Se

It took Joanna nearly two years to recover from the losses of her sheep. Some people would have done it earlier, but she was not a clever economist. Where many women on the Marsh would have thrown themselves into an orgy of retrenchment ranging from the dismissal of a dairymaid to the substitution of a cheaper brand of tea she made no new occasions for thrift, and persevered but lamely in the old ones. She was fond of spending liked to see things trim and bright; she hated waste, especially when others were guilty of it, but she found a positive support in display.

She was also generous. Everybody knew that she had paid Dick Socknersh thirty shillings for the two weeks that he was out of work after leaving her before he went as cattleman to an inland farm and she had found the money for Martha Tilden’s wedding, and for her lying-in a month afterwards, and some time later she had helped Peter Relf with ready cash to settle his debts and move himself and his wife and baby to West Wittering, where he had the offer of a place with three shillings a week more than they gave at Honeychild.

She might have indulged herself still further in this way, which gratified both her warm heart and her proud head, if she had not wanted so much to send Ellen to a good school. The school at Rye was all very well, attended by the daughters of tradesmen and farmers, and taught by women whom Joanna recognized as ladies; but she had long dreamed of sending her little sister to a really good school at Folkestone where Ellen would wear a ribbon round her hat and go for walks in a long procession of two-and-two, and be taught wonderful, showy and intricate things by ladies with letters after their names whom Joanna despised because she felt sure they had never had a chance of getting married.

She herself had been educated at the National School, and from six to fourteen had trudged to and fro on the Brodnyx road, learning to read and write and reckon and say her catechism.... But this was not good enough for Ellen. Joanna had made up her mind that Ellen should be a lady; she was pretty and lazy and had queer likes and dislikes all promising signs of vocation. She would never learn to care for Ansdore, with its coarse and crowding occupations, so there was no reason why she should grow up like her sister in capable commonness. Half unconsciously Joanna had planned a future in which she ventured and toiled, while Ellen wore a silk dress and sat on the drawing-room sofa that being the happiest lot she could picture for anyone, though she would have loathed it herself.

In a couple of years Ansdore’s credit once more stood high at Lewes Old Bank, and Ellen could be sent to a select school at Folkestone so select indeed that there had been some difficulty about getting her father’s daughter into it. Joanna was surprised as well as disgusted that the schoolmistress should give herself such airs, for she was very plainly dressed, whereas Joanna had put on all her most gorgeous apparel for the interview; but she had been very glad when her sister was finally accepted as a pupil at Rose Hill House, for now she would have as companions the daughters of clergymen and squires, and learn no doubt to model herself on their refinement. She might even be asked to their homes for her holidays, and, making friends in their circle, take a short cut to silken immobility on the drawing-room sofa by way of marriage.... Joanna congratulated herself on having really done very well for Ellen, though during the first weeks she missed her sister terribly. She missed their quarrels and caresses she missed Ellen’s daintiness at meals, though she had often smacked it she missed her strutting at her side to church on Sunday she missed her noisy, remonstrant setting out to school every morning and her noisy affectionate return her heart ached when she looked at the little empty bed in her room, and being sentimental she often dropped a tear where she used to drop a kiss on Ellen’s pillow.

Nevertheless she was proud of what she had done for her little sister, and she was proud too of having restored Ansdore to prosperity, not by stinging and paring, but by her double capacity for working hard herself and for getting all the possible work out of others. If no one had gone short under her roof, neither had anyone gone idle if the tea was strong and the butter was thick and there was always prime bacon for breakfast on Sundays, so was there also a great clatter on the stairs at five o’clock each morning, a rattle of brooms and hiss and slop of scrubbing-brushes and the mistress with clogs on her feet and her father’s coat over her gown, poking her head into the maids’ room to see if they were up, hurrying the men over their snacks, shouting commands across the yard, into the barns or into the kitchen, and seemingly omnipresent to those slackers who paused to rest or chat or “put their feet up.”

That time had scarred her a little put some lines into the corners of her eyes and straightened the curling corners of her mouth, but it had also heightened the rich healthy colour on her cheeks, enlarged her fine girth, her strength of shoulder and depth of bosom. She did not look any older, because she was so superbly healthy and superbly proud. She knew that the neighbours were impressed by Ansdore’s thriving, when they had foretold its downfall under her sway.... She had vindicated her place in her father’s shoes, and best of all, she had expiated her folly in the matter of Socknersh, and restored her credit not only in the bar of the Woolpack but in her own eyes.

Se

One afternoon, soon after Ellen had gone back to school for her second year, when Joanna was making plum jam in the kitchen, and getting very hot and sharp-tongued in the process, Mrs. Tolhurst saw a man go past the window on his way to the front door.

“Lor, miss! There’s Parson!” she cried, and the next minute came sounds of struggle with Joanna’s rusty door-bell.

“Go and see what he wants take off that sacking apron first and if he wants to see me, put him into the parlour.”

Mr. Pratt lacked “visiting” among many other accomplishments as a parish priest the vast, strewn nature of his parish partly excused him and a call from him was not the casual event it would have been in many places, but startling and portentous, requiring fit celebration.

Joanna received him in state, supported by her father’s Bible and stuffed owls. She had kept him waiting while she changed her gown, for like many people who are sometimes very splendid she could also on occasion be extremely disreputable, and her jam-making costume was quite unfit for the masculine eye, even though negligible. Mr. Pratt had grown rather nervous waiting for her he had always been afraid of her, because of her big, breathless ways, and because he felt sure that she was one of the many who criticized him.

“I I’ve only come about a little thing at least it’s not a little thing to me, but a very big thing er er ”

“What is it?” asked Joanna, a stuffed owl staring disconcertingly over each shoulder.

“For some time there’s been complaints about the music in church. Of course I’m quite sure Mr. Elphick does wonders, and the ladies of the choir are excellent er gifted ... I’m quite sure. But the harmonium it’s very old and quite a lot of the notes won’t play ... and the bellows ... Mr. Saunders came from Lydd and had a look at it, but he says it’s past repair er satisfactory repair, and it ud really save money in the long run if we bought a new one.”

Joanna was a little shocked. She had listened to the grunts and wheezes of the harmonium from her childhood, and the idea of a new one disturbed her it suggested sacrilege and ritualism and the moving of landmarks.

“I like what we’ve got very well,” she said truculently “It’s done for us properly this thirty year.”

“That’s just it,” said the Rector, “it’s done so well that I think we ought to let it retire from business, and appoint something younger in its place ... he! he!” He looked at her nervously to see if she had appreciated the joke, but Joanna’s humour was not of that order.

“I don’t like the idea,” she said.

Mr. Pratt miserably clasped and unclasped his hands. He felt that one day he would be crushed between his parishioners’ hatred of change and his fellow-priests’ insistence on it rumour said that the Squire’s elder son, Father Lawrence, was coming home before long, and the poor little rector quailed to think of what he would say of the harmonium if it was still in its place.

“I er Miss Godden I feel our reputation is at stake. Visitors, you know, come to our little church, and are surprised to find us so far behind the times in our music. At Pedlinge we’ve only got a piano, but I’m not worrying about that now.... Perhaps the harmonium might be patched up enough for Pedlinge, where our services are not as yet Fully Choral ... it all depends on how much money we collect.”

“How much do you want?”

“Well, I’m told that a cheap, good make would be thirty pounds. We want it to last us well, you see, as I don’t suppose we shall ever have a proper organ.”

He handed her a little book in which he had entered the names of subscribers.

“People have been very generous already, and I’m sure if your name is on the list they will give better still.”

The generosity of the neighbourhood amounted to five shillings from Prickett of Great Ansdore, and half-crowns from Vine, Furnese, Vennal, and a few others. As Joanna studied it she became possessed of two emotions one was a feeling that since others, including Great Ansdore, had given, she could not in proper pride hold back, the other was a queer savage pity for Mr. Pratt and his poor little collection scarcely a pound as the result of all his begging, and yet he had called it generous....

She immediately changed her mind about the scheme, and going over to a side table where an ink-pot and pen reposed on a woolly mat, she prepared to enter her name in the little book.

“I’ll give him ten shillings,” she said to herself “I’ll have given the most.”

Mr. Pratt watched her. He found something stimulating in the sight of her broad back and shoulders, her large presence had invigorated him somehow he felt self-confident, as he had not felt for years, and he began to talk, first about the harmonium, and then about himself he was a widower with three pale little children, whom he dragged up somehow on an income of two hundred a year.

Joanna was not listening. She was thinking to herself “My cheque-book is in the drawer. If I wrote him a cheque, how grand it would look.”

Finally she opened the drawer and took the cheques out. After all, she could afford to be generous she had nearly a hundred pounds in Lewes Old Bank, put aside without any scraping for future “improvements.” How much could she spare? A guinea that would look handsome, among all the miserable half-crowns....

Mr. Pratt had seen the cheque-book, and a stutter came into his speech

“So good of you, Miss Godden ... to help me ... encouraging, you know ... been to so many places, a tiring afternoon ... feel rewarded.”

She suddenly felt her throat grow tight; the queer compassion had come back. She saw him trotting forlornly round from farm to farm, begging small sums from people much better off than himself, receiving denials or grudging gifts ... his boots were all over dust, she had noticed them on her carpet. Her face flushed, as she suddenly dashed her pen into the ink, wrote out the cheque in her careful, half-educated hand, and gave it to him.

“There that’ll save you tramping any further.”

She had written the cheque for the whole amount.

Mr. Pratt could not speak. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish. Then suddenly he began to gabble, he poured out thanks and assurances and deprecations in a stammering torrent. His gratitude overwhelmed Joanna, disgusted her. She lost her feeling of warmth and compassion after all, what should she pity him for now that he had got what he wanted, and much more easily than he deserved?

“That’s all right, Mr. Pratt. I’m sorry I can’t wait any longer now. I’m making jam.”

She forgot his dusty boots and weary legs that had scarcely had time to rest, she forgot that she had meant to offer him a cup of tea.

“Good afternoon,” she said, as he rose, with apologies for keeping her.

She went with him to the door, snatched his hat off the peg and gave it to him, then crashed the door behind him, her cheeks burning with a queer kind of shame.

Se

For the next few days Joanna avoided Mr. Pratt; she could not tell why her munificence should make her dislike him, but it did. One day as she was walking through Pedlinge she saw him standing in the middle of the road, talking to a young man whom on approach she recognized as Martin Trevor, the Squire’s second son. She could not get out of his way, as the Pedlinge dyke was on one side of the road and on the other were some cottages. To turn back would be undignified, so she decided to pass them with a distant and lordly bow.

Unfortunately for this, she could not resist the temptation to glance at Martin Trevor she had not seen him for some time, and it was surprising to meet him in the middle of the week, as he generally came home only for week-ends. That glance was her undoing a certain cordiality must have crept into it, inspired by his broad shoulders and handsome, swarthy face, for Mr. Pratt was immediately encouraged, and pounced. He broke away from Trevor to Joanna’s side.

“Oh, Miss Godden ... so glad to meet you. I I never thanked you properly last week for your generosity your munificence. Thought of writing, but somehow felt that felt that inadequate.... Mr. Trevor, I’ve told you about Miss Godden ... our harmonium ...”

He had actually seized Joanna’s hand. She pulled it away. What a wretched undersized little chap he was. She could have borne his gratitude if only he had been a real man, tall and dark and straight like the young fellow who was coming up to her.

“Please don’t, Mr. Pratt. I wish you wouldn’t make all this tedious fuss.”

She turned towards Martin Trevor with a greeting in her eyes. But to her surprise she saw that he had fallen back. The Rector had fallen back too, and the two men stood together, as when she had first come up to them.

Joanna realized that she had missed the chance of an introduction. Well, it didn’t matter. She really couldn’t endure Mr. Pratt and his ghastly gratitude. She put her stiffest bow into practice and walked on.

For the rest of the day she tried to account for young Trevor’s mid-week appearance. Her curiosity was soon satisfied, though she was at a disadvantage in having no male to bring her news from the Woolpack. However, she made good use of other people’s males, and by the same evening was possessed of the whole story. Martin Trevor had been ill in London with pleurisy, and the doctor said his lungs were in danger and that he must give up office work and lead an open-air life. He was going to live with his father for a time, and help him farm North Farthing House they were taking in a bit more land there, and buying sheep.

Se

That October the Farmers’ Club Dinner was held as usual at the Woolpack. There had been some controversy about asking Joanna there was controversy every year, but this year the difference lay in the issue, for the ayes had it.

The reasons for this change were indefinite on the whole, no doubt, it was because people liked her better. They had grown used to her at Ansdore, where at first her mastership had shocked them; the scandal and contempt aroused by the Socknersh episode were definitely dead, and men took off their hats to the strenuousness with which she had pulled the farm together, and faced a crisis that would have meant disaster to many of her neighbours. Ansdore was one of the largest farms of the district, and it was absurd that it should never be represented at the Woolpack table merely on the ground that its master was a woman.

Of course many women wondered how Joanna could face such a company of males, and suggestions were made for admitting farmers’ wives on this occasion. But Joanna was not afraid, and when approached as to whether she would like other women invited, or to bring a woman friend, she declared that she would be quite satisfied with the inevitable presence of the landlord’s wife.

She realized that she would be far more imposing as the only woman guest, and made great preparations for a proper display. Among these was included the buying of a new gown at Folkestone. She thought that Folkestone, being a port for the channel steamers, would be more likely to have the latest French fashions than the nearer towns of Bulverhythe and Marlingate. My I But she would make the Farmers’ Club sit up.

The dressmaker at Folkestone tried to persuade her not to have her sleeves lengthened or an extra fold of lace arranged along the top of her bodice.

“Madam has such a lovely neck and arms it’s a pity to cover them up and it spoils the character of the gown. Besides, madam, this gown is not at all extreme demi-toilet is what it really is.”

“I tell you it won’t do I’m going to dine alone with several gentlemen, and it wouldn’t be seemly to show such a lot of myself.”

It ended, to the dressmaker’s despair, in her draping her shoulders in a lace scarf and wearing kid gloves to her elbow; but though these pruderies might have spoilt her appearance at Dungemarsh Court, there was no doubt as to its effectiveness at the Woolpack. The whole room held its breath as she sailed in, with a rustle of amber silk skirts. Her hair was piled high against a tortoise-shell comb, making her statelier still.

Furnese of Misleham, who was chairman that year, came gaping to greet her. The others stared and stood still. Most of them were shocked, in spite of the scarf and the long gloves, but then it was just like Joanna Godden to swing bravely through an occasion into which most women would have crept. She saw that she had made a sensation, which she had expected and desired, and her physical modesty being appeased, she had no objection to the men’s following eyes. She saw that Sir Harry Trevor was in the room, with his son Martin.

It was the first time that the Squire had been to the Farmers’ Club Dinner. Up till then no one had taken him seriously as a farmer. For a year or two after his arrival in the neighbourhood he had managed the North Farthing estate through a bailiff, and on the latter’s turning out unsatisfactory, had dismissed him, and at the same time let off a good part of the land, keeping only a few acres for cow-grazing round the house. Now, on his son’s coming home and requiring an outdoor life, he had given a quarter’s notice to the butcher-grazier to whom he had sub-let his innings, had bought fifty head of sheep, and joined the Farmers’ Club which he knew would be a practical step to his advantage, as it brought certain privileges in the way of marketing and hiring. Joanna was glad to see him at the Woolpack, because she knew that there was now a chance of the introduction she had unfortunately missed in Pedlinge village a few weeks ago. She had a slight market-day acquaintance with the Old Squire as the neighbourhood invariably called him, to his intense annoyance and now she greeted him with her broad smile.

“Good evening, Sir Harry.”

“Good evening, Miss Godden. I’m pleased to see you here. You’re looking very well.”

His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified than by all the bulging glances of the other men.

“I’m pleased to see you, too, Sir Harry. I hear you’ve joined the Club.”

“Surelye as a real farmer ought to say; and so has my son Martin he’s going to do most of the work. Martin, you’ve never met Miss Godden. Let me introduce you.”

Joanna’s welcoming grin broke itself on the young man’s stiff bow. There was a moment’s silence.

“He doesn’t look as if a London doctor had threatened him with consumption,” said the Squire banteringly. “Sometimes I really don’t, think I believe it I think he’s only come down here so as he can look after me.”

Martin made some conventional remark. He was a tall, broadly built young man, with a dark healthy skin and that generally robust air which sometimes accompanies extreme delicacy in men.

“The doctor says he’s been overworking,” continued his father, “and that he ought to try a year’s outdoor life and sea air. If you ask me, I should say he’s overdone a good many things besides work ” he threw the boy a defiant, malicious glance, rather like a child who gets a thrust into an elder “but Walland Marsh is as good a cure for over-play as for over-work. Not much to keep him up late hereabouts, is there, Miss Godden?”

“I reckon it’ll be twelve o’clock before any of us see our pillows to-night,” said Joanna.

“Tut! Tut I What terrible ways we’re getting into, just when I’m proposing the place as a rest-cure. How do you feel, Miss Godden, being the only woman guest?”

“I like it.”

“Bet you do so do we.”

Joanna laughed and bridled. She felt proud of her position she pictured every farmer’s wife on the Marsh lying awake that night so that she could ask her husband directly he came upstairs how Joanna Godden had looked, what she had said, and what she had worn.

Se

At dinner she sat on the Chairman’s right. On her other side, owing to some accident of push and shuffle, sat young Martin Trevor. At first she had not thought his place accidental, in spite of his rather stiff manner before they sat down, but after a while she realized with a pang of vexation that he was not particularly pleased to find himself next her. He replied without interest to her remarks and then entered into conversation with his right-hand neighbour. Joanna was annoyed she could not put down his constraint to shyness, for he did not at all strike her as a shy young man. Nor was he being ungracious to Mr. Turner of Beckett’s House, though the latter could not talk of turnips half so entertainingly as Joanna would have done. He obviously did not want to speak to her. Why? Because of what had happened in Pedlinge all that time ago? She remembered how he had drawn back ... he had not liked the way she had spoken to Mr. Pratt. She had not liked it herself by the time she got to the road’s turn. But to think of him nursing his feelings all this time ... and something she had said to Mr. Pratt ... considering that she had bought them all a new harmonium ... the lazy, stingy louts with their half-crowns....

She had lost her serenity, her sense of triumph she felt vaguely angry with the whole company, and snapped at Arthur Alce when he spoke to her across the table. He had asked after Ellen, knowing she had been to Folkestone.

“Ellen’s fine and learning such good manners as it seems a shame to bring her into these parts at Christmas for her to lose ’em.”

“On the other hand. Miss Godden, she might impart them to us,” said the Squire from a little farther down.

“She’s learning how to dance and make curtsies right down to the floor,” said Joanna.

“Then she’s fit to see the Queen. You really mustn’t keep her away from us at Christmas on the contrary, we ought to make some opportunities for watching her dance; she must be as pretty as a sprite.”

“That she is,” agreed Joanna, warming and mollified, “and I’ve bought her a new gown that pulls out like an accordion, so as she can wave her skirts about when she dances.”

“Well, the drawing-room at North Farthing would make an excellent ball-room ... we must see about that eh, Martin?”

“It’ll want a new floor laid down there’s rot under the carpet,” was his son’s disheartening reply. But Joanna had lost the smarting of her own wound in the glow of her pride for Ellen, and she ate the rest of her dinner in good-humoured contempt of Martin Trevor.

When the time for the speeches came her health was proposed by the Chairman.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “let us drink to the Lady.”

The chivalry of the committee had prompted them to offer her Southland to respond to this toast. But Joanna had doubts of his powers as an orator, whereas she had none of her own. She stood up, a glow of amber brightness above all the black coats, and spoke of her gratification, of her work at Ansdore and hopes for south-country farming. Her speech, as might have been expected, was highly dogmatic. She devoted her last words to the Marsh as a grain-bearing district on one or two farms, where pasture had been broken, the yield in wheat had been found excellent. Since that was so, why had so few farms hitherto shown enterprise in this direction? There was no denying that arable paid better than pasture, and the only excuse for neglecting it was poverty of soil. It was obvious that no such poverty existed here on the contrary, the soil was rich, and yet no crops were grown in it except roots and here and there a few acres of beans or lucerne. It was the old idea, she supposed, about breaking up grass. It was time that old idea was bust she herself would lead the way at Ansdore next spring.

As she was the guest of the evening, they heard her with respect, which did not, however, survive her departure at the introduction of pipes and port.

“Out on the rampage again, is she?” said Southland to his neighbour.

“Well, if she busts that ‘old idea’ same as she bust the other ’old idea’ about crossing Kent sheep, all I can say is that it’s Ansdore she’ll bust next.”

“Whosumdever breaks pasture shall himself be broke,” said Vine oracularly.

“Surelye surelye,” assented the table.

“She’s got pluck all the same,” said Sir Harry.

But he was only an amateur.

“I don’t hold for a woman to have pluck,” said Vennal of Beggar’s Bush, “what do you say, Mr. Alce?”

“I say nothing, Mr. Vennal.”

“Pluck makes a woman think she can do without a man,” continued Vennal, “when everyone knows, and it’s in Scripture, that she can’t. Now Joanna Godden should ought to have married drackly minute Thomas Godden died and left her Ansdore, instead of which she’s gone on plunging like a heifer till she must be past eight and twenty as I calculate ”

“Now, now, Mr. Vennal, we mustn’t start anything personal of our lady guest,” broke in Furnese from the Chair, “we may take up her ideas or take ’em down, but while she’s the guest of this here Farmers’ Club, which is till eleven-thirty precise, we mustn’t start arguing about her age or matrimonious intentions. Anyways, I take it, that’s a job for our wives.”

“Hear, hear,” and Joanna passed out of the conversation, for who was going to waste time either taking up or taking down a silly, tedious, foreign, unsensible notion like ploughing grass?...

Indeed, it may be said that her glory had gone up in smoke the smoke of twenty pipes.

She had been obliged to leave the table just when it was becoming most characteristic and convivial, and to retire forlorn and chilly in her silken gown to the Woolpack parlour, where she and the landlady drank innumerable cups of tea. It was an unwelcome reminder of the fact that she was a woman, and that no matter how she might shine and impress the company for an hour, she did not really belong to it. She was a guest, not a member, of the Farmers’ Club, and though a guest has more honour, he has less fellowship and fun. It was for fellowship and fun that she hungrily longed as she sat under the green lamp-shade of the Woolpack’s parlour, and discoursed on servants and the price of turkeys with Mrs. Jupp, who was rather constrained and absent-minded owing to her simultaneous efforts to price Miss Godden’s gown. Now and then a dull roar of laughter came to her from the Club room. What were they talking about, Joanna wondered. Had there been much debate over her remarks on breaking pasture?...

Se

On the whole, the Farmers’ Club Dinner left behind it a rankling trail for one thing, it was not followed as she had hoped and half expected by an invitation to join the Farmers’ Club. No, they would never have a woman privileged among them she realized that, in spite of her success, certain doors would always be shut on her. The men would far rather open those doors ceremonially now and then than allow her to go freely in and out. After all, perhaps they were right hadn’t she got her own rooms that they were shut out of?... Women were always different from men, even if they did the same things ... she had heard people talk of “woman’s sphere.” What did that mean? A husband and children, of course any fool could tell you that. When you had a husband and children you didn’t go round knocking at the men’s doors, but shut yourself up snugly inside your own ... you were warm and cosy, and the firelight played on the ceiling.... But if you were alone inside your room with no husband or child to keep you company ... then it was terrible, worse than being outside ... and no wonder you went round to the men’s doors, and knocked on them and begged them to give you a little company, or something to do to help you to forget your empty room....

“Well, I could marry Arthur Alce any day I liked,” she thought to herself.

But somehow that did not seem any solution to the problem.

She thought of one or two other men who had approached her, but had been scared off before they had reached any definite position of courtship. They were no good either young Cobb of Slinches had married six months ago, and Jack Abbot of Stock Bridge belonged to the Christian Believers, who kept Sunday on Saturday, and in other ways fathered confusion. Besides, she didn’t want to marry just anyone who would have her some dull yeoman who would take her away from Ansdore, or else come with all his stupid, antiquated, man-made notions to sit for ever on her enterprising acres. She wanted her marriage to be some big, neighbour-startling adventure she wanted either to marry someone above herself in birth and station, or else very much below. She had touched the fringe of the latter experience and found it disappointing, so she felt that she would now prefer the other she would like to marry some man of the upper classes, a lawyer or a parson or a squire. The two first were represented in her mind by Mr. Huxtable and Mr. Pratt, and she did not linger over them, but the image she had put up for the third was Martin Trevor dark, tall, well-born, comely and strong of frame, and yet with that hidden delicacy, that weakness which Joanna must have in a man if she was to love him....

She had been a fool about Martin Trevor she had managed to put him against her at the start. Of course it was silly of him to mind what she said to Mr. Pratt, but that didn’t alter the fact that she had been stupid herself, that she had failed to make a good impression just when she most wanted to do so. Martin Trevor was the sort of man she felt she could “take to,” for in addition to his looks he had the quality she prized in males the quality of inexperience; he was not likely to meddle with her ways, since he was only a beginner and would probably be glad of her superior knowledge and judgment. He would give her what she wanted his good name and his good looks and her neighbours’ envious confusion and she would give him what he wanted, her prosperity and her experience. North Farthing House was poorer than Ansdore in spite of late dinners and drawing-rooms the Trevors could look down on her from the point of view of birth and breeding but not from any advantage more concrete.

As for herself, for her own warm, vigorous, vital person with that curious simplicity which was part of her unawakened state, it never occurred to her to throw herself into the balance when Ansdore was already making North Farthing kick the beam. She thought of taking a husband as she thought of taking a farm hand as a matter of bargaining, of offering substantial benefits in exchange for substantial services. If in a secondary way she was moved by romantic considerations, that was also true of her engagement of her male servants. Just as she saw her future husband in his possibilities as a farm-hand, in his relations to Ansdore, so she could not help seeing every farm-hand in his possibilities as a husband, in his relations to herself.

Se

Martin Trevor would have been surprised had he known himself the object of so much attention. His attitude towards Joanna was one of indifference based on dislike her behaviour towards Mr. Pratt had disgusted him at the start, but his antipathy was not all built on that foundation. During the weeks he had been at home, he had heard a good deal about her indeed he had found her rather a dominant personality on the Marsh and what he had heard had not helped turn him from his first predisposition against her.

As a young boy he had shared his brother’s veneration of the Madonna, and though, when he grew up, his natural romanticism had not led him his brother’s way, the boyish ideal had remained, and unconsciously all his later attitude towards women was tinged with it. Joanna was certainly not the Madonna type, and all Martin’s soul revolted from her broad, bustling ways everywhere he went he heard stories of her busyness and her bluff, of “what she had said to old Southland,” or “the sass she had given Vine.” She seemed to him to be an arrant, pushing baggage, running after notoriety and display. Her rudeness to Mr. Pratt was only part of the general parcel. He looked upon her as sexless, too, and he hated women to be sexless his Madonna was not after Memling but after Raphael. Though he heard constant gossip about her farming activities and her dealings at market, he heard none about her passions, the likelier subject. All he knew was that she had been expected for years to marry Arthur Alce, but had not done so, and that she had also been expected at one time to marry her looker, but had not done so. The root of such romances must be poor indeed if this was all the flower that gossip could give them.

Altogether he was prejudiced against Joanna Godden, and the prejudice did not go deep enough to beget interest. He was not interested in her, and did not expect her to be interested in him; therefore it was with great surprise, not to say consternation, that one morning at New Romney Market he saw her bearing down upon him with the light of battle in her eye.

“Good morning, Mr. Trevor.”

“Good morning, Miss Godden.”

“Fine weather.”

“Fine weather.”

He would have passed on, but she barred the way, rather an imposing figure in her bottle-green driving coat, with a fur toque pressed down over the flying chestnut of her hair. Her cheeks were not so much coloured as stained deep with the sun and wind of Walland Marsh, and though it was November, a mass of little freckles smudged and scattered over her skin. It had not occurred to him before that she was even a good-looking creature.

“I’m thinking, Mr. Trevor,” she said deliberately, “that you and me aren’t liking each other as much as we should ought.”

“Really, Miss Godden. I don’t see why you need say that.”

“Well, we don’t like each other, do we? Leastways, you don’t like me. Now” lifting a large, well-shaped hand “you needn’t gainsay me, for I know what you think. You think I was middling rude to Mr. Pratt in Pedlinge street that day I first met you and so I think myself, and I’m sorry, and Mr. Pratt knows it. He came around two weeks back to ask about Milly Pump, my chicken-gal, getting confirmed, and I told him I liked him and his ways so much that he could confirm the lot, gals and men even old Stuppeny who says he’s been done already, but I say it don’t matter, since he’s so old that it’s sure to have worn off by this time.”

Martin stared at her with his mouth open.

“So I say as I’ve done proper by Mr. Pratt,” she continued, her voice rising to a husky flurry, “for I’ll have to give ’em all a day off to get confirmed in, and that’ll be a tedious affair for me. However, I don’t grudge it, if it’ll make things up between us between you and me, I’m meaning.”

“But, I I that is, you’ve made a mistake your behaviour to Mr. Pratt is no concern of mine.”

He was getting terribly embarrassed this dreadful woman, what would she say next? Unconsciously yielding to a nervous habit, he took off his cap and violently rubbed up his hair the wrong way. The action somehow appealed to Joanna.

“But it is your concern, I reckon you’ve shown me plain that it is. I could see you were offended at the Farmers’ Dinner.”

A qualm of compunction smote Martin.

“You’re showing me that I’ve been jolly rude.”

“Well, I won’t say you haven’t,” said Joanna affably. “Still you’ve had reason. I reckon no one ud like me better for behaving rude to Mr. Pratt ...”

“Oh, damn Mr. Pratt!” cried Martin, completely losing his head “I tell you I don’t care tuppence what you or anyone says or does to him.”

“Then you should ought to care, Mr. Trevor,” said Joanna staidly, “not that I’ve any right to tell you, seeing how I’ve behaved. But at least I gave him a harmonium first it’s only that I couldn’t abide the fuss he made of his thanks. I like doing things for folks, but I can’t stand their making fools of themselves and me over it.”

Trevor had become miserably conscious that they were standing in the middle of the road, that Joanna was not inconspicuous, and if she had been, her voice would have made up for it. He could see people gaitered farmers, clay-booted farm-hands staring at them from the pavement. He suddenly felt himself not without justification the chief spectacle of Romney market-day.

“Please don’t think about it any more, Miss Godden,” he said hurriedly. “I certainly should never presume to question anything you ever said or did to Mr. Pratt or anybody else. And, if you’ll excuse me, I must go on I’m a farmer now, you know,” with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “and I’ve plenty of business in the market.”

“Reckon you have,” said Joanna, her voice suddenly falling flat.

He snatched off his cap and left her standing in the middle of the street.

Se

He did not let himself think of her for an hour or more the episode struck him as grotesque and he preferred not to dwell on it. But after he had done his business of buying a farm horse, with the help of Mr. Southland who was befriending his inexperience, he found himself laughing quietly, and he suddenly knew that he was laughing over the interview with Joanna. And directly he had laughed, he was smitten with a sense of pathos her bustle and self-confidence which hitherto had roused his dislike, now showed as something rather pathetic, a mere trapping of feminine weakness which would deceive no one who saw them at close quarters. Under her loud voice, her almost barbaric appearance, her queerly truculent manner, was a naïve mixture of child and woman soft, simple, eager to please. He knew of no other woman who would have given herself away quite so directly and naturally as she had ... and his manhood was flattered. He was far from suspecting the practical nature of her intentions, but he could see that she liked him, and wanted to stand in his favour. She was not sexless, after all.

This realization softened and predisposed him; he felt a little contrite, too he remembered how her voice had suddenly dragged and fallen flat at his abrupt farewell.... She was disappointed in his reception of her offers of peace she had been incapable of appreciating the attitude his sophistication was bound to take up in the face of such an outburst. She had proved herself, too, a generous soul frankly owning herself in the wrong and trying by every means to make atonement.... Few women would have been at once so frank and so practical in their repentance. That he suspected the repentance was largely for his sake did not diminish his respect of it. When he met Joanna Godden again, he would be nice to her.

The opportunity was given him sooner than he expected. Walking up the High Street in quest of some quiet place for luncheon every shop and inn seemed full of thick smells of pipes and beer and thick noises of agricultural and political discussion conducted with the mouth full he saw Miss Godden’s trap waiting for her outside the New Inn. He recognized her equipage, not so much from its make or from the fat cob in the shafts, as from the figure of old Stuppeny dozing at Smiler’s head. Old Stuppeny went everywhere with Miss Godden, being now quite unfit for work on the farm. His appearance was peculiar, for he seemed, like New Romney church tower, to be built in stages. He wore, as a farm-labourer of the older sort, a semi-clerical hat, which with his long white beard gave him down to the middle of his chest a resemblance to that type still haunting the chapels of marsh villages and known as Aged Evangelist from his chest to his knees, he was mulberry coat and brass buttons, Miss Joanna Godden’s coachman, though as the vapours of the marsh had shaped him into a shepherd’s crook, his uniform lost some of its effect. Downwards from the bottom of his coat he was just a farm-labourer, with feet of clay and corduroy trousers tied with string.

His presence showed that Miss Godden was inside the New Inn, eating her dinner, probably finishing it, or he would not have brought the trap round. It was just like her, thought Martin, with a tolerant twist to his smile, to go to the most public and crowded place in Romney for her meal, instead of shrinking into the decent quiet of some shop. But Joanna Godden had done more for herself in that interview than she had thought, for though she still repelled she was no longer uninteresting. Martin gave up searching for that quiet meal, and walked into the New Inn.

He found Joanna sitting at a table by herself, finishing a cup of tea. The big table was edged on both sides with farmers, graziers and butchers, while the small tables were also occupied, so there was not much need for his apologies as he sat down opposite her. Her face kindled at once

“I’m sorry I’m so near finished.”

She was a grudgeless soul, and Martin almost liked her.

“Have you done much business to-day?”

“Not much. I’m going home as soon as I’ve had my dinner. Are you stopping long?”

“Till I’ve done a bit of shopping” he found himself slipping into the homeliness of her tongue “I want a good spade and some harness.”

“I’ll tell you a good shop for harness ...” Joanna loved enlightening ignorance and guiding inexperience, and while Martin’s chop and potatoes were being brought she held forth on different makes of harness and called spades spades untiringly. He listened without rancour, for he was beginning to like her very much. His liking was largely physical he wouldn’t have believed a month ago that he should ever find Joanna Godden attractive, but to-day the melting of his prejudice seemed to come chiefly from her warm beauty, from the rich colouring of her face and the flying sunniness of her hair, from her wide mouth with its wide smile, from the broad, strong set of her shoulders, and the sturdy tenderness of her breast.

She saw that he had changed. His manner was different, more cordial and simple the difference between his coldness and his warmth was greater than in many, for like most romantics he had found himself compelled at an early age to put on armour, and the armour was stiff and disguising in proportion to the lightness and grace of the body within. Not that he and Joanna talked of light and graceful things ... they talked, after spades and harness, of horses and sheep, and of her ideas on breaking up grass, which was to be a practical scheme at Ansdore that spring in spite of the neighbours, of the progress of the new light railway from Lydd to Appledore, of the advantages and disadvantages of growing lucerne. But the barrier was down between them, and he knew that they were free, if they chose, to go on from horses and sheep and railways and crops to more daring, intimate things, and because of that same freedom they stuck to the homely topics, like people who are free to leave the fireside but wait till the sun is warmer on the grass.

He had begun his apple-tart before she rose.

“Well, I must be getting back now. Good-bye, Mr. Trevor. If you should ever happen to pass Ansdore, drop in and I’ll give you a cup of tea.”

He was well aware that the whole room had heard this valediction. He saw some of the men smiling at each other, but he was not annoyed. He rose and went with her to the door, where she hugged herself into her big driving coat. Something about her made him feel big enough to ignore the small gossip of the Marsh.

Se

He liked her now he told himself that she was good common stuff. She was like some sterling homespun piece, strong and sweet-smelling she was like a plot of the marsh earth, soft and rich and alive. He had forgotten her barbaric tendency, the eccentricity of looks and conduct which had at first repelled him that aspect had melted in the unsuspected warmth and softness he had found in her. He had been mistaken as to her sexlessness she was alive all through. She was still far removed from his type, but her fundamental simplicity had brought her nearer to it, and in time his good will would bring her the rest of the way. Anyhow, he would look forward to meeting her again perhaps he would call at Ansdore, as she had proposed.

Joanna was not blind to her triumph, and it carried her beyond her actual attainment into the fulfilment of her hopes. She saw Martin Trevor already as her suitor respectful, interested, receptive of her wisdom in the matter of spades. She rejoiced in her courage in having taken the first step she would not have much further to go now. Now that she had overcome his initial dislike, the advantages of the alliance must be obvious to him. She looked into the future, and between the present moment and the consummated union of North Farthing and Ansdore, she saw thrilling, half-dim, personal adventures for Martin and Joanna ... the touch of his hands would be quite different from the touch of Arthur Alce’s ... and his lips she had never wanted a man’s lips before, except perhaps Socknersh’s for one wild, misbegotten minute ... she held in her heart the picture of Martin’s well-cut, sensitive mouth, so unlike the usual mouths of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, which were either coarse-lipped or no-lipped.... Martin’s mouth was wonderful it would be like fire on hers....

Thus Joanna rummaged in her small stock of experience, and of the fragments built a dream. Her plans were not now all concrete they glowed a little, though dimly, for her memory held no great store, and her imagination was the imagination of Walland Marsh, as a barndoor fowl to the birds that fly. She might have dreamed more if her mind had not been occupied with the practical matter of welcoming Ellen home for her Christmas holidays.

Ellen, who arrived on Thomas-day, already seemed in some strange way to have grown apart from the life of Ansdore. As Joanna eagerly kissed her on the platform at Rye, there seemed something alien in her soft cool cheek, in the smoothness of her hair under the dark boater hat with its deviced hat-band.

“Hullo, Joanna,” she said.

“Hullo, dearie. I’ve just about been pining to get you back. How are you? how’s your dancing?” This as she bundled her up beside her in the trap, while the porter helped old Stuppeny with her trunk.

“I can dance the waltz and the polka.”

“That’s fine I’ve promised the folks around here that you shall show ’em what you can do.”

She gave Ellen another warm, proud hug, and this time the child’s coolness melted a little. She rubbed her immaculate cheek against her sister’s sleeve

“Good old Jo ...”

Thus they drove home at peace together.

The peace was shattered many times between that day and Christmas. Ellen had forgotten what it was like to be slapped and what it was like to receive big smacking kisses at odd encounters in yard or passage she resented both equally. “You’re like an old bear, Jo an awful old bear.” She had picked up at school a new vocabulary, of which the word “awful,” used to express every quality of pleasure or pain, was a fair sample. Joanna sometimes could not understand her sometimes she understood too well.

“I sent you to school to be made a little lady of, and here you come back speaking worse than a National child.”

“All the girls talk like that at school.”

“Then seemingly it was a waste to send you there, since you could have learned bad manners cheaper at home.”

“But the mistresses don’t allow it,” said Ellen, in hasty fear of being taken away, “you get a bad mark if you say ‘damn.’”

“I should just about think you did, and I’d give you a good spanking too. I never heard such language no, not even at the Woolpack.”

Ellen gave her peculiar, alien smile.

“You’re awfully old-fashioned, Jo.”

“Old-fashioned, am I, because I don’t go against my Catechism and take the Lord’s name in vain?”

“Yes, you do every time you say ‘Lord sakes’ you take the Lord’s name in vain, and it’s common into the bargain.”

Here Joanna lost her temper and boxed Ellen’s ears.

“You dare say I’m common! So that’s what you learn at school? to come home and call your sister common. Well, if I’m common, you’re common too, since we’re the same blood.”

“I never said you were common,” sobbed Ellen “and you really are a beast, hitting me about. No wonder I like school better than home if that’s how you treat me.”

Joanna declared with violence if that was how she felt she should never see school again, whereupon Ellen screamed and sobbed herself into a pale, quiet, tragic state lying back in her chair, her face patchy with crying, her head falling queerly sideways like a broken doll’s till Joanna, scared and contrite, assured her that she had not meant her threat seriously, and that Ellen should stop at school as long as she was a good girl and minded her sister.

This sort of thing had happened every holiday, but there were also brighter aspects, and on the whole Joanna was proud of her little sister and pleased with the results of the step she had taken. Ellen could not only dance and drop beautiful curtsies, but she could play tunes on the piano, and recite poetry. She could ask for things in French at table, could give startling information about the Kings of England and the exports and imports of Jamaica, and above all these accomplishments, she showed a welcome alacrity to display them, so that her sister could always rely on her for credit and glory.

“When Martin Trevor comes I’ll make her say her piece.”

Se

Martin came on Christmas Day. He knew that the feast would lend a special significance to the visit, but he did not care; for in absence he had idealized Joanna into a fit subject for flirtation. He had no longer any wish to meet her on the level footing of friendship besides, he was already beginning to feel lonely on the Marsh, to long for the glow of some romance to warm the fogs that filled his landscape. In spite of his father’s jeers, he was no monk, and generally had some sentimental adventure keeping his soul alive but he was fastidious and rather bizarre in his likings, and since he had come to North Farthing, no one, either in his own class or out of it, had appealed to him, except Joanna Godden.

She owed part of her attraction to the surviving salt of his dislike. There was still a savour of antagonism in his liking of her. Also his curiosity was still unsatisfied. Was that undercurrent of softness genuine? Was she really simple and tender under her hard flaunting? Was she passionate under her ignorance and naïveté? Only experiment could show him, and he meant to investigate, not merely for the barren satisfaction of his curiosity, but for the satisfaction of his manhood which was bound up with a question.

When he arrived, Joanna was still in church on Christmas Day as on other selected festivals, she always “stayed the Sacrament,” and did not come out till nearly one. He went to meet her, and waited for her some ten minutes in the little churchyard which was a vivid green with the Christmas rains. The day was clear and curiously soft for the season, even on the Marsh where the winters are usually mild. The sky was a delicate blue, washed with queer, flat clouds the whole country of the Marsh seemed faintly luminous, holding the sunshine in its greens and browns. Beside the dyke which flows by Brodnyx village stood a big thorn tree, still bright with haws. It made a vivid red patch in the foreground, the one touch of Christmas in a landscape which otherwise suggested October especially in the sunshine, which poured in a warm shower on to the altar-tomb where Martin sat.

He grew dreamy with waiting his thoughts seemed to melt into the softness of the day, to be part of the still air and misty sunshine, just as the triple-barned church with its grotesque tower was part.... He could feel the great Marsh stretching round him, the lonely miles of Walland and Dunge and Romney, once the sea’s bed, now lately inned for man and his small dwellings, his keepings and his cares, perhaps one day to return to the same deep from which it had come. People said that the bells of Broomhill church drowned in the great floods which had changed the Rother’s mouth still rang under the sea. If the sea came to Brodnyx, would Brodnyx bells ring on? And Pedlinge? And Brenzett? And Fairfield? And all the little churches of Thomas a Becket on their mounds? What a ringing there would be.

He woke out of his daydream at the sound of footsteps the people were coming out, and glancing up he saw Joanna a few yards off. She looked surprised to see him, but also she made no attempt to hide her pleasure.

“Mr. Trevor! You here?”

“I came over to Ansdore to wish you a happy Christmas, and they told me you were still in church.”

“Yes I stopped for Communion ” her mouth fell into a serious, reminiscent line, “you didn’t come to the first service, neither?”

“No, my brother’s at home, and he took charge of my father’s spiritual welfare they went off to church at Udimore, and I was too lazy to follow them.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t come here they used my harmonium, and it was valiant.”

He smiled at her adjective.

“I’ll come another day and hear your valiant harmonium. I suppose you think everybody should go to church?”

“My father went, and I reckon I’ll keep on going.”

“You always do as your father did?”

“In most ways.”

“But not in all? I hear startling tales of new-shaped waggons and other adventures, to say nothing of your breaking up grass next spring.”

“Well, if you don’t see any difference between breaking up grass and giving up church ...”

“They are both a revolt from habit.”

“Now, don’t you talk like that it ain’t seemly. I don’t like hearing a man make a mock of good things, and going to church is a good thing, as I should ought to know, having just come out of it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Martin humbly, and for some reason he felt ashamed. They were walking now along the Pedlinge road, and the whole Marsh, so broad and simple, seemed to join in her rebuke of him.

She saw his contrite look, and repented of her sharpness.

“Come along home and have a bit of our Christmas dinner.”

Martin stuttered he had not expected such an invitation, and it alarmed him.

“We all have dinner together on Christmas Day,” continued Joanna, “men and gals, old Stuppeny, Mrs. Tolhurst, everybody we’d take it kindly if you’d join us. But I’m forgetting you’ll be having your own dinner at home.”

“We shan’t have ours till the evening.”

“Oh late dinner” her tone became faintly reverential “it ud never do if we had that. The old folk, like Stuppeny and such, ud find their stomachs keep them awake. We’ve got two turkeys and a goose and plum puddings and mince pies, to say nothing of the oranges and nuts that ain’t the kind of food to go to bed with.”

“I agree,” said Martin, smiling.

“Then you’ll come and have dinner at Ansdore?”

They had reached the first crossing of the railway line, and if he was going back to North Farthing he should turn here. He could easily make an excuse no man really wanted to eat two Christmas dinners but his flutter was gone, and he found an attraction in the communal meal to which she was inviting him. He would like to see the old folk at their feast, the old folk who had been born on the Marsh, who had grown wrinkled with its sun and reddened with its wind and bent with their labours in its damp soil. There would be Joanna too he would get a close glimpse of her. It was true that he would be pulling the cord between them a little tighter, but already she was drawing him and he was coming willingly. To-day he had found in her an unsuspected streak of goodness, a sound, sweet core which he had not looked for under his paradox of softness and brutality.... It would be worth while committing himself with Joanna Godden.

Se

Dinner on Christmas Day was always in the kitchen at Ansdore. When Joanna reached home with Martin, the two tables, set end to end, were laid with newly ironed cloths and newly polished knives, but with the second-best china only, since many of the guests were clumsy. Joanna wished there had been time to get out the best china, but there was not.

Ellen came flying to meet them, in a white serge frock tied with a red sash.

“Arthur Alce has come, Jo we’re all waiting. Is Mr. Trevor coming too?” and she put her head on one side, looking up at him through her long fringe.

“Yes, duckie. Mr. Trevor’s dropped in to taste our turkey and plum pudding to see if they ain’t better than his own to-night.”

“Is he going to have another turkey and plum pudding to-night? How greedy!”

“Be quiet, you sassy little cat” and Joanna’s hand swooped, missing Ellen’s head only by the sudden duck she gave it.

“Leave me alone, Joanna you might keep your temper just for Christmas Day.”

“I won’t have you sass strangers.”

“I wasn’t sassing.”

“You was.”

“I wasn’t.”

Martin felt scared.

“I hope you don’t mean me by the stranger,” he said, taking up lightness as a weapon, “I think I know you well enough to be sassed not that I call that sassing.”

“Well, it’s good of you not to mind,” said Joanna, “personally I’ve great ideas of manners, and Ellen’s brought back some queer ones from her school, though others she’s learned are beautiful. Fancy, she never sat down to dinner without a serviette.”

“Never,” said Ellen emphatically.

Martin appeared suitably impressed. He thought Ellen a pretty little thing, strangely exotic beside her sister.

Dinner was ready in the kitchen, and they all went in, Joanna having taken off her coat and hat and smoothed her hair. Before they sat down there were introductions to Arthur Alce and to Luck and Broadhurst and Stuppeny and the other farm people. The relation between employer and employed was at once more patriarchal and less sharply defined at Ansdore than it was at North Farthing Martin tried to picture his father sitting down to dinner with the carter and the looker and the housemaid ... it was beyond imagination, yet Joanna did it quite naturally. Of course there was a smaller gulf between her and her people the social grades were inclined to fuse on the Marsh, and the farmer was only just better than his looker but on the other hand, she seemed to have far more authority....

“Now, hold your tongues while I say grace,” she cried.

Joanna carved the turkeys, refusing to deputise either to Martin or to Alce. At the same time she led a general kind of conversation. The Christmas feast was to be communal in spirit as well as in fact there were to be no formalities above the salt or mutterings below it. The new harmonium provided a good topic, for everyone had heard it, except Mrs. Tolhurst who had stayed to keep watch over Ansdore, cheering herself with the prospect of carols in the evening.

“It sounded best in the psalms,” said Wilson, Joanna’s looker since Socknersh’s day “oh, the lovely grunts it made when it said ’Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee!”

“So it did,” said Broadhurst, “but I liked it best in the Herald Angels.”

“I liked it all through,” said Milly Pump, the chicken-girl. “And I thought Mr. Elphick middling clever to make it sound as if it wur playing two different tunes at the same time.”

“Was that how it sounded?” asked Mrs. Tolhurst wistfully, “maybe they’ll have it for the carols to-night.”

“Surelye,” said old Stuppeny, “you’d never have carols wudout a harmonister. I’d lik myself to go and hear it, but doubt if I ull git so far wud so much good victual inside me.”

“No, you won’t not half so far,” said Joanna briskly, “you stop at home and keep quiet after this, or you’ll be having bad dreams to-night.”

“I never do but have one kind o’ dream,” said old Stuppeny, “I dream as I’m setting by the fire and a young gal brings me a cup of cocoa. ’Tis but an old dream, but reckon the Lord God sends the old dreams to the old folk all them new dreams that are about on the Marsh, they goes to the young uns.”

“Well, you’ve no call to complain of your dreams, Stuppeny,” said Wilson, “’tisn’t everyone who has the luck to dream regular of a pretty young gal. Leastways, I guess she’s pretty, though you aeun’t said it.”

“I doean’t take much count on her looks ’tis the cocoa I’m after, though it aeun’t often as the Lord God lets the dream stay till I’ve drunk my cup. Sometimes ’tis my daughter Nannie wot brings it, but most times ’tis just some unacquainted female.”

“Oh, you sorry old dog,” said Wilson, and the table laughed deep-throatedly, or giggled, according to sex. Old Stuppeny looked pleased. His dream, for some reason unknown to himself, never failed to raise a laugh, and generally produced a cup of cocoa sooner or later from one of the girls.

Martin did not join in the discussion he felt that his presence slightly damped the company, and for him to talk might spoil their chances of forgetting him. He watched Miss Godden as she ate and laughed and kept the conversation rolling he also watched Arthur Alce, trying to use this man’s devotion as a clue to what was left of Joanna’s mystery. Alce struck him as a dull fellow, and he put down his faithfulness to the fact that having once fallen into love as into a rut he had lain there ever since like a sheep on its back. He could see that Alce did not altogether approve of his own choice her vigour and flame, her quick temper, her free airs she was really too big for these people; and yet she was so essentially one of them ... their roots mingled in the same soil, the rich, damp, hardy soil of the Marsh.

His attitude towards her was undergoing its second and final change. Now he knew that he would never want to flirt with her. He did not want her tentatively or temporarily. He still wanted her adventurously, but her adventure was not the adventure of siege and capture but of peaceful holding. Like the earth, she would give her best not to the man who galloped over her, but to the man who chose her for his home and settlement. Thus he would hold her, or not at all. Very likely after to-day he would renounce her he had not yet gone too far, his eyes were still undazzled, and he could see the difficulties and limitations in which he was involving himself by such a choice. He was a gentleman and a townsman he trod her country only as a stranger, and he knew that in spite of the love which the Marsh had made him give it in the few months of his dwelling, his thoughts still worked for years ahead, when better health and circumstances would allow him to go back to the town, to a quick and crowded life. Could he then swear himself to the slow blank life of the Three Marshes, where events move deliberately as a plough? To the empty landscape, to the flat miles? He would have to love her enough to endure the empty flatness that framed her. He could never take her away, any more than he could take away Ansdore or North Farthing. He must make a renunciation for her sake could he do so? And after all, she was common stuff a farmer’s daughter, bred at the National School. By taking her he would be making just a yokel of himself.... Yet was it worth clinging to his simulacrum of gentility boosted up by his father’s title and a few dead rites, such as the late dinner which had impressed her so much. The only real difference between the Goddens and the Trevors was that the former knew their job and the latter didn’t.

All this thinking did not make either for much talk or much appetite, and Joanna was disappointed. She let fall one or two remarks on farming and outside matters, thinking that perhaps the conversation was too homely and intimate for him, but he responded only languidly.

“A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Trevor,” said Ellen pertly.

“You eat your pudding,” said Joanna.

It occurred to her that perhaps Martin was disgusted by the homeliness of the meal after all, he was gentry, and it was unusual for gentry to sit down to dinner with a crowd of farm-hands.... No doubt at home he had wine-glasses, and a servant-girl to hand the dishes. She made a resolution to ask him again and provide both these luxuries. To-day she would take him into the parlour and make Ellen show off her accomplishments, which would help put a varnish of gentility on the general coarseness of the entertainment. She wished she had asked Mr. Pratt she had thought of doing so, but finally decided against it.

So when the company had done shovelling the Stilton cheese into their mouths with their knives, she announced that she and Mr. Trevor would have their cups of tea in the parlour, and told Milly to go quick and light the fire.

Ellen was most satisfactorily equal to this part of the occasion. She recited “Curfew shall not Ring Tonight,” and played Haydn’s “Gipsy Rondo.” Joanna began to feel complacent once more.

“I made up my mind she should go to a good school,” she said when her sister had run back to what festivities lingered in the kitchen, “and really it’s wonderful what they’ve taught her. She’ll grow up to be a lady.”

It seemed to Martin that she stressed the last word rather wistfully, and the next moment she added

“There’s not many of your sort on the Marsh.”

“How do you mean my sort?”

“Gentlefolk.”

“Oh, we don’t trouble to call ourselves gentlefolk. My father and I are just plain farmers now.”

“But you don’t really belong to us you’re the like of the Savilles at Dungemarsh Court, and the clergy families.”

“Is that where you put us? We’d find our lives jolly dull if we shut ourselves up in that set. I can tell you that I’ve enjoyed myself far more here to-day than ever at the Court or the Rectory. Besides, Miss Godden, your position on Walland Marsh is very much better than ours. You’re a great personage, you know.”

“Reckon folks talk about me,” said Joanna proudly. “Maybe you’ve heard ’em.”

He nodded.

“You’ve heard about me and Arthur Alce?”

“I’ve heard some gossip.”

“Don’t you believe it. I’m fond of Arthur, but he ain’t my style and I could do better for myself ...”

She paused her words seemed to hang in the flickering warmth of the room. She was waiting for him to speak, and he felt a little shocked and repelled. She was angling for him he had never suspected that.

“I must go,” he said, standing up.

“So soon?”

“Yes tradition sends one home on Christmas Day.”

He moved towards the door, and she followed him, glowing and majestic in the shadows of the firelit room. Outside, the sky was washed with a strange, fiery green, in which the new kindled stars hung like lamps.

They stood for a moment on the threshold, the warm, red house behind them, before them the star-hung width and emptiness of the Marsh. Martin blocked the sky for Joanna, as he turned and held out his hand. Then, on the brink of love, she hesitated. A memory smote her of herself standing before another man who blocked the sky, and in whose eyes sat the small, enslaved image of herself. Was she just being a fool again? Ought she to draw back while she had still the power, before she became his slave, his little thing, and all her bigness was drowned in his eyes. She knew that whatever she gave him now could never be taken back. Here stood the master of the mistress of Ansdore.

As for Martin, his thoughts were of another kind.

“Good-bye,” he said, renouncing her for her boldness and her commonness and all that she would mean of change and of foregoing “Good-bye, Joanna.”

He had not meant to say her name, but it had come, and with it all the departing adventure of love. She seemed to fall towards him, to lean suddenly like a tree in a gale he smelt a fresh, sweet smell of clean cotton underclothing, of a plain soap, of free unperfumed hair ... then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her warm, shy mouth, feeling that for this moment he had been born.

Se

“Well, where have you been?” asked Sir Harry, as his son walked in at the hall door soon after six.

“I’ve been having dinner with Joanna Godden.”

“The deuce you have.”

“I looked in to see her this morning and she asked me to stay.”

“You’ve stayed long enough your saintly brother’s had to do the milking.”

“Where’s Dennett?”

“Gone to the carols with the rest. Confounded nuisance, these primitive religious impulses of an elemental people always seem to require an outlet at an hour when other people want their meals.”

“They’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“I doubt it, and cook’s gone too and Tom Saville’s coming, you know.”

“Well, I’d better go and see after the milking.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve finished,” and a dark round head came round the door, followed by a hunched figure in a cloak, from the folds of which it deprecatingly held out a pint jug.

“What’s that?”

“The results of half an hour’s milking. I know I should have got more, but I think the cows found me unsympathetic.”

Martin burst out laughing. Ordinarily he would have felt annoyed at the prospect of having to go milking at this hour, but to-night he was expansive and good-humoured towards all beasts and men.

He laughed again

“I don’t know that the cows have any particular fancy for me, but I’ll go and see what I can do.”

“I’m sorry not to have succeeded better,” said his brother.

The elder Trevor was only two years older than Martin, but his looks gave him more. His features were blunter, more humorous, and his face was already lined, while his hands looked work-worn. He wore a rough grey cassock buttoned up to his chin.

“You should have preached to them,” said Sir Harry, “like St. Francis of something or other. You should have called them your sisters and they’d have showered down their milk in gallons. What’s the good of being a monk if you can’t work miracles?”

“I leave that to St. Francis Dennett I’m quite convinced that cows are milked only supernaturally, and I find it very difficult even to be natural with them. Perhaps Martin will take me in hand and show me that much.”

“I don’t think I need. I hear the servants coming in.”

“Thank God,” exclaimed Sir Harry, “now perhaps we shall get our food cooked. Martin’s already had dinner, Lawrence he had it with Joanna Godden. Martin, I don’t know that I like your having dinner with Joanna Godden. It marks you they’ll talk about it at the Woolpack for weeks, and it’ll probably end in your having to marry her to make her an honest woman.”

“That’s what I mean to do to marry her.”

The words broke out of him. He had certainly not meant to tell his father anything just yet. Apart from his natural reserve, Sir Harry was not the man he would have chosen for such confidences till they became inevitable. The fact that his father was still emotionally young and had love affairs of his own gave him feelings of repugnance and irritation he could have endured the conventionally paternal praise or blame, but he was vaguely outraged by the queer basis of equality from which Sir Harry dealt with his experiences. But now the truth was out. What would they say, these two? The old rake who refused to turn his back on youth and love, and the triple-vowed religious who had renounced both before he had enjoyed either.

Sir Harry was the first to speak.

“Martin, I am an old man, who will soon be forced to dye his hair, and really my constitution is not equal to these shocks. What on earth makes you think you want to marry Joanna Godden?”

“I love her.”

“A most desperate situation. But surely marriage is rather a drastic remedy.”

“Well, don’t let’s talk about it any longer. I’m going to dress Saville will be here in a quarter of an hour.”

“But I must talk about it. Hang it all, I’m your father I’m the father of both of you, though you don’t like it a bit and would rather forget it. Martin, you mustn’t marry Joanna Godden however much you love her. It would be a silly mistake she’s not your equal, and she’s not your type. Have you asked her?”

“Practically.”

“Oh that’s all right, then. It doesn’t matter asking a woman practically as long as you don’t ask her literally.”

“Father, please don’t talk about it.”

“I will talk about it. Lawrence, do you know what this idiot’s letting himself in for? Have you seen Joanna Godden? Why, she’d never do for him? She’s a big, bouncing female, and her stays creak.”

“Be quiet, father. You make me furious.”

“Yes, you’ll be disrespectful to me in a minute. That would be very sad, and the breaking of a noble record. Of course it’s presumptuous of me to want a lady for my daughter-in-law, and perhaps you’re right to chuck away the poor remains of our dignity they were hardly worth keeping.”

“I’ve thought over that,” said Martin. He saw now that having recklessly started the subject he could not put it aside till it had been fought out. “I’ve thought over that, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Joanna’s worth any sacrifice I can make for her.”

“But not marriage why must you ask her to marry you? You don’t really know her. You’ll cool off.”

“I shan’t.”

“What about your health, Martin?” asked Lawrence, “are you fit and able to marry? You know what the doctor said.”

“He said I might go off into consumption if I hung on in town that beastly atmosphere at Wright’s and all the racket.... But there’s nothing actually wrong with me, I’m perfectly fit down here. I’ll last for ever in this place, and I tell you it’s been a ghastly thought till now knowing that I must either stop here, away from all my friends and interests, or else shorten my life. But now, I don’t care when I marry Joanna Godden I’ll take root, I’ll belong to the Marsh, I’ll be at home. You don’t know Joanna Godden, Lawrence if you did I believe you’d like her. She’s so sane and simple she’s so warm and alive; and she’s good, too when I met her to-day, she had just been to Communion. She’ll help me to live at last I’ll be able to live the best life for me, body and soul, down here in the sea air, with no town rubbish ...”

“It sounds a good thing,” said Lawrence. “After all, father, there really isn’t much use trying to keep up the state of the Trevors and all that now ...”

“No, there isn’t especially when this evening’s guest will arrive in two minutes to find us sitting round in dirt and darkness and dissension, all because we’ve been too busy discussing our heir’s betrothal to a neighbouring goose-girl to trouble about such fripperies as dressing for dinner. Of course now Lawrence elects to take Martin’s part there’s no good my trying to stand against the two of you. I’ve always been under your heels, ever since you were old enough to boss me. Let the state of the Trevors go Martin, marry Joanna Godden and we will come to you for our mangolds Lawrence, if you were not hindered by your vows, I should suggest your marrying one of the Miss Southlands or the Miss Vines, and then we could have a picturesque double wedding. As for me, I will build on more solid foundations than either of you, and marry my cook.”

With which threat he departed to groom himself.

“He’ll be all right,” said Martin, “he likes Joanna Godden really.”

“So do I. She sounds a good sort. Will you take me to see her before I go?”

“Certainly. I want you to meet her. When you do you’ll see that I’m not doing anything rash, even from the worldly point of view. She comes of fine old yeoman stock, and she’s of far more consequence on the Marsh than any of us.”

“I can’t see that the social question is of much importance. As long as your tastes and your ideas aren’t too different ...”

“I’m afraid they are, rather. But somehow we seem to complement each other. She’s so solid and so sane there’s something barbaric about her too ... it’s queer.”

“I’ve seen her. She’s a fine-looking girl a bit older than you, isn’t she?”

“Five years. Against it, of course but then I’m so much older than she is in most ways. She’s a practical woman of business knows more about farming than I shall ever know in my life but in matters of life and love, she’s a child ...”

“I should almost have thought it better the other way round that you should know about the business and she about the love. But then in such matters I too am a child.”

He smiled disarmingly, but Martin felt ruffled partly because his brother’s voluntary abstention from experience always annoyed him, and partly because he knew that in this case the child was right and the man wrong.

Se

In the engagement of Joanna Godden to Martin Trevor Walland Marsh had its biggest sensation for years. Indeed it could be said that nothing so startling had happened since the Rother changed its mouth. The feelings of those far-back marsh-dwellers who had awakened one morning to find the Kentish river swirling past their doors at Broomhill might aptly be compared with those of the farms round the Woolpack, who woke to find that Joanna Godden was not going just to jog on her final choice between Arthur Alce and old maidenhood, but had swept aside to make an excellent, fine marriage.

“She’s been working for this all along,” said Prickett disdainfully.

“I don’t see that she’s had the chance to work much,” said Vine, “she hasn’t seen the young chap more than three or four times.”

“Bates’s looker saw them at Romney once,” said Southland, “having their dinner together; but that time at the Farmers’ Club he’d barely speak to her.”

“Well she’s got herself talked about over two men that she hasn’t took, and now she’s took a man that she hasn’t got herself talked about over.”

“Anyways, I’m glad of it,” said Furnese, “she’s a mare that’s never been praeaperly broken in, and now at last she’s got a man to do it.”

“Poor feller, Alce. I wonder how he’ll take it.”

Alce took it very well. For a week he did not come to Ansdore, then he appeared with Joanna’s first wedding present in the shape of a silver tea-service which had belonged to his mother.

“Maybe it’s a bit early yet for wedding presents. They say you won’t be married till next fall. But I’ve always wanted you to have this tea-set of mother’s it’s real silver, as you can see by the lion on it a teapot and milk jug and sugar bowl; many’s the time I’ve seen you in my mind’s eye, setting like a queen and pouring my tea out of it. Since it can’t be my tea, it may as well be another’s.”

“There’ll always be a cup for you, Arthur,” said Joanna graciously.

“Thanks,” said Arthur in a stricken voice.

Joanna could not feel as sorry for Alce as she ought and would have liked. All her emotions, whether of joy or sorrow, seemed to be poured into the wonderful new life that Martin had given her. A new life had begun for her on Christmas Day in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender. She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing but he had stripped her of Ansdore, and she was just Joanna Godden who had waited twenty-eight years for love.

Yet, perhaps because she had waited so long, she was now a little afraid. She had hitherto met love only in the dim forms of Arthur Alce and Dick Socknersh, with still more hazy images in the courtships of Abbot and Cobb. Now Martin was showing her love as no dim flicker or candlelight or domestic lamplight but as a bright, eager fire. She loved his kisses, the clasp of his strong arms, the stability of his chest and shoulders but sometimes his passion startled her, and she had queer, shy withdrawals. Yet these were never more than temporary and superficial; her own passions were slowly awaking, and moreover had their roots in a sweet, sane instinct of vocation and common sense.

On the whole, though, she was happiest in the quieter ways of love the meals together, the fireside talks, the meetings in lonely places, the queer, half-laughing secrets, the stolen glances in company. She made a great fuss of his bodily needs she was convinced that he did not get properly fed or looked after at home, and was always preparing him little snacks and surprises. For her sake Martin swallowed innumerable cups of milk and wrapped his chin in choky mufflers.

She had prouder moments too. On her finger glittered a gorgeous band of diamonds and sapphires which she had chosen for her engagement ring, and it was noticed that Joanna Godden now always drove with her gloves off. She had insisted on driving Martin round the Marsh to call on her friends to show him to Mrs. Southland, Mrs. Vine, and Mrs. Prickett, to say nothing of their husbands who had always said no man in his senses would marry Joanna Godden. Well, not merely a man but a gentleman was going to do it a gentleman who had his clothes made for him at a London tailor’s instead of buying them ready-made at Lydd or Romney or Rye, who had he confessed it, though he never wore it a top hat in his possession, who ate late dinner and always smelt of good tobacco and shaving soap ... such thoughts would bring the old Joanna back, for one fierce moment of gloating.

Her reception by North Farthing House had done nothing to spoil her triumph. Martin’s father and brother had both accepted her the latter willingly, since he believed that she would be a sane and stabilizing influence in Martin’s life, hitherto over-restless and mood-ridden. He looked upon his brother as a thwarted romantic, whose sophistication had debarred him from finding a natural outlet in religion. He saw in his love for Joanna the chance of a return to nature and romance, since he loved a thing at once simple and adventurous, homely and splendid which was how religion appeared to Father Lawrence. He had liked Joanna very much on their meeting, and she liked him too, though as she told him frankly she “didn’t hold with Jesoots.”

As for Sir Harry, he too liked Joanna, and was too well-bred and fond of women to show himself ungracious about that which he could not prevent.

“I’ve surrendered, Martin. I can’t help myself. You’ll bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, but I am all beautiful resignation. Indeed I think I shall offer myself as best man, and flirt dutifully with Ellen Godden, who I suppose will be chief bridesmaid. Your brother shall himself perform the ceremony. What could your family do more?”

“What indeed?” laughed Martin. He felt warmhearted towards all men now he could forgive both his father for having had too much experience and his brother for having had too little.

Se

The actual date of the wedding was not fixed till two months had run. Though essentially adult and practical in all matters of business and daily life, Joanna was still emotionally adolescent, and her betrothed state satisfied her as it would never have done if her feelings had been as old as her years. Also this deferring of love had helped other things to get a hold on her Martin was astonished to find her swayed by such considerations as sowing and shearing and marketing “I can’t fix up anything till I’ve got my spring sowings done” “that ud be in the middle of the shearing” “I’d sooner wait till I’m through the autumn markets.”

He discovered that she thought “next fall” the best time for the wedding “I’ll have got everything clear by then, and I’ll know how the new ploughs have borne.” He fought her and beat her back into June “after the hay.” He was rather angry with her for thinking about these things, they expressed a side of her which he would have liked to ignore. He did not care for a “managing” woman, and he could still see, in spite of her new moments of surrender, that Joanna eternally would “manage.” But in spite of this his love for her grew daily, as he discovered daily her warmth and breadth and tenderness, her growing capacity for passion. Once or twice he told her to let the sowings and the shearings be damned, and come and get married to him quietly without any fuss at the registrar’s. But Joanna was shocked at the idea of getting married anywhere but in church she could not believe a marriage legal which the Lion and the Unicorn had not blessed. Also he discovered that she rejoiced in fuss, and thought June almost too early for the preparations she wanted to make.

“I’m going to show ’em what a wedding’s like,” she remarked ominously “I’m going to do everything in the real, proper, slap-up style. I’m going to have a white dress and a veil and carriages and bridesmaids and favours ” this was the old Joanna “you don’t mind, do you, Martin?” this was the new.

Of course he could not say he minded. She was like an eager child, anxious for notice and display. He would endure the wedding for her sake. He also would endure for her sake to live at Ansdore; after a few weeks he saw that nothing else could happen. It would be ridiculous for Joanna to uproot herself from her prosperous establishment and settle in some new place just because in spirit he shrank from becoming “Mr. Joanna Godden.” She had said that “Martin and Joanna Trevor” should be painted on the scrolled name-boards of her waggons, but he knew that on the farm and in the market-place they would not be on an equal footing, whatever they were in the home. As farmer and manager she would outshine him, whose tastes and interests and experiences were so different. Never mind he would have more time to give to the beloved pursuit of exploring the secret, shy marsh country he would do all Joanna’s business afield, in the far market towns of New Romney and Dymchurch, and the farms away in Kent or under the Coast at Ruckinge and Warhorne.

Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time at Ansdore. He liked the life of the place with its mixture of extravagance and simplicity, democracy and tyranny. Fortunately Ellen approved of him indeed he sometimes found her patronage excessive. He thought her spoilt and affected, and might almost have come to dislike her if she had not been such a pretty, subtle little thing, and if she had not interested and amused him by her sharp contrasts with her sister. He was now also amused by the conflicts between the two, which at first had shocked him. He liked to see Joanna’s skin go pink as she faced Ellen in a torment of loving anger and rattled the fierce words off her tongue, while Ellen tripped and skipped and evaded and generally triumphed by virtue of a certain fundamental coolness. “It will be interesting to watch that girl growing up,” he thought.

Se

As the year slid through the fogs into the spring, he persuaded Joanna to come with him on his rambles on the Marsh. He was astonished to find how little she knew of her own country, of that dim flat land which was once under the sea. She knew it only as the hunting ground of her importance. It was at Yokes Court that she bought her roots, and from Becket’s House her looker had come; Lydd and Rye and Romney were only market-towns you did best in cattle at Rye, but the other two were proper for sheep; Old Honeychild was just a farm where she had bought some good spades and dibbles at an auction; at Misleham they had once had foot-and-mouth disease she had gone to Picknye Bush for the character of Milly Pump, her chicken-girl....

He told her of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads, with their mouths full of slang cant talk of “mackerel” and “fencing” and “hornies” and “Oliver’s glim.”

“Well, if they talked worse there then than they talk now, they must have talked very bad indeed,” was all Joanna found to say.

He told her of the old monks of Canterbury who had covered the Marsh with the altars of Thomas a Becket.

“We got shut of ’em all on the fifth of November,” said Joanna, “as we sing around here on bonfire nights and ’A halfpenny loaf to feed the Pope, a penn’orth of cheese to choke him,’ as we say.”

All the same he enjoyed the expeditions that they had together in her trap, driving out on some windy-skied March day, to fill the hours snatched from her activities at Ansdore and his muddlings at North Farthing, with all the sea-green sunny breadth of Walland, and still more divinely with Walland’s secret places the shelter of tall reeds by the Yokes Sewer, or of a thorn thicket making a tent of white blossom and spindled shadows in the midst of the open land.

Sometimes they crossed the Rhee Wall on to Romney Marsh, and he showed her the great church at Ivychurch, which could have swallowed up in its nave the two small farms that make the village. He took her into the church at New Romney and showed her the marks of the Great Flood, discolouring the pillars for four feet from the ground.

“Doesn’t it thrill you? Doesn’t it excite you?” he teased her, as they stood together in the nave, the church smelling faintly of hearthstones.

“How long ago did it happen?”

“In the year of our Lord twelve hundred and eighty seven the Kentish river changed his mouth, and after swilling out Romney Sands and drowning all the marsh from Honeychild to the Wicks, did make himself a new mouth in Rye Bay, with which mouth he swallowed the fifty taverns and twelve churches of Broomhill, and ”

“Oh, have done talking that silly way it’s like the Bible, only there’s no good in it.”

Her red mouth was close to his in the shadows of the church he kissed it....

“Child!”

“Oh, Martin ”

She was faintly shocked because he had kissed her in church, so he drew her to him, tilting back her chin.

“You mustn’t” ... but she had lost the power of gainsaying him now, and made no effort to release herself. He held her up against the pillar and gave her mouth another idolatrous kiss before he let her go.

“If it happened all that while back, they might at least have got the marks off by this time,” she said, tucking away her loosened hair.

Martin laughed aloud her little reactions of common sense after their passionate moments never failed to amuse and delight him.

“You’d have had it off with your broom, and that’s all you think about it. But look here, child what if it happened again?”

“It can’t.”

“How do you know?”

“It can’t I know it.”

“But if it happened then it could happen again.”

“There ain’t been a flood on the Marsh in my day, nor in my poor father’s day, neither. Sometimes in February the White Kemp brims a bit, but I’ve never known the roads covered. You’re full of old tales. And now let’s go out, for laughing and love-making ain’t the way to behave in church.”

“The best way to behave in church is to get married.”

She blushed faintly and her eyes filled with tears.

They went out, and had dinner at the New Inn, which held the memory of their first meal together, in that huge, sag-roofed dining-room, then so crowded, now empty except for themselves. Joanna was still given to holding forth on such subjects as harness and spades, and to-day she gave Martin nearly as much practical advice as on that first occasion.

“Now, don’t you waste your money on a driller we don’t give our sheep turnips on the Marsh. It’s an Inland notion. The grass here is worth a field of roots. You stick to grazing and you’ll keep your money in your pocket and never send coarse mutton to the butcher.”

He did not resent her advice, for he was learning humility. Her superior knowledge and experience of all practical matters was beginning to lose its sting. She was in his eyes so adorable a creature that he could forgive her for being dominant. The differences in their natures were no longer incompatibilities, but gifts which they brought each other he brought her gifts of knowledge and imagination and emotion, and she brought him gifts of stability and simplicity and a certain saving commonness. And all these gifts were fused in the glow of personality, in a kind bodily warmth, in a romantic familiarity which sometimes found its expression in shyness and teasing.

They loved each other.

Se

Martin had always wanted to go out on the cape at Dunge Ness, that tongue of desolate land which rakes out from Dunge Marsh into the sea, slowly moving every year twenty feet towards France. Joanna had a profound contempt of Dunge Ness “not enough grazing on it for one sheep” but Martin’s curiosity mastered her indifference and she promised to drive him out there some day. She had been once before with her father, on some forgotten errand to the Hope and Anchor inn.

It was an afternoon in May when they set out, bowling through Pedlinge in the dog cart behind Smiler’s jogging heels. Joanna wore her bottle green driving coat, with a small, close-fitting hat, since Martin, to her surprise and disappointment, disliked her best hat with the feathers. He sat by her, unconsciously huddling to her side, with his hand thrust under her arm and occasionally pressing it she had told him that she could suffer that much of a caress without detriment to her driving.

It was a bright, scented day, heavily coloured with green and gold and white; for the new grass was up in the pastures, releasing the farmer from many anxious cares, and the buttercups were thick both on the grazing lands and on the innings where the young hay stood, still green; the watercourses were marked with the thick dumpings of the may, walls of green-teased white streaking here and there across the pastures, while under the boughs the thick green water lay scummed with white ranunculus, and edged with a gaudy splashing of yellow irises, torches among the never silent reeds. Above it all the sky was misty and fall of shadows, a low soft cloud, occasionally pierced with sunlight.

“It’ll rain before night,” said Joanna.

“What makes you think that?”

“The way of the wind, and those clouds moving low and the way you see Rye Hill all clear with the houses on it and the way the sheep are grazing with their heads to leeward.”

“Do you think they know?”

“Of course they know. You’d be surprised at the things beasts know, Martin.”

“Well, it won’t matter if it does rain we’ll be home before night. I’m glad we’re going down on the Ness I’m sure it’s wonderful.”

“It’s a tedious hole.”

“That’s what you think.”

“I know I’ve been there.”

“Then it’s very sweet of you to come again with me.”

“It’ll be different with you.”

She was driving him by way of Broomhill, for that was another place which had fired his imagination, though to her it too was a tedious hole. Martin could not forget the Broomhill of old days the glamour of taverns and churches and streets lay over the few desolate houses and ugly little new church which huddled under the battered sea-wall. Great reedy pools still remained from the thirteenth century floods, brackish on the flat seashore, where the staked keddle nets showed that the mackerel were beginning to come into Rye Bay.

“Nothing but fisher-folk around here,” said Joanna contemptuously “you’ll see ’em all in the summer, men, women and children, with heaps of mackerel that they pack in boxes for London and such places so much mackerel they get that there’s nothing else ate in the place for the season, and yet if you want fish-guts for manure they make you pay inland prices, and do your own carting.”

“I think it’s a delicious place,” he retorted, teasing her, “I’ve a mind to bring you here for our honeymoon.”

“Martin, you’d never I You told me you were taking me to foreign parts, and I’ve told Mrs. Southland and Mrs. Furnese and Maudie Vine and half a dozen more all about my going to Paris and seeing the sights and hearing French spoken.”

“Yes perhaps it would be better to go abroad; Broomhill is wonderful, but you in Paris will be more wonderful than Broomhill even in the days before the flood.”

“I want to see the Eiffel Tower where they make the lemonade and I want to buy myself something really chick in the way of hats.”

“Joanna do you know the hat which suits you best?”

“Which?” she asked eagerly, with some hope for the feathers.

“The straw hat you tie on over your hair when you go out to the chickens first thing in the morning.”

“That old thing I Why I My! Lor! Martin! That’s an old basket that I tie under my chin with a neckerchief of poor father’s.”

“It suits you better than any hat in the Rue St. Honore it’s brown and golden like yourself, and your hair comes creeping and curling from under it, and there’s a shadow on your face, over your eyes the shadow stops just above your mouth your mouth is all of your face that I can see dearly, and it’s your mouth that I love most ...”

He suddenly kissed it, ignoring her business with the reins and the chances of the road, pulling her round in her seat and covering her face with his, so that his eyelashes stroked her cheek. She drew her hands up sharply to her breast, and with the jerk the horse stopped.

For a few moments they stayed so, then he released her and they moved on. Neither of them spoke; the tears were in Joanna’s eyes and in her heart was a devouring tenderness that made it ache. The trap lurched in the deep ruts of the road, which now had become a mass of shingle and gravel, skirting the beach. Queer sea plants grew in the ruts, the little white sea-campions with their fat seed-boxes filled the furrows of the road as with a foam it seemed a pity and a shame to crush them, and one could tell by their fresh growth how long it was since wheels had passed that way.

At Jury’s Gap, a long white-daubed coastguard station marked the end of the road. Only a foot-track ran out to the Ness. They left the horse and trap at the station and went afoot.

“I told you it was a tedious place,” said Joanna. Like a great many busy people she did not like walking, which she always looked upon as a waste of time. Martin could seldom persuade her to come for a long walk.

It was a long walk up the Ness, and the going was bad, owing to the shingle. The sea-campion grew everywhere, and in sunny corners the yellow-horned poppy put little spots of colour into a landscape of pinkish grey. The sea was the same colour as the land, for the sun had sunk away into the low thick heavens, leaving the sea an unrelieved, tossed dun waste.

The wind came tearing across Rye Bay with a moan, lifting all the waves into little sharp bitter crests.

“We’ll get the rain,” said Joanna sagely.

“I don’t care if we do,” said Martin.

“You haven’t brought your overcoat.”

“Never mind that.”

“I do mind.”

His robust appearance his broad back and shoulders, thick vigorous neck and swarthy skin only magnified his pathos in her eyes. It was pitiful that this great thing should be so frail.... He could pick her up with both hands on her waist, and hold her up before him, the big Joanna and yet she must take care of him.

Se

An hour’s walking brought them to the end of the Ness to a strange forsaken country of coastguard stations and lonely taverns and shingle tracks. The lighthouse stood only a few feet above the sea, at the end of the point, and immediately before it the water dropped to sinister, glaucous depths.

“Well, it ain’t much to see,” said Joanna.

“It’s wonderful,” said Martin “it’s terrible.”

He stood looking out to sea, into the Channel streaked with green and grey, as if he would draw France out of the southward fogs. He felt half-way to France ... here on the end of this lonely crane, with water each side of him and ahead, and behind him the shingle which was the uttermost of Kent.

“Joanna don’t you feel it, too?”

“Yes maybe I do. It’s queer and lonesome I’m glad I’ve got you, Martin.”

She suddenly came close to him and put out her arms, hiding her face against his heart.

“Child what is it?”

“I dunno. Maybe it’s this place, but I feel scared. Oh, Martin, you’ll never leave me? You’ll always be good to me?...”

“I ... oh, my own precious thing.”

He held her close to him and they both trembled she with her first fear of those undefinable forces and associations which go to make the mystery of place, he with the passion of his faithfulness, of his vows of devotion, too fierce and sacrificial even to express.

“Let’s go and have tea,” she said, suddenly disengaging herself, “I’ll get the creeps if we stop out here on the beach much longer reckon I’ve got ’em now, and I never was the one to be silly like that. I told you it was a tedious hole.”

They went to the Britannia, on the eastern side of the bill. The inn looked surprised to see them, but agreed to put the kettle on. They sat together in a little queer, dim room, smelling of tar and fish, and bright with the flames of wreckwood. Joanna had soon lost her fears she talked animatedly, telling him of the progress of her spring wheat; of the dead owl that had fallen out of the beams of Brenzett church during morning prayers last Sunday, of the shocking way they had managed their lambing at Beggar’s Bush, of King Edward’s Coronation that was coming off in June.

“I know of something else that’s coming off in June,” said Martin.

“Our wedding?”

“Surelye.”

“I’m going into Folkestone next week, to that shop where I bought my party gown.”

“And I’m going to Mr. Pratt to tell him to put up our banns, or we shan’t have time to be cried three times before the first of June.”

“The first! I told you the twenty-fourth.”

“But I’m not going to wait till the twenty-fourth. You promised me June.”

“But I shan’t have got in my hay, and the shearers are coming on the fourteenth you have to book weeks ahead, and that was the only date Harmer had free.”

“Joanna.”

Her name was a summons, almost stern, and she looked up. She was still sitting at the table, stirring the last of her tea. He sat under the window on an old sea-chest, and had just lit his pipe.

“Come here, Joanna.”

She came obediently, and sat beside him, and he put his arm round her. The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I know now there is only one thing between us, and that’s Ansdore.”

“How d’you mean? It ain’t between us.”

“It is again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of our love. What other woman on God’s earth would put off her marriage to fit in with the sheep-shearing?”

“I ain’t putting it off. We haven’t fixed the day yet, and I’m just telling you to fix a day that’s suitable and convenient.”

“You know I always meant to marry you the first week in June.”

“And you know as I’ve told you, that I can’t take the time off then.”

“The time off! You’re not a servant. You can leave Ansdore any day you choose.”

“Not when the shearing’s on. You don’t understand, Martin I can’t have all the shearers up and nobody to look after ’em.”

“What about your looker? or Broadhurst? You don’t trust anybody but yourself.”

“You’re just about right I don’t.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Not to shear sheep.”

Martin laughed ruefully.

“You’re very sensible, Joanna unshakably so. But I’m not asking you to trust me with the sheep, but to trust me with yourself. Don’t misunderstand me, dear. I’m not asking you to marry me at the beginning of the month just because I haven’t the patience to wait till the end. It isn’t that, I swear it. But don’t you see that if you fix our marriage to fit in with the farm-work, it’ll simply be beginning things in the wrong way? As we begin we shall have to go on, and we can’t go on settling and ordering our life according to Ansdore’s requirements it’s a wrong principle. Think, darling,” and he drew her close against his heart, “we shall want to see our children and will you refuse, just because that would mean that you would have to lie up and keep quiet and not go about doing all your own business?”

Joanna shivered.

“Oh, Martin, don’t talk of such things.”

“Why not?”

She had given him some frank and graphic details about the accouchement of her favourite cow, and he did not understand that the subject became different when it was human and personal.

“Because I because we ain’t married yet.”

“Joanna, you little prude!”

She saw that he was displeased and drew closer to him, slipping her arms round his neck, so that he could feel the roughness of her work-worn hands against it.

“I’m not shocked only it’s so wonderful I can’t abear talking of it ... Martin, if we had one ... I should just about die of joy ...”

He gripped her to him silently, unable to speak. Somehow it seemed as if he had just seen deeper into Joanna than during all the rest of his courtship. He moved his lips over her bright straying hair her face was hidden in his sleeve.

“Then we’ll stop at Mr. Pratt’s on our way home and ask him to put up the banns at once?”

“Oh no ” lifting herself sharply “I didn’t mean that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it won’t make any difference to our marriage, being married three weeks later but it’ll make an unaccountable difference to my wool prices if the shearers don’t do their job proper and then there’s the hay.”

“On the contrary, child it will make a difference to our marriage. We shall have started with Ansdore between us.”

“What nonsense.”

“Well, I can’t argue with you you must do as you like. My wife is a very strong-willed person, who will keep her husband in proper order. But he loves her enough to bear it.”

He kissed her gently, and they both stood up. At the same time there was a sharp scud of rain against the window.

Se

The journey home was quieter and dimmer than the journey out. Their voices and footsteps were muffled in the roar of the wind, which had risen from sorrow to anger. The rain beat in their faces as they walked arm in arm over the shingle. They could not hurry, for at every step their feet sank.

“I said it was a tedious hole,” reiterated Joanna, “and now perhaps you’ll believe me the folk here walk with boards on their feet, what they call backstays. Our shoes will be just about ruined.”

She was not quite happy, for she felt that Martin was displeased with her, though he made no reproaches. He did not like her to arrange their wedding day to fit in with the shearing. But what else could she do? If she was away when the shearers came, there’d be no end to their goings on with the girls, and besides, who’d see that the work was done proper and the tegs not scared out of their lives?

It was only six o’clock, but a premature darkness was falling as the clouds dropped over Dunge Marsh, and the rain hung like a curtain over Rye Bay, blotting out all distances, showing them nothing but the crumbling, uncertain track. In half an hour they were both wet through to their shoulders, for the rain came down with all the drench of May. Joanna could see that Martin was beginning to be worried about himself he was worried about her too, but he was more preoccupied with his own health than other men she knew, the only way in which he occasionally betrayed the weak foundations of his stalwart looks.

“The worst of it is, we’ll have to sit for an hour in the dog-cart after we get to Jury’s Gap. You’ll catch your death of cold, Joanna.”

“Not I! I often say I’m like our Romney sheep I can stand all winds and waters. But you’re not used to it like I am you should ought to have brought your overcoat.”

“How was I to know it would turn out like this?”

“I told you it would rain.”

“But not till after we’d started.”

Joanna said nothing. She accepted Martin’s rather unreasonable displeasure without protest, for she felt guilty about other things. Was he right, after all, when he said that she was putting Ansdore between them?... She did not feel that she was, any more than she was putting Ansdore between herself and Ellen. But she hated him to have the thought. Should she give in and tell him he could call on Mr. Pratt on their way home?... No, there was plenty of time to make up her mind about that. To-day was only Tuesday, and any day up till Saturday would do for putting in notice of banns ... she must think things over before committing herself ... it wasn’t only the shearers there was the hay....

Thus they came, walking apart in their own thoughts, to Jury’s Gap. In a few moments the horse was put to, and they were lurching in the ruts of the road to Broomhill. The air was full of the sound of hissing rain, as it fell on the shingle and in the sea and on the great brackish pools of the old flood. Round the pools were thick beds of reeds, shivering and moaning, while along the dykes the willows tossed their branches and the thorn-trees rattled.

“It’ll freshen up the grass,” said Joanna, trying to cheer Martin.

“I was a fool not to bring my overcoat,” he grumbled.

Then suddenly her heart went out to him more than ever, because he was fractious and fretting about himself. She took one hand off the reins and pressed his as it lay warm between her arm and her side.

“Reckon you’re my own silly child,” she said in a low voice.

“I’m sorry, Jo,” he replied humbly, “I know I’m being a beast and worrying you. But I’m worried about you too you’re as wet as I am.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve got my coat. I’m not at all worried about myself nor about you, neither.” She could not conceive of a man taking cold through a wetting.

She had planned for him to come back to supper with her at Ansdore, but with that fussiness which seemed so strange and pathetic, he insisted on going straight back to North Farthing to change his clothes.

“You get into a hot bath with some mustard,” he said to her, meaning what he would do himself.

“Ha! ha!” laughed Joanna, at such an idea.

Se

She did not see Martin for the next two days. He had promised to go up to London for the first night of a friend’s play, and was staying till Friday morning. She missed him very much he used to come to Ansdore every day, sometimes more than once, and they always had at least one meal together. She brooded about him too, for she could not rid herself of the thought that she had failed him in her refusal to be married before the shearing. He was disappointed he could not understand....

She looked round on Ansdore almost distrustfully ... was it true that she loved it too much? The farm looked very lonely and bare, with the mist hanging in the doorways, and the rain hissing into the midden, while the bush as the trees were called which sheltered nearly every marsh dwelling sighed and tossed above the barn-roofs. She suddenly realized that she did not love it as much as she used.

The knowledge came like a slap. She suddenly knew that for the last four months her love for Martin had been eating into her love for Ansdore.... It was like the sun shining on a fire and putting it out now that the sun had gone she saw that her hearth was cold. It was for Martin she had sown her spring wheat, for Martin she had broken up twelve acres of pasture by the Kent Ditch, for Martin she would shear her sheep and cut her hay....

Then since it was all for Martin, what an owl she was to sacrifice him to it, to put it before his wants and needs. He wanted her, he needed her, and she was offering him bales of wool and cocks of hay. Of course in this matter she was right and he was wrong it would be much better to wait just a week or two till after the shearing and the hay-making but for the first time Joanna saw that even right could surrender. Even though she was right, she could give way to him, bend her will to his. After all, nothing really mattered except his love, his good favour better that she should muddle her shearing and her crops than the first significant weeks of their married life. He should put his dear foot upon her neck for the last of her pride was gone in that discovery of the dripping day, the discovery that her plans, her ambitions, her life, herself, had their worth only in the knowledge that they belonged to him.

It was on Thursday afternoon that Joanna finally beat Ansdore out of her love. She cried a little, for she wished that it had happened earlier, before Martin went away. Still, it was his going that had shown her at last clearly where she belonged. She thought of writing and telling him of her surrender, but like most of her kind she shrank from writing letters except when direly necessary; and she would see Martin to-morrow he had promised to come to Ansdore straight from the station.

So instead of writing her letter, she went and washed the tears off her face over the sink and sat down to a cup of tea and a piece of bread and dripping with Mrs. Tolhurst and Milly Pump. When Ellen was at home Joanna was lofty and exclusive, and had her meals in the dining-room she did not think it right that her little sister, with all her new accomplishments and elegancies, should lead the common, kitchen life also, of course, when Martin came they sat down in state, with pink wine-glasses beside their tumblers. But when she was alone she much preferred a friendly meal with Milly and Mrs. Tolhurst she even joined them in pouring her tea into her saucer, and sat with it cooling on her spread fingers, her elbow on the cloth. She unbent from mistress to fellow-worker, and they talked the scandal of a dozen farms.

“It’s as I said, at Yokes Court,” said Mrs. Tolhurst “there’s no good young Mus’ Southland saying as the girl’s mother sent for her I know better.”

“I saw Mrs. Lambarde after church on Sunday,” said Joanna, “and she wasn’t expecting Elsie then.”

“Elsie went before her box did,” said Milly Pump, “Bill Piper fetched it along after her, as he told me himself.”

“I’m sure it’s Tom Southland,” said Joanna.

“Surelye,” said Mrs. Tolhurst, “and all the more as he’s been saying at the Woolpack that the Old Squire’s been hanging around after the girl which reminds me, Miss Joanna, as I hear Mus’ Martin’s back this afternoon.”

“This afternoon! He said to-morrow morning.”

“Well, he’s come this afternoon. Broadhurst met him driving from Rye station.”

“Then he’s sure to be over to-night. You get the wine-glasses out, Mrs. Tolhurst, and spread in the dining-room.”

She rose up from table, once more apart from her servants. Her brain was humming with surprised joy Martin was back, she would soon see him, he would be sure to come to her. And then she would tell him of her surrender, and the cloud would be gone from their love.

With beating heart she ran upstairs to change her dress and tidy herself, for he might come at any moment. There was a red-brown velvet dress he particularly liked she pulled it out of her drawer and smoothed its folds. Her drawers were crammed and heavy with the garments she was to wear as Martin’s wife; there were silk blouses bought at smart shops in Folkestone and Marlingate; there was a pair of buckled shoes size eight; there were piles of neat longcloth and calico underclothing, demure nightdresses buttoning to the chin, stiff petticoats, and what she called “petticoat bodies,” fastening down the front with linen buttons, and with tiny, shy frills of embroidery at the neck and armholes.

She put on the brown dress, and piled up her hair against the big comb. She looked at herself in the glass by the light of the candles she had put to light up the rainy evening. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and her hair and her dress were the same soft, burning colour.... When would Martin come?

Then suddenly she thought of something even better than his coming. She thought of herself going over to North Farthing House and telling him that she had changed her mind and that she was his just as soon as ever he wanted her.... Her breath came fast at the inspiration it would be better than waiting for him here; it gave to her surrender the spectacular touch which hitherto it had lacked and her nature demanded. The rain was coming down the wind almost as fiercely and as fast as it had come on Tuesday night, but Joanna the marsh-born had never cared for weather. She merely laced on her heavy boots and bundled into her father’s overcoat. Then she put out a hand for an old hat, and suddenly she remembered the hat Martin had said he liked her in above all others. It was an old rush basket, soft and shapeless with age, and she tied it over her head with her father’s red and white spotted handkerchief.

She was now ready, and all she had to do was to run down and tell Mrs. Tolhurst that if Mr. Martin called while she was out he was to be asked to wait. She was not really afraid of missing him, for there were few short cuts on the Marsh, where the long way round of the road was often the only way but she hoped she would reach North Farthing before he left it; she did not want anything to be taken from her surrender, it must be absolute and complete ... the fires of her own sacrifice were kindled and were burning her heart.

Se

She did not meet Martin on the Brodnyx Road; only the wind was with her, and the rain. She turned aside to North Farthing between the Woolpack and the village, and still she did not meet him and now she really thought that she would arrive in time. On either side of the track she followed, Martin’s sheep were grazing that was his land, those were his dykes and willows, ahead of her were the lighted windows of his house. She wondered what he would say when he saw her. Would he be much surprised? She had come to North Farthing once or twice before, but not very often. If he was not surprised to see her, he would be surprised when she told him why she had come. She pictured how he would receive her news with his arms round her, with his kisses on her mouth.

Her arrival was a check the formalities of her betrothed’s house never failed to upset her. To begin with she had to face that impertinent upstart of a Nell Raddish, all tricked out in a black dress and white apron and cap and collar and cuffs, and she only a cowman’s daughter with a face like a plum, and no sense or notions at all till she came to Farthing, since when, as everyone knew, her skirts had grown shorter and her nose whiter and her hair frizzier and her ways more knowing.

“Good evening, Nell,” said Joanna, covering her embarrassment with patronage, “is Mr. Martin at home?”

“Yes, he is,” said Nell, “he came back this afternoon.”

“I know that, of course. I want to see him, please.”

“I’m not sure if he’s gone up to bed. Come in, and I’ll go and look.”

“Up to bed!”

“Yes, he’s feeling poorly. That’s why he came home.”

“Poorly, what’s the matter?” Joanna pushed past Nell into the house.

“I dunno, a cold or cough. He told me to bring him some tea and put a hot brick in his bed. Sir Harry ain’t in yet.”

Joanna marched up the hall to the door of Martin’s study. She stopped and listened for a moment, but could hear nothing, except the beating of her own heart. Then, without knocking, she went in. The room was ruddy and dim with firelight, and at first she thought it was empty, but the next minute she saw Martin huddled in an armchair, a tea-tray on a low stool beside him.

“Martin!”

He started up out of a kind of sleep, and blinked at her.

“Jo! Is that you?”

“Yes. I’ve come over to tell you I’ll marry you whenever you want. Martin dear, what’s the matter? Are you ill?”

“It’s nothing much I’ve caught cold, and thought I’d better come home. Colds always make me feel wretched.”

She could see that he was anxious about himself, and in her pity she forgave him for having ignored her surrender. She knelt down beside him and took both his restless hands.

“Have you had your tea, dear?”

“No. I asked her to bring it, and then I sort of fell asleep ...”

“I’ll give it to you.”

She poured out his tea, giving him a hot black cup, with plenty of sugar, as they liked it on the Marsh. He drank it eagerly, and felt better.

“Jo, how good of you to come over and see me. Who told you I was back?”

“I heard it from Milly Pump, and she heard it from Broadhurst.”

“I meant to send a message round to you. I hope I’ll be all right to-morrow.”

“Reckon you will, dear.... Martin, you heard what I said about marrying you when you want?”

“Do you mean it?”

“Of course I mean it I came over a-purpose to tell you. While you was away I did some thinking, and I found that Ansdore doesn’t matter to me what it used. It’s only you that matters now.”

She was crouching at his feet, and he stooped over her, taking her in his arms, drawing her back between his knees.

“You noble, beloved thing ...”

The burning touch of his lips and face reminded her that he was ill, so the consecration of her sacrifice lost a little of its joy.

“You’re feverish you should ought to go to bed.”

“I’m going when I’ve had another cup of tea. Will you give me another, child?”

“I’ve a mind to go home through Brodnyx and ask Dr. Taylor to call round.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’m bad enough for a doctor I catch cold easily, and I was wet through the other night.”

“Was it that!” Her voice shook with consternation.

“I expect so but don’t fret, darling Jo. It’s nothing. I’ll be quite right to-morrow I feel better already.”

“I think you should ought to see a doctor, though. I’ll call in on my way back. I’ll can in on Mr. Pratt, too, and tell him to start crying us next Sunday.”

“That’s my business I’ll go to-morrow. But are you sure, darling, you can make such a sacrifice? I’m afraid I’ve been a selfish beast, and I’m spoiling your plans.”

“Oh no, you ain’t. I feel now as if I wanted to get married more’n anything wotsumever. The shearing ull do proper the men know their job and Broadhurst ull see to the hay. They dursn’t muck things up, knowing as I’ll be home to see to it by July.”

“To say nothing of me,” said Martin, pinching her ear.

“To say nothing of you.”

“Joanna, you’ve got on the old hat ...”

“I put it on special.”

“Bless you.”

He pulled her down to the arm of his chair, and for a moment they huddled together, cheek on cheek. The opening of the door made Joanna spring virtuously upright. It was Sir Harry.

“Hullo, Joanna! you here. Hullo, Martin! The lovely Raddish says you’ve come home middling queer. I hope that doesn’t mean anything serious.”

“I’ve got some sort of a chill, and I feel a beast. So I thought I’d better come home.”

“I’ve given him his tea,” said Joanna, “and now he should ought to go to bed.”

Sir Harry looked at her. She struck him as an odd figure, in her velvet gown and basket hat, thick boots and man’s overcoat. The more he saw of her, the less could he think what to make of her as a daughter-in-law; but to-night he was thankful for her capable managing mentally and physically he was always clumsy with Martin in illness. He found it hard to adapt himself to the occasional weakness of this being who dominated him in other ways.

“Do you think he’s feverish?”

Joanna felt Martin’s hands again.

“I guess he is. Maybe he wants a dose or a cup of herb tea does good, they say. But I’ll ask Doctor to come around. Martin, I’m going now this drackly minute, and I’ll call in at Dr. Taylor’s and at Mr. Pratt’s.”

“Wait till to-morrow, and I’ll see Pratt,” said Martin, unable to rid himself of the idea that a bride should find such an errand embarrassing.

“I’d sooner go myself to-night. Anyways you mustn’t go traipsing around, even if you feel better to-morrow. I’ll settle everything, so don’t you fret.”

She took his face between her hands, and kissed him as if he were a child.

“Good night, my duck. You get off to bed and keep warm.”

Se

She worked off her fears in action. Having given notice of the banns to Mr. Pratt, sent off Dr. Taylor to North Farthing, put up a special petition for Martin in her evening prayers, she went to bed and slept soundly. She was not an anxious soul, and a man’s illness never struck her as particularly alarming. Men were hard creatures whose weaknesses were of mind and character rather than of body and though Martin was softer than some, she could not quite discount his broad back and shoulders, his strong, swinging arms.

She drove over to North Farthing soon after breakfast, expecting to find him, in spite of her injunctions, about and waiting for her.

“The day’s warm and maybe he won’t hurt if he drives on with me to Honeychild” the thought of him there beside her was so strong that she could almost feel his hand lying pressed between her arm and her heart.

But when she came to the house she found only Sir Harry, prowling in the hall.

“I’m glad you’ve come, Joanna. I’m anxious about Martin.”

“What’s the matter? What did the doctor say?”

“He said there’s congestion of the lung or something. Martin took a fit of the shivers after you’d gone, and of course it made him worse when the doctor said the magic word ‘lung.’ He’s always been hipped about himself, you know.”

“I’d better go and see him.”

She hitched the reins, and climbed down out of the trap stumbling awkwardly as she alighted, for she had begun to tremble.

“You don’t think he’s very bad, do you?”

“Can’t say. I wish Taylor ud come. He said he’d be here again this morning.”

His voice was sharp and complaining, for anything painful always made him exasperated. Martin lying ill in bed, Martin shivering and in pain and in a funk was so unlike the rather superior being whom he liked to pretend bullied him, that he felt upset and rather shocked. He gave a sigh of relief as Joanna ran upstairs he told himself that she was a good practical sort of woman, and handsome when she was properly dressed.

She had never been upstairs in North Farthing House before, but she found Martin’s room after only one false entry which surprised the guilty Raddish sitting at Sir Harry’s dressing-table and smarming his hair-cream on her ignoble head. The blinds in Martin’s room were down, and he was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, with his head turned away from her.

“That you, father? has Taylor come?”

“No, it’s me, dearie. I’ve come to see what I can do for you.”

The sight of him huddled there in the pillows, restless, comfortless, neglected, wrung her heart. Hitherto her love for Martin had been singularly devoid of intimacy. They had kissed each other, they had eaten dinner and tea and supper together, they had explored the Three Marshes in each other’s company, but she had scarcely ever been to his house, never seen him asleep, and in normal circumstances would have perished rather than gone into his bedroom. To-day when she saw him there, lying on his wide, tumbled bed, among his littered belongings his clothes strewn untidily on the floor, his books on their shelves, his pictures that struck her rigidity as indecent, his photographs of people who had touched his life, some perhaps closely, but were unknown to her, she had a queer sense of the revelation of poor, pathetic secrets. This, then, was Martin when he was away from her untidy, sensual, forlorn, as all men were ... she bent down and kissed him.

“Lovely Jo,” ... he yielded childish, burning lips, then drew away “No, you mustn’t kiss me it might be bad for you.”

“Gammon, dear. ’Tis only a chill.”

She saw that he was in a bate about himself, so after her tender beginnings, she became rough. She made him sit up while she shook his pillows, then she made him lie flat and tucked the sheet round him strenuously; she scolded him for leaving his clothes lying about on the floor. She felt as if her love for him was only just beginning the last four months seemed cold and formal compared with these moments of warm, personal service. She brought him water for his hands, and scrubbed his face with a sponge to his intense discomfort. She was bawling downstairs to the unlucky Raddish to put the kettle on for some herb tea since an intimate cross-examination revealed that he had not had the recommended dose when the doctor arrived and came upstairs with Sir Harry.

He undid a good deal of Joanna’s good work he ordered the blind to be let down again, and he refused to back her up in her injunctions to the patient to lie flat on the contrary he sent for more pillows, and Martin had to confess to feeling easier when he was propped up against them with a rug round his shoulders. He then announced that he would send for a nurse from Rye.

“Oh, but I can manage,” cried Joanna “let me nurse him. I can come and stop here, and nurse him day and night.”

“I am sure there is no one whom he’d rather have than you, Miss Godden,” said Dr. Taylor gallantly, “but of course you are not professional, and pneumonia wants thoroughly experienced nursing the nurse counts more than the doctor in a case like this.”

“Pneumonia! Is that what’s the matter with him?”

They had left Martin’s room, and the three of them were standing in the hall.

“I’m afraid that’s it only in the right lung so far.”

“But you can stop it you won’t let him get worse. Pneumonia!...”

The word was full of a sinister horror to her, suggesting suffocation agony. And Martin’s chest had always been weak the weak part of his strong body. She should have thought of that ... thought of it three nights ago when, all through her, he had been soaked with the wind-driven rain ... just like a drowned rat he had looked when they came to Ansdore, his cap dripping, the water running down his neck.... No, no, it could not be that he couldn’t have caught pneumonia just through getting wet that time she had got wet a dunnamany times and not been tuppence the worse ... his lungs were not weak in that way it was the London fogs that had disagreed with them, the doctor had said so, and had sent him away from town, to the Marsh and the rain.... He had been in London for the last two days, and the fog had got into his poor chest again, that was all, and now that he was home on the Marsh he would soon be well of course he would soon be well she was a fool to fret. And now she would go upstairs and sit with him till the nurse came; it was her last chance of doing those little tender, rough, intimate things for him ... till they were married oh, she wouldn’t let him fling his clothes about like that when they were married! Meantime she would go up, and see that he swallowed every drop of the herb tea that was the stuff to give anyone who was ill on the Marsh, no matter what the doctor said ... rheumatism, bronchitis, colic, it cured them all.

Se

Martin was very ill. The herb tea did not cure him, nor did the stuff the doctor gave him. Nor did the starched crackling nurse, who turned Joanna out of the room and exasperatingly spoke of Martin as “my patient.”

Joanna had lunch with Sir Harry, who in the stress of anxiety was turning into something very like a father, and afterwards drove off in her trap to Rye, having forgotten all about the Honeychild errand. She went to the fruiterers, and ordered grapes and peaches.

“But you won’t get them anywhere now, Miss Godden. It’s just between seasons in another month ...”

“I must have ’em now,” said Joanna truculently, “I don’t care what I pay.”

It ended in the telephone at the Post Office being put into hysteric action, and a London shop admonished to send down peaches and grapes to Rye station by passenger train that afternoon.

The knowledge of Martin’s illness was all over Walland Marsh by the evening. All the Marsh knew about the doctor and the nurse and the peaches and grapes from London. The next morning they knew that he was worse, and that his brother had been sent for Father Lawrence arrived on Saturday night, driving in the carrier’s cart from Rye station. On Sunday morning people met on their way to church, and shook their heads as they told each other the latest news from North Farthing double pneumonia, an abscess on the lung.... Nell Raddish said his face was blue ... the Old Squire was quite upset ... the nurse was like a heathen, raging at the cook.... Joanna Godden? she sat all day in Mr. Martin’s study, waiting to be sent for upstairs, but she’d only seen him once....

Then, when tongues at last were quiet in church, just before the second lesson, Mr. Pratt read out

“I publish the banns of marriage between Martin Arbuthnot Trevor, bachelor, of this parish, and Joanna Mary Godden, spinster, of the parish of Pedlinge. This is for the first time of asking. If any of you know any just cause or impediment why these persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.”

Se

Martin died early on Monday morning. Joanna was with him at the last, and to the last she did not believe that he would die because he had given up worrying about himself, so she was sure he must feel better. Three hours before he died he held both her hands and looked at her once more like a man out of his eyes ... “Lovely Jo,” he said.

She had lain down in most of her clothes as usual, in the little spare room, and between two and three o’clock in the morning the nurse had roused her.

“You’re wanted ... but I’m not sure if he’ll know you.”

He didn’t. He knew none of them his mind seemed to have gone away and left his body to fight its last fight alone.

“He doesn’t feel anything,” they said to her, when Martin gasped and struggled “but don’t stay if you’d rather not.”

“I’d rather stay,” said Joanna, “he may know me. Martin ...” she called to him. “Martin I’m here I’m Jo ” but it was like calling to someone who is already far away down a long road.

There was a faint sweet smell of oil in the room Father Lawrence had administered the last rites of Holy Church. His romance and Martin’s had met at his brother’s death-bed ... “Go forth, Christian soul, from this world, in the Name of God in the name of the Angels and Archangels in the name of the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, and of all the Saints of God; let thine habitation to-day be in peace and thine abode in Holy Sion” ... “Martin, it’s only me, it’s only Jo” ... Thus the two voices mingled, and he heard neither.

The cold morning lit up the window square, and the window rattled with the breeze of Rye Bay. Joanna felt someone take her hand and lead her towards the door. “He’s all right now,” said Lawrence’s voice “it’s over ...”

Somebody was giving her a glass of wine she was sitting in the dining-room, staring unmoved at Nell Raddish’s guilt revealed in a breakfast-table laid over night. Lawrence and Sir Harry were both with her, being kind to her, forgetting their own grief in trying to comfort her. But Joanna only wanted to go home. Suddenly she felt lonely and scared in this fine house, with its thick carpets and mahogany and silver now that Martin was not here to befriend her in it. She did not belong she was an outsider, she wanted to go away.

She asked for the trap, and they tried to persuade her to stay and have some breakfast, but she repeated doggedly, “I want to go.” Lawrence went and fetched the trap round, for the men were not about yet. The morning had not really come only the cold twilight, empty and howling with wind, with a great drifting sky of fading stars.

Lawrence went with her to the door, and kissed her “Good-bye, dear Jo. Father or I will come and see you soon.” She was surprised at the kiss, for he had never kissed her before, though the Squire had taken full advantage of their relationship she had supposed it wasn’t right for Jesoots.

She did not know what she said to him probably nothing. There was a terrible silence in her heart. She heard Smiler’s hoofs upon the road clop, clop, clop. But they did not break the silence within ... oh, Martin, Martin, put your hand under my arm, against my heart maybe that’ll stop it aching.

Thoughts of Martin crowding upon her, filling her empty heart with memories.... Martin sitting on the tombstone outside Brodnyx church on Christmas day, Martin holding her in his arms on the threshold of Ansdore ... Martin kissing her in New Romney church, bending her back against the pillar stained with the old floods ... that drive through Broomhill how he had teased her! “we’ll come here for our honeymoon” ... Dunge Ness, the moaning sea, the wind, her fear, his arms ... the warm kitchen of the Britannia, with the light of the wreckwood fire, the teacups on the table, “we shall want to see our children".... No, no, you mustn’t say that not now, not now.... Remember instead how we quarrelled, how he tried to get between me and Ansdore, so that I forgot Ansdore, and gave it up for his sake; but it’s all I’ve got now. I gave up Ansdore to Martin, and now I’ve lost Martin and got Ansdore. I’ve got three hundred acres and four hundred sheep and three hundred pounds at interest in Lewes Old Bank. But I’ve lost Martin. I’ve done valiant for Ansdore, better’n ever I hoped poor father ud be proud of me. But my heart’s broken. I don’t like remembering it hurts I must forget.

Colour had come into the dawn. The Marsh was slowly turning from a strange papery grey to green. The sky changed from white to blue, and suddenly became smeared with ruddy clouds. At once the watercourses lit up, streaking across the green in fiery slats the shaking boughs of the willows became full of fire, and at the turn of the road the windows of Ansdore shone as if it were burning.

There it stood at the road’s bend. Its roofs a fiery yellow with the swarming sea-lichen, its solid walls flushed faintly pink in the sunrise, its windows squares of amber and flame. It was as a house lit up and welcoming. It seemed to shout to Joanna as she came to it clop, clop along the road.

“Come back come home to me I’m glad to see you again. You forgot me for five days, but you won’t forget me any more for I’m all that you’ve got now.”