their shoulders.
Ellen provided a piquant contrast to her surroundings. As she sat there in her soft grey dress, with her eyes cast down under her little town hat, with her quiet voice, and languid, noiseless movements, anything more unlike the average farmer's wife of the district was difficult to imagine. Joanna felt annoyed with her for dressing up all quiet as a water-hen, but she could see that, in spite of it, her sacrifice in having her party transferred from the glamorous evening hour had been justified. Both the Old Squire and his sister were obviously interested in Ellen Alce—he in the naïve unguarded way of the male, she more subtly and not without a dash of patronage.
Mrs. Williams always took an interest in any woman she thought downtrodden, as her intuition told her Ellen was by that coarse, hairy creature, Arthur Alce. She herself had disposed of an unsatisfactory husband with great decision and resource, and, perhaps as a thank-offering, had devoted the rest of her life to woman's emancipation. She travelled about the country lecturing for a well-known suffrage society, and was bitterly disappointed in Joanna Godden because she expressed herself quite satisfied without the vote.
"But don't you feel it humiliating to see your carter and your cowman and your shepherd boy all go up to Rye to vote on polling-day, while you, who own this farm, and have such a stake in the country, aren't allowed to do so?"
"It only means as I've got eight votes instead of one," said Joanna, "and don't have the trouble of going to the poll, neither. Not one of my men would dare vote but as I told him, so reckon I do better than most at the elections."
Mrs. Williams told Joanna that it was such opinions which were keeping back the country from some goal unspecified.
"Besides, you have to think of other women, Miss Godden—other women who aren't so fortunate and independent as yourself."
She gave a long glance at Ellen, whose downcast eyelids flickered.
"I don't care about other women," said Joanna, "if they won't stand up for themselves, I can't help them. It's easy enough to stand up to a man. I don't think much of men, neither. I like 'em, but I can't think any shakes of their doings. That's why I'd sooner they did their own voting and mine too. Now, Mene Tekel, can't you see the Squire's ate all his cabbage?—You hand him the dish again—not under his chin—he don't want to eat out of it—but low down, so as he can get hold of the spoon...."
Joanna looked upon her luncheon party as a great success, and her pleasure was increased by the fact that soon after it Sir Harry Trevor and his sister paid a ceremonial call on Ellen at Donkey Street.
"Now she'll be pleased," thought Joanna, "it's always what she's been hankering after—having gentlefolk call on her and leave their cards. It ain't my fault it hasn't happened earlier.... I'm unaccountable glad she met them at my house. It'll learn her to think prouder of me."
§24
That spring and summer Sir Harry Trevor was a good deal at North Farthing, and it was rumoured on the Marsh that he had run through the money so magnanimously left him and had been driven home to economize. Joanna did not see as much of him as in the old days—he had given up his attempts at farming, and had let off all the North Farthing land except the actual garden and paddock. He came to see her once or twice, and she went about as rarely to see him. It struck her that he had changed in many ways, and she wondered a little where he had been and what he had done during the last four years. He did not look any older. Some queer, rather unpleasant lines had traced themselves at the corners of his mouth and eyes, but strangely enough, though they added to his characteristic air of humorous sophistication, they also added to his youth, for they were lines of desire, of feeling ... perhaps in his four years of absence from the Marsh he had learned how to feel at last, and had found youth instead of age in the commotions which feeling brings. Though he must be fifty-five, he looked scarcely more than forty—and he had a queer, weak, loose, emotional air about him that she found it hard to account for.
In the circumstances she did not press invitations upon him, she had no time to waste on men who did not appreciate her as a woman—which the Squire, in spite of his susceptibility, obviously failed to do. From June to August she met him only once, and that was at Ellen's. Neither did she see very much of Ellen that summer—her life was too full of hard work, as a substitute for economy.
Curiously enough next time she went to see her sister Sir Harry was there again.
"Hullo! I always seem to be meeting you here," she said—"and nowhere else—you never come to see me now."
Sir Harry grinned.
"You're always so mortal busy, Jo—I'd feel in your way. Now this little woman never seems to have much to do. You're a lazy little thing, Ellen—I don't believe you ever move off the sofa, except to the piano."
Joanna was surprised to see him on such familiar terms with her sister—"Ellen," indeed! He'd no right to call her that.
"Mrs. Alce hasn't nothing beyond her housework to do—and any woman worth her keep 'ull get shut of that in the morning. Now I've got everything on my hands—and I've no good, kind Arthur to look after me neither," and Joanna beamed on Arthur Alce as he stirred his tea at the end of the table.
"And jolly thankful you are that you haven't," said the Squire. "Own up, Joanna, and say that the last thing you'd want in life would be someone to look after you."
"Well, it strikes me," said Joanna, "as most of the people I meet want looking after themselves, and it 'ud be just about waste for any of 'em to start looking after me."
Arthur Alce unexpectedly murmured something that sounded like "Hear, hear."
When Joanna left, he brought round her trap, as the saucy-eyed young groom was having a day off in Rye.
"How've your turnips done?" he asked.
"Not so good as last year, but the wurzels are fine."
"Mine might be doing better"—he stood fumbling with a trace-buckle.
"Has that come loose?" asked Joanna.
"Nun-no. I hope your little lady liked her oats."
"She looks in good heart—watch her tugging. You've undone that buckle, Arthur."
"So I have—I was just fidgeting."
He fastened the strap again, his fingers moving clumsily and slowly. It struck her that he was trying to gain time, that he wanted to tell her something.
"Anything the matter, Arthur?"
"Nothing—why?"
"Oh, it struck me you looked worried."
"What should I be worried about?"
"There's a lot of things you might be worried about. What did you tell me about your wurzels?"
"They're not so bad."
"Then I can't see as there's any need for you to look glum."
"No more there ain't," said Arthur in the voice of a man making a desperate decision.
§25
It was not till nearly a month later that Joanna heard that people were "talking" about Ellen and Sir Harry. Gossip generally took some time to reach her, owing to her sex, which was not privileged to frequent the Woolpack bar, where rumours invariably had a large private circulation before they were finally published at some auction or market. She resented this disability, but in spite of the general daring of her outlook and behaviour, nothing would have induced her to enter the Woolpack save by the discreet door of the landlady's parlour, where she occasionally sipped a glass of ale. However, she had means of acquiring knowledge, though not so quickly as those women who were provided with husbands and sons. On this occasion Mene Tekel Fagge brought the news, through the looker at Slinches, with whom she was walking out.
"That'll do, Mene," said Joanna to her handmaiden, "you always was the one to pick up idle tales, and Dansay should ought to be ashamed of himself, drinking and talking the way he does. Now you go and tell Peter Crouch to bring me round the trap."
She drove off to Donkey Street, carrying her scandal to its source. She was extremely angry—not that for one moment she believed in the truth of those accusations brought against her sister, but Ellen was just the sort of girl, with her airs and notions, to get herself talked about at the Woolpack, and it was disgraceful to have such things said about one, even if they were not true. There was a prickly heat of shame in Joanna's blood as she hustled the mare over the white loops of the Romney road.
The encounter with Ellen made her angrier still.
"I don't care what they say," said her sister, "why should I mind what a public-house bar says against me?"
"Well, you should ought to mind—it's shameful."
"They've said plenty against you."
"I'd rather have that sort of thing said about me than some."
"Ellen!"
"Well, the Squire's isn't a bad name to have coupled with mine, if they must couple somebody's."
"I wonder you ain't afraid of being struck dead, talking like that—you with the most kind, good-tempered and lawful husband that ever was."
"Do you imagine that I'm disloyal to Arthur?"
"Howsumever could you think I'd dream of such a thing?"
"Well, it's the way you're talking."
"It ain't."
"Then why are you angry?"
"Because you shouldn't ought to get gossiped about like that."
"It isn't my fault."
"It is. You shouldn't ought to have Sir Harry about the place as much as you do. The last two times I've been here, he's been too."
"I like him—he amuses me."
"I like him too, but he ain't worth nothing, and he's got a bad name. You get shut of him, Ellen—I know him, and I know a bit about him; he ain't the sort of man to have coming to your house when folks are talking."
"You have him to yours—whenever you can get him."
"But then I'm a single woman, and he being a single man there's no harm in it."
"Do you think that a married woman should know no man but her husband?"
"What did she marry a husband for?"
"Really, Joanna ... however, there's no use arguing with you. I'm sorry you're annoyed at the gossip, but to keep out of the gossip here one would have to live like a cabbage. You haven't exactly kept out of it yourself."
"Have done, do, with telling me that. They only talk about me because I'm more go-ahead than any of 'em, and make more money. Anyone may talk about you that way and I shan't mind. But to have it said at the Woolpack as you, a married woman, lets a man like Sir Harry be for ever hanging around your house ..."
"Are you jealous?" said Ellen softly. "Poor old Jo—I'm sorry if I've taken another of your men."
Joanna opened her mouth and stared at her. At first she hardly understood, then, suddenly grasping what was in Ellen's mind, she took in her breath for a torrential explanation of the whole matter. But the next minute she realized that this was hardly the moment to say anything which would prejudice her sister against Arthur Alce. If Ellen would value him more as a robbery, then let her persist in her delusion. The effort of silence was so great that Joanna became purple and apoplectic—with a wild, grabbing gesture she turned away, and burst out of the house into the drive, where her trap was waiting.
§26
The next morning Mene Tekel brought fresh news from the Woolpack, and this time it was of a different quality, warranted to allay the seething of Joanna's moral sense. Sir Harry Trevor had sold North Farthing to a retired bootmaker. He was going to the South of France for the winter, and was then coming back to his sister's flat in London, while she went for a lecturing tour in the United States. The Woolpack was very definitely and minutely informed as to his doings, and had built its knowledge into the theory that he must have had some more money left him.
Joanna was delighted—she forgave Sir Harry, and Ellen too, which was a hard matter. None the less, as November approached through the showers and floods, she felt a little anxious lest he should delay his going or perhaps even revoke it. However, the first week of the month saw the arrival of the bootmaker from Deal, with two van-loads of furniture, and his wife and four grown-up daughters—all as ugly as roots, said the Woolpack. The Squire's furniture was sold by auction at Dover, from which port his sailing was in due course guaranteed by credible eye-witnesses. Joanna once more breathed freely. No one could talk about him and Ellen now—that disgraceful scandal, which seemed to lower Ellen to the level of Marsh dairy-girls in trouble, and had about it too that strange luciferian flavour of "the sins of Society," that scandal had been killed, and its dead body taken away in the Dover mail.
Now that he was gone, and no longer a source of danger to her family's reputation, she found herself liking Sir Harry again. He had always been friendly, and though she fundamentally disapproved of his "ways," she was woman enough to be thrilled by his lurid reputation. Moreover, he provided a link, her last living link, with Martin's days—now that strange women kept rabbits in the backyards of North Farthing and the rooms were full of the Deal bootmaker's resplendent suites, that time of dew and gold and dreams seemed to have faded still further off. For many years it had lain far away on the horizon, but now it seemed to have faded off the earth altogether, and to live only in the sunset sky or in the dim moon-risings, which sometimes woke her out of her sleep with a start, as if she slipped on the verge of some troubling memory.
This kindlier state of affairs lasted for about a month, during which Joanna saw very little of Ellen. She was at rest about her sister, for the fact that Ellen might be feeling lonely and unhappy at the departure of her friend did not trouble her in the least; such emotions, so vile in their source, could not call for any sympathy. Besides, she was busy, hunting for a new cowman to work under Broadhurst, whose undertakings, since the establishment of the milk-round, had almost come to equal those of the looker in activity and importance.
She was just about to set out one morning for a farm near Brenzett, when she saw Arthur Alce come up to the door on horseback.
"Hullo, Jo!" he called rather anxiously through the window. "Have you got Ellen?"
"I?—No. Why should I have her, pray?"
"Because I ain't got her."
"What d'you mean? Get down, Arthur, and come and talk to me in here. Don't let everyone hear you shouting like that."
Arthur hitched his horse to the paling and came in.
"I thought maybe I'd find her here," he said. "I ain't seen her since breakfast."
"There's other places she could have gone besides here. Maybe she's gone shopping in Romney and forgot to tell you."
"It's queer her starting off like that without a word—and she's took her liddle bag and a few bits of things with her too."
"What things?—Arthur! Why couldn't you tell me that before?"
"I was going to.... I'm feeling a bit anxious, Jo.... I've a feeling she's gone after that Old Squire."
"You dare say such a thing! Arthur, I'm ashamed of you, believing such a thing of your wife and my sister."
"Well, she was unaccountable set on him."
"Nonsense! He just amused her. It's you whose wife she is."
"She's scarce given me a word more'n in the way of business, as you might say, this last three month. And she won't let me touch her."
"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"I didn't want to trouble you, and I thought maybe it was a private matter."
"You should have told me the drackly minute Ellen started not to treat you proper. I'd have spoken to her.... Now we're in for a valiant terrification."
"I'm unaccountable sorry, Jo."
"How long has she been gone?"
"Since around nine. I went out to see the tegs, counting them up to go inland, and when I came in for dinner the gal told me as Ellen had gone out soon after breakfast, and had told her to see as I got my dinner, as she wouldn't be back."
"Why didn't you start after her at once?"
"Well, I made sure as she'd gone to you. Then I began to think over things and put 'em together, and I found she'd taken her liddle bag, and I got scared. I never liked her seeing such a lot of that man."
"Then why didn't you stop it?"
"How could I?"
"I could have—and the way people talked.... I'd have locked her up sooner than ... well, it's too late now ... the boat went at twelve. Oh, Arthur, why didn't you watch her properly? Why did you let her go like that? Think of it! What's to become of her—away in foreign parts with a man who ain't her husband ... my liddle Ellen ... oh, it's turble—turble—"
Her speech suddenly roughened into the Doric of the Marsh, and she sat down heavily, dropping her head to her knees.
"Joanna—don't, don't ... don't take on, Jo."
He had not seen her cry before, and now she frightened him. Her shoulders heaved, and great panting sobs shook her broad back.
"My liddle Ellen ... my treasure, my duckie ... oh, why have you left us?... You could have come back to me if you didn't like it.... Oh, Ellen, where are you?... Come back ..."
Arthur stood motionless beside her, his frame rigid, his protuberant blue eyes staring through the window at the horizon. He longed to take Joanna in his arms, caress and comfort her, but he knew that he must not.
"Cheer up," he said at last in a husky voice, "maybe it ain't so bad as you think. Maybe I'll find her at home when I get back to Donkey Street."
"Not if she took her bag. Oh, whatsumever shall we do?—whatsumever shall we do?"
"We can but wait. If she don't come back, maybe she'll send me a letter."
"It queers me how you can speak so light of it."
"I speak light?"
"Yes, you don't seem to tumble to it."
"Reckon I do tumble to it, but what can we do?"
"You shouldn't have left her alone all that time from breakfast till dinner—if you'd gone after her at the start you could have brought her back. You should ought to have kicked Sir Harry out of Donkey Street before the start. I'd have done it surely. Reckon I love Ellen more'n you."
"Reckon you do, Jo. I tell you, I ought never to have married her—since it was you I cared for all along."
"Hold your tongue, Arthur. I'm ashamed of you to choose this time to say such an immoral thing."
"It ain't immoral—it's the truth."
"Well, it shouldn't ought to be the truth. When you married Ellen you'd no business to go on caring for me. I guess all this is a judgment on you, caring for a woman when you'd married her sister."
"You ain't yourself, Jo," said Arthur sadly, "and there's no sense arguing with you. I'll go away till you've got over it. Maybe I'll have some news for you to-morrow morning."
§27
To-morrow morning he had a letter from Ellen herself. He brought it at once to a strangely drooping and weary-eyed Joanna, and read it again over her shoulder.