Joanna Godden Part 18

"Maybe it's a bit early yet for wedding presents. They say you won't be married till next fall. But I've always wanted you to have this tea-set of mother's--it's real silver, as you can see by the lion on it--a teapot and milk jug and sugar bowl; many's the time I've seen you in my mind's eye, setting like a queen and pouring my tea out of it. Since it can't be my tea, it may as well be another's."

"There'll always be a cup for you, Arthur," said Joanna graciously.

"Thanks," said Arthur in a stricken voice.

Joanna could not feel as sorry for Alce as she ought and would have liked. All her emotions, whether of joy or sorrow, seemed to be poured into the wonderful new life that Martin had given her. A new life had begun for her on Christmas Day--in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition--she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender.

She had lost much of her old swagger, her old c.o.c.ksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing--but he had stripped her of Ansdore, and she was just Joanna G.o.dden who had waited twenty-eight years for love.

Yet, perhaps because she had waited so long, she was now a little afraid. She had hitherto met love only in the dim forms of Arthur Alce and d.i.c.k Socknersh, with still more hazy images in the courtships of Abbot and Cobb. Now Martin was showing her love as no dim flicker or candlelight or domestic lamplight but as a bright, eager fire. She loved his kisses, the clasp of his strong arms, the stability of his chest and shoulders--but sometimes his pa.s.sion startled her, and she had queer, shy withdrawals. Yet these were never more than temporary and superficial; her own pa.s.sions were slowly awaking, and moreover had their roots in a sweet, sane instinct of vocation and common sense.

On the whole, though, she was happiest in the quieter ways of love--the meals together, the fireside talks, the meetings in lonely places, the queer, half-laughing secrets, the stolen glances in company. She made a great fuss of his bodily needs--she was convinced that he did not get properly fed or looked after at home, and was always preparing him little snacks and surprises. For her sake Martin swallowed innumerable cups of milk and wrapped his chin in choky m.u.f.flers.

She had prouder moments too. On her finger glittered a gorgeous band of diamonds and sapphires which she had chosen for her engagement ring, and it was noticed that Joanna G.o.dden now always drove with her gloves off.

She had insisted on driving Martin round the Marsh to call on her friends--to show him to Mrs. Southland, Mrs. Vine, and Mrs. p.r.i.c.kett, to say nothing of their husbands who had always said no man in his senses would marry Joanna G.o.dden. Well, not merely a man but a gentleman was going to do it--a gentleman who had his clothes made for him at a London tailor's instead of buying them ready-made at Lydd or Romney or Rye, who had--he confessed it, though he never wore it--a top hat in his possession, who ate late dinner and always smelt of good tobacco and shaving soap ... such thoughts would bring the old Joanna back, for one fierce moment of gloating.

Her reception by North Farthing House had done nothing to spoil her triumph. Martin's father and brother had both accepted her--the latter willingly, since he believed that she would be a sane and stabilizing influence in Martin's life, hitherto over-restless and mood-ridden. He looked upon his brother as a thwarted romantic, whose sophistication had debarred him from finding a natural outlet in religion. He saw in his love for Joanna the chance of a return to nature and romance, since he loved a thing at once simple and adventurous, homely and splendid--which was how religion appeared to Father Lawrence. He had liked Joanna very much on their meeting, and she liked him too, though as she told him frankly she "didn't hold with Jesoots."

As for Sir Harry, he too liked Joanna, and was too well-bred and fond of women to show himself ungracious about that which he could not prevent.

"I've surrendered, Martin. I can't help myself. You'll bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, but I am all beautiful resignation.

Indeed I think I shall offer myself as best man, and flirt dutifully with Ellen G.o.dden, who I suppose will be chief bridesmaid. Your brother shall himself perform the ceremony. What could your family do more?"

"What indeed?" laughed Martin. He felt warmhearted towards all men now--he could forgive both his father for having had too much experience and his brother for having had too little.

--14

The actual date of the wedding was not fixed till two months had run.

Though essentially adult and practical in all matters of business and daily life, Joanna was still emotionally adolescent, and her betrothed state satisfied her as it would never have done if her feelings had been as old as her years. Also this deferring of love had helped other things to get a hold on her--Martin was astonished to find her swayed by such considerations as sowing and shearing and marketing--"I can't fix up anything till I've got my spring sowings done"--"that ud be in the middle of the shearing"--"I'd sooner wait till I'm through the autumn markets."

He discovered that she thought "next fall" the best time for the wedding--"I'll have got everything clear by then, and I'll know how the new ploughs have borne." He fought her and beat her back into June--"after the hay." He was rather angry with her for thinking about these things, they expressed a side of her which he would have liked to ignore. He did not care for a "managing" woman, and he could still see, in spite of her new moments of surrender, that Joanna eternally would "manage." But in spite of this his love for her grew daily, as he discovered daily her warmth and breadth and tenderness, her growing capacity for pa.s.sion. Once or twice he told her to let the sowings and the shearings be d.a.m.ned, and come and get married to him quietly without any fuss at the registrar's. But Joanna was shocked at the idea of getting married anywhere but in church--she could not believe a marriage legal which the Lion and the Unicorn had not blessed. Also he discovered that she rejoiced in fuss, and thought June almost too early for the preparations she wanted to make.

"I'm going to show 'em what a wedding's like," she remarked ominously--"I'm going to do everything in the real, proper, slap-up style. I'm going to have a white dress and a veil and carriages and bridesmaids and favours--" this was the old Joanna--"you don't mind, do you, Martin?" this was the new.

Of course he could not say he minded. She was like an eager child, anxious for notice and display. He would endure the wedding for her sake. He also would endure for her sake to live at Ansdore; after a few weeks he saw that nothing else could happen. It would be ridiculous for Joanna to uproot herself from her prosperous establishment and settle in some new place just because in spirit he shrank from becoming "Mr.

Joanna G.o.dden." She had said that "Martin and Joanna Trevor" should be painted on the scrolled name-boards of her waggons, but he knew that on the farm and in the market-place they would not be on an equal footing, whatever they were in the home. As farmer and manager she would outshine him, whose tastes and interests and experiences were so different. Never mind--he would have more time to give to the beloved pursuit of exploring the secret, shy marsh country--he would do all Joanna's business afield, in the far market towns of New Romney and Dymchurch, and the farms away in Kent or under the Coast at Ruckinge and Warhorne.

Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time at Ansdore. He liked the life of the place with its mixture of extravagance and simplicity, democracy and tyranny. Fortunately Ellen approved of him--indeed he sometimes found her patronage excessive. He thought her spoilt and affected, and might almost have come to dislike her if she had not been such a pretty, subtle little thing, and if she had not interested and amused him by her sharp contrasts with her sister. He was now also amused by the conflicts between the two, which at first had shocked him.

He liked to see Joanna's skin go pink as she faced Ellen in a torment of loving anger and rattled the fierce words off her tongue, while Ellen tripped and skipped and evaded and generally triumphed by virtue of a certain fundamental coolness. "It will be interesting to watch that girl growing up," he thought.

--15

As the year slid through the fogs into the spring, he persuaded Joanna to come with him on his rambles on the Marsh. He was astonished to find how little she knew of her own country, of that dim flat land which was once under the sea. She knew it only as the hunting ground of her importance. It was at Yokes Court that she bought her roots, and from Becket's House her looker had come; Lydd and Rye and Romney were only market-towns--you did best in cattle at Rye, but the other two were proper for sheep; Old Honeychild was just a farm where she had bought some good spades and dibbles at an auction; at Misleham they had once had foot-and-mouth disease--she had gone to Picknye Bush for the character of Milly Pump, her chicken-girl....

He told her of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads, with their mouths full of slang--cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing"

and "hornies" and "Oliver's glim."

"Well, if they talked worse there then than they talk now, they must have talked very bad indeed," was all Joanna found to say.

He told her of the old monks of Canterbury who had covered the Marsh with the altars of Thomas a Becket.

"We got shut of 'em all on the fifth of November," said Joanna, "as we sing around here on bonfire nights--and 'A halfpenny loaf to feed the Pope, a penn'orth of cheese to choke him,' as we say."

All the same he enjoyed the expeditions that they had together in her trap, driving out on some windy-skied March day, to fill the hours s.n.a.t.c.hed from her activities at Ansdore and his muddlings at North Farthing, with all the sea-green sunny breadth of Walland, and still more divinely with Walland's secret places--the shelter of tall reeds by the Yokes Sewer, or of a thorn thicket making a tent of white blossom and spindled shadows in the midst of the open land.

Sometimes they crossed the Rhee Wall on to Romney Marsh, and he showed her the great church at Ivychurch, which could have swallowed up in its nave the two small farms that make the village. He took her into the church at New Romney and showed her the marks of the Great Flood, discolouring the pillars for four feet from the ground.

"Doesn't it thrill you?--Doesn't it excite you?" he teased her, as they stood together in the nave, the church smelling faintly of hearthstones.

"How long ago did it happen?"

"In the year of our Lord twelve hundred and eighty seven the Kentish river changed his mouth, and after swilling out Romney Sands and drowning all the marsh from Honeychild to the Wicks, did make himself a new mouth in Rye Bay, with which mouth he swallowed the fifty taverns and twelve churches of Broomhill, and--"

"Oh, have done talking that silly way--it's like the Bible, only there's no good in it."

Her red mouth was close to his in the shadows of the church--he kissed it....

"Child!"

"Oh, Martin--"

She was faintly shocked because he had kissed her in church, so he drew her to him, tilting back her chin.

"You mustn't" ... but she had lost the power of gainsaying him now, and made no effort to release herself. He held her up against the pillar and gave her mouth another idolatrous kiss before he let her go.

"If it happened all that while back, they might at least have got the marks off by this time," she said, tucking away her loosened hair.

Martin laughed aloud--her little reactions of common sense after their pa.s.sionate moments never failed to amuse and delight him.

"You'd have had it off with your broom, and that's all you think about it. But look here, child--what if it happened again?"

"It can't."

"How do you know?"

"It can't--I know it."

"But if it happened then it could happen again."

"There ain't been a flood on the Marsh in my day, nor in my poor father's day, neither. Sometimes in February the White Kemp brims a bit, but I've never known the roads covered. You're full of old tales. And now let's go out, for laughing and love-making ain't the way to behave in church."

"The best way to behave in church is to get married."

She blushed faintly and her eyes filled with tears.