Chapter XI: Part 11

After dinner, he took her on the pier. "East Lynne" was being played in the Pavilion, and they had two of the best seats. Joanna was terribly thrilled and a little shocked--she was also, at the proper time, overcome with emotion. When little Willie lay dying, it was more than she could bear ... poor little chap, it made your heart ache to see him--even though he was called Miss Maidie Masserene on the programme, and when not in bed stuck out in parts of his sailor suit which little boys do not usually stick out in. His poor mother, too ... the tears rolled down Joanna's face, and her throat was speechless and swollen ... something seemed to be tugging at her heart ... she grew ashamed, almost frightened. It was a positive relief when the curtain came down, and rose again to show that little Willie had done likewise and stood bowing right and left in his night-shirt.

Still the tears would furtively trickle ... what a fool she was getting--it must be the wine. My, but she had a weak head ... she must never take another glass. Then suddenly, in the darkness, she felt a hand take hers, pick it up, set it on a person's knee ... her hand lay palm downwards on his knee, and his own lay over it--she began to tremble and her heart turned to water. The tears ran on and on.

... They were outside, the cool sea wind blew over them, and in the wind was the roar of the sea. Without a word they slipped out of the stream of people heading for the pier gates, and went to the railing, where they stood looking down on the black water.

"Why are you crying, dear?" asked Hill tenderly, as his arm crept round her.

"I dunno--I'm not the one to cry. But that little chap ... and his poor mother ..."

"You soft-hearted darling." ... He held her close, in all her gracious and supple warmth, which even the fierceness of her stays could not quite keep from him. Oh, she was the dearest thing, so crude and yet so soft ... how glad he was he had not drawn back at the beginning, as he had half thought of doing ... she was the loveliest woman, adorable--mature, yet unsophisticated ... she was like a quince, ripe and golden red, yet with a delicious tartness.

"Joanna," he breathed, his mouth close to the tawny, flying anthers of her hair--"Do you think you could love me?"

He felt her hair stroke his lips, as she turned her head. He saw her eyes bright with tears and passion. Then suddenly she broke from him--

"I can't--I can't ... it's more than I can bear."

He came after her, overtaking her just before the gate.

"Darling thing, what's the matter?--You ain't afraid?"

"No--no--it isn't that. Only I can't bear ... beginning to feel it ... again."

"Again?"

"Yes--I told you a bit ... I can't tell you any more."

"But the chap's dead."

"Yes."

"Hang it all, we're alive ..." and she surrendered to his living mouth.

§16

That night she slept, and the next morning she felt calmer. Some queer, submerged struggle seemed to be over. As a matter of fact, her affair was more uncertain than ever. After Albert's kiss, they had had no discussion and very little conversation. He had taken her back to the hotel, and had kissed her again--this time on the warm, submissive mouth she lifted to him. He had said--"I'll come and see you at Ansdore--I've got another week." And she had said--nothing. She did not know if he wanted to marry her, or even if she wanted to marry him. She did not worry about how--or if--she should explain him to Ellen. All her cravings and uncertainties were swallowed up in a great quiet, a strange quiet which was somehow all the turmoil of her being expressed in silence.

The next day he was true to his promise, and saw her off--sitting decorously in her first-class carriage "For Ladies Only."

"You'll come and see me at Ansdore?" she said, as the moment of departure drew near, and he said nothing about last night's promise.

"Do you really want me to come?"

"Reckon I do."

"I'll come, then."

"Which day?"

"Say Monday, or Tuesday."

"Come on Monday, by this train--and I'll meet you at the station in my trap. I've got a fine stepper."

"Right you are. I'll come on Monday. It's kind of you to want me so much."

"I do want you."

Her warm, glowing face in the frame of the window invited him, and they kissed. Funny, thought Hill to himself, the fuss she had made at first, and she was all over him now.... But women were always like that--wantons by nature and prudes by grace, and it was wonderful what a poor fight grace generally made of it.

Joanna, unaware that she had betrayed herself and womankind, leaned back comfortably in the train as it slid out of the station. She was in a happy dream, hardly aware of her surroundings. Mechanically she watched the great stucco amphitheatre of Marlingate glide past the window--then the red throbbing darkness of a tunnel ... and the town was gone, like a bad dream, giving place to the tiny tilted fields and century-old hedges of the south-eastern weald. Then gradually these sloped and lost themselves in marsh--first only a green tongue running into the weald along the bed of the Brede River, then spreading north and south and east and west, from the cliff-line of England's ancient coast to the sand-line of England's coast to-day, from the spires of the monks of Battle to the spires of the monks of Canterbury.

Joanna was roused automatically by this return to her old surroundings. She began to think of her trap waiting for her outside Rye station. She wondered if Ellen would have come to meet her. Yes, there she was on the platform ... wearing a green frock, too. She'd come out of her blacks. Joanna thrilled to a faint shock. She wondered how many other revolutions Ellen had carried out in her absence.

"Well, old Jo ..." It seemed to her that Ellen's kiss was warmer than usual. Or was it that her own heart was so warm...?

Ellen found her remarkably silent. She had expected an outpouring of Joanna's adventures, achievements and triumphs, combined with a desperate catechism as to just how much ruin had befallen Ansdore while she was away. Instead of which Joanna seemed for the first time in Ellen's experience, a little dreamy. She had but little to say to Rye's one porter, or to Peter Crouch, the groom. She climbed up on the front seat of the trap, and took the reins.

"You're looking well," said Ellen--"I can see your change has done you good."

"Reckon it has, my dear."

"Were you comfortable at the hotel?"

This, if anything, should have started Joanna off, but all she said was--

"It wasn't a bad place."

"Well, if you don't want to talk about your own affairs," said Ellen to herself--"you can listen to mine, for a change. Joanna,"--she added aloud--"I came to meet you, because I've got something special to tell you."

"What's that?"

"Perhaps you can guess."

Joanna dreamily shook her head.

"Well, I'm thinking of getting married again."

"Married!"

"Yes--it's eighteen months since poor Arthur died," sighed the devoted widow, "and--perhaps you've noticed--Tip Ernley's been getting very fond of me."

"Yes, I had noticed.... I was wondering why you didn't tell."

"There was nothing to tell. He couldn't propose to me till he had something definite to do. Now he's just been offered the post of agent on the Duke of Wiltshire's estate--a perfectly splendid position. Of course, I told him all about my first marriage"--she glanced challengingly at her sister--"but he's a perfect dear, and he saw at once I'd been more sinned against than sinning. We're going to be married this summer."

"I'm unaccountable glad."

Ellen gave her a queer look.

"You take it very calmly, Jo."

"Well, I'd been expecting it all along."

"You won't mind my going away and leaving you?"

"Reckon you'll have to go where your husband goes."

"What on earth's happened?" thought Ellen to herself--"She's positively meek."

The next minute she knew.

"Ellen," said Joanna, as they swung into the Straight Mile, "I've got a friend coming to spend the day on Monday--a Mr. Hill that I met in Marlingate."

§17

For the next few days Joanna was restless and nervous; she could not be busy with Ansdore, even after a fortnight's absence. The truth in her heart was that she found Ansdore rather flat. Wilson's pride in the growth of the young lambs, Broadhurst's anxiety about Spot's calving and his preoccupation with the Suffolk dray-horse Joanna was to buy at Ashford fair that year, all seemed irrelevant to the main purpose of life. The main stream of her life had suddenly been turned underground--it ran under Ansdore's wide innings--on Monday it would come again to the surface, and take her away from Ansdore.

The outward events of Monday were not exciting. Joanna drove into Rye with Peter Crouch behind her, and met Albert Hill with a decorous handshake on the platform. During the drive home, and indeed during most of his visit, his attitude towards her was scarcely more than ordinary friendship. In the afternoon, when Ellen had gone out with Tip Ernley, he gave her a few kisses, but without much passion. She began to feel disquieted. Had he changed? Was there someone else he liked? At all costs she must hold him--she must not let him go.

The truth was that Hill felt uncertain how he stood--he was bewildered in his mind. What was she driving at? Surely she did not think of marriage--the difference in their ages was far too great. But what else could she be thinking of? He gathered that she was invincibly respectable--and yet he was not sure.... In spite of her decorum, she had queer, unguarded ways. He had met no one exactly like her, though he was a man of wide and not very edifying experience. The tactics which had started his friendship with Joanna he had learned at the shorthand and typewriting college where he had learned his clerking job--and they had brought him a rummage of adventures, some transient, some sticky, some dirty, some glamorous. He had met girls of a fairly good class--for his looks caused much to be forgiven him--as well as the typists, shop-girls and waitresses of his more usual association. But he had never met anyone quite like Joanna--so simple yet so swaggering, so solid yet so ardent, so rigid yet so unguarded, so superior and yet, he told himself, so lacking in refinement. She attracted him enormously ... but he was not the sort of man to waste his time.

"When do you go back to London?" she asked.

"Wednesday morning."

She sighed deeply, leaning against him on the sofa.

"Is this all the holiday you'll get this year?"

"No--I've Whitsun coming--Friday to Tuesday. I might run down to Marlingate ..."

He watched her carefully.

"Oh, that 'ud be fine. You'd come and see me here?"

"Of course--if you asked me?"

"If I asked you," she repeated in a sudden, trembling scorn.

Her head drooped to his breast, and he took her in his arms, holding her across him--all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized him--prude or rake, she should get her lesson from him all right.

§18

When he had gone Joanna said to Ellen--

"D'you think it would be seemly if I asked Mr. Hill here to stay?"

"Of course it would be 'seemly,' Jo. I'm a married woman. But would he be able to come? He's in business somewhere, isn't he?"

"Yes, but he could get away for Whitsun."

"Then ask him by all means. But ..."

She looked at her quickly and teasingly.

"But what?"

"Jo, do you care about this man?"

"What d'you mean? Why should I care? Or, leastways, why shouldn't I?"

"No reason at all. He's a good bit younger than you are, but then I always fancied that if you married it ud be a man younger than yourself."

"Who said I was going to marry him?"

"No one. But if you care ..."

"I never said I did."

"Oh, you're impossible," said Ellen with a little shrug. She picked up a book from the table, but Joanna could not let the conversation drop.

"What d'you think of Mr. Hill, Ellen? Does he remind you of anyone particular?"

"No, not at the moment."

"Hasn't it ever struck you he's a bit like my Martin Trevor?"

Her tongue no longer stammered at the name.

"Your Martin Trevor! Jo, what nonsense, he's not a bit like him."

"He's the living image--the way his hair grows out of his forehead, and his dark, saucy eyes ..."

"Well, I was only a little girl when you were engaged to Martin Trevor, but as I remember him he was quite different from Mr. Hill. He belonged to another class, for one thing.... He was a gentleman."

"And you think Mr. Hill ain't a gentleman?"

"My dear Joanna! Of course he's not--he doesn't profess to be."

"He's got a good position as a clerk. Some clerks are gentlemen."

"But this one isn't."

"How do _you_ know?"

"Because I happen to be engaged to someone who is."

"That ain't any reason for miscalling my friends."

"I'm not 'miscalling' anyone.... Oh, hang it all, Jo, don't let's quarrel about men at our time of life. I'm sorry if I said anything you don't like about Mr. Hill. Of course, I don't know him as well as you do."

§19

So Joanna wrote to Albert Hill in her big, cramped handwriting, on the expensive yet unostentatious note-paper which Ellen had decreed, inviting him to come and spend Whitsuntide at Ansdore.

His answer did not come for three or four days, during which, as he meant she should, she suffered many doubts and anxieties. Was he coming? Did he care for her? Or had he just been fooling? She had never felt like this about a man before. She had loved, but love had never held her in the same bondage--perhaps because till now she had always had certainties. Her affair with Martin, her only real love affair, had been a certainty, Arthur Alce's devotion had been a most faithful certainty, the men who had comforted her bereavement had also in their different ways been certainties. Albert Hill was the only man who had ever eluded her, played with her or vexed her. She knew that she attracted him, but she also guessed dimly that he feared to bind himself. As for her, she was now determined. She loved him and must marry him. Characteristically she had swept aside the drawbacks of their different ages and circumstances, and saw nothing but the man she loved--the man who was for her the return of first love, youth and spring. A common little tawdry-minded clerk some might have called him, but to Joanna he was all things--fulfilment, lover and child, and also a Sign and a Second Coming.

She could think of nothing else. Once again Ansdore was failing her, as it always failed her in any crisis of emotion--Ansdore could never be big enough to fill her heart. But she valued it because of the consequence it must give her in young Hill's eyes, and she was impressed by the idea that her own extra age and importance gave her the rights of approach normally belonging to the man.... Queens always invited their consorts to share their thrones, and she was a queen, opening her gates to the man she loved. There could be no question of her leaving her house for his--he was only a little clerk earning two pounds a week, and she was Squire of the Manor. Possibly this very fact made him hesitate, fear to presume.... Well, she must show him he was wrong, and this Whitsuntide was her opportunity. But she wished that she could feel more queenly in her mind--less abject, craving and troubled. In outward circumstances she was his queen, but in her heart she was his slave.

She plunged into an orgy of preparation. Mrs. Tolhurst and Mene Tekel and the new girl from Windpumps who now reinforced the household were nearly driven off their legs. Ellen spared the wretched man much in the way of feather-beds--just one down mattress would be enough, town people weren't used to sleeping on feathers. She also chastened the scheme of decoration, and substituted fresh flowers for the pampas grasses which Joanna thought the noblest adornment possible for a spare bedroom. On the whole Ellen behaved very well about Albert Hill--she worked her best to give him a favourable impression of Ansdore as a household, and when he came she saw that he and her sister were as much alone together as possible.

"He isn't at all the sort of brother-in-law I'd like you to have, my dear," she said to Tip, "but if you'd seen some of the men Joanna's taken up with you'd realize it might have been much worse. I'm told she once had a most hectic romance with her own shepherd ... she's frightfully impressionable, you know."

"Is she really?" said Tip in his slow, well-bred voice. "I shouldn't have thought that."

"No, because--dear old Jo! it's so funny--she's quite without art. But she's always been frightfully keen on men, though she never could attract the right sort; and for some reason or other--to do with the farm, I suppose--she's never been keen on marriage. Now lately I've been thinking she really ought to marry--lately she's been getting quite queer--_détraquée_--and I do think she ought to settle down."

"But Hill's much younger than she is."

"Joanna would never care for anyone older. She's always liked boys--it's because she wants to be sure of being boss, I suppose. I know for a fact she's turned down nearly half a dozen good, respectable, well-to-do farmers of her own age or older than herself. And yet I've sometimes felt nervous about her and Peter Crouch, the groom.... Oh, I tell you, Jo's queer, and I'll be thankful if she marries Bertie Hill, even though he is off the mark. After all, Tip"--and Ellen looked charming--"Jo and I aren't real ladies, you know."

§20

Albert was able to get off on the Friday afternoon, and arrived at Ansdore in time for the splendours of late dinner and a bath in the new bathroom. There was no doubt about it, thought he, that he was on a good thing, whichever way it ended. She must have pots of money ... everything of the very best ... and her sister marrying no end of a swell--Ernley, who played for Sussex, and was obviously top-notch in every other way. Perhaps he wouldn't be such a fool, after all, if he married her. He would be a country gentleman with plenty of money and a horse to ride--better than living single till, with luck, he got a rise, and married inevitably one of his female acquaintances, to live in the suburbs on three hundred a year.... And she was such a splendid creature--otherwise he would not have thought of it--but in attraction she could give points to any girl, and her beauty, having flowered late, would probably last a good while longer....

But--. That night as he sat at his bedroom window, smoking a succession of Gold Flake cigarettes, he saw many other aspects of the situation. The deadly quiet of Ansdore in the night, with all the blackness of the Marsh waiting for the unrisen moon, was to him a symbol of what his life would be if he married Joanna. He would perish if he got stuck in a hole like this, and yet--he thus far acknowledged her queenship--he could never ask her to come out of it. He could not picture her living in streets--she wouldn't fit--but then, neither would he fit down here. He liked streets and gaiety and noise and picture-palaces.... If she'd been younger he might have risked it, but at her age--thirteen years older than he (she had told him her age in an expansive moment) it was really impossible. But, damn it all! She was gorgeous--and he'd rather have her than any younger woman. He couldn't make her out--she must see the folly of marriage as well as he ... then why was she encouraging him like this?--Leading him on into an impossible situation? Gradually he was drifting back into his first queer moment of antagonism--he felt urged to conquest, not merely for the gratification of his vanity nor even for the attainment of his desire, but for the satisfaction of seeing her humbled, all her pride and glow and glory at his feet, like a tiger-lily in the dust.

The next day Joanna drove him into Lydd, and in the afternoon took him inland, to Ruckinge and Warehorne. These drives were another reconstruction of her life with Martin, though now she no longer loved Albert only in his second-coming aspect. She loved him passionately and childishly for himself--the free spring of his hair from his forehead, not merely because it had also been Martin's but because it was his--the impudence as well as the softness of his eyes, the sulkiness as well as the sensitiveness of his mouth, the unlike as well as the like. She loved his quick, Cockney accent, his Cockney oaths when he forgot himself--the way he always said "Yeyss" instead of "Yes"--his little assumptions of vanity in socks and tie. She loved a queer blend of Albert and Martin, the real and the imaginary, substance and dream.

As for him, he was enjoying himself. Driving about the country with a fine woman like Joanna, with privileges continually on the increase, was satisfactory even if no more than an interlude. "Where shall we go to-morrow?" he asked her, as they sat in the parlour after dinner, leaving the garden to Ellen and Tip.

"To-morrow? Why, that's Sunday."

"But can't we go anywhere on Sunday?"

"To church, of course."

"But won't you take me out for another lovely drive? I was hoping we could go out all day to-morrow. It's going to be ever so fine."

"Maybe, but I was brought up to go to church on Sundays, and on Whit Sunday of all other Sundays."

"But this Sunday's going to be different from all other Sundays--and from all other Whit Sundays...."

He looked at her meaningly out of his bold, melting eyes, and she surrendered. She could not deny him in this matter any more than in most others.... She could not disappoint him any more than she could disappoint a child. He should have his drive--she would take him over to New Romney, even though it was written "Neither thou nor thine ox nor thine ass nor the stranger that is within thy gates."

§21

So the next morning when Brodnyx bells were ringing in the east she drove off through Pedlinge on her way to Broomhill level. She felt rather uneasy and ashamed, especially when she passed the church-going people. It was the first time in her life that she had voluntarily missed going to church--for hundreds of Sundays she had walked along that flat white lick of road, her big Prayer Book in her hand, and had gone under that ancient porch to kneel in her huge cattle-pen pew with its abounding hassocks. Even the removal of the Lion and the Unicorn, and the transformation of her comfortable, Established religion into a disquieting mystery had not made her allegiance falter. She still loved Brodnyx church, even now when hassocks were no longer its chief ecclesiastical ornament. She thought regretfully of her empty place and shamefully of her neighbours' comments on it.

It was a sunless day, with grey clouds hanging over a dull green marsh, streaked with channels of green water. The air was still and heavy with the scent of may and meadowsweet and ripening hayseed. They drove as far as the edges of Dunge Marsh, then turned eastward along the shingle road which runs across the root of the Ness to Lydd. The little mare's chocolate flanks were all a-sweat, and Joanna thought it better to bait at Lydd and rest during the heat of the day.

"You'd never think it was Whitsun," said Albert, looking out of the inn window at the sunny, empty street. "You don't seem to get much of a crowd down here. Rum old place, ain't it?"

Already Joanna was beginning to notice a difference between his outlook and Martin's.

"What d'you do with yourself out here all day?" he continued.

"I've plenty to do."

"Well, it seems to agree with you--I never saw anyone look finer. You're reelly a wonder, old thing."

He picked up the large hand lying on the table-cloth and kissed it back and palm. From any other man, even from Martin himself, she would have received the caress quite simply, been proud and contented, but now it brought her into a strange trouble. She leaned towards him, falling upon his shoulder, her face against his neck. She wanted his kisses, and he gave them to her.

At about three o'clock they set out again. The sun was high now, but the air was cooler, for it had lost its stillness and blew in rippling gusts from the sea. Joanna resolved not to go on to New Romney, as they had waited too long at Lydd; so she took the road that goes to Ivychurch, past Midley chapel, one of the ruined shrines of the monks of Canterbury--grey walls huddled against a white tower of hawthorn in which the voices of the birds tinkled like little bells.

She was now beginning to feel more happy and self-confident but she was still preoccupied, though with a new situation. They had now been alone together for five hours, and Albert had not said a word about the marriage on which her hopes were set. Her ideas as to her own right of initiative had undergone a change. He was in all matters of love so infinitely more experienced than she was that she could no longer imagine herself taking the lead. Hitherto she had considered herself as experienced and capable in love as in other things--had she not been engaged for five months? Had she not received at least half a dozen offers of marriage? But Albert had "learned her different." His sure, almost careless, touch abashed her, and the occasional fragments of autobiography which he let fall, showed her that she was a limited and ignorant recluse compared to this boy of twenty-five. In matters of money and achievement she might brag, but in matters of love she was strangely subservient to him, because in such matters he had everything to teach her.

They stopped for tea at Ivychurch; the little inn and the big church beside the New Sewer were hazed over in a cloud of floating sunshine and dust. She had been here before with Martin, and after tea she and Albert went into the church and looked around them. But his interest in old places was not the same as Martin's. He called things "quaint" and "rummy," and quoted anything he had read about them in the guide-book, but he could not make them come alive in a strange re-born youth--he could not make her feel the beauty of the great sea on which the French ships had ridden, or the splendours of the Marsh before the Flood, with all its towns and taverns and steeples. Unconsciously she missed this appeal to her sleeping imagination, and her bringing of him into the great church, which could have held an the village in its aisles, was an effort to supply what was lacking.

But Albert's attitude towards the church was critical and unsatisfactory. It was much too big for the village. It was ridiculous ... that little clump of chairs in all the huge emptiness ... what a waste of money, paying a parson to idle away his time among a dozen people.... "How Dreadful is this Place" ran the painted legend over the arches.... Joanna trembled.

They came out on the farther side of the churchyard, where a little path leads away into the hawthorns of the New Sewer. A faint sunshine was spotting it through the branches, and suddenly Joanna's heart grew warm and heavy with love. She wanted some sheltered corner where she could hold his hand, feel his rough coat-sleeve against her cheek--or, dearer still, carry his head on her bosom, that heavenly weight of a man's head, with the coarse, springing hair to pull and stroke.... She put her arm into his.

"Bertie, let's go and sit over there in the shade."

He smiled at the innocence of her contrivance.

"Shall we?" he said, teasing her--"won't it make us late for dinner?"

"We don't have dinner on Sundays--we have supper at eight, so as to let the gals go to church."

Her eyes looked, serious and troubled, into his. He pressed her hand.

"You darling thing."

They moved away out of the shadow of the church, following the little path down to the channel's bank. The water was of a clear, limpid green, new-flushed with the tide, with a faint stickle moving down it, carrying the white, fallen petals of the may. The banks were rich with loosestrife and meadowsweet, and as they walked on, the arching of hawthorn and willow made of the stream and the path beside it a little tunnel of shade and scent.

The distant farmyard sounds which spoke of Ivychurch behind them gradually faded into a thick silence.

Joanna could feel Bertie leaning against her as they walked, he was playing with her hand, locking and unlocking her fingers with his. Weren't men queer ... the sudden way they melted at a touch? Martin had been like that--losing his funny sulks.... And now Bertie was just the same. She felt convinced that in one moment ... in two ... he would ask her to be his wife....

"Let's sit down for a bit," she suggested.

They sat down by the water side, crushing the meadowsweet till its sickliness grew almost fierce with bruising. She sidled into his arms, and her own crept round him. "Bertie ..." she whispered. Her heart was throbbing quickly, and, as it were, very high--in her throat--choking her. She began to tremble. Looking up she saw his eyes above her, gazing down at her out of a mist--everything seemed misty, trees and sky and sunshine and his dear face.... She was holding him very tight, so tight that she could feel his collar-bones bruising her arms. He was kissing her now, and his kisses were like blows. She suddenly became afraid, and struggled.

"Jo, Jo--don't be a fool--don't put me off, now ... you can't, I tell you."

But she had come to herself.

"No--let me go. I ... it's late--I've got to go home."

She was strong enough to push him from her, and scrambled to her feet. They both stood facing each other in the trodden streamside flowers.

"I beg your pardon," he said at last.

"Oh, it doesn't matter."

She was ashamed.

§22

She was frightened, too--never in her life had she imagined that she could drift so far as she had drifted in those few seconds. She was still trembling as she led the way back to the church. She could hear him treading after her, and as she thought of him her heart smote her. She felt as if she had hurt him--oh, what had she done to him? What had she denied him? What had she given him to think?

As they climbed into the trap she could tell that he was sulking. He looked at her half-defiantly from under his long lashes, and the corners of his mouth were turned down like a child's. The drive home was constrained and nearly silent. Joanna tried to talk about the grazings they had broken at Yokes Court, in imitation of her own successful grain-growing, about her Appeal to the High Court which was to be heard that summer, and the motor-car she would buy if it was successful--but it was obvious that they were both thinking of something else. For the last part of the drive, from Brodnyx to Ansdore, neither of them spoke a word.

The sunset was scattering the clouds ahead and filling the spaces with lakes of gold. The dykes turned to gold, and a golden film lay over the pastures and the reeds. The sun wheeled slowly north, and a huge, shadowy horse and trap began to run beside them along the embankment of the White Kemp Sewer. They turned up Ansdore's drive, now neatly gravelled and gated, and a flood of light burst over the gables of the house, pouring on Joanna as she climbed down over the wheel. She required no help, and he knew it, but she felt his hands pressing her waist; she started away, and she saw him laugh--mocking her. She nearly cried.

The rest of that evening was awkward and unhappy. She had a vague feeling in her heart that she had treated Albert badly, and yet ... the strange thing was that she shrank from an explanation. It had always been her habit to "have things out" on all occasions, and many a misunderstanding had been strengthened thereby. But to-night she could not bear the thought of being left alone with Albert. For one thing, she was curiously vague as to the situation--was she to blame or was he? Had she gone too far or not far enough? What was the matter, after all? There was nothing to lay hold of.... Joanna was unused to this nebulous state of mind; it made her head ache, and she was glad when the time came to go to bed.

With a blessed sense of relief she felt the whitewashed thickness of her bedroom walls between her and the rest of the house. She did not trouble to light her candle. Her room was in darkness, except for one splash of light reflected from her mirror which held the moon. She went over to the window and looked out. The marsh swam in a yellow, misty lake of moonlight. There was a strange air of unsubstantiality about it--the earth was not the solid earth, the watercourses were moonlight rather than water, the light was water rather than light, the trees were shadows....

"Ah-h-h," said Joanna Godden.

She lifted her arms to her head with a gesture of weariness--as she took out the pins her hair fell on her shoulders in great hanks and masses, golden and unsubstantial as the moon.

Slowly and draggingly she began to unfasten her clothes--they fell off her, and lay like a pool round her feet. She plunged into her stiff cotton nightgown, buttoning it at neck and wrists. Then she knelt by her bed and said her prayers--the same prayers that she had said ever since she was five.

The moonlight was coming straight into the room--showing its familiar corners. There was no trace of Ellen in this room--nothing that was "artistic" or "in good taste." A lively pattern covered everything that could be so covered, but Joanna's sentimental love of old associations had spared the original furniture--the wide feather bed, the oaken chest of drawers, the wash-stand which was just a great chest covered with a towel. Over her bed hung Poor Father's Buffalo Certificate, the cherished symbol of all that was solid and prosperous and reputable in life.

She lay in bed. After she got in she realized that she had forgotten to plait her hair, but she felt too languid for the effort. Her hair spread round her on the pillow like a reproach. For some mysterious reason her tears began to fall. Her life seemed to reproach her. She saw all her life stretching behind her for a moment--the moment when she had stood before Socknersh her shepherd, seeing him dark against the sky, between the sun and moon. That was when Men, properly speaking, had begun for her--and it was fifteen years since then--and where was she now? Still at Ansdore, still without her man.

Albert had not asked her to marry him, nor, she felt desperately, did he mean to. If he did, he would surely have spoken to-day. And now besides, he was angry with her, disappointed, estranged. She had upset him by turning cold like that all of a sudden.... But what was she saying? Why, of course she had been quite right. She should ought to have been cold from the start. That was her mistake--letting the thing start when it could have no seemly ending ... a boy like that, nearly young enough to be her son ... and yet she had been unable to deny him, she had let him kiss her and court her--make love to her.... Worse than that, she had made love to him, thrown herself at him, pursued him with her love, refused to let him go ... and all the other things she had done--changing for his sake from her decent ways ... breaking the Sabbath, taking off her neck-band. She had been getting irreligious and immodest, and now she was unhappy, and it served her right.

The house was quite still; everyone had gone to bed, and the moon filled the middle of the window, splashing the bed, and Joanna in it, and the walls, and the sagging beams of the ceiling. She thought of getting up to pull down the blind, but had no more energy to do that than to bind her hair. She wanted desperately to go to sleep. She lay on her side, her head burrowed down into the pillow, her hands clenched under her chin. Her bed was next the door, and beyond the door, against the wall at right angles to it, was her chest of drawers, with Martin's photograph in its black frame, and the photograph of his tombstone in a frame with a lily worked on it. Her eyes strained towards them in the darkness ... oh, Martin--Martin, why did I ever forget you?... But I never forgot you ... Martin, I've never had my man.... I've got money, two farms, lovely clothes--I'm just as good as a lady ... but I've never had my man.... Seemingly I'll go down into the grave without him ... but, oh, I do want ... the thing I was born for....

Sobs shook her broad shoulders as she lay there in the moonlight. But they did not relieve her--her sobs ploughed deep into her soul ... they turned strange furrows.... Oh, she was a bad woman, who deserved no happiness. She'd always known it.

She lifted her head, straining her eyes through the darkness and tears to gaze at Martin's photograph as if it were the Serpent in the Wilderness. Perhaps all this had come upon her because she had been untrue to his memory--and yet what had so appealed to her about Bertie was that he was like Martin, though Ellen said he wasn't--well, perhaps he wasn't.... But what was happening now? Something had come between her and the photograph on the chest of drawers. With a sudden chill at her heart, she realized that it was the door opening.

"Who's there?" she cried in a hoarse angry whisper.

"Don't be frightened, dear--don't be frightened, my sweet Jo--" said Bertie Hill.

§23

She could not think--she could only feel. It was morning--that white light was morning, though it was like the moon. Under it the Marsh lay like a land under the sea--it must have looked like this when the keels of the French boats swam over it, high above Ansdore, and Brodnyx, and Pedlinge, lying like red apples far beneath, at the bottom of the sea. That was nonsense ... but she could not think this morning, she could only feel.

He had not been gone an hour, but she must find him. She must be with him--just feel him near her. She must see his head against the window, hear the heavy, slow sounds of his moving. She slipped on her clothes and twisted up her hair, and went down into the empty, stir-less house. No one was about--even her own people were in bed. The sun was not yet up, but the white dawn was pouring into the house, through the windows, through the chinks. Joanna stood in the midst of it. Then she opened the door and went out into the yard, which was a pool of cold light, ringed round with barns and buildings and reed-thatched haystacks. It was queer how this cold, still, trembling dawn hurt her--seemed to flow into her, to be part of herself, and yet to wound.... She had never felt like this before--she could never have imagined that love would make her feel like this, would make her see beauty in her forsaken yard at dawn--not only see but feel that beauty, physically, as pain. Her heart wounded her--her knees were failing--she went back into the house.

A wooden chair stood in the passage outside the kitchen door, and she sat down on it. She was still unable to think, and she knew now that she did not want to think--it might make her afraid. She wanted only to remember.... He had called her the loveliest, sweetest, most beautiful woman in the world.... She repeated his words over and over again, calling up the look with which he had said them ... oh, those eyes of his--slanty, saucy, secret, loving eyes....

She wondered why he did not come down. She could not imagine that he had turned into bed and gone to sleep--that he did not know she was sitting here waiting for him in the dawn. For a moment she thought of going up and knocking at his door--then she heard a thud of footsteps and creaking of boards, which announced that Mene Tekel and Nan Gregory of Windpumps were stirring in their bedroom. In an incredibly short time they were coming downstairs, tying apron-strings and screwing up hair as they went, and making a terrific stump past the door behind which they imagined their mistress was in bed. It was a great shock to them to find that she was downstairs before them--they weren't more than five minutes late.

"Hurry up, gals," said Joanna, "and get that kettle boiling for the men. I hear Broadhurst about the yard. Mene Tekel, see as there's no clinkers left in the grate; Mrs. Alce never got her bath yesterday evening before dinner as she expects it. When did you do the flues last?"

She set her household about its business--her dreams could not live in the atmosphere of antagonistic suspicion in which she had always viewed the younger members of her own sex. She was firmly convinced that neither Nan nor Mene would do a stroke of work if she was not "at them"; the same opinion applied in a lesser degree to the men in the yard. So till Ansdore's early breakfast appeared amid much hustling and scolding, Joanna had no time to think about her lover, or continue the dreams so strangely and gloriously begun in the sunless dawn.

Bertie was late for breakfast, and came down apologising for having overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy--her little boy ... she dropped her eyelids over her tears.

After breakfast, as soon as they were alone, she stole into his arms and held close to him, without embrace, her hands just clasped over her breast on which her chin had fallen. He tried to raise her burning, blushing face, but she turned it to his shoulder.

§24

Albert Hill went back to London on Tuesday, but he came down again the following week-end, and the next, and the next, and then his engagement to Joanna was made public.

In this respect the trick was hers. The affair had ended in a committal which he had not expected, but his own victory was too substantial for him to regret any development of it to her advantage. Besides, he had seen the impossibility of conducting the affair on any other lines, both on account of the circumstances in which she lived and of her passionate distress when she realized that he did not consider marriage an inevitable consequence of their relation. It was his only way of keeping her--and he could not let her go. She was adorable, and the years between them meant nothing--her beauty had wiped them out. He could think of her only as the ageless woman he loved, who shared the passion of his own youth and in it was for ever young.

On the practical side, too, he was better reconciled. He felt a pang of regret when he thought of London and its work and pleasures, of his chances of a "rise"--which his superiors had hinted was now imminent--of a head clerkship, perhaps eventually of a partnership and a tight marriage into the business--since his Whitsuntide visit to Ansdore he had met the junior partner's daughter and found her as susceptible to his charms as most young women. But after all, his position as Joanna Godden's husband would be better even than that of a partner in the firm of Sherwood and Son. What was Sherwood's but a firm of carpet-makers?--a small firm of carpet-makers. As Joanna's husband he would be a Country Gentleman, perhaps even a County Gentleman. He saw himself going out with his gun ... following the hounds in a pink coat.... He forgot that he could neither shoot nor ride.

Meantime his position as Joanna's lover was not an unenviable one. She adored him and spoiled him like a child. She poured gifts upon him--a gold wrist-watch, a real panama hat, silk socks in gorgeous colours, boxes and boxes of the best Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes--she could not give him enough to show her love and delight in him.

At first he had been a little embarrassed by this outpouring, but he was used to receiving presents from women, and he knew that Joanna had plenty of money to spend and really got as much pleasure out of her gifts as he did. They atoned for the poverty of her letters. She was no letter-writer. Her feelings were as cramped as her handwriting by the time she had got them down on paper; indeed, Joanna herself was wondrously expressed in that big, unformed, constricted handwriting, black yet uncertain, sprawling yet constrained, in which she recorded such facts as "Dot has calved at last," or "Broadhurst will be 61 come Monday," or--as an utmost concession--"I love you, dear."

However, too great a strain was not put on this frail link, for he came down to Ansdore almost every week-end, from Saturday afternoon to early Monday morning. He tried to persuade her to come up to London and stay at his mother's house--he had vague hopes that perhaps an experience of London might persuade her to settle there (she could afford a fine house over at Blackheath, or even in town itself, if she chose). But Joanna had a solid prejudice against London--the utmost she would consent to was a promise to come up and stay with Albert's mother when her appeal was heard at the High Court at the beginning of August. Edward Huxtable had done his best to convince her that her presence was unnecessary, but she did not trust either him or the excellent counsel he had engaged. She had made up her mind to attend in person, and look after him properly.

§25

The attitude of Brodnyx and Pedlinge towards this new crisis in Joanna Godden's life was at first uncertain. The first impression was that she had suddenly taken fright at the prospect of old-maidenhood, and had grabbed the first man she could get, even though he was young enough to be her son.

"He ain't twenty-one till Michaelmas," said Vine at the Woolpack.

"She's always liked 'em young," said Furnese.

"Well, if she'd married Arthur Alce when she fust had the chance, instead of hanging around and wasting time the way she's done, by now she could have had a man of her intended's age for a son instead of a husband."

"Reckon it wouldn't have been the same thing."

"No--it would have been a better thing," said Vine.

When it became known that Joanna's motive was not despair but love, public opinion turned against her, Albert's manner among the Marsh people was unfortunate. In his mind he had always stressed his bride's connexions through Ellen--the Ernleys, a fine old county family; he found it very satisfying to slap Tip Ernley on the back and call him "Ole man." He had deliberately shut his eyes to the other side of her acquaintance, those Marsh families, the Southlands, Furneses, Vines, Cobbs and Bateses, to whom she was bound by far stronger, older ties than any which held her to Great Ansdore. He treated these people as her and his inferiors--unlike Martin Trevor, he would not submit to being driven round and shown off to Misleham, Picknye Bush, or Slinches.... It was small wonder that respectable families became indignant at such airs.

"What does he think himself, I'd like to know? He's nothing but a clerk--such as I'd never see my boy."

"And soon he won't be even that--he'll just be living on Joanna."

"She's going to keep him at Ansdore?"

"Surelye. She'll never move out now."

"But what's she want to marry for, at her age, and a boy like that?"

"She's getting an old fool, I reckon."

§26

The date of the wedding was not yet fixed, though September was spoken of rather vaguely, and this time the hesitation came from the bridegroom. As on the occasion of her first engagement Joanna had made difficulties with the shearing and hay-making, so now Albert contrived and shifted in his anxiety to fit in his marriage with other plans.

He had, it appeared, as far back as last Christmas, arranged for a week's tour in August with the Polytechnic to Lovely Lucerne. In vain Joanna promised him a liberal allowance of "Foreign Parts" for their honeymoon--Bertie's little soul hankered after the Polytechnic, his pals who were going with him, and the kindred spirits he would meet at the chalets. Going on his honeymoon as Joanna Godden's husband was a different matter and could not take the place of such an excursion.

Joanna did not press him. She was terribly afraid of scaring him off. It had occurred to her more than once that his bonds held him far more lightly than she was held by hers. And the prospect of marriage was now an absolute necessity if she was to endure her memories. Marriage alone could hallow and remake Joanna Godden. Sometimes, as love became less of a drug and a bewilderment, her thoughts awoke, and she would be overwhelmed by an almost incredulous horror at herself. Could this be Joanna Godden, who had turned away her dairy-girl for loose behaviour, who had been so shocked at the adventures of her sister Ellen? She could never be shocked at anyone again, seeing that she herself was just as bad and worse than anyone she knew.... Oh, life was queer--there was no denying. It took you by surprise in a way you'd never think--it made you do things so different from your proper notions that afterwards you could hardly believe it was you that had done them--it gave you joy that should ought to have been sorrow ... and pain as you'd never think.

As the summer passed and the time for her visit to town drew near, Joanna began to grow nervous and restless. She did not like the idea of going to a place like London, though she dared not confess her fears to the travelled Ellen or the metropolitan Bertie. She felt vaguely that "no good would come of it"--she had lived thirty-eight years without setting foot in London, and it seemed like tempting Providence to go there now....

However she resigned herself to the journey--indeed, when the time came she undertook it more carelessly than she had undertaken the venture of Marlingate. Her one thought was of Albert, and she gave over Ansdore almost nonchalantly to her carter and her looker, and abandoned Ellen to Tip Ernley with scarcely a doubt as to her moral welfare.