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 pa.s.s Ansdore, drop in and I'll give you a cup of tea."

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

--9

He liked her now--he told himself that she was good common stuff. She was like some sterling homespun piece, strong and sweet-smelling--she was like a plot of the marsh earth, soft and rich and alive. He had forgotten her barbaric tendency, the eccentricity of looks and conduct which had at first repelled him--that aspect had melted in the unsuspected warmth and softness he had found in her. He had been mistaken as to her s.e.xlessness--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 coa.r.s.e-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 pa.s.sage--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 'd.a.m.n.'"

"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, a.s.sured her that she had not meant her threat seriously, and that Ellen should stop at school as long as she was a good girl and minded her sister.

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

"When Martin Trevor comes I'll make her say her piece."

--10

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

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 pa.s.sionate under her ignorance and _navete_? 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 d.y.k.e 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?"