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Alce gropingly put out a hairy hand towards her, which was his nearest approach to a caress. Joanna flicked it away. "Now a-done do, Arthur Alce" dropping in her merriment into the lower idiom of the Marsh "a-done do with your croaking and your stroking both. Let me go my own ways, for I know 'em better than you can."
Ellen, pale as a flower, with wide lips like rose-leaves and narrow, brooding eyes, with her languor, and faint suggestions of the exotic, all the mystery with which fate had chosen to veil the common secret which was Ellen Alce.... She could now have the luxury of pitying her sister, of seeing herself possessed of what her tyrant Joanna had not, and longed for.... Slowly she was gaining the advantage, her side of the wheel was mounting while Joanna's went down; in spite of the elder woman's success and substance the younger was unmistakably winning ascendancy over her.
"Reckon she thinks the old Squire ud like to marry her," said Alce, "I'd be glad if I thought so well of him." "He can't marry her, seeing as she's your wife." "If we were divorced, she wouldn't be." "She would. You were made man and wife in Pedlinge church, as I saw with my own eyes, and I'll never believe as what was done then can be undone just by having some stuff written in the papers."
If Arthur Alce appeared a silence would fall on the company, to be broken at last by some remark on the price of wool or the Rye United's last match. Everybody was sorry for Alce, everybody thought that Thomas Godden had treated him badly by not making his daughter marry him as a condition of her inheritance.
"I talk about them too," said Joanna, "and I can't see as I'd be any better for talking of nothing else." What Alce had meant to convey to her was that he would much rather hear her discussing the ailments of her children than of her potatoes, but he was far too delicate-minded to state this. He only looked at her sadly.
He piloted her out of the crush, and they went to the George, where the trap was soon put to. Ellen sat drooping along the Straight Mile. "Lord, but you're hem tired," said Alce, looking down at her. "I've got a little headache I had it when I started." "Then you shouldn't ought to have come." "Joanna said I was to." "You should have told her about your head."
When she had brought her meal to a close with a cup of tea, she found Alce waiting for her in the hotel entrance. "I never thought you'd come to market, Joanna." "And why not, pray?" The correct answer was "Because you don't know enough about beasts," but Alce had the sense to find a substitute. "Because it ain't safe or seemly for a woman to come alone and deal with men." "And why not, again?
In some mysterious way Ellen had won acceptance from the latter, whatever her secret relations with the former may have been. The stories about her grew ever more and more charitable. The Woolpack pronounced that Arthur Alce would not have gone away "if it had been all on her side," and it was now certainly known that Mrs.
Lawrence ud have made the people properly mind their ways. And it ain't becoming in you, Ellen Alce, to let your own misdoings stand between folk and what's good for 'em." Ellen accepted the rebuke good-humouredly. She had grown more mellow of late, and was settling into her life at Ansdore as she had never settled since she went to school.
Men were pressing round, farmers and graziers and butchers, drawn by the spectacle of Joanna Godden at war with her looker in the middle of Lydd market. Alce touched her arm appealingly "Come away, Joanna," he murmured. She flung round at him. "Keep dear leave me to settle my own man." There was a titter in the crowd.
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