§30

Towards the spring, Ellen wrote again, breaking the silence of several weeks. She wrote in a different tone—some change had passed over her. She no longer asked Arthur to divorce her—on the contrary she hinted her thanks for his magnanimity in not having done so. Evidently she no longer counted on marrying Sir Harry Trevor, perhaps, even, she did not wish to. But in one point she had not changed—she was not coming back to her husband.

"I couldn't bear to live that life again, especially after what's happened. It's not his fault—it's simply that I'm different. If he wants his freedom, I suggest that he should let me divorce him—it could easily be arranged. He should go and see a really good lawyer in London."

Yes—Ellen spoke truly when she said that she was "different." Her cavalier dealings with the situation, the glib way she spoke of divorce, the insult she flung at the respectable form of Huxtable, Vidler and Huxtable by suggesting that Arthur should consult "a really good lawyer in London," all showed how far she had travelled from the ways of Walland Marsh.

"What's she after now?" asked Joanna.

"Reckon they're getting tired of each other."

"She don't say so."

"No—she wants to find out which way the land lays first."

"I'll write and tell her she can come back and live along of me, if she won't go to you."

"Then I'll have to be leaving these parts—I couldn't be at Donkey Street and her at Ansdore."

"Reckon you could—she can go out of the way when you call."

"It wouldn't be seemly."

"Where ud you go?"

"I've no notion. But reckon all this ain't the question yet. Ellen won't come back to you no more than she'll come back to me."

"She'll just about have to come if she gets shut of the Old Squire, seeing as she's got no more than twelve pounds a year of her own. Reckon poor father was a wise man when he left Ansdore to me and not to both of us—you'd almost think he'd guessed what she was coming to."

Joanna wrote to Ellen and made her offer. Her sister wrote back at great length, and rather pathetically—"Harry" was going on to Venice, and she did not think she would go with him—"when one gets to know a person, Jo, one sometimes finds they are not quite what one thought them." She would like to be by herself for a bit, but she did not want to come back to Ansdore, even if Arthur went away—"it would be very awkward after what has happened." She begged Jo to be generous and make her some small allowance—"Harry would provide for me if he hadn't had such terrible bad luck—he never was very well off, you know, and he can't manage unless we keep together. I know you wouldn't like me to be tied to him just by money considerations."

Joanna was bewildered by the letter. She could have understood Ellen turning in horror and loathing from the partner of her guilt, but she could not understand this wary and matter-of-fact separation. What was her sister made of? "Harry would provide for me" ... would she really have accepted such a provision? Joanna's ears grew red. "I'll make her come home," she exclaimed savagely—"she'll have to come if she's got no money."

"Maybe she'll stop along of him," said Arthur.

"Then let her—I don't care. But she shan't have my money to live on by herself in foreign parts, taking up with any man that comes her way; for I don't trust her now—I reckon she's lost to shame."

She wrote Ellen to this effect, and, not surprisingly, received no answer. She felt hard and desperate—the thought that she was perhaps binding her sister to her misdoing gave her only occasional spasms of remorse. Sometimes she would feel as if all her being and all her history, Ansdore and her father's memory, disowned her sister, and that she could never take her back into her life again, however penitent—"She's mocked at our good ways—she's loose, she's low." At other times her heart melted towards Ellen in weakness, and she knew within herself that no matter what she did, she would always be her little sister, her child, her darling, whom all her life she had cherished and could never cast out.

She said nothing about these swaying feelings to Arthur—she had of late grown far more secretive about herself—as for him, he took things as they came. He found a wondrous quiet in this time, when he was allowed to serve Joanna as in days of old. He did not think of marrying her—he knew that even if it was true that the lawyers could set aside parson's word, Joanna would not take him now, any more than she would have taken him five or ten or fifteen years ago; she did not think about him in that way. On the other hand she appreciated his company and his services. He called at Ansdore two or three times a week, and ran her errands for her. It was almost like old times, and in his heart he knew and was ashamed to know that he hoped Ellen would never come back. If she came back either to him or to Joanna, these days of quiet happiness would end. Meantime, he would not think of it—he was Joanna's servant, and when she could not be in two places at once it was his joy and privilege to be in one of them. "I could live like this for ever, surely," he said to himself, as he sat stirring his solitary cup of tea at Donkey Street, knowing that he was to call at Ansdore the next morning. That was the morning he met Joanna in the drive, hatless, and holding a piece of paper in her hand.

"I've heard from Ellen—she's telegraphed from Venice—she's coming home."