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She stopped, breathless, her cheeks and eyes burning, a curious ache in her breast. The sun was gone now, only the moon hung flushed in the foggy sky. Socknersh's face was in darkness as he stood with his back to the east, but she could see on his features a look of surprise and dismay which suddenly struck her as pathetic in its helpless stupidity.
She looked into the future, and between the present moment and the consummated union of North Farthing and Ansdore, she saw thrilling, half-dim, personal adventures for Martin and Joanna ... the touch of his hands would be quite different from the touch of Arthur Alce's ... and his lips she had never wanted a man's lips before, except perhaps Socknersh's for one wild, misbegotten minute ... she held in her heart the picture of Martin's well-cut, sensitive mouth, so unlike the usual mouths of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, which were either coarse-lipped or no-lipped.... Martin's mouth was wonderful it would be like fire on hers....
Joanna watched for a moment without speaking; then suddenly she broke out: "Socknersh, I hear it's said that the new lambs ull be poor in wool." "They're saying it, missus, but it äun't true." "I don't care if it's true or not. You shouldn't ought to tell my gal Martha such things before you tell me." Socknersh's eyes opened wide, and the other men looked up from their work.
She must wait and see him alone ... the next minute she knew further that she must not apologize, and the minute after she knew further still almost further than she could bear that in denying herself an apology she was denying herself a luxury, that she wanted to apologize, to kneel at Socknersh's clay-caked feet and beg his forgiveness, to humble herself before him by her penitence so that he could exalt her by his pardon....
"There's more than he gives a double arsenic dip, surelye." "Surelye but they mixes the can a bit. Broadhurst says as Socknersh's second dip was as strong as his first." The feeling about Socknersh's incapacity reached such a point that more than one warning was given Joanna for her father's sake, and one at least for her own, from Arthur Alce.
She had sent her to school to be made a lady of, but the finished article was nearly as disappointing as the cross-bred lambs of Socknersh's unlucky day. If Ellen had wanted to lie abed of a morning, never to do a hand's turn of work, or had demanded a table napkin at all her meals, Joanna would have humoured her and bragged about her.
And now she was humbled in her own eyes, and also in the eyes of her neighbours. She would have to confess herself in the wrong. Everyone knew that she had just raised Socknersh's wages, so there would be no good pretending that she had known his shortcomings from the first, but had put up with them as long as she could.
And Joanna marched off up the drive, where this conversation had taken place. She raised Socknersh's wages to twenty shillings the next day, and it was not due to any wordy flow of his gratitude that the name of Martha Tilden was not mentioned between them. "Better leave it," thought Joanna to herself, "after all, I'm not sure and she's a slut.
It was as if Marsh itself enfolded her, for his clothes and skin were caked with the soil of it.... She opened her eyes, and looking up into his, saw her own face, infinitely white and small, looking down at her out of them. Joanna Godden looked at her out of Socknersh's eyes.
She evidently knew what was ahead, for she looked pale and a little scared, and yet she had about her a strange air of confidence ... though not so strange, after all, since she carried Dick Socknersh's child, and her memory was full of his caresses and the secrets of his love ... thus bravely could Joanna herself have faced an angry world.... "You leave my service at once," she said.
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