United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ellen's most constant visitor at this time was the son of the people who had taken Great Ansdore dwelling-house. Tip Ernley had just come back from Australia; he did not like colonial life and was looking round for something to do at home.
She told herself that it was because she was so tired that she often felt depressed and wakeful at nights. Raymond Avenue was not noisy, indeed it was nearly as quiet as Ansdore, but on some nights Joanna lay awake from Bertie's last kiss till the crashing entrance of the Girl to pull up her blinds in the morning. At nights, sometimes, a terrible clearness came to her.
She would like to be by herself for a bit, but she did not want to come back to Ansdore, even if Arthur went away "it would be very awkward after what has happened." She begged Jo to be generous and make her some small allowance "Harry would provide for me if he hadn't had such terrible bad luck he never was very well off, you know, and he can't manage unless we keep together.
Of course she was fond of Jo, but she was tired of living with her you couldn't call your soul your own she would never be happy till she had made herself independent of Jo, and only marriage would do that. She was tired of sulking and submitting she could make a better life for herself over at Donkey Street than she could at Ansdore.
For a year or so after Martin's death, she had maintained her solace of secret kisses, but in time she had come to withdraw even from these, and by now the full force of her vitality was pouring itself into her life at Ansdore, its ambitions and business, her love for Ellen, and her own pride.
Arthur Alce was no longer the only suitor at Ansdore it was well known that Sam Turner, who had lately moved from inland to Northlade, was wanting to have her, and Hugh Vennal would have been glad to bring her as his second wife to Beggar's Bush.
She could go to Chichester, where Martha Relf, the girl who had been with her when she first took over Ansdore and had behaved so wickedly with the looker at Honeychild, now kept furnished rooms as a respectable widow.
Ellen had no particular pleasure in letting the boys kiss her she was a cold-blooded little thing but, she asked herself, what else was there to do in a desert like Walland Marsh? The Marsh mocked her every morning as she looked out of her window at the flat miles between Ansdore and Dunge Ness.
She saw all her life stretching behind her for a moment the moment when she had stood before Socknersh her shepherd, seeing him dark against the sky, between the sun and moon. That was when Men, properly speaking, had begun for her and it was fifteen years since then and where was she now? Still at Ansdore, still without her man.
She could certainly now have had her pick among the unmarried farmers which could not have been said when she first set up her mastership at Ansdore. Since those times men had learned to tolerate her swaggering ways, also her love affair with Martin had made her more normal, more of a soft, accessible woman.
Word Of The Day