Joanna Godden by Sheila Kaye Smith
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Sheila Kaye Smith >> Joanna Godden
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"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.
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