The Frobishers/Chapter 32

TWO AIMS

"My dear Joan,&mdash;You are intolerable. Who would ever have supposed that you were so sly as to send me out of the way to Pendabury&mdash;though, Heaven knows, I am delighted to be anywhere, so long as I am not in the Potteries&mdash;and to entice Hector Beaudessart away from his own mansion and compel him to take up his residence in the same horrible place that you are in? You good people are awfully deep. Of course you had your ends clearly in view, and the whole scheme was well laid and adroitly carried out. He has been here hardly at all since I came to Pendabury, and when he is here he can talk of nothing but pots and potters&mdash;the making of one and the improvement of the other. I must say you people who set up to be philanthropic, and all the rest of it, are as cunning as foxes, and poor simple creatures, like myself, are no match for you.

"Well, as soon as I saw how this fine comedy was going to end, I had to provide for myself. I have no idea of playing second fiddle any more under you. I don't care, although I have good cause to be angry. With a little finessing I brought Colonel Wood to his knees, and have accepted him. He is old enough to be my father, and is rather deaf and a bit of a sawney. But I don't mind. He is comfortably off has a nice place, no bothering children by his first wife&mdash;I shall bundle her portrait into the attics. I intend to give dinner-parties and dances; I shall hunt, and have shooting, and lawn tennis, and hockey parties, and enjoy myself to the nines.

"I look back on that&mdash;excuse a vulgarism, as old Shand would say, but really, a vulgar expletive will alone describe the place&mdash;that beastly Black Hole, as I do upon a hideous nightmare. So I bargain, if you do come to Pendabury, and we meet, not to breathe one word of shop.

"There, I have good cause to be angry with you, but I am too disgusted at your bad taste in sticking where you are to be angry at anything you may do. So, fare thee well.&mdash;Your loving sister,

"SIBYLLA."

"Polly," said Joan, looking up, "there is going to be a marriage in our family."

"I have been long expecting it," said the girl.

"My sister."

"Oh!&mdash;she!"

A twelvemonth had passed since the arrangement had been reached described in the last chapter.

Polly had been sent into the country, and had returned looking fresh and sound, only her hand was not recovered. Electricity had, however, done something towards the improvement of its condition.

Cissie also was back, an altered being, with the pure red blood mantling her cheeks, still the devoted hench-woman of Joan, to whom she clung as a leech.

"My bones!" exclaimed Polly, "you've no idea how took up my father is with his bulbs and window-gardening. He says it has only one drawback&mdash;there ain't no slugs in the boxes to entice out and kill. And the way in which you keep him supplied with flowers &mdash; as one goes off, another to come on. He is so took up with his plants he's forgot about his politics at the Blue Boar. But then it is the same all along the Row. There ain't nowhere in the town such a show as we make with flowers in our windows&mdash;and sent from Pendabury every fortnight! Lord! I don't know what our folk would do now without their flowers! And it has had a coorious effect on some of them. I mind when none of us cared a doit to go into the country for a holiday, if there weren't shows, or dancing, or something of town carried out into the country. We thought there was nothing to see there, nothing to amuse us. But now some of our young folk are all agog to get among the green lanes, or out on the moors, searching after wild flowers. It has set up a new interest in their minds. That's what you have done."

Hector had stuck to his work in the potbank, and had become intensely interested in it, as also, and mainly, in the men with whom he was brought in contact. He did not remain at his work there altogether. He returned every now and then to Pendabury, to attend to duties that required his presence on the estate. Joan, however, did not abandon her post, and she despatched such girls and others to Rosewood as, by failure of power and an anaemic look, showed symptoms of being attacked by the lead.

"And pray, when are you going to be married?" asked Polly.

"Not till next Easter," answered Joan. "That was our compact at the outset."

"And after that, what shall you do?"

"I shall hold to my plan, and spend the winter months here, that is to say from Michaelmas to Lady Day, in the same way as heretofore. You can do without me in the summer."

"We shall have to. Where will you be married?"

"Here, of course."

"Here! Then who will be bridesmaids?"

"Can you question? You and Cissie, and Caroline and Bessie and the rest."

"That will be fine. Bless my bones! But when you go we shall miss you."

"And do you not suppose that I shall miss you?"

"Ah, well," said Polly, with a sigh, " it will be but for a while, six months, and then we shall have our Joan back again."

"Yes, your Joan. In heart, in soul, in life I belong to you."

"We can't do without you. You are, and ever will be, OUR JOAN."