"Is this all the holiday you'll get this year?"

"No--I've Whitsun coming--Friday to Tuesday. I might run down to Marlingate ..."

He watched her carefully.

"Oh, that 'ud be fine. You'd come and see me here?"

"Of course--if you asked me?"

"If I asked you," she repeated in a sudden, trembling scorn.

Her head drooped to his breast, and he took her in his arms, holding her across him--all her magnificent weight upon his knees. Oh, she was a lovely creature ... as he kissed her firm, shy mouth it seemed to him as if her whole body was a challenge. A queer kind of antagonism seized him--prude or rake, she should get her lesson from him all right.

--18

When he had gone Joanna said to Ellen--

"D'you think it would be seemly if I asked Mr. Hill here to stay?"

"Of course it would be 'seemly,' Jo. I'm a married woman. But would he be able to come? He's in business somewhere, isn't he?"

"Yes, but he could get away for Whitsun."

"Then ask him by all means. But ..."

She looked at her quickly and teasingly.

"But what?"

"Jo, do you care about this man?"

"What d'you mean? Why should I care? Or, leastways, why shouldn't I?"

"No reason at all. He's a good bit younger than you are, but then I always fancied that if you married it ud be a man younger than yourself."

"Who said I was going to marry him?"

"No one. But if you care ..."

"I never said I did."

"Oh, you're impossible," said Ellen with a little shrug. She picked up a book from the table, but Joanna could not let the conversation drop.

"What d'you think of Mr. Hill, Ellen? Does he remind you of anyone particular?"

"No, not at the moment."

"Hasn't it ever struck you he's a bit like my Martin Trevor?"

Her tongue no longer stammered at the name.

"Your Martin Trevor! Jo, what nonsense, he's not a bit like him."

"He's the living image--the way his hair grows out of his forehead, and his dark, saucy eyes ..."

"Well, I was only a little girl when you were engaged to Martin Trevor, but as I remember him he was quite different from Mr. Hill. He belonged to another cla.s.s, for one thing.... He was a gentleman."

"And you think Mr. Hill ain't a gentleman?"

"My dear Joanna! Of course he's not--he doesn't profess to be."

"He's got a good position as a clerk. Some clerks are gentlemen."

"But this one isn't."

"How do _you_ know?"

"Because I happen to be engaged to someone who is."

"That ain't any reason for miscalling my friends."

"I'm not 'miscalling' anyone.... Oh, hang it all, Jo, don't let's quarrel about men at our time of life. I'm sorry if I said anything you don't like about Mr. Hill. Of course, I don't know him as well as you do."

--19

So Joanna wrote to Albert Hill in her big, cramped handwriting, on the expensive yet unostentatious note-paper which Ellen had decreed, inviting him to come and spend Whitsuntide at Ansdore.

His answer did not come for three or four days, during which, as he meant she should, she suffered many doubts and anxieties. Was he coming?

Did he care for her? Or had he just been fooling? She had never felt like this about a man before. She had loved, but love had never held her in the same bondage--perhaps because till now she had always had certainties. Her affair with Martin, her only real love affair, had been a certainty, Arthur Alce's devotion had been a most faithful certainty, the men who had comforted her bereavement had also in their different ways been certainties. Albert Hill was the only man who had ever eluded her, played with her or vexed her. She knew that she attracted him, but she also guessed dimly that he feared to bind himself. As for her, she was now determined. She loved him and must marry him. Characteristically she had swept aside the drawbacks of their different ages and circ.u.mstances, and saw nothing but the man she loved--the man who was for her the return of first love, youth and spring. A common little tawdry-minded clerk some might have called him, but to Joanna he was all things--fulfilment, lover and child, and also a Sign and a Second Coming.

She could think of nothing else. Once again Ansdore was failing her, as it always failed her in any crisis of emotion--Ansdore could never be big enough to fill her heart. But she valued it because of the consequence it must give her in young Hill's eyes, and she was impressed by the idea that her own extra age and importance gave her the rights of approach normally belonging to the man.... Queens always invited their consorts to share their thrones, and she was a queen, opening her gates to the man she loved. There could be no question of her leaving her house for his--he was only a little clerk earning two pounds a week, and she was Squire of the Manor. Possibly this very fact made him hesitate, fear to presume.... Well, she must show him he was wrong, and this Whitsuntide was her opportunity. But she wished that she could feel more queenly in her mind--less abject, craving and troubled. In outward circ.u.mstances she was his queen, but in her heart she was his slave.

She plunged into an orgy of preparation. Mrs. Tolhurst and Mene Tekel and the new girl from Windpumps who now reinforced the household were nearly driven off their legs. Ellen spared the wretched man much in the way of feather-beds--just one down mattress would be enough, town people weren't used to sleeping on feathers. She also chastened the scheme of decoration, and subst.i.tuted fresh flowers for the pampas gra.s.ses which Joanna thought the n.o.blest adornment possible for a spare bedroom. On the whole Ellen behaved very well about Albert Hill--she worked her best to give him a favourable impression of Ansdore as a household, and when he came she saw that he and her sister were as much alone together as possible.

"He isn't at all the sort of brother-in-law I'd like you to have, my dear," she said to Tip, "but if you'd seen some of the men Joanna's taken up with you'd realize it might have been much worse. I'm told she once had a most hectic romance with her own shepherd ... she's frightfully impressionable, you know."

"Is she really?" said Tip in his slow, well-bred voice. "I shouldn't have thought that."

"No, because--dear old Jo! it's so funny--she's quite without art. But she's always been frightfully keen on men, though she never could attract the right sort; and for some reason or other--to do with the farm, I suppose--she's never been keen on marriage. Now lately I've been thinking she really ought to marry--lately she's been getting quite queer--_detraquee_--and I do think she ought to settle down."

"But Hill's much younger than she is."

"Joanna would never care for anyone older. She's always liked boys--it's because she wants to be sure of being boss, I suppose. I know for a fact she's turned down nearly half a dozen good, respectable, well-to-do farmers of her own age or older than herself. And yet I've sometimes felt nervous about her and Peter Crouch, the groom.... Oh, I tell you, Jo's queer, and I'll be thankful if she marries Bertie Hill, even though he is off the mark. After all, Tip"--and Ellen looked charming--"Jo and I aren't real ladies, you know."