came home. She was not unhappy in
her life at Ansdore, for her escapade had given her a queer advantage
over her sister, and she now found that she could to a certain extent,
mould the household routine to her comfort. She was no longer entirely
dominated, and only a small amount of independence was enough to satisfy
her, a born submitter, to whom contrivance was more than rule. She
wanted only freedom for her tastes and pleasures, and Joanna did not now
strive to impose her own upon her. Occasionally the younger woman
complained of her lot, bound to a man whom she no longer cared for,
wearing only the fetters of her wifehood--she still hankered after a
divorce, though Arthur must be respondent. This always woke Joanna to
rage, but Ellen's feelings did not often rise to the surface, and on the
whole the sisters were happy in their life together--more peaceful
because they were more detached than in the old days. Ellen invariably
wore black, hoping that strangers and newcomers would take her for a
widow.
This she actually became towards the close of the year 1910. Arthur did
a fair amount of hunting with his brother in the shires, and one day his
horse came down at a fence, throwing him badly and fracturing his skull.
He died the same night without regaining consciousness--death had
treated him better on the whole than life, for he died without pain or
indignity, riding to hounds like any squire. He left a comfortable
little fortune, too--Donkey Street and its two hundred acres--and he
left it all to Joanna.
Secretly he had made his will anew soon after going to the shires, and
in it he had indulged himself, ignoring reality and perhaps duty.
Evidently he had had no expectations of a return to married life with
Ellen, and in this new testament he ignored her entirely, as if she had
not been. Joanna was his wife, inheriting all that was his, of land and
money and live and dead stock--"My true, trusty friend, Joanna Godden."
Ellen was furious, and Joanna herself was a little shocked. She
understood Arthur's motives--she guessed that one of his reasons for
passing over Ellen had been his anxiety to leave her sister dependent on
her, knowing her fear that she would take flight. But this exaltation of
her by his death to the place she had refused to occupy during his life,
gave her a queer sense of smart and shame. For the first time it struck
her that she might not have treated Arthur quite well....
However, she did
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