Joanna Godden Part 58

"I dunno ... I loved him, and I was mad."

"I think it's horrible of you--perfectly horrible. I'd absolutely no idea you were that sort of woman--I thought at least you were decent and respectable.... A man you were engaged to, too. Oh, I know what you're thinking--you're thinking I'm in the same boat as you are, but I tell you I'm not. I was a married woman--I couldn't have married my lover, I'd a right to take what I could get. But you could have married yours--you were going to marry him. But you lost your head--like a common servant--like the girl you sacked years ago when you thought I was too young to understand anything about it. And I never landed myself with a child--at least there was some possibility of wiping out what I'd done when it proved a mistake, some chance of living it down--and I've done it, I've won my way back, and now you come along and disgrace me all over again, and the man I love ..."

Never had Ellen's voice been so like Joanna's. It had risen to a hoa.r.s.e note where it hung suspended--anyone now would know that they were sisters.

"I tell you I'm sorry, Ellen. But I can't do nothing bout it."

"Yes, you can. You can marry this man, Hill--then no one need ever know, Tip need never know--"

"Reckon that wouldn't keep them from knowing. They'd see as I was getting married in a hurry--not an invitation out and my troossoo not half ready--and then they'd count the months till the baby came. No, I tell you, it'll be much better if I go away. Everyone ull think as I'm bust, through having lost my case, and I'll go right away--Chichester, I'd thought of going to, where Martha Relf is--and when the baby comes, no one till be a bit the wiser."

"Of course they will. They'll know all about it--everything gets known here, and you've never in your life been able to keep a secret. If you marry, people won't talk in the same way--it'll be only guessing, anyhow. You needn't be down here when the baby's born--and at least Tip needn't know. Joanna, if you love me, if you ever loved me, you'll send a wire to this man and tell him that you've changed your mind and must see him--you can easily make up the quarrel, whatever it was."

"Maybe he wouldn't marry me now, even if I did wire."

"Nonsense--he'd have to."

"Well, he won't be asked."

Joanna was stiffening with grief. She had not expected to have this battle with Ellen; she had been prepared for abuse and upbraiding, but not for argument--it had not struck her that her sister would demand the rehabilitation she herself refused.

"You're perfectly shameless," sobbed Ellen. "My G.o.d! It ud take a woman like you to brazen through a thing like this. Sw.a.n.king, swaggering, you've always been ... well, I bet you'll find this too much even for your swagger--you don't know what you're letting yourself in for.... I can tell you a little, for I've known, I've felt, what people can be....

I've had to face them--when you wouldn't let Arthur give me my divorce."

"Well, I'll just about have to face 'em, that's all. I done wrong, and I don't ask not to be punished."

"You're an absolute fool. And if you won't do anything for your own sake, you might at least do something for mine. I tell you, I'm not like you--I do think of other people--and for Tip's sake I can't have everyone talking about you, and may be my own story raked up again. I won't have him punished for his goodness. If you won't marry and be respectable, I tell you, you needn't think I'll ever let you see me again."

"But, Ellen, supposing even there is talk--you and Tip won't be here to hear it. You'll be married by then and away in Wilts.h.i.+re. Tip need never know."

"How can he help knowing, as long as you've got a tongue in your head?

And what'll he think you're doing at Chichester?--No, I tell you, Joanna, unless you marry Hill, you can say good-bye to me"--she was speaking quite calmly now--"I don't want to be hard and unsisterly, but I happen to love the man who's going to be my husband better than anyone in the world. He's been good, and I'm not going to have his goodness put upon. He's marrying a woman who's had trouble and scandal in her life, but at least he's not going to have the shame of that woman's sister. So you can choose between me and yourself."

"It ain't between you and myself. It's between you and my child. It's for my child's sake I won't marry Bertie Hill."

"My dear Joanna, are you quite an a.s.s? Can't you see that the person who will suffer most for all this is your child? I didn't bring in that argument before, as I didn't think it would appeal to you--but surely you see that the position of an illegitimate child ..."

"Is much better than the child of folk who don't love each other, and have only married because it was coming. I'm scared myself, and I can scare Bert, and we can get married--but what'll that be? He don't love me--I don't love him. He don't want to marry me--I don't want to marry him. He'll never forgive me, and all our lives he'll be throwing it up to me--and he'll be hating the child, seeing as it's only because of it we're married, and he'll make it miserable. Oh, you don't know Bertie as I know him--I don't say as it's all his fault, poor boy, I reckon his mother didn't raise him properly--but you should hear him speak to his mother and sister, and know what he'd be as a husband and father. I tell you, he ain't fit to be the father of a child."

"And are you fit to be the mother?" Ellen sneered.

"Maybe I ain't. But the point is, I am the mother, nothing can change that. And reckon I can fight, and keep the worst off. Oh, I know it ain't easy, and it ain't right; and I'll suffer for it, and the worst till be that my child ull have to suffer too. But I tell you it shan't suffer more than I can help. Reckon I shan't manage so badly. I'll raise it among strangers, and I'll have a nice little bit of money to live on, coming to me from the farm, even when I've paid you a share, as I shall, as is fitting. I'll give my child every chance I can."

"Then it's a choice between your child and me. If you do this mad thing, Joanna, you'll have to go. I can't have you ever coming near me and Tip--it isn't only for my own sake--it's for his."

"Reckon we're both hurting each other for somebody else's sake. But I ain't angry with you, Ellen, same as you're angry with me."

"I am angry with you--I can't help it. You go and do this utterly silly and horrible thing, and then instead of making the best you can of it for everybody's sake, you go on blundering worse and worse. Such utter ignorance of the world ... such utter ignorance of your own self ... how d'you think you're going to manage without Ansdore? Why, it's your very life--you'll be utterly lost without it. Think of yourself, starting an entirely new life at your age--nearly forty. It's impossible. You don't know what you're letting yourself in for. But you'll find out when it's too late, and then both you and your unfortunate child ull have to suffer."

"If I married Bert I couldn't keep on Ansdore. He wouldn't marry me unless I came to London--I know that now. He's set on business. I'd have to go and live with him in a street ... then we'd both be miserable, all three be miserable. Now if I go off alone, maybe later on I can get a bit of land, and run another farm in foreign parts--by Chichester or Southampton--just a little one, to keep me busy. Reckon that ud be fine and healthy for my child ..."

"Your child seems to be the only thing you care about. Really to hear you talk, one ud almost think you were glad."

"I am glad."

Ellen sprang to her feet.

"There's no good going on with this conversation. You're quite without feeling and quite without shame. I don't know if you'll come to your senses later, and not perhaps feel quite so _glad_ that you have ruined your life, disgraced your family, broken my heart, brought shame and trouble into the life of a good and decent man. But at present I'm sick of you."

She walked towards the door.

"Ellen," cried Joanna--"don't go away like that--don't think that of me.

I ain't glad in that way."

But Ellen would not turn or speak. She went out of the door with a queer, white draggled look about her.

"Ellen," cried Joanna a second time, but she knew it was no good....

Well, she was alone now, if ever a woman was.

She stood staring straight in front of her, out of the little flower-pot obscured window, into the far distances of the Marsh. Once more the Marsh wore its strange, occasional look of being under the sea, but this time it was her own tears that had drowned it.

"Child--what if the old floods came again?" she seemed to hear Martin's voice as it had spoken in a far-off, half forgotten time.... He had talked to her about those old floods, he had said they might come again, and she had said they couldn't.... My! How they used to argue together in those days. He had said that if the floods came back to drown the Marsh, all the church bells would ring under the sea....

She liked thinking of Martin in this way--it comforted her. It made her feel as if, now that everything had been taken from her, the past so long lost had been given back. And not the past only, for if her memories lived, her hopes lived too--not even Ellen's bitterness could kill them.... There she stood, nearly forty years old, on the threshold of an entirely new life--her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, all lost. But the past and the future still were hers.