He knew that to-day he had pleased her better than he had ever pleased her in his life. To-day she had said to him "God bless you, Arthur—you're the best friend I have, or am like to have, neither." To-day he had made himself her kinsman, with a dozen new opportunities of service. Chief among these was the dear little girl on his arm—how pretty and sweet she was! How he would love her and cherish her as he had promised Mr. Pratt! Well, thank God, he had done Joanna one good turn, and himself not such a bad one, neither. How clever she had been to think of his marrying Ellen! He would never have thought of it himself; yet now he saw clearly that it was a wonderful notion—nothing could be better. Joanna was valiant for notions.... Alce had had one glass of champagne.
At about four o'clock, Joanna dashed into the circle round the bride, and took Ellen away upstairs, to put on her travelling dress of saxe-blue satin—the last humiliation she would have to endure from Ansdore. The honeymoon was being spent at Canterbury, cautiously chosen by Arthur as a place he'd been to once and so knew the lie of a bit. Ellen had wanted to go to Wales, or to the Lakes, but Joanna had sternly forbidden such outrageous pinings—"Arthur's got two cows calving next week—what are you thinking of, Ellen Godden?"
The bridal couple drove away amidst much hilarity, inspired by the unaccustomed champagne and expressed in rice and confetti. After they had gone the guests still lingered, feasting at the littered tables or re-inspecting and re-valuing the presents which had been laid out, after the best style, in the dining-room. Sir Harry Trevor had sent Ellen a little pearl pendant, though he had been unable to accept Joanna's invitation and come to the wedding himself—he wrote from a London address and hinted vaguely that he might never come back to North Farthing House, which had been let furnished. His gift was the chief centre of interest—when Mrs. Vine had done comparing her electro-plated cruet most favourably with the one presented by Mrs. Furnese and the ignoble china object that Mrs. Cobb had had the meanness to send, and Mrs. Bates had recovered from the shock of finding that her tea-cosy was the exact same shape and pattern as the one given by Mrs. Gain. People thought it odd that the Old Squire should send pearls to Ellen Godden—something for the table would have been much more seemly.
Joanna had grown weary—her shoulders drooped under her golden gown, she tossed back her head and yawned against the back of her hand. She was tired of it all, and wanted them to go. What were they staying for? They must know the price of everything pretty well by this time and have eaten enough to save their suppers. She was no polished hostess, concealing her boredom, and the company began soon to melt away. Traps lurched over the shingle of Ansdore's drive, the Pricketts walked off across the innings to Great Ansdore, guests from Rye packed into two hired wagonettes, and the cousins from the Isle of Wight drove back to the George, where, as there were eight of them and they refused to be separated, Joanna was munificently entertaining them instead of under her own roof.
When the last was gone, she turned back into the house, where Mrs. Tolhurst stood ready with her broom to begin an immediate sweep-up after the waiters, whom she looked upon as the chief source of the disorder. A queer feeling came over Joanna, a feeling of loneliness, of craving, and she fell in all her glory of feathers and silk upon Mrs. Tolhurst's alpaca bosom. Gone were those arbitrary and often doubtful distinctions between them, and the mistress enjoyed the luxury of a good cry in her servant's arms.
§18
Ellen's marriage broke into Joanna's life quite as devastatingly as Martin's death. Though for more than three years her sister had been away at school, with an ever-widening gulf of temperament between herself and the farm, and though since her return she had been little better at times than a rebellious and sulky stranger, nevertheless she was a part of Ansdore, a part of Joanna's life there, and the elder sister found it difficult to adjust things to her absence.
Of course Ellen had not gone very far—Donkey Street was not five miles from Ansdore, though in a different parish and a different county. But the chasm between them was enormous—it was queer to think that a mere change of roof-tree could make such a difference. No doubt the reason was that with Ellen it had involved an entire change of habit. While she lived with Joanna she had been bound both by the peculiarities of her sister's nature and her own to accept her way of living. She had submitted, not because she was weak or gentle-minded but because submission was an effective weapon of her welfare; now, having no further use for it, she ruled instead and was another person. She was, besides, a married woman, and the fact made all the difference to Ellen herself. She felt herself immeasurably older and wiser than Joanna, her teacher and tyrant. Her sister's life seemed to her puerile.... Ellen had at last read the riddle of the universe and the secret of wisdom.
The sisters' relations were also a little strained over Arthur Alce. Joanna resented the authority that Ellen assumed—it took some time to show her that Arthur was no longer hers. She objected when Ellen made him shave off his moustache and whiskers; he looked ten years younger and a far handsomer man, but he was no longer the traditional Arthur Alce of Joanna's history, and she resented it. Ellen on her part resented the way Joanna still made use of him, sending him to run errands and make inquiries for her just as she used in the old days before his marriage. "Arthur, I hear there's some good pigs going at Honeychild auction—I can't miss market at Lydd, but you might call round and have a look for me." Or "Arthur, I've a looker's boy coming from Abbot's Court—you might go there for his characters, I haven't time, with the butter-making to-day and Mene Tekel such an owl."
Ellen rebelled at seeing her husband ordered about, and more than once "told off" her sister, but Joanna had no intention of abandoning her just claims in Arthur, and the man himself was pig-headed—"I mun do what I can for her, just as I used." Ellen could make him shave off his whiskers, she could even make him on occasion young and fond and frolicsome, but she could not make him stop serving Joanna, or, had she only known it, stop loving her. Arthur was perfectly happy as Ellen's husband, and made her, as Joanna had foretold, an exemplary one, but his love for Joanna seemed to grow rather than diminish as he cared for and worked for and protected her sister. It seemed to feed and thrive on his love for Ellen—it gave him a wonderful sense of action and effectiveness, and people said what a lot of good marriage had done for Arthur Alce, and that he was no longer the dull chap he used to be.