§1
For many months Ansdore was a piece of wreckage to which a drowning woman clung. Joanna's ship had foundered—the high-castled, seaworthy ship of her life—and she drifted through the dark seas, clinging only to this which had once been so splendid in the midst of her decks, but was now mere wreckage, the least thing saved. If she let go she would drown. So she trailed after Ansdore, and at last it brought her a kind of anchorage, not in her native land, but at least in no unkind country of adoption. During the last weeks of Martin's wooing, she had withdrawn herself a little from the business of the farm into a kind of overlordship, from which she was far more free to detach herself than from personal service. Now she went back to work with her hands—she did not want free hours, either for his company or for her own dreams; she rose early, because she waked early and must rise when she waked, and she went round waking the girls, hustling the men, putting her own hand to the milking or the cooking, more sharp-tongued than ever, less tolerant, but more terribly alive, with a kind of burning, consuming life that vexed all those about her.
"She spicks short wud me," said old Stuppeny, "and I've töald her as she mun look around fur a new head man. This time I'm going."
"She's a scold," said Broadhurst, "and reckon the young chap säaved himself a tedious life by dying."
"Reckon her heart's broke," said Mrs. Tolhurst.
"Her temper's broke," said Milly Pump.
They were unsympathetic, because she expressed her grief in terms of fierce activity instead of in the lackadaisical ways of tradition. If Joanna had taken to her bed on her return from North Farthing House that early time, and had sent for the doctor, and shown all the credited symptoms of a broken heart, they would have pitied her and served her and borne with her. But, instead, she had come back hustling and scolding, and they could not see that she did so because not merely her heart but her whole self was broken, and that she was just flying and rattling about like a broken thing. So instead of pitying her, they grumbled and threatened to leave her service—in fact, Milly Pump actually did so, and was succeeded by Mene Tekel Fagge, the daughter of Bibliolatious parents at Northlade.
Ansdore throve on its mistress's frenzy. That autumn Joanna had four hundred pounds in Lewes Old Bank, the result of her splendid markets and of her new ploughs, which had borne eight bushels to the acre. She had triumphed gloriously over everyone who had foretold her ruin through breaking up pasture; strong-minded farmers could scarcely bear to drive along that lap of the Brodnyx road which ran through Joanna's wheat, springing slim and strong and heavy-eared as from Lothian soil—if there had been another way from Brodnyx to Rye market they would have taken it; indeed it was rumoured that on one occasion Vine had gone by train from Appledore because he couldn't abear the sight of Joanna Godden's ploughs.
This rumour, when it reached her, brought her a faint thrill. It was the beginning of a slow process of reidentification of herself with her own activities, which till then had been as some furious raging outside the house. She began to picture new acts of discomfiting adventure, new roads which should be shut to Vine through envy. Ansdore was all she had, so she must make it much. When she had given it and herself to Martin she had had all the Marsh and all the world to plant with her love; but since he was gone and had left her gifts behind him, she had just a few acres to plant with wheat—and her harvest should be bread alone.
§2
Her black months had changed her—not outwardly very much, but leaving wounds in her heart. Martin had woken in her too many needs for her to be able to go back quietly into the old life of unfulfilled content. He had shown her a vision of herself as complete woman, mother and wife, of a Joanna Godden bigger than Ansdore. She could no longer be the Joanna Godden whose highest ambition was to be admitted member of the Farmers' Club. He had also woken in her certain simple cravings—for a man's strong arm round her and his shoulder under her cheek. She had now to make the humiliating discovery that the husk of such a need can remain after the creating spirit had left it. In the course of the next year she had one or two small, rather undignified flirtations with neighbouring farmers—there was young Gain over at Botolph's Bridge, and Ernest Noakes of Belgar. They did not last long, and she finally abandoned both in disgust, but a side of her, always active unconsciously, was now disturbingly awake, requiring more concrete satisfactions than the veiled, self-deceiving episode of Socknersh.
She was ashamed of this. And it made her withdraw from comforts she might have had. She never went to North Farthing House, where she could have talked about Martin with the one person who—as it happened—would have understood her treacheries. Lawrence came to see her once at the end of September, but she was gruff and silent. She recoiled from his efforts to break the barriers between life and death; he wanted her to give Martin her thoughts and her prayers just as if he were alive. But she "didn't hold with praying for the dead"—the Lion and the Unicorn would certainly disapprove of such an act; and Martin was now robed in white, with a crown on his head and a harp in his hand and a new song in his mouth—he had no need of the prayers of Joanna Godden's unfaithful lips. As for her thoughts, by the same token she could not think of him as he was now; that radiant being in glistening white was beyond the soft approaches of imagination—robed and crowned, he could scarcely be expected to remember himself in a tweed suit and muddy boots kissing a flushed and hot Joanna on the lonely innings by Beggar's Bush. No, Martin was gone—gone beyond thought and prayer—gone to sing hymns for ever and ever—he who could never abide them on earth—gone to forget Joanna in the company of angels—pictured uncomfortably by her as females, who would be sure to tell him that she had let Thomas Gain kiss her in the barn over at Botolph's Bridge....
She could not think of him as he was now, remote and white, and she could bear still less to think of him as he had been once, warm and loving, with his caressing hands and untidy hair, with his flushed cheek pressed against hers, and the good smell of his clothes—with his living mouth closing slowly down on hers ... no, earth was even sharper than heaven. All she had of him in which her memory and her love could find rest were those few common things they keep to remember their dead by on the Marsh—a memorial card, thickly edged with black, which she had had printed at her own expense, since apparently such things were no part of the mourning of North Farthing House; his photograph in a black frame; his grave in Brodnyx churchyard, in the shadow of the black, three-hooded tower, and not very far from the altar-tomb on which he had sat and waited for her that Christmas morning.