Joanna Godden Part 55

"Lawrence--tell me what to do."

"Dear Jo--I'm not quite sure.... I don't know what you want, you see.

What I should want first myself would be absolution."

"Oh, don't you try none of your Jesoot tricks on me--I couldn't bear it."

"Very well. Then I think there's only one thing you can do, and that is to go home and take up your life where you left it, with a very humble heart. 'I shall go softly all my days in the bitterness of my soul.'"

Joanna gulped.

"And be very thankful, too."

"What for?"

"For your repentance."

"Well, reckon I do feel sorry--and reckon, too, I done something to be sorry for.... Oh, Lawrence, what a wicked owl I've been! If you'd told me six year ago as I'd ever have come to this I'd have had a fit on the ground."

Lawrence looked round him nervously. Whatever Joanna's objections to private penance, she was curiously indifferent to confessing her sins to all mankind in Charing Cross station. The platform was becoming crowded again, and already their confessional had been invaded--a woman with a baby was sitting on the end of it.

"Your train will be starting soon," said Lawrence--"let's go and find you something to eat."

--33

Joanna felt better after she had had a good cup of coffee and a poached egg. She was surprised afterwards to find she had eaten so much.

Lawrence sat with her while she ate, then took her to find her porter, her luggage and her train.

"But won't you lose your train to Africa?" asked Joanna.

"I'm only going as far as Waterloo this morning, and there's a train every ten minutes."

"When do you start for Africa?"

"I think to-night."

"I wish you weren't going there. Why are you going?"

"Because I'm sent."

"When will you come back?"

"I don't know--perhaps never."

"I'm middling sorry you're going. What a place to send you to!--all among n.i.g.g.e.rs."

She was getting more like herself. He stood at the carriage door, talking to her of indifferent things till the train started. The whistle blew, and the train began to glide out of the station. Joanna waved her hand to the grey figure standing on the platform beside the tramp's bundle which was all that would go with it to the ends of the earth. She did not know whether she pitied Lawrence or envied him.

"Reckon he's got some queer notions," she said to herself.

She leaned back in the carriage, feeling more at ease than she had felt for weeks. She was travelling third cla.s.s, for one of Lawrence's notions was that everybody did so, and when Joanna had given him her purse to buy her ticket it had never struck him that she did not consider third-cla.s.s travel "seemly" in one of her s.e.x and position. However, the carriage was comfortable, and occupied only by two well-conducted females. Yes--she was certainly feeling better. She would never have thought that merely telling her story to Lawrence would have made such a difference. But a great burden had been lifted off her heart.... He was a good chap, Lawrence, for all his queer ways--such as ud make you think he wasn't gentry if you didn't know who his father was and his brother had been--and no notion how to behave himself as a clergyman, neither--anyway she hoped he'd get safe to Africa and that the n.i.g.g.e.rs wouldn't eat him ... though she'd heard of such things....

She'd do as he said, too. She'd go home and take up things where she'd put them down. It would be hard--much harder than he thought. Perhaps he didn't grasp all that she was doing in giving up marriage, the one thing that could ever make her respect herself again. Well, she couldn't help that--she must just do without respecting herself--that's all. Anything would be better than shutting up herself and Albert together in prison, till they hated each other. It would be very hard for her, who had always been so proud of herself, to live without even respecting herself. But she should have thought of that earlier. She remembered Lawrence's words--"I will go softly all my days in the bitterness of my soul".... Well, she'd do her best, and perhaps G.o.d would forgive her, and then when she died she'd go to heaven, and be with Martin for ever and ever, in spite of all the bad things she'd done....

She got out at Appledore and took the light railway to Brodnyx. She did not feel inclined for the walk from Rye. The little train was nearly empty, and Joanna had a carriage to herself. She settled herself comfortably in a corner--it was good to be coming home, even as things were. The day was very sunny and still. The blue sky was slightly misted--a yellow haze which smelt of chaff and corn smudged together the sky and the marsh and the distant sea. The farms with their red and yellow roofs were like ripe apples lying in the gra.s.s.

Yes, the Marsh was the best place to live on, and the Marsh ways were the best ways, and the man who had loved her on the Marsh was the best man and the best lover.... She wondered what Ellen would say when she heard she had broken off her engagement. Ellen had never thought much of Bertie--she had thought Joanna was a fool to see such a lot in him; and Ellen had been right--her eyes and her head were clearer than her poor sister's.... She expected she would be home in time for tea--Ellen would be terrible surprised to see her; if she'd had any sense she'd have sent her a telegram.

The little train had a strange air of friendliness as it jogged across Romney Marsh. It ran familiarly through farmyards and back gardens, it meekly let the motor-cars race it and pa.s.s it as it clanked beside the roads. The line was single all the way, except for a mile outside Brodnyx station, where it made a loop to let the up-train pa.s.s. The up-train was late--they had been too long loading up the fish at Dungeness, or there was a reaping machine being brought from Lydd. For some minutes Joanna's train stayed halted in the sunshine, in the very midst of the Three Marshes. Miles of sun-swamped green spread on either side--the carriage was full of sunshine--it was bright and stuffy like a greenhouse. Joanna felt drowsy, she lay back in her corner blinking at the sun--she was all quiet now. A blue-bottle droned against the window, and the little engine droned, like an impatient fly--it was all very still, very hot, very peaceful....

Then suddenly something stirred within her--stirred physically. In some mysterious way she seemed to come alive. She sat up, pressing her hand to her side. A flood of colour went up into her face--her body trembled, and the tears started in her eyes ... she felt herself choking with wild fear, and wild joy.

--34

Oh, she understood now. She understood, and she was certain. She knew now--she knew, and she was frightened ... oh, she was frightened ... now everything was over with her indeed.

Joanna nearly fainted. She fell in a heap against the window, looking more than ever, as the sunshine poured on her, like a great golden, broken flower. She felt herself choking and managed to right herself--the window was down, and a faint puff of air came in from the sea, lifting her hair as she leaned back against the wooden wall of the carriage, her mouth a little open.... She felt better now, but still so frightened.... She was done for, she was finished--there would not be any more talk of going back and picking up things where she had let them drop. She would have to marry Bertie--there was no help for it, she would send him a telegram from Brodnyx station. Oh, that this should have happened!... And she had been feeling so much easier in her mind--she had almost begun to feel happy again, thinking of the old home and the old life. And now she knew that they had gone for ever--the old home and the old life. She had cut herself away from both--she would have to marry Albert, to shut her little clerk in prison after all, and herself with him. She would have to humble herself before him, she would have to promise to go and live with him in London, do all she possibly could to make his marriage easy for him. He did not want to marry her, and she did not want to marry him, but there was no help for it, they must marry now, because of what their love had given them before it died.

She had no tears for this new tragedy. She leaned forward in her seat, her hands clasped between her knees, her eyes staring blankly at the carriage wall as if she saw there her future written ... herself and Albert growing old together, or rather herself growing old while Albert lived through his eager, selfish youth--herself and Albert shut up together ... how he would scold her, how he would reproach her--he would say "You have brought me to this," and in time he would come to hate her, his fellow-prisoner who had shut the door on both of them--and he would hate her child ... they would never have married except for the child, so he would hate her child, scold it, make it miserable ... it would grow up in an unhappy home, with parents who did not love each other, who owed it a grudge for coming to them--her child, her precious child....

Still in her heart, alive under all the fear, was that thrill of divine joy which had come to her in the first moment of realization. Terror, shame, despair--none of them could kill it, for that joy was a part of her being, part of the new being which had quickened in her. It belonged to them both--it was the secret they shared ... joy, unutterable joy.

Yes, she was glad she was going to have this child--she would still be glad even in the prison-house of marriage, she would still be glad even in the desert of no-marriage, every tongue wagging, every finger pointing, every heart despising. Nothing could take her joy from her--make her less than joyful mother....

Then as the joy grew and rose above the fear, she knew that she could never let fear drive her into bondage. Nothing should make a sacrifice of joy to shame--to save herself she would not bring up her child in the sorrow and degradation of a loveless home.... If she had been strong enough to give up the thought of marriage for the sake of Bertie's liberty and her own self-respect, she could be strong enough now to turn from her only hope of reputation for the sake of the new life which was joy within her. It would be the worst, most shattering thing she had ever yet endured, but she would go through with it for the love of the unborn. Joanna was not so unsophisticated as to fail to realize the difficulties and complications of her resolve--how much her child would suffer for want of a father's name; memories of lapsed dairymaids had stressed in her experience the necessity of a marriage no matter how close to the birth. But she did not rate these difficulties higher than the misery of such a home as hers and Albert's would be. Better anything than that. Joanna had no illusions about Albert now--he'd have led her a dog's life if she had married him in the first course of things; now it would be even worse, and her child should not suffer that.

No, she would do her best. Possibly she could arrange things so as to protect, at least to a certain extent, the name her baby was to bear.

She would have to give up Ansdore, of course--leave Walland Marsh ...

her spirit quailed, but she braced it fiercely. She was going through with this--it was the only thing Lawrence had told her that she could do--go softly all her days--to the very end. That end was farther and bitterer than either he or she had imagined then, but she would not have to go all the way alone. A child--that was what she had always wanted; she had tried to fill her heart with other things, with Ansdore, with Ellen, with men ... but what she had always wanted had been a child--she saw that now. Her child should have been born in easy, honourable circ.u.mstances, with a kind father--Arthur Alce, perhaps, since it could not be Martin Trevor. But the circ.u.mstances of its birth were her doing, and it was she who would face them. The circ.u.mstances only were her sin and shame, her undying regret--since she knew she could not keep them entirely to herself--the rest was joy and thrilling, vital peace.

The little train pulled itself together, and ran on into Brodnyx station. Joanna climbed down on the wooden platform, and signalled to the porter-stationmaster to take out her box.

"What, you back, Miss G.o.dden!" he said, "we wasn't expecting you."

"No, I've come back pretty sudden. Do you know if there's any traps going over Pedlinge way?"

"There's Mrs. Furnese come over to fetch a crate of fowls. Maybe she'd give you a lift."

"I'll ask her," said Joanna.

Mrs. Furnese, too, was much surprised to see her back, but she said nothing about it, partly because she was a woman of few words, and partly because they'd all seen in the paper this morning that Joanna had lost her case--and reckon she must be properly upset. Maybe that was why she had come back....

"Would you like to drive?" she asked Joanna, when they had taken their seats in Misleham's ancient gig, with the crate of fowls behind them.

She felt rather shy of handling the reins under Joanna G.o.dden's eye, for everyone knew that Joanna drove like a Jehu, something tur'ble.