"Howsumever, I shall always think of you when I pour it out of your teapot--which will be every day that I don't have it in the kitchen."

"Thank you, Jo."

"And you'll write and tell me how you're getting on?"

"Reckon I will."

"Maybe you'll send me some samples of those oats your brother did so well with. I'm not over pleased with that Barbacklaw, and ud make a change if I could find better."

"I'll be sure and send."

Joanna told him of an inspiration she had had with regard to the poorer innings of Great Ansdore--she was going to put down fish-guts for manure--it had done wonders with some rough land over by Botolph's Bridge--"Reckon it'll half stink the tenants out, but they're at the beginning of a seven years lease, so they can't help themselves much."

She held forth at great length, and Arthur listened, holding his cup and saucer carefully on his knee with his big freckled hands. His eyes were fixed on Joanna, on the strong-featured, high-coloured face he thought so much more beautiful than Ellen's with its delicate lines and pale, petal-like skin.... Yes, Joanna was the girl all along--the one for looks, the one for character--give him Joanna every time, with her red and brown face, and thick brown hair, and her high, deep bosom, and st.u.r.dy, comfortable waist ... why couldn't he have had Joanna, instead of what he'd got, which was nothing? For the first time in his life Arthur Alce came near to questioning the ways of Providence. Reckon it was the last thing he would ever do for her--this going away. He wasn't likely to come back, though he did talk of it, just to keep up their spirits. He would probably settle down in the shires--go into partnership with his brother--run a bigger place than Donkey Street, than Ansdore even.

"Well, I must be going now. There's still a great lot of things to be tidied up."

He rose, awkwardly setting down his cup. Joanna rose too. The sunset, rusty with the evening sea-mist, poured over her goodly form as she stood against the window, making its outlines dim and fiery and her hair like a burning crown.

"I shall miss you, Arthur."

He did not speak, and she held out her hand.

"Good-bye."

He could not say it--instead he pulled her towards him by the hand he held.

"Jo--I must."

"Arthur--no!"

But it was too late--he had kissed her.

"That's the first time you done it," she said reproachfully.

"Because it's the last. You aren't angry, are you?"

"I?--no. But, Arthur, you mustn't forget you're married to Ellen."

"Am I like to forget it?--And seeing all the dunnamany kisses she's given to another man, reckon she won't grudge me this one poor kiss I've given the woman I've loved without clasp or kiss for fifteen years."

For the first time she heard in his voice both bitterness and pa.s.sion, and at that moment the man himself seemed curiously to come alive and to compel.... But Joanna was not going to dally with temptation in the unaccustomed shape of Arthur Alce. She pushed open the door.

"Have they brought round Ranger?--Hi! Peter Crouch!--Yes, there he is.

You'll have a good ride home, Arthur."

"But there'll be rain to-morrow."

"I don't think it. The sky's all red at the rims."

"The wind's shifted."

Joanna moistened her finger and held it up--

"So it has. But the gla.s.s is high. Reckon it'll hold off till you're in the shires, and then our weather won't trouble you."

She watched him ride off, standing in the doorway till the loops of the Brodnyx road carried him into the rusty fog that was coming from the sea.

_PART IV_

LAST LOVE

--1

Time pa.s.sed on, healing the wounds of the Marsh. At Donkey Street, the neighbours were beginning to get used to young Honisett and his bride, at Rye and Lydd and Romney the farmers had given up expecting Arthur Alce to come round the corner on his grey horse, with samples of wheat or prices of tegs. At Ansdore, too, the breach was healed. Joanna and Ellen lived quietly together, sharing their common life without explosions. Joanna had given up all idea of "having things out" with Ellen. There was always a bit of pathos about Joanna's surrenders, and in this case Ellen had certainly beaten her. It was rather difficult to say exactly to what the younger sister owed her victory, but undoubtedly she had won it, and their life was in a measure based upon it. Joanna accepted her sister--past and all; she accepted her little calm a.s.sumptions of respectability together with those more expected tendencies towards the "French." When Ellen had first come back, she had been surprised and resentful to see how much she took for granted in the way of acceptance, not only from Joanna but from the neighbours.

According to her ideas, Ellen should have kept in shamed seclusion till public opinion called her out of it, and she had been alarmed at her a.s.sumptions, fearing rebuff, just as she had almost feared heaven's lightning stroke for that demure little figure in her pew on Sunday, murmuring "Lord have mercy" without tremor or blush.

But heaven had not smitten and the neighbours had not snubbed. In some mysterious way Ellen had won acceptance from the latter, whatever her secret relations with the former may have been. The stories about her grew ever more and more charitable. The Woolpack p.r.o.nounced that Arthur Alce would not have gone away "if it had been all on her side," and it was now certainly known that Mrs. Williams had been at San Remo....

Ellen's manner was found pleasing--"quiet but affable." Indeed, in this respect she had much improved. The Southlands took her up, forgiving her treatment of their boy, now comfortably married to the daughter of a big Folkestone shopkeeper. They found her neither brazen nor shamefaced--and she'd been as shocked as any honest woman at Lady Mountain's trial in the Sunday papers ... if folk only knew her real story, they'd probably find....

In fact, Ellen was determined to get her character back.

She knew within herself that she owed a great deal to Joanna's protection--for Joanna was the chief power in the parishes of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, both personally and territorially. Ellen had been wise beyond the wisdom of despair when she came home. She was not unhappy in her life at Ansdore, for her escapade had given her a queer advantage over her sister, and she now found that she could to a certain extent, mould the household routine to her comfort. She was no longer entirely dominated, and only a small amount of independence was enough to satisfy her, a born submitter, to whom contrivance was more than rule. She wanted only freedom for her tastes and pleasures, and Joanna did not now strive to impose her own upon her. Occasionally the younger woman complained of her lot, bound to a man whom she no longer cared for, wearing only the fetters of her wifehood--she still hankered after a divorce, though Arthur must be respondent. This always woke Joanna to rage, but Ellen's feelings did not often rise to the surface, and on the whole the sisters were happy in their life together--more peaceful because they were more detached than in the old days. Ellen invariably wore black, hoping that strangers and newcomers would take her for a widow.

This she actually became towards the close of the year 1910. Arthur did a fair amount of hunting with his brother in the shires, and one day his horse came down at a fence, throwing him badly and fracturing his skull.

He died the same night without regaining consciousness--death had treated him better on the whole than life, for he died without pain or indignity, riding to hounds like any squire. He left a comfortable little fortune, too--Donkey Street and its two hundred acres--and he left it all to Joanna.

Secretly he had made his will anew soon after going to the shires, and in it he had indulged himself, ignoring reality and perhaps duty.

Evidently he had had no expectations of a return to married life with Ellen, and in this new testament he ignored her entirely, as if she had not been. Joanna was his wife, inheriting all that was his, of land and money and live and dead stock--"My true, trusty friend, Joanna G.o.dden."

Ellen was furious, and Joanna herself was a little shocked. She understood Arthur's motives--she guessed that one of his reasons for pa.s.sing over Ellen had been his anxiety to leave her sister dependent on her, knowing her fear that she would take flight. But this exaltation of her by his death to the place she had refused to occupy during his life, gave her a queer sense of smart and shame. For the first time it struck her that she might not have treated Arthur quite well....

However, she did not sympathize with Ellen's indignation--

"You shouldn't ought to have expected a penny, the way you treated him."

"I don't see why he shouldn't have left me at least some furniture, seeing there was about five hundred pounds of my money in that farm.

He's done rather well out of me on the whole--making me no allowance whatever when he was alive."

"Because I wouldn't let him make it--I've got some pride if you haven't."