--16

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

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

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

"Do you really want me to come?"

"Reckon I do."

"I'll come, then."

"Which day?"

"Say Monday, or Tuesday."

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

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

"I do want you."

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

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

Joanna was roused automatically by this return to her old surroundings.

She began to think of her trap waiting for her outside Rye station. She wondered if Ellen would have come to meet her. Yes, there she was on the platform ... wearing a green frock, too. She'd come out of her blacks.

Joanna thrilled to a faint shock. She wondered how many other revolutions Ellen had carried out in her absence.

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

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

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

"Reckon it has, my dear."

"Were you comfortable at the hotel?"

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

"It wasn't a bad place."

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

"What's that?"

"Perhaps you can guess."

Joanna dreamily shook her head.

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

"Married!"

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

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

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

"I'm unaccountable glad."

Ellen gave her a queer look.

"You take it very calmly, Jo."

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

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

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

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

The next minute she knew.

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

--17

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

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

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

but he was not the sort of man to waste his time.

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

"Wednesday morning."

She sighed deeply, leaning against him on the sofa.