At the station she had to wake old Stuppeny out of his slumber on the back seat, and put him in his proper place at Smiler's head, while she went on the platform. The train was just due, and she had not passed many remarks with the ticket-collector—a comely young fellow whom she liked for his build and the sauciness of his tongue—before it arrived. As it steamed in, her heart began to beat anxiously—she bit her lip, and actually looked nervous. Ellen was the only person in the world who could make her feel shy and ill at ease, and Ellen had only lately acquired this power; but there had been a constraint about their meetings for the last year. During the last year Ellen had become terribly good-mannered and grown up, and somehow that first glimpse of the elegant maiden whom her toil and sacrifice had built out of little Ellen Godden of Ansdore, never failed to give Joanna a queer sense of awkwardness and inferiority.

To-day Ellen was more impressive, more "different" than ever. She had been allowed to buy new clothes before leaving Folkestone, and her long blue coat and neat little hat made Joanna, for the first time in her life, feel tawdry and savage in her fur and feathers. Her sister stepped down from her third-class carriage as a queen from her throne, beckoned to Rye's one porter, and without a word pointed back into the compartment, from which he removed a handbag; whereat she graciously gave him twopence and proceeded to greet Joanna.

"Dear Jo," she murmured, filling her embrace with a soft perfume of hair, which somehow stifled the "Hello, duckie" on the other's tongue.

Joanna found herself turning to Rye's one porter with inquiries after his wife and little boy, doing her best to take the chill off the proceedings. She wished that Ellen wouldn't give herself these airs. It is true that they always wore off as Ansdore reasserted itself in old clothes and squabbles, but Joanna resented her first impressions.

However, her sister thawed a little on the drive home—she was curious about the affairs of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, for her time in two worlds was at an end, and Ansdore was henceforth to give her its horizons.

"Will there be any parties at Christmas?" she asked.

"Sure to be," said Joanna, "I'll be giving one myself, and Mrs. Vine was telling me only yesterday as she's a mind to have some neighbours in for whist."

"Won't there be any dancing?"

"Oh, it's that what you're after, is it?" said Joanna proudly.

"Mabel and Pauline are going to heaps of dances this Christmas—and Myra West is coming out. Mayn't I come out, Joanna?"

"Come out o' what, dearie?"

"Oh, you know—put up my hair and go to balls."

"You can put your hair up any day you please—I put mine up at fifteen, and you're turned seventeen now. As for balls ..."

She broke off, a little at a loss as to how she was to supply this deficiency. It would scarcely be possible for her to break into the enclosures of Dungemarsh Court—especially since she had allowed herself to drop away from North Farthing House ... she had been a fool to do that—Sir Harry might have helped her now. But then ... her lips tightened.... Anyhow, he would not be at home for Christmas—since Martin's death he had sub-let the farm and was a good deal away; people said he had "come into" some money, left him by a former mistress, who had died more grateful than he deserved.

"I'll do the best I can for you, duck," said Joanna, "you shall have your bit of dancing—and anyways I've got a fine, big surprise for you when we're home."

"What sort of a surprise?"

"That's telling."

Ellen, in spite of her dignity, was child enough to be intensely excited at the idea of a secret, and the rest of the drive was spent in baffled question and provoking answer.

"I believe it's something for me to wear," she said finally, as they climbed out of the trap at the front door—"a ring, Joanna.... I've always wanted a ring."

"It's better than a ring," said Joanna, "leastways it's bigger," and she laughed to herself.

She led the way upstairs, while Mrs. Tolhurst and old Stuppeny waltzed recriminatingly with Ellen's box.

"Where are you taking me?" asked her sister, pausing with her hand on the door-knob of Joanna's bedroom.

"Never you mind—come on."

Would Mene Tekel, she wondered, have remembered to set the lamps, so that the room should not depend on the faint gutter of sunset to display its glories? She opened the door, and was reassured—a fury of light and colour leapt out—rose, blue, green, buff, and the port-wine red of mahogany. The pink curtains were drawn, but there was no fire in the grate—for fires in bedrooms were unknown at Ansdore; however, a Christmas-like effect was given by sprigs of holly stuck in the picture-frames, and a string of paper flowers hung from the bed-tester to the top of the big woolly bell-rope by the mantelpiece. Joanna heard her sister gasp.

"It's yours, Ellen—your new room. I've given it to you—all to yourself. There's the spare mahogany furniture, and the best pictures, and poor father's Buffalo certificate."

The triumph of her own achievement melted away the last of her uneasiness—she seized Ellen in her arms and kissed her, knocking her hat over one ear.

"See, you've got new curtains—eighteenpence a yard ... and that's mother's text—'Inasmuch....' and I've bought a new soap-dish at Godfrey's—it doesn't quite go with the basin, but they've both got roses on 'em ... and you won't mind there being a few of my gowns in the wardrobe—only the skirts—I've got room for the bodies in my drawers ... that's the basket armchair out of the dining-room, with a new cover that Mene Tekel fixed for it ... the clock's out of the spare room—it don't go, but it looks fine on the mantelpiece.... Say, duckie, are you pleased?—are you pleased with your old Jo?"

"Oh, Joanna ... thank you," said Ellen.

"Well, I'll have to be leaving you now—that gal's got a rabbit pie in the oven for our tea, and I must go and have a look at her crust. You unpack and clean yourself—and be careful not to spoil anything."



Sec.5

Supper that night was rather a quiet meal. Something about Ellen drove Joanna back into her old sense of estrangement. Her sister made her think of a lily on a thundery day. She wore a clinging dress of dull green stuff, which sheathed her delicate figure like a lily bract—her throat rose out of it like a lily stalk, and her face, with its small features and soft skin, was the face of a white flower. About her clung a dim atmosphere of the languid and exotic, like the lily's scent which is so unlike the lily.

"Ellen," broke out Joanna, with a glance down at her own high, tight bosom, "don't you ever wear stays?"

"No. Miss Collins and the gym mistress both say it's unhealthy."

"Unhealthy! And don't they never wear none themselves?"

"Never. They look much better without—besides, small waists are going out of fashion."

"But ... Ellen ... it ain't seemly—to show the natural shape of your body as you're doing."

"I've been told my figure's a very good one."

"And whoever dared make such a remark to you?"

"It was a compliment."

"I don't call it any compliment to say such things to a young girl. Besides, what right have you to go showing what you was meant to hide?"

"I'm not showing anything I was meant to hide. My figure isn't nearly so pronounced as yours—if I had your figure, I couldn't wear this sort of frock."

"My figure is as God made it"—which it certainly was not—"and I was brought up to be the shape of a woman, in proper stays, and not the shape of a heathen statue. I'd be ashamed for any of the folk around here to see you like that—and if Arthur Alce, or any other man, came in, I'd either have to send you out or wrap the table-cover round you."

Ellen took refuge in a haughty silence, and Joanna began to feel uneasy and depressed. She thought that Ellen was "fast." Was this what she had learned at school—to flout the standards of her home?



Sec.6

The next morning Joanna overslept herself, in consequence of a restless hour during the first part of the night. As a result, it had struck half past seven before she went into her sister's room. She was not the kind of person who knocks at doors, and burst in to find Ellen, inadequately clothed in funny little garments, doing something very busily inside the cupboard.

"Hullo, duckie! And how did you sleep in your lovely bed?"

She was once more aglow with the vitality and triumph of her own being, but the next moment she experienced a vague sense of chill—something was the matter with the room, something had happened to it. It had lost its sense of cheerful riot, and wore a chastened, hangdog air. In a spasm of consternation Joanna realized that Ellen had been tampering with it.

"What have you done?—Where's my pictures?—Where've you put the window curtains?" she cried at last.

Ellen stiffened herself and tried not to look guilty.

"I'm just trying to find room for my own things."

Joanna stared about her.

"Where's father's Buffalo certificate?"

"I've put it in the cupboard."

"In the cupboard!—father's ... and I'm blessed if you haven't taken down the curtains."

"They clash with the carpet—it quite hurts me to look at them. Really, Joanna, if this is my room, you oughtn't to mind what I do in it."

"Your room, indeed!—You've got some sass!—And I spending more'n forty pound fixing it up for you. I've given you new wall paper and new carpet and new curtains and all the best pictures, and took an unaccountable lot of trouble, and now you go and mess it up."

"I haven't messed it up. On the contrary"—Ellen's vexation was breaking through her sense of guilt—"I'm doing the best I can to make it look decent. Since you say you've done it specially for me and spent all that money on it, I think at least you might have consulted my taste a little."

"And what is your taste, ma'am?"

"A bit quieter than yours," said Ellen saucily. "There are about six different shades of red and pink in this room."

"And what shades would you have chosen, may I be so bold as to ask?" Joanna's voice dragged ominously with patience—"the same shade as your last night's gownd, which is the colour of the mould on jam? I'll have the colours I like in my own house—I'm sick of your dentical, die-away notions. You come home from school thinking you know everything, when all you've learned is to despise my best pictures, and say my curtains clash with the carpet, when I chose 'em for a nice match. I tell you what, ma'am, you can just about put them curtains back, and them pictures, and that certificate of poor father's that you're so ashamed of."

"I want to put my own pictures up," said Ellen doggedly—"if I've got to live with your carpet and wallpaper, I don't see why I shouldn't have my own pictures."

Joanna swept her eye contemptuously over "The Vigil," "Sir Galahad," "The Blessed Damozel," and one or two other schoolgirl favourites that were lying on the bed.

"You can stick those up as well—there ain't such a lot."

"But can't you see, Joanna, that there are too many pictures on the wall already?—It's simply crowded with them. Really, you're an obstinate old beast," and Ellen began to cry.

Joanna fought back in herself certain symptoms of relenting. She could not bear to see Ellen cry, but on the other hand she had "fixed up" this room for Ellen—she had had it furnished and decorated for her—and now Ellen must and should appreciate it. She should not be allowed to disguise and bowdlerize it to suit the unwelcome tastes she had acquired at school. The sight of her father's Buffalo certificate, lying face downwards on the cupboard floor, gave strength to her flagging purpose.

"You pick that up and hang it in its proper place."

"I won't."

"You will."

"I won't! Why should I have that hideous thing over my bed?"

"Because it was your father's, and you should ought to be proud of it."

"It's some low drinking society he belonged to, and I'm not proud—I'm ashamed."

Joanna boxed her ears.

"You don't deserve to be his daughter, Ellen Godden, speaking so. It's you that's bringing us all to shame—thank goodness you've left school, where you learned all that tedious, proud nonsense. You hang those pictures up again, and those curtains, and you'll keep this room just what I've made it for you."

Ellen was weeping bitterly now, but her sacrilege had hardened Joanna's heart. She did not leave the room till the deposed dynasty of curtains and pictures was restored, with poor father's certificate once more in its place of honour. Then she marched out.



Sec.7

The days till Christmas were full of strain. Joanna had won her victory, but she did not find it a satisfying one. Ellen's position in the Ansdore household was that of a sulky rebel—resentful, plaintive, a nurse of hard memories—too close to be ignored, too hostile to be trusted.

The tyrant groaned under the heel of her victim. She was used to quarrels, but this was her first experience of a prolonged estrangement. It had been all very well to box Ellen's ears as a child, and have her shins kicked in return, and then an hour or two later be nursing her on her lap to the tune of "There was an Old Woman," or "Little Boy Blue".... But this dragged out antagonism wore down her spirits into a long sadness. It was the wrong start for that happy home she had planned, in which Ellen, the little sister, was to absorb that overflowing love which had once been Martin's, but which his memory could not hold in all its power.

It seemed as if she would be forced to acknowledge Ellen's education as another of her failures. She had sent her to school to be made a lady of, but the finished article was nearly as disappointing as the cross-bred lambs of Socknersh's unlucky day. If Ellen had wanted to lie abed of a morning, never to do a hand's turn of work, or had demanded a table napkin at all her meals, Joanna would have humoured her and bragged about her. But, on the contrary, her sister had learned habits of early rising at school, and if left to herself would have been busy all day with piano or pencil or needle of the finer sort. Also she found more fault with the beauties of Ansdore's best parlour than the rigours of its kitchen; there lay the sting—her revolt was not against the toils and austerities of the farm's life but against its glories and comelinesses. She despised Ansdore for its very splendours, just as she despised her sister's best clothes more than her old ones.

By Christmas Day things had righted themselves a little. Ellen was too young to sulk more than a day or two, and she began to forget her grievances in the excitement of the festival. There was the usual communal midday dinner, with Arthur Alce back in his old place at Joanna's right hand. Alce had behaved like a gentleman, and refused to take back the silver tea set, his premature wedding gift. Then in the evening, Joanna gave a party, at which young Vines and Southlands and Furneses offered their sheepish admiration to her sister Ellen. Of course everyone was agreed that Ellen Godden gave herself lamentable airs, but she appealed to her neighbours' curiosity through her queer, exotic ways, and the young men found her undeniably beautiful—she had a thick, creamy skin, into which her childhood's roses sometimes came as a dim flush, and the younger generation of the Three Marshes was inclined to revolt from the standards of its fathers.

So young Stacey Vine kissed her daringly under the mistletoe at the passage bend, and was rewarded with a gasp of sweet scent, which made him talk a lot at the Woolpack. While Tom Southland, a man of few words, went home and closed with his father's offer of a partnership in his farm, which hitherto he had thought of setting aside in favour of an escape to Australia. Ellen was pleased at the time, but a night's thought made her scornful.

"Don't you know any really nice people?" she asked Joanna. "Why did you send me to school with gentlemen's daughters if you just meant me to mix with common people when I came out?"

"You can mix with any gentlefolk you can find to mix with. I myself have been engaged to marry a gentleman's son, and his father would have come to my party if he hadn't been away for Christmas."

She felt angry and sore with Ellen, but she was bound to admit that her grievance had a certain justification. After all, she had always meant her to be a lady, and now, she supposed, she was merely behaving like one. She cast about her for means of introducing her sister into the spheres she coveted ... if only Sir Harry Trevor would come home!—But she gathered there was little prospect of that for some time. Then she thought of Mr. Pratt, the rector.... It was the first time that she had ever considered him as a social asset—his poverty, his inefficiency and self-depreciation had quite outweighed his gentility in her ideas; he had existed only as the Voice of the Church on Walland Marsh, and the spasmodic respect she paid him was for his office alone. But now she began to remember that he was an educated man and a gentleman, who might supply the want in her sister's life without in any way encouraging those more undesirable "notions" she had picked up at school.

Accordingly, Mr. Pratt, hitherto neglected, was invited to Ansdore with a frequency and enthusiasm that completely turned his head. He spoiled the whole scheme by misinterpreting its motive, and after about the ninth tea-party, became buoyed with insane and presumptuous hopes, and proposed to Joanna. She was overwhelmed, and did not scruple to overwhelm him, with anger and consternation. It was not that she did not consider the rectory a fit match for Ansdore, even with only two hundred a year attached to it, but she was furious that Mr. Pratt should think it possible that she could fancy him as a man—"a little rabbity chap like him, turned fifty, and scarce a hair on him. If he wants another wife at his age he should get an old maid like Miss Godfrey or a hopeful widder like Mrs. Woods—not a woman who's had real men to love her, and ud never look at anything but a real, stout feller."

However, she confided the proposal to Ellen, for she wanted her sister to know that she had had an offer from a clergyman, and also that she was still considered desirable—for once or twice Ellen had thrown out troubling hints that she thought her sister middle-aged. Of course she was turned thirty now, and hard weather and other hard things had made her inclined to look older, by reddening and lining her face. But she had splendid eyes, hair and teeth, and neither the grace nor the energy of youth had left her body, which had coarsened into something rather magnificent, tall and strong, plump without stoutness, clean-limbed without angularity.

She could certainly now have had her pick among the unmarried farmers—which could not have been said when she first set up her mastership at Ansdore. Since those times men had learned to tolerate her swaggering ways, also her love affair with Martin had made her more normal, more of a soft, accessible woman. Arthur Alce was no longer the only suitor at Ansdore—it was well known that Sam Turner, who had lately moved from inland to Northlade, was wanting to have her, and Hugh Vennal would have been glad to bring her as his second wife to Beggar's Bush. Joanna was proud of these attachments and saw to it that they were not obscure—also, one or two of the men, particularly Vennal, she liked for themselves, for their vitality and "set-upness"; but she shied away from the prospect of marriage. Martin had shown her all that it meant in the way of renunciation, and she felt that she could make its sacrifices for no one less than Martin. Also, the frustration of her hopes and the inadequacy of her memories had produced in her a queer antipathy to marriage—a starting aside. Her single state began to have for her a certain worth in itself, a respectable rigour like a pair of stays. For a year or so after Martin's death, she had maintained her solace of secret kisses, but in time she had come to withdraw even from these, and by now the full force of her vitality was pouring itself into her life at Ansdore, its ambitions and business, her love for Ellen, and her own pride.



Sec.8

Ellen secretly despised Joanna's suitors, just as she secretly despised all Joanna's best and most splendid things. They were a dull lot, driving her sister home on market-day, or sitting for hours in the parlour with Arthur Alce's mother's silver tea-set. It was always "Good evening, Miss Godden," "Good evening, Mr. Turner"—"Fine weather for roots"—"A bit dry for the grazing." It was not thus that Ellen Godden understood love. Besides, these men looked oafs, in spite of the fine build of some of them—they were not so bad in their working clothes, with their leggings and velveteen breeches, but in their Sunday best, which they always wore on these occasions, they looked clumsy and ridiculous, their broad black coats in the cut of yester-year and smelling of camphor, their high-winged collars scraping and reddening their necks ... in their presence Ellen was rather sidling and sweet, but away from them in the riotous privacy of her new bedroom, she laughed to herself and jeered.

She had admirers of her own, but she soon grew tired of them—would have grown tired sooner if Joanna had not clucked and shoo'd them away, thus giving them the glamour of the forbidden thing. Joanna looked upon them all as detrimentals, presumptuously lifting up their eyes to Ansdore's wealth and Ellen's beauty.

"When you fall in love, you can take a stout yeoman with a bit of money, if you can't find a real gentleman same as I did. Howsumever, you're too young to go meddling with such things just yet. You be a good girl, Ellen Godden, and keep your back straight, and don't let the boys kiss you."

Ellen had no particular pleasure in letting the boys kiss her—she was a cold-blooded little thing—but, she asked herself, what else was there to do in a desert like Walland Marsh? The Marsh mocked her every morning as she looked out of her window at the flat miles between Ansdore and Dunge Ness. This was her home—this wilderness of straight dykes and crooked roads, every mile of which was a repetition of the mile before it. There was never any change in that landscape, except such as came from the sky—cloud-shadows shaking like swift wings across the swamp of buttercups and sunshine, mists lying in strange islands by the sewers, rain turning all things grey, and the wind as it were made visible in a queer flying look put on by the pastures when the storms came groaning inland from Rye Bay ... with a great wail of wind and slash of rain and a howl and shudder through all the house.

She found those months of spring and summer very dreary. She disliked the ways of Ansdore; she met no one but common and vulgar people, who took it for granted that she was just one of themselves. Of course she had lived through more or less the same experiences during her holidays, but then the contact had not been so close or so prolonged, and there had always been the prospect of school to sustain her.

But now schooldays were over, and seemed very far away. Ellen felt cut off from the life and interests of those happy years. She had hoped to receive invitations to go and stay with the friends she had made at school; but months went by and none came. Her school-friends were being absorbed by a life very different from her own, and she was sensitive enough to realize that parents who had not minded her associating with their daughters while they were still at school, would not care for their grown-up lives to be linked together. At first letters were eagerly written and constantly received, but in time even this comfort failed, as ways became still further divided, and Ellen found herself faced with the alternative of complete isolation or such friendships as she could make on the Marsh.

She chose the latter. Though she would have preferred the humblest seat in a drawing-room to the place of honour in a farm-house kitchen, she found a certain pleasure in impressing the rude inhabitants of Brodnyx and Pedlinge with her breeding and taste. She accepted invitations to "drop in after church," or to take tea, and scratched up rather uncertain friendships with the sisters of the boys who admired her.

Joanna watched her rather anxiously. She tried to persuade herself that Ellen was happy and no longer craved for the alien soil from which she had been uprooted. But there was no denying her own disappointment. A lady was not the wonderful being Joanna Godden had always imagined. Ellen refused to sit in impressive idleness on the parlour sofa, not because she disapproved of idleness, but because she disapproved of the parlour and the sofa. She despised Joanna's admirers, those stout, excellent men she was so proud of, who had asked her in marriage, "as no one ull ever ask you, Ellen Godden, if you give yourself such airs." And worst of all, she despised her sister ... her old Jo, on whose back she had ridden, in whose arms she had slept.... Those three years of polite education seemed to have wiped out all the fifteen years of happy, homely childhood. Sometimes Joanna wished she had never sent her to a grand school. All they had done there was to stuff her head with nonsense. It would have been better, after all, if she had gone to the National, and learned to say her Catechism instead of to despise her home.



Sec.9

One day early in October the Vines asked Ellen to go with them into Rye and visit Lord John Sanger's menagerie.

Joanna was delighted that her sister should go—a wild beast show was the ideal of entertainment on the Three Marshes.

"You can put on your best gown, Ellen—the blue one Miss Godfrey made you. You've never been to Lord John Sanger's before, have you? I'd like to go myself, but Wednesday's the day for Romney, and I just about can't miss this market. I hear they're sending up some heifers from Orgarswick, and there'll be sharp bidding.... I envy you going to a wild beast show. I haven't been since Arthur Alce took me in '93. That was the first time he asked me to marry him. I've never had the time to go since, though Sanger's been twice since then, and they had Buffalo Bill in Cadborough meadow.... I reckon you'll see some fine riding and some funny clowns—and there'll be stalls where you can buy things, and maybe a place where you can get a cup of tea. You go and enjoy yourself, duckie."

Ellen smiled a wan smile.

On Monday night the news came to the Vines that their eldest son, Bill, who was in an accountant's office at Maidstone, had died suddenly of peritonitis. Of course Wednesday's jaunt was impossible, and Joanna talked as if young Bill's untimely end had been an act of premeditated spite.

"If only he'd waited till Thursday—even Wednesday morning ud have done ... the telegram wouldn't have got to them till after they'd left the house, and Ellen ud have had her treat."

Ellen bore the deprivation remarkably well, but Joanna fumed and champed. "I call it a shame," she said to Arthur Alce,—"an unaccountable shame, spoiling the poor child's pleasure. It's seldom she gets anything she likes, with all her refined notions, but here you have, as you might say, amusement and instruction combined. If only I hadn't got that tedious market ... but go I must; it's not a job I can give to Broadhurst, bidding for them heifers—and I mean to have 'em. I hear Furnese is after 'em, but he can't bid up to me."

"Would you like me to take Ellen to the wild beast show?" said Arthur Alce.

"Oh, Arthur—that's middling kind of you, that's neighbourly. But aren't you going into Romney yourself?"

"I've nothing particular to go for. I don't want to buy. If I went it ud only be to look at stock."

"Well, I'd take it as a real kindness if you'd drive in Ellen to Rye on Wednesday. The show's there only for the one day, and nobody else is going up from these parts save the Cobbs, and I don't want Ellen to go along with them 'cos of that Tom Cobb what's come back and up to no good."

"I'm only too pleased to do anything for you, Joanna, as you know well."

"Yes, I know it well. You've been a hem good neighbour to me, Arthur."

"A neighbour ain't so good as I'd like to be."

"Oh, don't you git started on that again—I thought you'd done."

"I'll never have done of that."

Joanna looked vexed. Alce's wooing had grown stale, and no longer gratified her. She could not help comparing his sandy-haired sedateness with her memories of Martin's fire and youth—that dead sweetheart had made it impossible for her to look at a man who was not eager and virile; her admirers were now all, except for him, younger than herself. She liked his friendship, his society, his ready and unselfish support, but she could not bear to think of him as a suitor, and there was almost disdain in her eyes.

"I don't like to hear such talk from you," she said coldly. Then she remembered the silver tea-set which he had never taken back, and the offer he had made just now.... "Not but that you ain't a good friend to me, Arthur—my best."

A faint pink crept under his freckles and tan.

"Well, I reckon that should ought to be enough for me—to hear you say that."

"I do say it. And now I'll go and tell Ellen you're taking her into Rye for the show. She'll be a happy girl."



Sec.10

Ellen was not quite so happy as her sister expected. Her sum of spectacular bliss stood in Shakespearean plays which she had seen, and in "Monsieur Beaucaire," which she had not. A wild beast show with its inevitable accompaniment of dust and chokiness and noise would give her no pleasure at all, and the slight interest which had lain in the escort of the Vines with the amorous Stacey was now removed. She did not want Arthur Alce's company. Her sister's admirer struck her as a dull dog.

"I won't trouble him," she said. "I'm sure he doesn't really want to go."

"Reckon he does," said Joanna. "He wants to go anywhere that pleases me."

This did not help to reconcile Ellen.

"Well, I don't want to be taken anywhere just to please you."

"It pleases you too, don't it?"

"No, it doesn't. I don't care twopence about fairs and shows, and Arthur Alce bores me."

This double blasphemy temporarily deprived Joanna of speech.

"If he's only taking me to please you," continued Ellen, "he can just leave me at home to please myself."

"What nonsense!" cried her sister—"here have I been racking around for hours just to fix a way of getting you to the show, and now you say you don't care about it."

"Well, I don't."

"Then you should ought to. I never saw such airs as you give yourself. Not care about Sanger's World Wide Show!—I tell you, you just about shall go to it, ma'am, whether you care about it or not, and Arthur Alce shall take you."

Thus the treat was arranged, and on Wednesday afternoon Alce drove to the door in his high, two-wheeled dog-cart, and Ellen climbed up beside him, under the supervision of Mrs. Tolhurst, whom Joanna, before setting out for market, had commissioned to "see as she went." Not that Joanna could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer contrariness might keep her away.

Ellen was wearing her darkest, demurest clothes, in emphatic contrast to the ribbons and laces in which Brodnyx and Pedlinge usually went to the fair. Her hair was neatly coiled under her little, trim black hat, and she wore dark suede gloves and buckled shoes. Alce felt afraid of her, especially as during the drive she never opened her mouth except in brief response to some remark of his.

Ellen despised Arthur Alce—she did not like his looks, his old-fashioned side-whiskers and Gladstone collars, or the amount of hair and freckles that covered the exposed portions of his skin. She despised him, too, for his devotion to Joanna; she did not understand how a man could be inspired with a lifelong love for Joanna, who seemed to her unattractive—coarse and bouncing. She also a little resented this devotion, the way it was accepted as an established fact in the neighbourhood, a standing sum to Joanna's credit. Of course she was fond of her sister—she could not help it—but she would have forgiven her more easily for her ruthless domineering, if she had not also had the advantage in romance. An admirer who sighed hopelessly after you all your life was still to Ellen the summit of desire. It was fortunate that she could despise Alce so thoroughly in his person, or else she might have found herself jealous of her sister.

They arrived at Sanger's in good time for the afternoon performance, and their seats were the best in the tent. Alce, ever mindful of Joanna, bought Ellen an orange and a bag of bull's-eyes. During the performance he was too much engrossed to notice her much—the elephants, the clowns, the lovely ladies, were as fresh and wonderful to him as to any child present, though as a busy farmer he had long ago discarded such entertainments and would not have gone to-day if it had not been for Ellen, or rather for her sister. When the interval came, however, he had time to notice his companion, and it seemed to him that she drooped.

"Are you feeling it hot in here?"

"Yes—it's very close."

He did not offer to take her out—it did not strike him that she could want to leave.

"You haven't sucked your orange—that'll freshen you a bit."

Ellen looked at her orange.

"Let me peel it for you," said Alce, noticing her gloved hands.

"Thanks very much—but I can't eat it here; there's nowhere to put the skin and pips."

"What about the floor? Reckon they sweep out the sawdust after each performance."

"I'm sure I hope they do," said Ellen, whose next-door neighbour had spat at intervals between his knees, "but really, I'd rather keep the orange till I get home."

At that moment the ring-master came in to start the second half of the entertainment, and Alce turned away from Ellen. He was unconscious of her till the band played "God Save the King," and there was a great scraping of feet as the audience turned to go out.

"We'll go and have a cup of tea," said Alce.

He took her into the refreshment tent, and blundered as far as offering her a twopenny ice-cream at the ice-cream stall. He was beginning to realize that she took her pleasures differently from most girls he knew; he felt disappointed and ill at ease with her—it would be dreadful if she went home and told Joanna she had not enjoyed herself.

"What would you like to do now?" he asked when they had emptied their tea-cups and eaten their stale buns in the midst of a great steaming, munching squash—"there's swings and stalls and a merry-go-round—and I hear the Fat Lady's the biggest they've had yet in Rye; but maybe you don't care for that sort of thing?"

"No, I don't think I do, and I'm feeling rather tired. We ought to be starting back before long."

"Oh, not till you've seen all the sights. Joanna ud never forgive me if I didn't show you the sights. We'll just stroll around, and then we'll go to the George and have the trap put to."

Ellen submitted—she was a born submitter, whose resentful and watchful submission had come almost to the pitch of art. She accompanied Alce to the swings, though she would not go up in them, and to the merry-go-round, though she would not ride in it.

"There's Ellen Godden out with her sister's young man," said a woman's voice in the crowd.

"Maybe he'll take the young girl now he can't get the old 'un," a man answered her.

"Oh, Arthur Alce ull never change from Joanna Godden."

"But the sister's a dear liddle thing, better worth having to my mind."

"Still, I'll never believe ..."

The voices were lost in the crowd, and Ellen never knew who had spoken, but for the first time that afternoon her boredom was relieved. It was rather pleasant to have anyone think that Arthur Alce was turning to her from Joanna ... it would be a triumph indeed if he actually did turn ... for the first time she began to take an interest in him.

The crowd was very thick, and Alce offered her his arm.

"Hook on to me, or maybe I'll lose you."

Ellen did as he told her, and after a time he felt her weight increase.

"Reckon you're middling tired."

He looked down on her with a sudden pity—her little hand was like a kitten under his arm.

"Yes, I am rather tired." It was no pretence—such an afternoon, without the stimulant and sustenance of enjoyment, was exhausting indeed.

"Then we'll go home—reckon we've seen everything."

He piloted her out of the crush, and they went to the George, where the trap was soon put to. Ellen sat drooping along the Straight Mile.

"Lord, but you're hem tired," said Alce, looking down at her.

"I've got a little headache—I had it when I started."

"Then you shouldn't ought to have come."

"Joanna said I was to."

"You should have told her about your head."

"I did—but she said I must come all the same. I said I was sure you wouldn't mind, but she wouldn't let me off."

"Joanna's valiant for getting her own way. Still, it was hard on you, liddle girl, making you come—I shouldn't have taken offence."

"I know you wouldn't. But Jo's so masterful. She always wants me to enjoy myself in her way, and being strong, she doesn't understand people who aren't."

"That's so, I reckon. Still your sister's a fine woman, Ellen—the best I've known."

"I'm sure she is," snapped Ellen.

"But she shouldn't ought to have made you come this afternoon, since you were feeling poorly."

"Don't let out I said anything to you about it, Arthur—it might make her angry. Oh, don't make her angry with me."



Sec.11

During the next few weeks it seemed to Joanna that her sister was a little more alert. She went out more among the neighbours, and when Joanna's friends came to see her, she no longer sulked remotely, but came into the parlour, and was willing to play the piano and talk and be entertaining. Indeed, once or twice when Joanna was busy she had sat with Arthur Alce after tea and made herself most agreeable—so he said.

The fact was that Ellen had a new interest in life. Those words sown casually in her thoughts at the show were bearing remarkable fruit. She had pondered them well, and weighed her chances, and come to the conclusion that it would be a fine and not impossible thing to win Arthur Alce from Joanna to herself.

She did not see why she should not be able to do so. She was prettier than her sister, younger, more accomplished, better educated. Alce on his side must be tired of wooing without response. When he saw there was a chance of Ellen, he would surely take it; and then—what a triumph! How people would talk and marvel when they saw Joanna Godden's life-long admirer turn from her to her little sister! They would be forced to acknowledge Ellen as a superior and enchanting person. Of course there was the disadvantage that she did not particularly want Arthur Alce, but her schemings did not take her as far as matrimony.

She was shrewd enough to see that the best way to capture Alce was to make herself as unlike her sister as possible. With him she was like a little soft cat, languid and sleek, or else delicately playful. She appealed to his protecting strength, and in time made him realize that she was unhappy in her home life and suffered under her sister's tyranny. She had hoped that this might help detach him from Joanna, but his affection was of that passive, tenacious kind which tacitly accepts all the faults of the beloved. He was always ready to sympathize with Ellen, and once or twice expostulated with Joanna—but his loyalty showed no signs of wavering.

As time went on, Ellen began to like him more in himself. She grew accustomed to his red hair and freckles, and when he was in his everyday kit of gaiters and breeches and broadcloth, she did not find him unattractive. Moreover she could not fail to appreciate his fundamental qualities of generosity and gentleness—he was like a big, faithful, gentle dog, a red-haired collie, following and serving.



Sec.12

The weeks went by, and Ellen still persevered. But she was disappointed in results. She had thought that Alce's subjection would not take very long, she had not expected the matter to drag. It was the fault of his crass stupidity—he was unable to see what she was after, he looked upon her just as a little girl, Joanna's little sister, and was good to her for Joanna's sake.

This was humiliating, and Ellen fretted and chafed at her inability to make him see. She was no siren, and was without either the parts or the experience for a definite attack on his senses. She worked as an amateur and a schoolgirl, with only a certain fundamental shrewdness to guide her; she was doubtless becoming closer friends with Alce—he liked to sit and talk to her after tea, and often gave her lifts in his trap—but he used their intimacy chiefly to confide in her his love and admiration for her sister, which was not what Ellen wanted.

The first person to see what was happening was Joanna herself. She had been glad for some time of Ellen's increased friendliness with Alce, but had pat it down to nothing more than the comradeship of that happy day at Lord John Sanger's show. Then something in Ellen's looks as she spoke to Arthur, in her manner as she spoke of him, made her suspicious—and one Sunday evening, walking home from church, she became sure. The service had been at Pedlinge, in the queer barn-like church whose walls inside were painted crimson; and directly it was over Ellen had taken charge of Alce, who was coming back to supper with them. Alce usually went to his parish church at Old Romney, but had accepted Ellen's invitation to accompany the Goddens that day, and now Ellen seemed anxious that he should not walk with her and Joanna, but had taken him on ahead, leaving Joanna to walk with the Southlands.

The elder sister watched them—Alce a little oafish in his Sunday blacks, Ellen wearing her new spring hat with the daisies. As she spoke to him she lifted her face on her graceful neck like a swan, and her voice was eager and rather secret. Joanna lost the thread of Mrs. Southland's reminiscences of her last dairy-girl, and she watched Ellen, watched her hands, watched the shrug of her shoulders under her gown—the girl's whole body seemed to be moving, not restlessly or jerkily, but with a queer soft ripple.

Then Joanna suddenly said to herself—"She loves him. Ellen wants Arthur Alce." Her first emotion was of anger, a resolve to stop this impudence; but the next minute she pitied instead—Ellen, with her fragile beauty, her little die-away airs, would never be able to get Arthur Alce from Joanna, to whom he belonged. He was hers, both by choice and habit, and Ellen would never get him. Then from pity, she passed into tenderness—she was sorry Ellen could not get Arthur, could not have him when she wanted him, while Joanna, who could have him, did not want him. It would be a good thing for her, too. Alce was steady and well-established—he was not like those mucky young Vines and Southlands. Ellen would be safe to marry him. It was a pity she hadn't a chance.

Joanna looked almost sentimentally at the couple ahead—then she suddenly made up her mind. "If I spoke to Arthur Alce, I believe I could make him do it." She could make Arthur do most things, and she did not see why he should stop at this. Of course she did not want Ellen to marry him or anybody, but now she had once come to think of it she could see plainly, in spite of herself, that marriage would be a good thing for her sister. She was being forced up against the fact that her schemes for Ellen had failed—school-life had spoiled her, home-life was making both her and home miserable. The best thing she could do would be to marry, but she must marry a good man and true—Alce was both good and true, and moreover his marriage would set Joanna free from his hang-dog devotion, of which she was beginning to grow heartily tired. She appreciated his friendship and his usefulness, but they could both survive, and she would at the same time be free of his sentimental lapses, the constant danger of a declaration. Yes, Ellen should have him—she would make a present of him to Ellen.



Sec.13

"Arthur, I want a word with you."

They were alone in the parlour, Ellen having been dispatched resentfully on an errand to Great Ansdore.

"About them wethers?"

"No—it's a different thing. Arthur, have you noticed that Ellen's sweet on you?"

Joanna's approach to a subject was ever direct, but this time she seemed to have taken the breath out of Arthur's body.

"Ellen ... sweet on me?" he gasped.

"Yes, you blind-eyed owl. I've seen it for a dunnamany weeks."

"But—Ellen? That liddle girl ud never care an onion for a dull, dry chap lik me."

"Reckon she would. You ain't such a bad chap, Arthur, though I could never bring myself to take you."

"Well, I must say I haven't noticed anything, or maybe I'd have spoken to you about it. I'm unaccountable sorry, Jo, and I'll do all I can to help you stop it."

"I'm not sure I want to stop it. I was thinking only to-day as it wouldn't be a bad plan if you married Ellen."

"But, Jo, I don't want to marry anybody but you."

"Reckon that's middling stupid of you, for I'll never marry you, Arthur Alce—never!"

"Then I don't want nobody."

"Oh, yes, you do. You'll be a fool if you don't marry and get a wife to look after you and your house, which has wanted new window-blinds this eighteen month. You can't have me, so you may as well have Ellen—she's next best to me, I reckon, and she's middling sweet on you."

"Ellen's a dear liddle thing, as I've always said against them that said otherwise—but I've never thought of marrying her, and reckon she don't want to marry me, she'd sooner marry a stout young Southland or young Vine."

"She ain't going to marry any young Vine. When she marries I'll see she marries a steady, faithful, solid chap, and you're the best I know."

"It's kind of you to say it, but reckon it wouldn't be a good thing for me to marry one sister when I love the other."

"But you'll never get the other, not till the moon's cheese, so there's no sense in vrothering about that. And I want Ellen to marry you, Arthur, since she's after you. I never meant her to marry yet awhiles, but reckon I can't make her happy at home—I've tried and I can't—so you may as well try."

"It ud be difficult to make Ellen happy—she's a queer liddle dentical thing."

"I know, but marriage is a wonderful soberer-down. She'll be happy once she gets a man and a house of her own."

"I'm not so sure. Anyways I'm not the man for her. She should ought to marry a gentleman."

"Well, there ain't none for her to marry, nor likely to be none. She'll go sour if she has to stand ... and she wants you, Arthur. I wouldn't be asking you this if I hadn't seen she wanted you, and seen too as the best thing as could happen to her would be for her to marry you."

"I'm sure she'll never take me."

"You can but ask her."

"She'll say 'No.'"

"Reckon she won't—but if she does, there'll be no harm in asking her."

"You queer me, Jo—it seems a foolish thing to marry Ellen when I want to marry you."

"But I tell you, you can never marry me. You're a stupid man, Arthur, who won't see things as they are. You go hankering after whom you can't get, and all the time you might get someone who's hankering after you. It's a lamentable waste, I say, and I'll never be pleased if you don't ask Ellen. It ain't often I ask you to do anything to please me, and this is no hard thing. Ellen's a fine match—a pretty girl, and clever, and well-taught—she'll play the piano to your friends. And I'll see as she has a bit of money with her. You'll do well for yourself by taking her, and I tell you, Arthur, I'm sick and tired of your dangling after me."



Sec.14

Joanna had many more conversations with Arthur Alce, and in the end bore down his objections. She used her tongue to such good purpose that by next Sunday he had come to see that Ellen wanted him, and that for him to marry her would be the best thing for everyone—Joanna, Ellen and himself. After all, it wasn't as if he had the slightest chance of Joanna—she had made that abundantly clear, and his devotion did not feed on hope so much as on a stale content in being famous throughout three marshes as her rejected suitor. Perhaps it was not amiss that her sudden call should stir him into a more active and vital service.

In the simplicity of his heart, he saw nothing outrageous in her demands. She was troubled and anxious about Ellen, and had a right to expect him to help her solve this problem in the best way that had occurred to her. As for Ellen herself, now his attention had been called to the matter, he could see that she admired him and sought him out. Why she should do so was as much a mystery as ever—he could not think why so soft and dainty and beautiful a creature should want to marry a homely chap like himself. But he did not doubt the facts, and when, at the beginning of the second week, he proposed to her, he was much less surprised at her acceptance than she was herself.

Ellen had never meant to accept him—all she had wanted had been the mere proclaimable fact of his surrender; but during the last weeks the focus of her plans had shifted—they had come to mean more than the gratification of her vanity. The denial of what she sought, the dragging of her schemes, the growing sense of hopelessness, had made her see just exactly how much she wanted. She would really like to marry Alce—the slight physical antipathy with which she had started had now disappeared, and she felt that she would not object to him as a lover. He was, moreover, an excellent match—better than any young Vines or Southlands or Furneses; as his wife she would be important and well-to-do, her triumph would be sealed, open and celebrated.... She would moreover be free. That was the strong hidden growth that had heaved up her flat little plans of a mere victory in tattle—if she married she would be her own mistress, free for ever of Joanna's tyranny. She could do what she liked with Alce—she would be able to go where she liked, know whom she liked, wear what she liked; whereas with Joanna all these things were ruthlessly decreed. Of course she was fond of Jo, but she was tired of living with her—you couldn't call your soul your own—she would never be happy till she had made herself independent of Jo, and only marriage would do that. She was tired of sulking and submitting—she could make a better life for herself over at Donkey Street than she could at Ansdore. Of course if she waited she might get somebody better, but she might have to wait a long time, and she did not care for waiting. She was not old or patient or calculating enough to be a really successful schemer; her plans carried her this time only as far as a triumph over Joanna and an escape from Ansdore.



Sec.15

Certainly her triumph was a great one. Brodnyx and Pedlinge had never expected such a thing. Their attitude had hitherto been that of the man at the fair, who would rather distrust appearances than believe Arthur Alce could change from Joanna Godden to her sister Ellen. It would have been as easy to think of the sunset changing from Rye to Court-at-Street.

There was a general opinion that Joanna had been injured—though no one really doubted her sincerity when she said that she would never have taken Arthur. Her evident pleasure in the wedding was considered magnanimous—it was also a little disappointing to Ellen. Not that she wanted Joanna to be miserable, but she would have liked her to be rather more sensible of her sister's triumph, to regret rather more the honour that had been taken from her. The bear's hug with which her sister had greeted her announcement, the eager way in which she had urged and hustled preparations for the wedding, all seemed a little incongruous and humiliating.... Joanna should at least have had some moments of realizing her fallen state.

However, what she missed at home Ellen received abroad. Some neighbours were evidently offended, especially those who had sons to mate. Mrs. Vine had been very stiff when Ellen called with Alce.

"Well, Arthur"—ignoring the bride-to-be—"I always felt certain you would marry Ansdore, but it was the head I thought you'd take and not the tail."

"Oh, the tail's good enough for me," said Arthur, which Ellen thought clumsy of him.

Having taken the step, Arthur was curiously satisfied. His obedience in renouncing Joanna seemed to have brought him closer to her than all his long wooing. Besides, he was growing very fond of little Ellen—her soft, clinging ways and little sleek airs appealed to him as those of a small following animal would, and he was proud of her cleverness, and of her prettiness, which now he had come to see, though for a long time he had not appreciated it, because it was so different from Joanna's healthy red and brown.

He took her round the farms, not only in her own neighbourhood, but those near Donkey Street, over on Romney Marsh, across the Rhee Wall. In her honour he bought a new trap, and Ellen drove beside him in it, sitting very demure and straight. People said—"There goes Ellen Godden, who's marrying her sister's young man," and sometimes Ellen heard them.

She inspected Donkey Street, which was a low, plain, oblong house, covered with grey stucco, against which flamed the orange of its lichened roof. It had been built in Queen Anne's time, and enlarged and stuccoed over about fifty years ago. It was a good, solid house, less rambling than Ansdore, but the kitchens were a little damp.

Alce bought new linen and new furniture. He had some nice pieces of old furniture too, which Ellen was very proud of. She felt she could make quite a pleasant country house of Donkey Street. In spite of Joanna's protests, Alce let her have her own way about styles and colours, and her parlour was quite unlike anything ever seen on the Marsh outside North Farthing and Dungemarsh Court. There was no centre table and no cabinet, but a deep, comfortable sofa, which Ellen called a chesterfield, and a "cosy corner," and a Sheraton bureau, and a Sheraton china-cupboard with glass doors. The carpet was purple, without any pattern on it, and the cushions were purple and black. For several days those black cushions were the talk of the Woolpack bar and every farm. It reminded Joanna a little of the frenzy that had greeted the first appearance of her yellow waggons, and for the first time she felt a little jealous of Ellen.

She sometimes, too, had moments of depression at the thought of losing her sister, of being once more alone at Ansdore, but having made up her mind that Ellen was to marry Arthur Alce, she was anxious to carry through the scheme as quickly and magnificently as possible. The wedding was fixed for May, and was to be the most wonderful wedding in the experience of the three marshes of Walland, Dunge and Romney. For a month Joanna's trap spanked daily along the Straight Mile, taking her and Ellen either into Rye to the confectioner's—for Joanna had too true a local instinct to do as her sister wanted and order the cake from London—or to the station for Folkestone where the clothes for both sisters were being bought. They had many a squabble over the clothes—Ellen pleaded passionately for the soft, silken undergarments in the shop windows, for the little lace-trimmed drawers and chemises ... it was cruel and bigoted of Joanna to buy yards and yards of calico for nightgowns and "petticoat bodies," with trimmings of untearable embroidery. It was also painful to be obliged to wear a saxe-blue going-away dress when she wanted an olive green, but Ellen reflected that she was submitting for the last time, and anyhow she was spared the worst by the fact that the wedding-gown must be white—not much scope for Joanna there.



Sec.16

The day before the wedding Joanna felt unusually nervous and restless. The preparations had been carried through so vigorously that everything was ready—there was nothing to do, no finishing touches, and into her mind came a sudden blank and alarm. All that evening she was unable to settle down either to work or rest. Ellen had gone to bed early, convinced of the good effect of sleep on her complexion, and Joanna prowled unhappily from room to room, glancing about mechanically for dust which she knew could not be there ... the farm was just a collection of gleaming surfaces and crackling chintzes and gay, dashing colours. Everything was as she wished it, yet did not please her.

She went into her room. On the little spare bed which had once been Ellen's lay a mass of tissue paper, veiling a marvellous gown of brown and orange shot silk, the colour of the sunburn on her cheeks, which she was to wear to-morrow when she gave the bride away. In vain had Ellen protested and said it would look ridiculous if she came down the aisle with her sister—Joanna had insisted on her prerogative. "It isn't as if we had any he-cousins fit to look at—I'll cut a better figger than either Tom or Pete Stansbury, and what right has either of them to give you away, I'd like to know?" Ellen had miserably suggested Sam Huxtable, but Joanna had fixed herself in her mind's eye, swaggering, rustling and flaming up Pedlinge aisle, with the little drooping lily of the bride upon her arm. "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" Mr. Pratt would say—"I do," Joanna would answer. Everyone would stare at Joanna, and remember that Arthur Alce had loved her for years before he loved her sister—she was certainly "giving" Ellen to him in a double sense.

She would be just as grand and important at this wedding as she could possibly have been at her own, yet to-night the prospect had ceased to thrill her. Was it because in this her first idleness she realized she was giving away something she wanted to keep? Or because she saw that, after all, being grand and important at another person's wedding is not as good a thing even as being humble at your own?

"Well, it might have been my own if I'd liked," she said to herself, but even that consideration failed to cheer her.

She went over to the chest of drawers. On it stood Martin's photograph in a black velvet frame adorned with a small metal shield on which were engraved the words "Not lost but gone before." The photograph was a little faded—Martin's eyes had lost some of their appealing darkness and the curves of the mouth she had loved were dim.... She put her face close to the faded face in the photograph, and looked at it. Gradually it blurred in a mist of tears, and she could feel her heart beating very slowly, as if each beat were an effort....

Then suddenly she found herself thinking about Ellen in a new way, with a new, strange anxiety. Martin's fading face seemed to have taught her about Ellen, about some preparation for the wedding which might have been left out, in spite of all the care and order of the burnished house. Did she really love Arthur Alce?—Did she really know what she was doing—what love meant?

Joanna put down the photograph and straightened her back. She thought of her sister alone for the last time in her big flowery bedroom, lying down for the last time in the rose-curtained, mahogany bed, for her last night's rest under Ansdore's roof. It was the night on which, if she had not been motherless, her mother would have gone to her with love and advice. Surely on this night of all nights it was not for Joanna to shirk the mother's part.

Her heaviness had gone, for its secret cause had been displayed—no doubt this anxiety and this question had lurked with her all the evening, following her from room to room. She did not hesitate, but went down the passage to Ellen's door, which she opened as usual without knocking.

"Not in bed, yet, duckie?"

Ellen was sitting on the bolster, in her little old plain linen nightdress buttoning to her neck, two long plaits hanging over her shoulders. The light of the rose-shaded lamp streamed on the flowery walls and floor of her compulsory bower, showing the curtains and pictures and vases and father's Buffalo certificate—showing also her packed and corded trunks, lying there like big, blobbed seals on her articles of emancipation.

"Hullo," she said to Joanna, "I'm just going to get in." She did not seem particularly pleased to see her.

"You pop under the clothes, and I'll tuck you up. There's something I want to speak to you about if you ain't too sleepy."

"About what?"

"About this wedding of yours."

"You've spoken to me about nothing else for weeks and months."

"But I want to speak to you different and most particular. Duckie, are you quite sure you love Arthur Alce?"

"Of course I'm sure, or I shouldn't be marrying him."

"There's an unaccountable lot of reasons why any gal ud snap at Arthur. He's got a good name and a good establishment, and he's as mild-mannered and obliging as a cow."

Ellen looked disconcerted at hearing her bridegroom thus defined.

"If that's all I saw in him I shouldn't have said 'yes.' I like him—he's got a kind heart and good manners, and he won't interfere with me—he'll let me do as I please."

"But that ain't enough—it ain't enough for you just to like him. Do you love him?—It's struck me all of a sudden, Ellen, I've never made sure of that, and it ud be a lamentable job if you was to get married to Arthur without loving him."

"But I do love him—I've told you. And may I ask, Jo, what you'd have done if I'd said I didn't? It's rather late for breaking off the match."

Joanna had never contemplated such a thing. It would be difficult to say exactly how far her plans had stretched, probably no further than the argument and moral suasion which would forcibly compel Ellen to love if she did not love already.

"No, no—I'd never have you break it off—with the carriages and the breakfast ordered, and my new gownd, and your troosoo and all.... But, Ellen, if you want to change your mind ... I mean, if you feel, thinking honest, that you don't love Arthur ... for pity's sake say so now before it's too late. I'll stand by you—I'll face the racket—I'd sooner you did anything than—"

"Oh, don't be an ass, Jo. Of course I don't want to change my mind. I know what I'm doing, and I'm very fond of Arthur—I love him, if you want the word. I like being with him, and I even like it when he kisses me. So you needn't worry."

"Marriage is more than just being kissed and having a man about the house."

"I know it is."

Something in the way she said it made Joanna see she was abysmally ignorant.

"Is there anything you'd like to ask me, dearie?"

"Nothing you could possibly know anything about."

Joanna turned on her.

"I'll learn you to sass me. You dare say such a thing!"

"Well, Jo—you're not married, and there are some things you don't know."

"That's right—call me an old maid! I tell you I could have made a better marriage than you, my girl.... I could have made the very marriage you're making, for the matter of that."

She stood up, preparing to go in anger. Then suddenly as she looked down on Ellen, fragile and lily-white among the bed-clothes, her heart smote her and she relented. This was Ellen's last night at home.

"Don't let's grumble at each other. I know you and I haven't quite hit it off, my dear, and I'm sorry, as I counted a lot on us being at Ansdore together. I thought maybe we'd be at Ansdore together all our lives. Howsumever, I reckon things are better as they are—it was my own fault, trying to make a lady of you, and I'm glad it's all well ended. Only see as it's truly well ended, dear—for Arthur's sake as well as yours. He's a good chap and deserves the best of you."

Ellen was still angry, but something about Joanna as she stooped over the bed, her features obscure in the lamplight, her shadow dim and monstrous on the ceiling, made a sudden, almost reproachful appeal. A rush of genuine feeling made her stretch out her arms.

"Jo ..."

Joanna stooped and caught her to her heart, and for a moment, the last moment, the big and the little sister were as in times of old.



Sec.17

Ellen's wedding was the most wonderful that Brodnyx and Pedlinge had seen for years. It was a pity that the law of the land required it to take place in Pedlinge church, which was comparatively small and mean, and which indeed Joanna could never feel was so Established as the church at Brodnyx, because it had only the old harmonium, and queer paintings of angels instead of the Lion and the Unicorn.

However, Mr. Elphick ground and sweated wonders out of "the old harmonister" as it was affectionately called by the two parishes, and everyone was too busy staring at the bride and the bride's sister to notice whether angels or King George the Third presided over the altar.

Joanna had all the success that she had longed for and expected. She walked down the aisle with Ellen white and drooping on her arm, like a sunflower escorting a lily. When Mr. Pratt said "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" she answered "I do" in a voice that rang through the church. Afterwards, she took her handkerchief out of her pocket and cried a little, as is seemly at weddings.

Turner of Northlade was Arthur Alce's best man, and there were four bridesmaids dressed in pink—Maudie Vine, Gertrude Prickett, Maggie Southland and Ivy Cobb. They carried bouquets of roses with lots of spiraea, and wore golden hearts "the gift of the bridegroom." Altogether the brilliance of the company made up for the deficiencies of its barn-like setting and the ineffectiveness of Mr. Pratt, who, discomposed by the enveloping presence of Joanna, blundered more helplessly than ever, so that, as Joanna said afterwards, she was glad when it was all finished without anyone getting married besides the bride and bridegroom.

After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Ansdore, with a wedding-cake and ices and champagne, and waiters hired from the George Hotel at Rye. Ellen stood at the end of the room shaking hands with a long procession of Pricketts, Vines, Furneses, Southlands, Bateses, Turners, Cobbs.... She looked a little tired and droopy, for she had had a trying day, with Joanna fussing and fighting her ever since six in the morning; and now she felt resentfully that her sister had snatched the splendours of the occasion from her to herself—it did not seem right that Joanna should be the most glowing, conspicuous, triumphant object in the room, and Ellen, unable to protest, sulked languishingly.

However, if the bride did not seem as proud and happy as she might, the bridegroom made up for it. There was something almost spiritual in the look of Arthur Alce's eyes, as he stood beside Ellen, his arm held stiffly for the repose of hers, his great choker collar scraping his chin, lilies of the valley and camellias sprouting from his buttonhole, a pair of lemon kid gloves—split at the first attempt, so he could only hold them—clutched in his moist hand. He looked devout, exalted, as he armed his little bride and watched her sister.

"Arthur Alce looks pleased enough," said Furnese to Mrs. Bates—"reckon he sees he's got the best of the family."

"Maybe he's thankful now that Joanna wouldn't take him."

Neither of them noticed that the glow was in Alce's eyes chiefly when they rested on Joanna.

He knew that to-day he had pleased her better than he had ever pleased her in his life. To-day she had said to him "God bless you, Arthur—you're the best friend I have, or am like to have, neither." To-day he had made himself her kinsman, with a dozen new opportunities of service. Chief among these was the dear little girl on his arm—how pretty and sweet she was! How he would love her and cherish her as he had promised Mr. Pratt! Well, thank God, he had done Joanna one good turn, and himself not such a bad one, neither. How clever she had been to think of his marrying Ellen! He would never have thought of it himself; yet now he saw clearly that it was a wonderful notion—nothing could be better. Joanna was valiant for notions.... Alce had had one glass of champagne.

At about four o'clock, Joanna dashed into the circle round the bride, and took Ellen away upstairs, to put on her travelling dress of saxe-blue satin—the last humiliation she would have to endure from Ansdore. The honeymoon was being spent at Canterbury, cautiously chosen by Arthur as a place he'd been to once and so knew the lie of a bit. Ellen had wanted to go to Wales, or to the Lakes, but Joanna had sternly forbidden such outrageous pinings—"Arthur's got two cows calving next week—what are you thinking of, Ellen Godden?"

The bridal couple drove away amidst much hilarity, inspired by the unaccustomed champagne and expressed in rice and confetti. After they had gone the guests still lingered, feasting at the littered tables or re-inspecting and re-valuing the presents which had been laid out, after the best style, in the dining-room. Sir Harry Trevor had sent Ellen a little pearl pendant, though he had been unable to accept Joanna's invitation and come to the wedding himself—he wrote from a London address and hinted vaguely that he might never come back to North Farthing House, which had been let furnished. His gift was the chief centre of interest—when Mrs. Vine had done comparing her electro-plated cruet most favourably with the one presented by Mrs. Furnese and the ignoble china object that Mrs. Cobb had had the meanness to send, and Mrs. Bates had recovered from the shock of finding that her tea-cosy was the exact same shape and pattern as the one given by Mrs. Gain. People thought it odd that the Old Squire should send pearls to Ellen Godden—something for the table would have been much more seemly.

Joanna had grown weary—her shoulders drooped under her golden gown, she tossed back her head and yawned against the back of her hand. She was tired of it all, and wanted them to go. What were they staying for? They must know the price of everything pretty well by this time and have eaten enough to save their suppers. She was no polished hostess, concealing her boredom, and the company began soon to melt away. Traps lurched over the shingle of Ansdore's drive, the Pricketts walked off across the innings to Great Ansdore, guests from Rye packed into two hired wagonettes, and the cousins from the Isle of Wight drove back to the George, where, as there were eight of them and they refused to be separated, Joanna was munificently entertaining them instead of under her own roof.

When the last was gone, she turned back into the house, where Mrs. Tolhurst stood ready with her broom to begin an immediate sweep-up after the waiters, whom she looked upon as the chief source of the disorder. A queer feeling came over Joanna, a feeling of loneliness, of craving, and she fell in all her glory of feathers and silk upon Mrs. Tolhurst's alpaca bosom. Gone were those arbitrary and often doubtful distinctions between them, and the mistress enjoyed the luxury of a good cry in her servant's arms.



Sec.18

Ellen's marriage broke into Joanna's life quite as devastatingly as Martin's death. Though for more than three years her sister had been away at school, with an ever-widening gulf of temperament between herself and the farm, and though since her return she had been little better at times than a rebellious and sulky stranger, nevertheless she was a part of Ansdore, a part of Joanna's life there, and the elder sister found it difficult to adjust things to her absence.

Of course Ellen had not gone very far—Donkey Street was not five miles from Ansdore, though in a different parish and a different county. But the chasm between them was enormous—it was queer to think that a mere change of roof-tree could make such a difference. No doubt the reason was that with Ellen it had involved an entire change of habit. While she lived with Joanna she had been bound both by the peculiarities of her sister's nature and her own to accept her way of living. She had submitted, not because she was weak or gentle-minded but because submission was an effective weapon of her welfare; now, having no further use for it, she ruled instead and was another person. She was, besides, a married woman, and the fact made all the difference to Ellen herself. She felt herself immeasurably older and wiser than Joanna, her teacher and tyrant. Her sister's life seemed to her puerile.... Ellen had at last read the riddle of the universe and the secret of wisdom.

The sisters' relations were also a little strained over Arthur Alce. Joanna resented the authority that Ellen assumed—it took some time to show her that Arthur was no longer hers. She objected when Ellen made him shave off his moustache and whiskers; he looked ten years younger and a far handsomer man, but he was no longer the traditional Arthur Alce of Joanna's history, and she resented it. Ellen on her part resented the way Joanna still made use of him, sending him to run errands and make inquiries for her just as she used in the old days before his marriage. "Arthur, I hear there's some good pigs going at Honeychild auction—I can't miss market at Lydd, but you might call round and have a look for me." Or "Arthur, I've a looker's boy coming from Abbot's Court—you might go there for his characters, I haven't time, with the butter-making to-day and Mene Tekel such an owl."

Ellen rebelled at seeing her husband ordered about, and more than once "told off" her sister, but Joanna had no intention of abandoning her just claims in Arthur, and the man himself was pig-headed—"I mun do what I can for her, just as I used." Ellen could make him shave off his whiskers, she could even make him on occasion young and fond and frolicsome, but she could not make him stop serving Joanna, or, had she only known it, stop loving her. Arthur was perfectly happy as Ellen's husband, and made her, as Joanna had foretold, an exemplary one, but his love for Joanna seemed to grow rather than diminish as he cared for and worked for and protected her sister. It seemed to feed and thrive on his love for Ellen—it gave him a wonderful sense of action and effectiveness, and people said what a lot of good marriage had done for Arthur Alce, and that he was no longer the dull chap he used to be.



Sec.19

It had done Ellen a lot of good too. During the next year she blossomed and expanded. She lost some of her white looks. The state of marriage suited her thoroughly well. Being her own mistress and at the same time having a man to take care of her, having an important and comfortable house of her own, ordering about her own servants and spending her husband's money, such things made her life pleasant, and checked the growth of peevishness that had budded at Ansdore.

During the first months of her marriage, Joanna went fairly often to see her, one reason being the ache which Ellen's absence had left in her heart—she wanted to see her sister, sit with her, hear her news. Another reason was the feeling that Ellen, a beginner in the ways of life and household management, still needed her help and guidance. Ellen soon undeceived her on this point. "I really know how to manage my own house, Joanna," she said once or twice when the other commented and advised, and Joanna had been unable to enforce her ideas, owing to the fact that she seldom saw Ellen above once or twice a week. Her sister could do what she liked in her absence, and it was extraordinary how definite and cocksure the girl was about things she should have approached in the spirit of meekness and dependence on her elders.

"I count my linen after it is aired—it comes in at such an inconvenient time that I can't attend to it then. The girls can easily hang it out on the horse—really, Joanna, one must trust people to do something."

"Well, then, don't blame me when you're a pillowcase short."

"I certainly shan't blame you," said Ellen coolly.

Joanna felt put out and injured. It hurt her to see that Ellen did not want her supervision—she had looked forward to managing Donkey Street as well as Ansdore. She tried to get a hold on Ellen through Arthur Alce.

"Arthur, it's your duty to see Ellen don't leave the bread-making to that cook-gal of hers. I never heard of such a notion—her laying on the sofa while the gal wastes coal and flour." ... "Arthur, Ellen needs a new churn—let her get a Wallis. It's a shame for her to be buying new cushions when her churn's an old butter-spoiler I wouldn't use if I was dead—Arthur, you're there with her, and you can make her do what I say."

But Arthur could not, any more than Joanna, make Ellen do what she did not want. He had always been a mild-mannered man, and he found Ellen, in her different way, quite as difficult to stand up to as her sister.

"I'm not going to have Jo meddling with my affairs," she would say with a toss of her head.



Sec.20

Another thing that worried Joanna was the fact that the passing year brought no expectations to Donkey Street. One of her happiest anticipations in connexion with Ellen's marriage was her having a dear little baby whom Joanna could hug and spoil and teach. Perhaps it would be a little girl, and she would feel like having Ellen over again.

She was bitterly disappointed when Ellen showed no signs of obliging her quickly, and indeed quite shocked by her sister's expressed indifference on the matter.

"I don't care about children, Jo, and I'm over young to have one of my own."

"Young! You're rising twenty, and mother was but eighteen when I was born."

"Well, anyhow, I don't see why I should have a child just because you want one."

"I don't want one. For shame to say such things, Ellen Alce."

"You want me to have one, then, for your benefit."

"Don't you want one yourself?"

"No—not now. I've told you I don't care for children."

"Then you should ought to! Dear little mites! It's a shame to talk like that. Oh, what wouldn't I give, Ellen, to have a child of yours in my arms."

"Why don't you marry and have one of your own?"

Joanna coloured.

"I don't want to marry."

"But you ought to marry if that's how you feel. Why don't you take a decent fellow like, say, Sam Turner, even if you don't love him, just so that you may have a child of your own? You're getting on, you know, Joanna—nearly thirty-four—you haven't much time to waste."

"Well it ain't my fault," said Joanna tearfully, "that I couldn't marry the man I wanted to. I'd have been married more'n five year now if he hadn't been took. And it's sorter spoiled the taste for me, as you might say. I don't feel inclined to get married—it don't take my fancy, and I don't see how I'm ever going to bring myself to do it. That's why it ud be so fine for me if you had a little one, Ellen—as I could hold and kiss and care for and feel just as if it was my own."

"Thanks," said Ellen.



Sec.21

The winding up of her plans for her sister made it necessary that Joanna should cast about for fresh schemes to absorb her energies. The farm came to her rescue in this fresh, more subtle collapse, and she turned to it as vigorously as she had turned after Martin's death, and with an increase of that vague feeling of bitterness which had salted her relations with it ever since.

A strong rumour was blowing on the Marsh that shortly Great Ansdore would come into the market. Joanna's schemes at once were given their focus. She would buy Great Ansdore if she had the chance. She had always resented its presence, so inaptly named, on the fringe of Little Ansdore's greatness. If she bought it, she would be adding more than fifty acres to her own, but it was good land—Prickett was a fool not to have made more of it—and the possession carried with it manorial rights, including the presentation of the living of Brodnyx with Pedlinge. When Joanna owned Great Ansdore in addition to her own thriving and established patrimony, she would be a big personage on the Three Marshes, almost "county." No tenant or yeoman from Dymchurch to Winchelsea, from Romney to the coast, would dare withhold his respect—she might even at last be admitted a member of the Farmers' Club....

It was characteristic of her that, with this purchase in view, she made no efforts to save money. She set out to make it instead, and her money-making was all of the developing, adventurous kind—she ploughed more grass, and decided to keep three times the number of cows and open a milk-round.

As a general practice only a few cows were kept on the Marsh farms, for, owing to the shallowness of the dykes, it was difficult to prevent their straying. However, Joanna boldly decided to fence all the Further Innings. She could spare that amount of grazing, and though she would have to keep down the numbers of her sheep till after she had bought Great Ansdore, she expected to make more money out of the milk and dairy produce—she might even in time open a dairy business in Rye. This would involve the engaging of an extra girl for the dairy and chickens, and an extra man to help Broadhurst with the cows, but Joanna was undaunted. She enjoyed a gamble, when it was not merely a question of luck, but also in part a matter of resource and planning and hard driving pace.

"There's Joanna Godden saving her tin to buy Great Ansdore," said Bates of Picknye Bush to Cobb of Slinches, as they watched her choosing her shorthorns at Romney. She had Arthur Alce beside her, and he was, as in the beginning, trying to persuade her to be a little smaller in her ideas, but, as in the beginning, she would not listen.

"Setting up cow-keeping now, is she?—Will she make as much a valiant wonder of that as she did with her sheep? Ha! ha!"

"Ha! ha!" The two men laughed and winked and rubbed their noses, for they liked to remember the doleful tale of Joanna's first adventure at Ansdore; it made them able to survey more equably her steady rise in glory ever since.

It was obvious to Walland Marsh that, on the whole, her big ideas had succeeded where the smaller, more cautious ones of her neighbours had failed. Of course she had been lucky—luckier than she deserved—but she was beginning to make men wonder if after all there wasn't policy in paying a big price for a good thing, rather than in obeying the rules of haggle which maintained on other farms. Ansdore certainly spent half as much again as Birdskitchen or Beggar's Bush or Misleham or Yokes Court, but then it had nearly twice as much to show for it. Joanna was not the woman who would fail to keep pace with her own prosperity—her swelling credit was not recorded merely in her pass-book; it was visible, indeed dazzling, to every eye.

She had bought a new trap and mare—a very smart turn-out, with rubber tires and chocolate-coloured upholstery, while the mare herself had blood in her, and a bit of the devil too, and upset the sleepy, chumbling rows of farmers' horses waiting for their owners in the streets of Lydd or Rye. Old Stuppeny had died in the winter following Ellen's marriage, and had been lavishly buried, with a tombstone, and an obituary notice in the Rye Observer, at Joanna's expense. In his place she had now one of those good-looking, rather saucy-eyed young men, whom she liked to have about her in a menial capacity. He wore a chocolate-coloured livery made by a tailor in Marlingate, and sat on the seat behind Joanna with his arms folded across his chest, as she spanked along the Straight Mile.

Joanna was now thirty-three years old, and in some ways looked older than her age, in others younger. Her skin, richly weather-beaten into reds and browns, and her strong, well-developed figure in its old-fashioned stays, made her look older than her eyes, which had an expectant, childish gravity in their brightness, and than her mouth, which was still a young woman's mouth, large, eager, full-lipped, with strong, little, white teeth. Her hair was beautiful—it had no sleekness, but, even in its coils, looked rough and abundant, and it had the same rich, apple-red colours in it as her skin.

She still had plenty of admirers, for the years had made her more rather than less desirable in herself, and men had grown used to her independence among them. Moreover, she was a "catch," a maid with money, and this may have influenced the decorous, well-considered offers she had about this time from farmers inland as well as on the Marsh. She refused them decidedly—nevertheless, it was obvious that she was well pleased to have been asked; these solid, estimable proposals testified to a quality in her life which had not been there before.

Yes—she had done well for herself on the whole, she thought. Looking back over her life, over the ten years she had ruled at Ansdore, she saw success consistently rewarding hard work and high ambition. She saw, too, strange gaps—parts of the road which had grown dim in her memory, parts where probably there had been a turning, where she might have left this well-laid, direct and beaten highway for more romantic field-paths. It was queer, when she came to think of it, that nothing in her life had been really successful except Ansdore, that directly she had turned off her high-road she had become at once as it were bogged and lantern-led. Socknersh ... Martin ... Ellen ... there had been by-ways, dim paths leading into queer unknown fields, a strange beautiful land, which now she would never know.



Sec.22

Ellen watched her sister's thriving. "She's almost a lady," she said to herself, "and it's wasted on her." She was inclined to be dissatisfied with her own position in local society. When she had first married she had not thought it would be difficult to get herself accepted as "county" in the new neighbourhood, but she had soon discovered that she had had far more consequence as Joanna Godden's sister than she would ever have as Arthur Alce's wife. Even in those days Little Ansdore had been a farm of the first importance, and Joanna was at least notorious where she was not celebrated; but Donkey Street held comparatively humble rank in a district overshadowed by Dungemarsh Court, and Arthur was not the man to push himself into consideration, though Ellen had agreed that half her marriage portion should be spent on the improvement of his farm.

No one of any consequence had called upon her, though her drawing-room, with its black cushions and Watts pictures, was more fit to receive the well-born and well-bred than Joanna's disgraceful parlour of oleographs and aspidistras and stuffed owls. The Parson had "visited" Mrs. Alce a few weeks after her arrival, but a "visit" is not a call, and when at the end of three months his wife still ignored her existence, Ellen made Arthur come over with her to Brodnyx and Pedlinge on the Sundays she felt inclined to go to church, saying that she did not care for their ways at Romney, where they had a lot of ceremonial centering round the alms-dish.

It was bitter for her to have to watch Joanna's steady rise in importance—the only respect in which she felt bitter towards her sister, since it was the only respect in which she felt inferior to her. After a time, Joanna discovered this. At first she had enjoyed pouring out her triumphs to Ellen on her visits to Donkey Street, or on the rarer occasions when Ellen visited Ansdore.

"Yes, my dear, I've made up my mind. I'm going to give a dinner-party—a late dinner-party. I shall ask the people to come at seven, and then not have dinner till the quarter, so as there'll be no chance of the food being kept waiting. I shall have soup and meat and a pudding, and wine to drink."

"Who are you going to invite?" asked Ellen, with a curl of her lip.

"Why, didn't I tell you? Sir Harry Trevor's coming back to North Farthing next month. Mrs. Tolhurst got it from Peter Crouch, who had it from the Woolpack yesterday. He's coming down with his married sister, Mrs. Williams, and I'll ask Mr. Pratt, so as there'll be two gentlemen and two ladies. I'd ask you, Ellen, only I know Arthur hasn't got an evening suit."