§21

She worked off her fears in action. Having given notice of the banns to Mr. Pratt, sent off Dr. Taylor to North Farthing, put up a special petition for Martin in her evening prayers, she went to bed and slept soundly. She was not an anxious soul, and a man's illness never struck her as particularly alarming. Men were hard creatures—whose weaknesses were of mind and character rather than of body—and though Martin was softer than some, she could not quite discount his broad back and shoulders, his strong, swinging arms.

She drove over to North Farthing soon after breakfast, expecting to find him, in spite of her injunctions, about and waiting for her.

"The day's warm and maybe he won't hurt if he drives on with me to Honeychild"—the thought of him there beside her was so strong that she could almost feel his hand lying pressed between her arm and her heart.

But when she came to the house she found only Sir Harry, prowling in the hall.

"I'm glad you've come, Joanna. I'm anxious about Martin."

"What's the matter? What did the doctor say?"

"He said there's congestion of the lung or something. Martin took a fit of the shivers after you'd gone, and of course it made him worse when the doctor said the magic word 'lung.' He's always been hipped about himself, you know."

"I'd better go and see him."

She hitched the reins, and climbed down out of the trap—stumbling awkwardly as she alighted, for she had begun to tremble.

"You don't think he's very bad, do you?"

"Can't say. I wish Taylor ud come. He said he'd be here again this morning."

His voice was sharp and complaining, for anything painful always made him exasperated. Martin lying ill in bed, Martin shivering and in pain and in a funk was so unlike the rather superior being whom he liked to pretend bullied him, that he felt upset and rather shocked. He gave a sigh of relief as Joanna ran upstairs—he told himself that she was a good practical sort of woman, and handsome when she was properly dressed.

She had never been upstairs in North Farthing House before, but she found Martin's room after only one false entry—which surprised the guilty Raddish sitting at Sir Harry's dressing-table and smarming his hair-cream on her ignoble head. The blinds in Martin's room were down, and he was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, with his head turned away from her.

"That you, father?—has Taylor come?"

"No, it's me, dearie. I've come to see what I can do for you."

The sight of him huddled there in the pillows, restless, comfortless, neglected, wrung her heart. Hitherto her love for Martin had been singularly devoid of intimacy. They had kissed each other, they had eaten dinner and tea and supper together, they had explored the Three Marshes in each other's company, but she had scarcely ever been to his house, never seen him asleep, and in normal circumstances would have perished rather than gone into his bedroom. To-day when she saw him there, lying on his wide, tumbled bed, among his littered belongings—his clothes strewn untidily on the floor, his books on their shelves, his pictures that struck her rigidity as indecent, his photographs of people who had touched his life, some perhaps closely, but were unknown to her, she had a queer sense of the revelation of poor, pathetic secrets. This, then, was Martin when he was away from her—untidy, sensual, forlorn, as all men were ... she bent down and kissed him.

"Lovely Jo," ... he yielded childish, burning lips, then drew away—"No, you mustn't kiss me—it might be bad for you."

"Gammon, dear. 'Tis only a chill."

She saw that he was in a bate about himself, so after her tender beginnings, she became rough. She made him sit up while she shook his pillows, then she made him lie flat and tucked the sheet round him strenuously; she scolded him for leaving his clothes lying about on the floor. She felt as if her love for him was only just beginning—the last four months seemed cold and formal compared with these moments of warm, personal service. She brought him water for his hands, and scrubbed his face with a sponge to his intense discomfort. She was bawling downstairs to the unlucky Raddish to put the kettle on for some herb tea—since an intimate cross-examination revealed that he had not had the recommended dose—when the doctor arrived and came upstairs with Sir Harry.

He undid a good deal of Joanna's good work—he ordered the blind to be let down again, and he refused to back her up in her injunctions to the patient to lie flat—on the contrary he sent for more pillows, and Martin had to confess to feeling easier when he was propped up against them with a rug round his shoulders. He then announced that he would send for a nurse from Rye.

"Oh, but I can manage," cried Joanna—"let me nurse him. I can come and stop here, and nurse him day and night."

"I am sure there is no one whom he'd rather have than you, Miss Godden," said Dr. Taylor gallantly, "but of course you are not professional, and pneumonia wants thoroughly experienced nursing—the nurse counts more than the doctor in a case like this."

"Pneumonia! Is that what's the matter with him?"

They had left Martin's room, and the three of them were standing in the hall.

"I'm afraid that's it—only in the right lung so far."

"But you can stop it—you won't let him get worse. Pneumonia!..."

The word was full of a sinister horror to her, suggesting suffocation—agony. And Martin's chest had always been weak—the weak part of his strong body. She should have thought of that ... thought of it three nights ago when, all through her, he had been soaked with the wind-driven rain ... just like a drowned rat he had looked when they came to Ansdore, his cap dripping, the water running down his neck.... No, no, it could not be that—he couldn't have caught pneumonia just through getting wet that time—she had got wet a dunnamany times and not been tuppence the worse ... his lungs were not weak in that way—it was the London fogs that had disagreed with them, the doctor had said so, and had sent him away from town, to the Marsh and the rain.... He had been in London for the last two days, and the fog had got into his poor chest again,—that was all, and now that he was home on the Marsh he would soon be well—of course he would soon be well—she was a fool to fret. And now she would go upstairs and sit with him till the nurse came; it was her last chance of doing those little tender, rough, intimate things for him ... till they were married—oh, she wouldn't let him fling his clothes about like that when they were married! Meantime she would go up, and see that he swallowed every drop of the herb tea—that was the stuff to give anyone who was ill on the Marsh, no matter what the doctor said ... rheumatism, bronchitis, colic, it cured them all.