"You just about try. If only we can get her somewheres for a week, so as to have time to write and tell her as all will be forgiven and you'll take her back...."
Arthur looked mutinous.
"I don't know as I want her back."
"Arthur, you must. Otherways, everybody ull have to know what's happened."
"But she didn't like being with me, or she wouldn't have gone away."
"She liked it well enough, or she wouldn't have stayed with you two year. Arthur, you must have her back, you just about must. You send her a telegram saying as you'll have her back if only she'll come this once, before folks find out where she's gone."
Arthur's resistance gradually failed before Joanna's entreaties and persuasions. He could not withstand Jo when her blue eyes were all dull with tears, and her voice was hoarse and frantic. For some months now his marriage had seemed to him a wrong and immoral thing, but he rather sorrowfully told himself that having made the first false step he could not now turn round and come back, even if Ellen herself had broken away. He rode off to find out the Squire's address, and send his wife the summoning and forgiving telegram.
§28
It was not perhaps surprising that, in spite of a lavish and exceedingly expensive offer of forgiveness, Ellen did not come home. Over a week passed without even an acknowledgment of the telegram, which she must have found reproachfully awaiting her arrival—the symbol of Walland Marsh pursuing her into the remoteness of a new life and a strange country.
As might have been expected Joanna felt this period of waiting and inactivity far more than she had felt the actual shock. She had all the weight on her shoulders of a sustained deception. She and Arthur had to dress up a story to deceive the neighbourhood, and they gave out that Ellen was in London, staying with Mrs. Williams—her husband had forbidden her to go, so she had run away, and now there would have to be some give and take on both sides before she could come back. Joanna had been inspired to circulate this legend by the discovery that Ellen actually had taken a ticket for London. She had probably guessed the sensation that her taking a ticket to Dover would arouse at the local station, so had gone first to London and travelled down by the boat express. It was all very cunning, and Joanna thought she saw the Old Squire's experienced hand in it. Of course it might be true that he had not persuaded Ellen to come out to him, but that she had gone to him on a sudden impulse.... But even Joanna's plunging instinct realized that her sister was not the sort to take desperate risks for love's sake, and the whole thing had about it a sly, concerted air, which made her think that Sir Harry was not only privy, but a prime mover.