NOTE
_Though local names, both of places and people, have been used in this
story, the author states that no reference is intended to any living
person._
JOANNA GODDEN
_PART I_
SHEPHERD'S HEY
§1
Three marshes spread across the triangle made by the Royal Military
Canal and the coasts of Sussex and Kent. The Military Canal runs from
Hythe to Rye, beside the Military Road; between it and the flat, white
beaches of the Channel lie Romney Marsh, Dunge Marsh and Walland Marsh,
from east to west. Walland Marsh is sectored by the Kent Ditch, which
draws huge, straggling diagrams here, to preserve ancient rights of
parishes and the monks of Canterbury. Dunge Marsh runs up into the apex
of the triangle at Dunge Ness, and adds to itself twenty feet of shingle
every year. Romney Marsh is the sixth continent and the eighth wonder of
the world.
The three marshes are much alike; indeed to the foreigner they are all a
single spread of green, slatted with watercourses. No river crosses
them, for the Rother curves close under Rye Hill, though these marshes
were made by its ancient mouth, when it was the River Limine and ran
into the Channel at Old Romney. There are a few big watercourses--the
New Sewer, the Yokes Sewer, the White Kemp Sewer--there are a few white
roads, and a great many marsh villages--Brenzett, Ivychurch, Fairfield,
Snargate, Snave--each little more than a church with a farmhouse or two.
Here and there little deserted chapels lie out on the marsh, officeless
since the days of the monks of Canterbury; and everywhere there are
farms, with hundreds of sheep grazing on the thick pastures.
Little Ansdore Farm was on Walland Marsh, three miles from Rye, and
about midway between the villages of Brodnyx and Pedlinge. It was a sea
farm. There were no hop-gardens, as on the farms inland, no white-cowled
oasts, and scarcely more than twelve acres under the plough. Three
hundred acres of pasture spread round Ansdore, dappled over with the big
Kent sheep--the road from Pedlinge to Brodnyx went through them, curling
and looping and doubling to the demands of the dykes. Just beyond
Pedlinge it turned northward and crossed the South Eastern Railway under
the hills that used to be the coast of England, long ago when the sea
flowed up over the marsh to the walls of Lympne and Rye; then in less
than a mile it had crossed the line again, turning south; for some time
it ran seawards, parallel with the Kent Ditch, then suddenly went off at
right angles and ran straight to the throws where the Woolpack Inn
watches the roads to Lydd and Appledore.
On a dim afternoon towards the middle of October in the year 1897, a
funeral procession was turning off this road into the drive of Little
Ansdore. The drive was thick with shingle, and the mourning coaches
lurched and rolled in it, spoiling no doubt the decorum of their
occupants. Anyhow, the first two to get out at the farmhouse door had
lost a little of that dignity proper to funerals. A fine young woman of
about twenty-three, dressed handsomely but without much fashion in black
crape and silk, jumped out with a violence that sent her overplumed
black hat to a rakish angle. In one black kid-gloved hand she grasped a
handkerchief with a huge black border, in the other a Prayer Book, so
could not give any help to the little girl of ten who stumbled out after
her, with the result that the child fell flat on the doorstep and cut
her chin. She immediately began to cry.
"Now be quiet, Ellen," said the elder roughly but not unkindly, as she
helped her up, and stuffing the black-bordered handkerchief into her
pocket, took out the everyday one which she kept for use. "There, wipe
your eyes, and be a stout gal. Don't let all the company see you
crying."
The last injunction evidently impressed Ellen, for she stopped at once.
Her sister had wiped the grit and the little smear of blood off her
chin, and stood in the doorway holding her hand while one by one the
other carriages drew up and the occupants alighted. Not a word was
spoken till they had all assembled, then the young woman said: "Please
come in and have a cup of tea," and turning on her heel led the way to
the dining-room.
"Joanna," said little Ellen in a loud whisper, "may I take off my hat?"
"No, that you mayn't."
"But the elastic's so tight--it's cutting my chin. Why mayn't I?"
"You can't till the funeral's over."
"It is over. They've put father in the ground."
"It isn't over till we've had tea, and you keep your hat on till it's
over."
For answer Ellen tore off her pork-pie hat and threw it on the floor.
Immediately Joanna had boxed her unprotected ears, and the head of the
procession was involved in an ignominious scuffle. "You pick up that hat
and put it on," said Joanna, "or you shan't have any nice tea." "You're
a beast! You're a brute," cried Ellen, weeping loudly. Behind them stood
two rows of respectable marsh-dwellers, gazing solemnly ahead as if the
funeral service were still in progress. In their hearts they were
thinking that it was just like Joanna Godden to have a terrification
like this when folk were expected to be serious. In the end Joanna
picked up Ellen's hat, crammed it down ruthlessly on her head, hind part
before, and heaving her up under her arm carried her into the
dining-room. The rest of the company followed, and were ushered into
their places to the accompaniment of Ellen's shrieks, which they
pretended not to hear.
"Mr. Pratt, will you take the end of the table?" said Joanna to the
scared little clergyman, who would almost have preferred to sit under it
rather than receive the honour which Miss Godden's respect for his cloth
dictated. "Mr. Huxtable, will you sit by me?" Having thus settled her
aristocracy she turned to her equals and allotted places to Vine of
Birdskitchen, Furnese of Misleham, Southland of Yokes Court, and their
wives. "Arthur Alce, you take my left," and a tall young man with red
hair, red whiskers, and a face covered with freckles and tan, came
sidling to her elbow.
In front of Joanna a servant-girl had just set down a huge black teapot,
which had been stewing on the hob ever since the funeral party had been
sighted crossing the railway line half a mile off. Round it were two
concentric rings of teacups--good old Worcester china, except for a
common three which had been added for number's sake, and which Joanna
carefully bestowed upon herself, Ellen, and Arthur Alce. Ellen had
stopped crying at the sight of the cakes and jam and pots of "relish"
which stretched down the table in orderly lines, so the meal proceeded
according to the decent conventions of silence. Nobody spoke, except to
offer some eatable to somebody else. Joanna saw that no cup or plate was
empty. She ought really to have delegated this duty to another, being
presumably too closely wrapped in grief to think of anybody's appetite
but her own, but Joanna never delegated anything, and her "A little more
tea, Mrs. Vine?"--"Another of these cakes, Mr. Huxtable?"--"Just a
little dash of relish, Mr. Pratt?" were constantly breaking the
stillness, and calling attention to her as she sat behind the teapot,
with her plumed hat still a little on one side.
She was emphatically what men call a "fine woman," with her firm, white
neck, her broad shoulders, her deep bosom and strong waist; she was
tall, too, with large, useful hands and feet. Her face was brown and
slightly freckled, with a warm colour on the cheeks; the features were
strong, but any impression of heaviness was at once dispelled by a pair
of eager, living blue eyes. Big jet earrings dangled from her ears,
being matched by the double chain of beads that hung over her
crape-frilled bodice. Indeed, with her plumes, her earrings, her
necklace, her frills, though all were of the decent and respectable
black, she faintly shocked the opinion of Walland Marsh, otherwise
disposed in pity to be lenient to Joanna Godden and her ways.
Owing to the absence of conversation, tea was not as long drawn-out as
might have been expected from the appetites. Besides, everyone was in a
hurry to be finished and hear the reading of old Thomas Godden's will.
Already several interesting rumours were afloat, notably one that he
had left Ansdore to Joanna only on condition that she married Arthur
Alce within the year. "She's a mare that's never been präaperly broken
in, and she wants a strong hand to do it." Thus unchoicely Furnese of
Misleham had expressed the wish that fathered such a thought.
So at the first possible moment after the last munch and loud swallow
with which old Grandfather Vine, who was unfortunately the slowest as
well as the largest eater, announced repletion, all the chairs were
pushed back on the drugget and a row of properly impassive faces
confronted Mr. Huxtable the lawyer as he took his stand by the window.
Only Joanna remained sitting at the table, her warm blue eyes seeming to
reflect the evening's light, her arm round little Ellen, who leaned
against her lap.
The will was, after all, not so sensational as had been hoped. It opened
piously, as might have been expected of Thomas Godden, who was as good
an old man as ever met death walking in a cornfield unafraid. It went on
to leave various small tokens of remembrance to those who had known
him--a mourning ring to Mr. Vine, Mr. Furnese and Mr. Southland, his two
volumes of Robertson's Sermons, and a book called "The Horse in Sickness
and in Health," to Arthur Alce, which was a disappointment to those who
had expected the bequest to be his daughter Joanna. There was fifty
pounds for Mr. Samuel Huxtable of Huxtable, Vidler and Huxtable,
Solicitors, Watchbell Street, Rye, five pounds each for those farm hands
in his employment at the time of his death, with an extra ten pounds to
"Nathan Stuppeny, my carter, on account of his faithful services both to
me and to my father. And I give, devise and bequeath the residue of my
property, comprising the freehold farm of Little Ansdore, in the parish
of Pedlinge, Sussex, with all lands and live and dead stock pertaining
thereto to my daughter Joanna Mary Godden. And I appoint the said Joanna
Mary Godden sole executrix of this my will."
When the reading was over the company remained staring for a minute as
decency required, then the door burst open and a big servant-girl
brought in a tray set with glasses of whisky and water for the men and
spiced wine for the women. These drink-offerings were received with a
subdued hum of conversation--it was impossible to hear what was said or
even to distinguish who was saying it, but a vague buzzing filled the
room, as of imprisoned bees. In the midst of it Ellen's voice rose
suddenly strident.
"Joanna, may I take off my hat now?"
Her sister looked doubtful. The funeral was not ceremonially complete
till Grandfather Vine had done choking over his heel-taps, but Ellen had
undoubtedly endured a good deal with remarkable patience--her virtue
ought in justice to be rewarded. Also Joanna noticed for the first time
that she was looking grotesque as well as uncomfortable, owing perhaps
to the hat being still on hind part before. So the necessary
dispensation was granted, and Ellen further refreshed by a sip of her
sister's wine.
The guests now took their departure, each being given a memorial card of
the deceased, with a fine black edge and the picture of an urn upon it.
Ellen also was given one, at her urgent request, and ran off in
excitement with the treasure. Joanna remained with Mr. Huxtable for a
final interview.
§2
"Well," he said, "I expect you'll want me to help you a bit, Miss
Joanna."
Joanna had sat down again at the end of the table--big, tousled,
over-dressed, alive. Huxtable surveyed her approvingly. "A damn fine
woman," he said to himself, "she'll marry before long."
"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Huxtable," said Joanna, "there's
many a little thing I'd like to talk over with you."
"Well, now's your time, young lady. I shan't have to be home for an hour
or two yet. The first thing is, I suppose, for me to find you a bailiff
for this farm."
"No, thank you kindly. I'll manage that."
"What! Do you know of a man?"
"No--I mean I'll manage the farm."
"You! My dear Miss Joanna ..."
"Well, why not? I've been bred up to it from a child. I used to do
everything with poor father."
As she said the last word her brightness became for a moment dimmed, and
tears swam into her eyes for the first time since she had taken the
ceremonial handkerchief away from them. But the next minute she lighted
up again.
"He showed me a lot--he showed me everything. I could do it much better
than a man who doesn't know our ways."
"But--" the lawyer hesitated, "but it isn't just a question of
knowledge, Miss Joanna; it's a question of--how shall I put it?--well,
of authority. A woman is always at a disadvantage when she has to
command men."
"I'd like to see the man I couldn't make mind me."
Huxtable grinned. "Oh, I've no doubt whatever that you could get
yourself obeyed; but the position--the whole thing--you'd find it a
great strain, and people aren't as a rule particularly helpful to a
woman they see doing what they call a man's job."
"I don't want anyone's help. I know my own business and my poor father's
ways. That's enough for me."
"Did your father ever say anything to you about this?"
"Oh no--he being only fifty-one and never thinking he'd be took for a
long while yet. But I know it's what he'd have wanted, or why did he
trouble to show me everything? And always talked to me about things as
free as he did to Fuller and Stuppeny."
"He would want you to do the best for yourself--he wouldn't want you to
take up a heavy burden just for his sake."
"Oh, it ain't just for his sake, it's for my own. I don't want a strange
man messing around, and Ansdore's mine, and I'm proud of it."
Huxtable rubbed his large nose, from either side of which his sharp eyes
looked disapprovingly at Joanna. He admired her, but she maddened him by
refusing to see the obvious side of her femininity.
"Most young women of your age have other things to think of besides
farming. There's your sister, and then--don't tell me that you won't
soon be thinking of getting married."
"Well, and if I do, it'll be time enough then to settle about the farm.
As for Ellen, I don't see what difference she makes, except that I must
see to things for her sake as well as mine. It wouldn't help her much if
I handed over this place to a man who'd muddle it all up and maybe bring
us to the Auctioneer's. I've known ... I've seen ... they had a bailiff
in at Becket's House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first
season, and got the fluke into their sheep. Why, even Sir Harry Trevor's
taken to managing things himself at North Farthing after the way he saw
they were doing with, that old Lambarde, and what he can do I can do,
seeing I wasn't brought up in a London square."
As Joanna's volubility grew, her voice rose, not shrilly as with most
women, but taking on a warm, hoarse note--her words seemed to be flung
out hot as coals from a fire. Mr. Huxtable grimaced. "She's a virago,"
he thought to himself. He put up his hand suavely to induce silence, but
the eruption went on.
"I know all the men, too. They'd do for me what they wouldn't do for a
stranger. And if they won't, I know how to settle 'em. I've been
bursting with ideas about farming all my life. Poor Father said only a
week before he was taken 'Pity you ain't a man, Joanna, with some of the
notions you've got.' Well, maybe it's a pity and maybe it isn't, but
what I've got to do now is to act up proper and manage what is mine, and
what you and other folks have got to do is not to meddle with me."
"Come, come, my dear young lady, nobody's going to meddle with you. You
surely don't call it 'meddling' for your father's lawyer, an old man
who's known you all your life, to offer you a few words of advice. You
must go your own way, and if it doesn't turn out as satisfactorily as
you expect, you can always change it."
"Reckon I can," said Joanna, "but I shan't have to. Won't you take
another whisky, Mr. Huxtable?"
The lawyer accepted. Joanna Godden's temper might be bad, but her
whisky was good. He wondered if the one would make up for the other to
Arthur Alce or whoever had married her by this time next year.
§3
Mr. Huxtable was not alone in his condemnation of Joanna's choice. The
whole neighbourhood disapproved of it. The joint parishes of Brodnyx and
Pedlinge had made up their minds that Joanna Godden would now be
compelled to marry Arthur Alce and settle down to mind her own business
instead of what was obviously a man's; and here she was, still at large
and her business more a man's than ever.
"She's a mare that's never been präaperly broken in, and she wants a
strong man to do it," said Furnese at the Woolpack. He had repeated this
celebrated remark so often that it had almost acquired the status of a
proverb. For three nights Joanna had been the chief topic of
conversation in the Woolpack bar. 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.
"Three times he's asked her, as I know for certain," said Vennal, the
tenant of Beggar's Bush.
"No, it's four," said Prickett, Joanna's neighbour at Great Ansdore,
"there was that time coming back from the Wild Beast Show."
"I was counting that," said Vennal; "that and the one that Mr. Vine's
looker heard at Lydd market, and then that time in the house."
"How do you know he asked her in the house?--that makes five."
"I don't get that--once indoors and twice out, that's three."
"Well, anyways, whether it's three or four or five, he's asked her quite
enough. It's time he had her now."
"He won't get her. She'll fly higher'n him now she's got Ansdore.
She'll be after young Edward Huxtable, or maybe Parson himself, him
having neglected to keep himself married."
"Ha! Ha! It ud be valiant to see her married to liddle Parson--she'd
forget herself and pick him up under her arm, same as she picks up her
sister. But anyways I don't think she'll get much by flying high. It's
all fine enough to talk of her having Ansdore, but whosumdever wants
Ansdore ull have to take Joanna Godden with it, and it isn't every man
who'd care to do that."
"Surelye. She's a mare that's never bin präaperly broken in. D'you
remember the time she came prancing into church with a bustle stuck on
behind, and everyone staring and fidgeting so as pore Mus' Pratt lost
his place in the Prayers and jumped all the way from the Belief to the
Royal Family?"
"And that time as she hit Job Piper over the head wud a bunch of osiers
just because he'd told her he knew more about thatching than she did."
"Surelye, and knocked his hat off into the dyke, and then bought him a
new one, with a lining to it."
"And there was that time when--"
Several more anecdotes to the point were contributed by the various
patrons of the bar, before the conversation, having described a full
circle, returned to its original starting point, and then set off again
with its vitality apparently undiminished. It was more than a week
before the summons of Mr. Gain, of Botolph's Bridge, for driving his gig
without a light ousted Joanna from her central glory in the Woolpack's
discussions.
At Ansdore itself the interest naturally lasted longer. Joanna's
dependents whether in yard or kitchen were resentfully engrossed in the
new conditions.
"So Joanna's going to run our farm for us, is she?" said the head man,
old Stuppeny, "that'll be valiant, wud some of the notions she has.
She'll have our pläace sold up in a twelve-month, surelye. Well, well,
it's time maybe as I went elsewheres--I've bin long enough at this job."
Old Stuppeny had made this remark at intervals for the last sixty
years, indeed ever since the day he had first come as a tow-headed boy
to scare sparrows from the fields of Joanna's grandfather; so no one
gave it the attention that should have been its due. Other people aired
their grievances instead.
"I wöan't stand her meddling wud me and my sheep," said Fuller, the
shepherd.
"It's her sheep, come to that," said Martha Tilden the chicken-girl.
Fuller dealt her a consuming glance out of his eyes, which the long
distances of the marsh had made keen as the sea wind.
"She döan't know nothing about sheep, and I've been a looker after sheep
since times when you and her was in your cradles, so I wöan't täake sass
from neither of you."
"She'll meddle wud you, Martha, just as she'll meddle wud the rest of
us," said Broadhurst, the cowman.
"She's meddled wud me for years--I'm used to it. It's you men what's
going to have your time now. Ha! Ha! I'll be pleased watching it."
Martha's short, brightly-coloured face seemed ready to break in two as
she laughed with her mouth wide open.
"When she's had a terrification wud me and said things as she's sorry
for, she'll give me a gownd of hers or a fine hat. Sometimes I think as
I make more out of her tempers than I do out of my good work what she
pays me wages for."
"Well, if I wur a decent maid I'd be ashamed to wear any of her
outlandish gowns or hats. The colours she chooses! Sometimes when I see
her walking through a field near the lambing time, I'm scared for my
ewes, thinking they'll drop their lambs out of fright. I can't help
being thankful as she's in black now for this season, though maybe I
shudn't ought to say it, seeing as we've lost a good mäaster, and one as
we'll all be tediously regretting in a week or two if we äun't now. You
take my word, Martha--next time she gives you a gownd, you give it back
to her and say as you don't wear such things, being a respectable woman.
It äun't right, starting you like that on bad ways."
§4
There was only one house in the joint parishes where Joanna had any
honourable mention, and that was North Farthing House on the other side
of the Kent Ditch. Here lived Sir Harry Trevor, the second holder of a
title won in banking enterprises, and lately fallen to low estate. The
reason could perhaps be seen on his good-looking face, with its sensual,
humorous mouth, roving eyes, and lurking air of unfulfilled, undefeated
youth. The taverns of the Three Marshes had combined to give him a
sensational past, and further said that his two sons had forced him to
settle at Brodnyx with a view to preserving what was left of his morals
and their inheritance. The elder was in Holy Orders, and belonged to a
small community working in the East End of London; he seldom came to
North Farthing House. The younger, Martin, who had some definite job in
the city, was home for a few days that October. It was to him his father
said:
"I can't help admiring that girl Joanna Godden for her pluck. Old Godden
died suddenly two weeks ago, and now she's given out that she'll run the
farm herself, instead of putting in a bailiff. Of course the neighbours
disapprove, they've got very strict notions round here as to woman's
sphere and all that sort of thing."
"Godden? Which farm's that?"
"Little Ansdore--just across the Ditch, in Pedlinge parish. It's a big
place, and I like her for taking it on."
"And for any other reason?"
"Lord, no! She isn't at all the sort of woman I admire--a great big
strapping wench, the kind this marsh breeds twelve to the acre, like the
sheep. Has it ever struck you, Martin, that the women on Romney Marsh,
in comparison with the women one's used to and likes, are the same as
the Kent sheep in comparison with Southdowns--admirably hardy and suited
to the district and all that, but a bit tough and coarse-flavoured?"
"I see that farming has already enlarged and refined your stock of
similes. I hope you aren't getting tired of it."
"No, not exactly. I'm interested in the place now I manage it without
that dolt Lambarde, and Hythe isn't too far for the phaeton if I want
to See Life. Besides, I haven't quite got over the thrill of not being
in debt and disgrace"--he threw Martin a glance which might have come
from a rebellious son to a censorious father. "But sometimes I wish
there was less Moated Grange about it all. Damn it, I'm always alone
here! Except when you or your reverend brother come down to see how I'm
behaving."
"Why don't you marry again?"
"I don't want to marry. Besides, whom the devil should I marry round
here? There's mighty few people of our own class about, and those there
are seem to have no daughters under forty."
Martin looked at him quizzically.
"Oh yes, you young beast--I know what you're thinking. You're thinking
that forty's just the right age for me. You're reminding me that I'm a
trifle _passé_ myself and ought to marry something sere and yellow. But
I tell you I don't feel any older than twenty-five--never have, it's my
affliction--while you've never been younger than forty in all your life.
It's you who ought to marry middle-age"--and he grimaced at Martin.
§5
Joanna rather enjoyed being the centre of discussion. She had none of
the modest shrinking from being talked about which might have affected
some young women. She was glad when Martha Tilden or another of the
girls brought her any overheard scraps. "Oh, that's what they say, is
it?" and she would laugh a big jolly laugh like a boy's.
So far she had enjoyed being "Mäaster" of Little Ansdore. It meant a lot
of work and a lot of thought and a lot of talking and interference, but
Joanna shrank from none of these things. She was healthy and vigorous
and intelligent, and was, moreover, quite unhampered by any diffidence
about teaching their work to people who had been busy at it before she
was born.
Still it was scarcely more than a fortnight since she had taken on the
government, and time had probably much to show her yet. She had a
moment of depression one morning, rising early as she always must, and
pulling aside the flowered curtain that covered her window. The prospect
was certainly not one to cheer; even in sunshine the horizons of the
marsh were discouraging with their gospel of universal flatness, and
this morning the sun was not yet up, and a pale mist was drifting
through the willows, thick and congealed above the watercourses, thinner
on the grazing lands between them, so that one could see the dim shapes
of the sheep moving through it. Even in clear weather only one other
dwelling was visible from Little Ansdore, and that was its fellow of
Great Ansdore, about half a mile away seawards. The sight of it never
failed to make Joanna contemptuous--for Great Ansdore had but fifty
acres of land compared with the three hundred of its Little neighbour.
Its Greatness was merely a matter of name and tradition, and had only
one material aspect in the presentation to the living of
Brodnyx-with-Pedlinge, which had been with Great Ansdore since the
passing of the monks of Canterbury.
To-day Great Ansdore was only a patch of grey rather denser than its
surroundings, and failed to inspire Joanna with her usual sense of
gloating. Her eyes were almost sad as she stared out at it, her chin
propped on her hands. The window was shut, as every window in every farm
and cottage on the marsh was shut at night, though the ague was now
little more than a name on the lips of grandfathers. Therefore the room
in which two people had slept was rather stuffy, though this in itself
would hardly account for Joanna's heaviness, since it was what she
naturally expected a bedroom to be in the morning. Such vague sorrow was
perplexing and disturbing to her practical emotions; she hurriedly
attributed it to "poor father," and the propriety of the sentiment
allowed her the relief of a few tears.
Turning back into the room she unbuttoned her turkey-red dressing-gown,
preparatory to the business of washing and dressing. Then her eye fell
on Ellen still asleep in her little iron bedstead in the corner, and a
glow of tenderness passed like a lamp over her face. She went across to
where her sister slept, and laid her face for a moment beside hers on
the pillow. Ellen's breath came regularly from parted lips--she looked
adorable cuddled there, with her red cheeks, like an apple in snow.
Joanna, unable to resist the temptation, kissed her and woke her.
"Hullo, Jo--what time is it?" mumbled Ellen sleepily.
"Not time to get up yet. I'm not dressed."
She sat on the edge of the bed, stooping over her sister, and her big
rough plaits dangled in the child's face.
"Hullo, Jo--hullo, old Jo," continued the drowsy murmur.
"Go to sleep, you bad girl," said Joanna, forgetting that she herself
had roused her.
Ellen was not wide enough awake to have any conflicting views on the
subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten
minutes the room was full of small sounds--the splashing of cold water
in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays,
the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while
Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled
bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years
ago--word for word as she had said them when she was five, even to the
"make me a good girl" at the end. Then she jumped up briskly and tore
the sheet off the bed, throwing it with the pillows on the floor, so
that Grace Wickens the servant should have no chance of making the bed
without stripping it, as was the way of her kind.
Grace was not up yet, of course. Joanna hit her door a resounding thump
as she passed it on her way to the kitchen. Here the dead ashes had been
raked out overnight, and the fire laid according to custom. She lit the
fire and put the kettle on to boil; she did not consider it beneath her
to perform these menial offices. She knew that every hand was needed for
the early morning work of a farm. By the time she had finished both
Grace and Martha were in the room, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
"That'll burn up nicely now," said Joanna, surveying the fire. "You'd
better put the fish-kettle on too, in case Broadhurst wants hot water
for a mash. Bring me out a cup of tea as soon as you can get it
ready--I'll be somewhere in the yard."
She put on an old coat of her father's over her black dress, and went
out, her nailed boots clattering on the cobble-stones. The men were
up--they should have been up an hour now--but no sounds of activity came
from the barns. The yard was in stillness, a little mist floating
against the walls, and the pervading greyness of the morning seemed to
be lit up by the huge blotches of yellow lichen that covered the slated
roofs of barns and dwelling--the roofs were all new, having only for a
year or two superseded the old roofs of osier thatch, but that queer
golden rust had almost hidden their substance, covering them as it
covered everything that was left exposed to the salt-thick marsh air.
Joanna stood in the middle of the yard looking keenly round her like a
cat, then like a cat she pounced. The interior of the latest built barn
was dimly lit by a couple of windows under the roof--the light was just
enough to show inside the doorway five motionless figures, seated about
on the root-pile and the root-slicing machine. They were Joanna's five
farm-men, apparently wrapped in a trance, from which her voice
unpleasantly awoke them.
"Here, you--what d'you think you're doing?"
The five figures stiffened with perceptible indignation, but they did
not rise from their sitting posture as their mistress advanced--or
rather swooped--into their midst. Joanna did not expect this. She paid a
man fifteen shillings a week for his labour and made no impossible
demands of his prejudices and private habits.
"I've been up an hour," she said, looking round on them, "and here I
find all of you sitting like a lot of sacks."
"It's two hours since I've bin out o' my warm bed," said old Stuppeny
reproachfully.
"You'd be as much use in it as out, if this is how you spend your time.
No one's been to the pigs yet, and it wants but half an hour to
milking."
"We wur setting around for Grace Wickens to bring us out our tea," said
Broadhurst.
"You thought maybe she wouldn't know her way across the yard if you was
on the other side of it? The tea ain't ready yet--I tell you I haven't
had any. It's a fine sight to see a lot of strong, upstanding men
lolling around waiting for a cup of tea."
The scorn in Joanna's voice was withering, and a resentful grumble
arose, amidst which old Stuppeny's dedication of himself to a new sphere
was hoarsely discernible. However the men scrambled to their feet and
tramped off in various directions; Joanna stopped Fuller, the shepherd,
as he went by.
"You'll be taking the wethers to Lydd this morning?"
"Surelye."
"How many are you taking?"
"Maybe two score."
"You can take the lot. It'll save us their grazing money this winter,
and we can start fattening the tegs in the spring."
"There's but two score wethers fit for market."
"How d'you mean?"
"The others äun't fatted präaperly."
"Nonsense--you know we never give 'em cake or turnips, so what does it
matter?"
"They äun't fit."
"I tell you they'll do well enough. I don't expect to get such prices
for them as for that lot you've kept down in the New Innings, but they
won't fetch much under, for I declare they're good meat. If we keep them
over the winter we'll have to send them inland and pay no end for their
grazing--and then maybe the price of mutton ull go down in the Spring."
"It ud be a fool's job to täake them."
"You say that because you don't want to have to fetch them up from the
Salt Innings. I tell you you're getting lazy, Fuller."
"My old mäaster never called me that."
"Well, you work as well for me as you did for him, and I won't call you
lazy, neither."
She gave him a conciliatory grin, but Fuller had been too deeply wounded
for such easy balm. He turned and walked away, a whole speech written in
the rebellious hunch of his shoulders.
"You'll get them beasts," she called after him.
"Surelye"--came in a protesting drawl. Then "Yup!--Yup!" to the two
sheep dogs couched on the doorstep.
§6
What with supervising the work and herding slackers, getting her
breakfast and packing off Ellen to the little school she went to at Rye,
Joanna found all too soon that the market hour was upon her. It did not
strike her to shirk this part of a farmer's duty--she would drive into
Rye and into Lydd and into Romney as her father had always driven,
inspecting beasts and watching prices. Soon after ten o'clock she ran
upstairs to make herself splendid, as the occasion required.
By this time the morning had lifted itself out of the mist. Great sheets
of blue covered the sky and were mirrored in the dykes--there was a soft
golden glow about the marsh, for the vivid green of the pastures was
filmed over with the brown of the withering seed-grasses, and the big
clumps of trees that protected every dwelling were richly toned to rust
through scales of flame. Already there were signs that the day would be
hot, and Joanna sighed to think that approaching winter had demanded
that her new best black should be made of thick materials. She hated
black, too, and grimaced at her sombre frills, which the mourning brooch
and chain of jet beads could only embellish, never lighten. But she
would as soon have thought of jumping out of the window as of discarding
her mourning a day before the traditions of the Marsh decreed. She
decided not to wear her brooch and chain--the chain might swing and
catch in the beasts' horns as she inspected them, besides her values
demanded that she should be slightly more splendid in church than at
market, so her ornaments were reserved as a crowning decoration, all
except her mourning ring made of a lock of her father's hair.
It was the first time she had been to market since his death, and she
knew that folks would stare, so she might as well give them something to
stare at. Outside the front door, in the drive, old Stuppeny was
holding the head of Foxy, her mare, harnessed to the neat trap that
Thomas Godden had bought early the same year.
"Hullo, Stuppeny--you ain't coming along like that!" and Joanna's eye
swept fiercely up and down his manure-caked trousers.
"I never knew as I wur coming along anywheres, Miss Joanna."
"You're coming along of me to the market. Surely you don't expect a lady
to drive by herself?"
Old Stuppeny muttered something unintelligible.
"You go and put on your black coat," continued Joanna.
"My Sunday coat!" shrieked Stuppeny.
"Yes--quick! I can't wait here all day."
"But I can't put on my good coat wudout cleaning myself, and it'll täake
me the best part o' the marnun to do that."
Joanna saw the reasonableness of his objection.
"Oh, well, you can leave it this once, but another time you remember and
look decent. To-day it'll do if you go into the kitchen and ask Grace to
take a brush to your trousers--and listen here!" she called after him as
he shambled off--"if she's making cocoa you can ask her to give you a
cup."
Grace evidently was making cocoa--a habit she had whenever her
mistress's back was turned--for Stuppeny did not return for nearly a
quarter of an hour. He looked slightly more presentable as he climbed
into the back of the trap. It struck Joanna that she might be able to
get him a suit of livery secondhand.
"There isn't much he's good for on the farm now at his age, so he may as
well be the one to come along of me. Broadhurst or Luck ud look a bit
smarter, but it ud be hard to spare them.... Stuppeny ud look different
in a livery coat with brass buttons.... I'll look around for one if I've
time this afternoon."
It was nearly seven miles from Ansdore to Lydd, passing the Woolpack,
and the ragged gable of Midley Chapel--a reproachful ruin among the
reeds of the Wheelsgate Sewer. Foxy went smartly, but every now and then
they had to slow down as they overtook and passed flocks of sheep and
cattle being herded along the road by drovers and shepherds in dusty
boots, and dogs with red, lolling tongues. It was after midday when the
big elm wood which had been their horizon for the last two miles
suddenly turned, as if by an enchanter's wand, into a fair-sized town of
red roofs and walls, with a great church tower raking above the trees.
Joanna drove straight to the Crown, where Thomas Godden had "put up"
every market day for twenty years. She ordered her dinner--boiled beef
and carrots, and jam roll--and walked into the crowded coffee room,
where farmers from every corner of the three marshes were already at
work with knife and fork. Some of them knew her by sight and stared,
others knew her by acquaintance and greeted her, while Arthur Alce
jumped out of his chair, dropping his knife and sweeping his neighbour's
bread off the table. He was a little shocked and alarmed to see Joanna
the only woman in the room; he suggested that she should have her dinner
in the landlady's parlour--"you'd be quieter like, in there."
"I don't want to be quiet, thank you," said Joanna.
She felt thankful that none of the few empty chairs was next Alce's--she
could never abide his fussing. She sat down between Cobb of Slinches and
a farmer from Snargate way, and opened the conversation pleasantly on
the subject of liver fluke in sheep.
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? Are all you men going to swindle me if you get the
chance?"
Joanna's laugh always had a disintegrating effect on Alce, with its loud
warm tones and its revelation of her pretty teeth--which were so white
and even, except the small pointed canines. When she laughed she opened
her mouth wide and threw back her head on her short white neck. 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."
"But these chaps--I don't like it--maybe, seeing you like this amongst
them, they'll get bold with you."
"Not they! How can you mention such a thing? There was Mr. Cobb and Mr.
Godfrey at dinner, talking to me as respectful as churchwardens, all
about liver fluke and then by way of rot in the oats, passing on natural
and civil to the Isle of Wight disease in potatoes--if you see anything
bold in _that_ ... well then you're an old woman as sure as I ain't."
A repetition of her laugh completed his disruption, and he found himself
there on the steps of the Crown begging her to let him take over her
market day discussions as her husband and deputy.
"Why should you go talking to farmers about Isle of Wight disease and
liver fluke, when you might be talking to their wives about making
puddings and stuffing mattresses and such-like women's subjects."
"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.
Joanna had not even troubled to refuse his proposal--any more than a
mother troubles to give a definite and reasoned refusal to the child who
asks for the moon. Finding him silent, and feeling rather sorry for him,
she suggested that he should come round with her to the shops and carry
some of her parcels.
§7
She went first of all to a firm of house-painters, for she meant to
brighten up Ansdore. She disliked seeing the place with no colour or
ornament save that which the marsh wind gave it of gold and rust. She
would have the eaves and the pipes painted a nice green, such as would
show up well at a distance. There was plenty of money, so why should
everything be drab? Alce discouraged her as well as he was able--it was
the wrong time of year for painting, and the old paint was still quite
good. Joanna treated his objections as she had treated his
proposal--with good-humoured, almost tender, indifference. She let him
make his moan at the house-painter's, then carelessly bore him on to the
furnishers', where she bought brightly-flowered stuff for new curtains.
Then he stood by while at an outfitter's she inspected coats for
Stuppeny, and finally bought one of a fine mulberry colour with brass
buttons all down the front.
She now returned to the market-place, and sought out two farmers from
the Iden district, with whom she made arrangements for the winter keep
of her lambs. Owing to the scanty and salt pastures of winter, it had
always been the custom on the marsh to send the young sheep for grazing
on upland farms, and fetch them back in the spring as tegs. Joanna
disposed of her young flock between Relf of Baron's Grange and Noakes of
Mockbeggar, then, still accompanied by Alce, strolled down to inspect
the wethers she had brought to the market.
On her way she met the farmer of Picknye Bush.
"Good day, Miss Godden--I've just come from buying some tegs of yourn."
"My looker's settled with you, has he?"
"He said he had the power to sell as he thought proper--otherways I was
going to ask for you."
An angry flush drowned the freckles on Joanna's cheek.
"That's Fuller, the obstinate, thick-headed old man...."
Bates's round face fell a little.
"I'm sorry if there's bin any mistäake. After all, I äun't got the
beasts yet--thirty shillings a head is the price he asked and I paid. I
call it a fair price, seeing the time of year and the state of the meat
market But if your looker's bin presuming and you äun't pleased, then I
wöan't call it a deal."
"I'm pleased enough to sell you my beasts, and thirty shillings is a
fairish price. But I won't have Fuller fixing things up over my head
like this, and I'll tell him so. How many of 'em did you buy, Mr.
Bates?"
"I bought the lot--two score."
Joanna made a choking sound. Without another word, she turned and walked
off in the direction of the hurdles where her sheep were penned, Bates
and Alce following her after one disconcerted look at each other. Fuller
stood beside the wethers, his two shaggy dogs couched at his feet--he
started when he suddenly saw his mistress burst through the crowd, her
black feathers nodding above her angry face.
"Fuller!" she shouted, so loud that those who were standing near turned
round to see--"How many wether-tegs have you brought to Lydd?"
"Two score."
"How many did I tell you to bring?"
"The others wurn't fit, surelye."
"But didn't I tell you to bring them?"
"You did, but they wurn't fit."
"I said you were to bring them, no matter if you thought 'em fit or
not."
"They wurn't fit to be sold as meat."
"I tell you they were."
"No one shall say as Tom Fuller döan't bring fit meat to market."
"You're an obstinate old fool. I tell you they were first-class meat."
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.
"I know bad meat from good, surelye," continued Fuller, feeling that
popular sentiment was on his side--"I should ought to, seeing as I wur
your father's looker before you wur your father's daughter."
"You were my father's looker, but after this you shan't be looker of
mine. Since you won't mind what I say or take orders from me, you can
leave my service this day month."
There was a horror-stricken silence in the crowd--even the lowest
journeyman butcher realized the solemnity of the occasion.
"You understand me?" said Joanna.
"Yes, ma'am," came from Fuller in a crushed voice.
§8
By the same evening the news was all over Lydd market, by the next it
was all over the Three Marshes. Everyone was repeating to everyone else
how Joanna Godden of Little Ansdore had got shut of her looker after
twenty-eight years' service, and her father not been dead a month.
"Enough to make him rise out of his grave," said the Marsh.
The actual reasons for the turning away were variously given--"Just
because he spuck up and told her as her pore father wudn't hold wud her
goings on," was the doctrine promulgated by the Woolpack; but the
general council sitting in the bar of the Crown decreed that the trouble
had arisen out of Fuller's spirited refusal to sell some lambs that had
tic. Other pronouncements were that she had sassed Fuller because he
knew more about sheep than she did--or that Fuller had sassed her for
the same reason--that it wasn't Joanna who had dismissed him, but he who
had been regretfully obliged to give notice, owing to her meddling--that
all the hands at Ansdore were leaving on account of her temper.
"He'll never get another pläace agäun, will pore old Fuller--he'll end
in the Union and be an everlasting shame to her."
There was almost a feeling of disappointment when it became known that
Fuller--who was only forty-two, having started his career at an early
age--had been given a most satisfactory job at Arpinge Farm inland, and
something like consternation when it was further said and confirmed by
Fuller himself that Joanna had given him an excellent character.
"She'll never get another looker," became the changed burden of the
Marsh.
But here again prophecy failed, for hardly had Joanna's advertisement
appeared simultaneously in the _Rye Observer_ and the _Kentish Express_
than she had half a dozen applications from likely men. Martha Tilden
brought the news to Godfrey's Stores, the general shop in Brodnyx.
"There she is, setting in her chair, talking to a young chap what's come
from Botolph's Bridge, and there's three more waiting in the
passage--she told Grace to give them each a cup of cocoa when she was
making it. And what d'you think? Their looker's come over from Old
Honeychild, asking for the place, though he was sitting in the Crown at
Lydd only yesterday, as Sam Broadhurst told me, saying as it was a shame
to get shut of Fuller like that, and as how Joanna deserved never to see
another looker again in her life."
"Which of the lot d'you think she'll take?" asked Godfrey.
"I dunno. How should I say? Peter Relf from Old Honeychild is a stout
feller, and one of the other men told me he'd got a character that made
him blush, it was that fine and flowery. But you never know with Joanna
Godden--maybe she'd sooner have a looker as knew nothing, and then she
could teach him. Ha! Ha!"
Meanwhile Joanna sat very erect in her kitchen chair, interviewing the
young chap from Botolph's Bridge.
"You've only got a year's character from Mr. Gain?"
"Yes, missus ..." a long pause during which some mental process took
place clumsily behind this low, sunburnt forehead ... "but I've got
these."
He handed Joanna one or two dirty scraps of paper on which were written
"characters" from earlier employers.
Joanna read them. None was for longer than two years, but they all spoke
well of the young man before her.
"Then you've never been on the Marsh before you came to Botolph's
Bridge?"
"No, missus."
"Sheep on the Marsh is very different from sheep inland."
"I know, missus."
"But you think you're up to the job."
"Yes, missus."
Joanna stared at him critically. He was a fine young fellow--slightly
bowed already though he had given his age as twenty-five, for the earth
begins her work early in a man's frame, and has power over the green
tree as well as the dry. But this stoop did not conceal his height and
strength and breadth, and somehow his bigness, combined with his
simplicity, his slow thought and slow tongue, appealed to Joanna,
stirred something within her that was almost tender. She handed him back
his dirty "characters."
"Well, I must think it over. I've some other men to see, but I'll write
you a line to Botolph's Bridge and tell you how I fix. You go now and
ask Grace Wickens, my gal, to give you a cup of hot cocoa."
Young Socknersh went, stooping his shock-head still lower as he passed
under the worn oak lintel of the kitchen door. Joanna interviewed the
shepherd from Honeychild, a man from Slinches, another from Anvil Green
inland, and one from Chilleye, on Pevensey marsh beyond Marlingate. She
settled with none, but told each that she would write. She spent the
evening thinking them over.
No doubt Peter Relf from Honeychild was the best man--the oldest and
most experienced--but on the other hand he wanted the most money, and
probably also his own way. After the disastrous precedent of Fuller,
Joanna wasn't going to have another looker who thought he knew better
than she did. Now, Dick Socknersh, he would mind her properly, she felt
sure.... Day from Slinches had the longest "character"--fifteen years
man and boy; but that would only mean that he was set in their ways and
wouldn't take to hers--she wasn't going to start fattening her sheep
with turnips, coarsening the meat, not to please anyone.... Now,
Socknersh, having never been longer than two years in a place wouldn't
have got fixed in any bad habits.... As for Jenkins and Taylor, they
weren't any good--just common Southdown men--she might as well write off
to them at once. Her choice lay between Relf and Day and Socknersh. She
knew that she meant to have Socknersh--he was not the best shepherd, but
she liked him the best, and he would mind her properly and take to her
ways ... for a moment he seemed to stand before her, with his head
stooping among the rafters, his great shoulders shutting out the window,
his curious, brown, childlike eyes fixed upon her face. Day was a
scrubby little fellow, and Relf had warts all over his hands.... But she
wasn't choosing Socknersh for his looks; she was choosing him because he
would work for her the best, not being set up with "notions." Of course
she liked him the best, too, but it would be more satisfactory from
every practical point of view to work with a man she liked than with a
man she did not like--Joanna liked a man to look a man, and she did not
mind if he was a bit of a child too.... Yes, she would engage Socknersh;
his "characters," though short, were most satisfactory--he was "good
with sheep and lambs," she could remember--"hard-working"--"patient"....
She wrote to Botolph's Bridge that evening, and engaged him to come to
her at the end of the week.
§9
Nothing happened to make her regret her choice. Socknersh proved, as she
had expected, a humble, hard-working creature, who never disputed her
orders, indeed who sometimes turned to her for direction and advice.
Stimulated by his deference, she became even more of an oracle than she
had hitherto professed. She looked up "The Sheep" in her father's
"Farmer's Encyclopædia" of the year 1861, and also read one or two more
books upon his shelves. From these she discovered that there was more in
sheep breeding than was covered by the lore of the Three Marshes, and
her mind began to plunge adventurously among Southdowns and Leicesters,
Black-faced, Blue-faced, and Cumberland sheep. She saw Ansdore famous as
a great sheep-breeding centre, with many thousands of pounds coming
annually to its mistress from meat and wool.
She confided some of these ideas to Arthur Alce and a few neighbouring
farmers. One and all discouraged her, and she told herself angrily that
the yeomen were jealous--as for Alce, it was just his usual silliness.
She found that she had a more appreciative listener in Dick Socknersh.
He received all her plans with deep respect, and sometimes an admiring
"Surelye, missus," would come from his lips that parted more readily for
food than for speech. Joanna found that she enjoyed seeking him out in
the barn, or turning off the road to where he stood leaning on his crook
with his dog against his legs.
"You'd never believe the lot there is in sheep-keeping, Socknersh; and
the wonders you can do if you have knowledge and information. Now the
folks around here, they're middling sensible, but they ain't what you'd
call clever. They're stuck in their ways, as you might say. Now if you
open your mind properly, you can learn a lot of things out of books. My
poor father had some wonderful books upon his shelves, that are mine to
read now, and you'd be surprised at the lot I've learned out of 'em,
even though I've been sheep-raising all my life."
"Surelye, missus."
"Now I'll tell you something about sheep-raising that has never been
done here, all the hundreds of years there's been sheep on the Marsh.
And that's the proper crossing of sheep. My book tells me that there's
been useful new breeds started that way and lots of money made. Now,
would you believe it, they've never tried crossing down here on the
Marsh, except just once or twice with Southdowns?--And that's silly,
seeing as the Southdown is a smaller sheep than ours, and I don't see
any sense in bringing down our fine big sheep that can stand all waters
and weathers. If I was to cross 'em, I'd sooner cross 'em with rams
bigger than themselves. I know they say that small joints of mutton are
all the style nowadays, but I like a fine big animal--besides, think of
the fleeces."
Socknersh apparently thought of them so profoundly that he was choked of
utterance, but Joanna could tell that he was going to speak by the
restless moving of his eyes under their strangely long dark lashes, and
by the little husky sounds he made in his throat. She stood watching him
with a smile on her face.
"Well, Socknersh--you were going to say ..."
"I wur going to say, missus, as my mäaster up at Garlinge Green, whur I
wur afore I took to the Marsh at Botolph's Bridge--my mäaster, Mus'
Pebsham, had a valiant set of Spanish ship, as big as liddle cattle; you
shud ought to have seen them."
"Did he do any crossing with 'em?"
"No, missus--leastways not whiles I wur up at the Green."
Joanna stared through the thick red sunset to the horizon. Marvellous
plans were forming in her head--part, they seemed, of the fiery shapes
that the clouds had raised in the west beyond Rye hill. Those clouds
walked forth as flocks of sheep--huge sheep under mountainous fleeces,
the wonder of the Marsh and the glory of Ansdore....
"Socknersh ..."
"Yes, missus."
She hesitated whether she should share with him her new inspiration. It
would be good to hear him say "Surelye, missus" in that admiring, husky
voice. He was the only one of her farm-hands who, she felt, had any
deference towards her--any real loyalty, though he was the last come.
"Socknersh, d'you think your master up at Garlinge would let me hire one
or two rams to cross with my ewes?--I might go up and have a look at
them. I don't know as I've ever seen a Spanish sheep.... Garlinge is up
by Court-at-Street, ain't it?"
"Yes, missus. 'Tis an unaccountable way from here."
"I'd write first. What d'you think of the notion, Socknersh? Don't you
think that a cross between a Spanish sheep and a Kent sheep ud be an
uncommon fine animal?"
"Surelye, missus."
That night Joanna dreamed that giant sheep as big as bullocks were being
herded on the Marsh by a giant shepherd.
§10
Spring brought a blooming to Ansdore as well as to the Marsh. Joanna had
postponed, after all, her house-painting till the winter months of
rotting sea mists were over. But in April the ladders striped her
house-front, and soon her windows and doors began to start luridly out
of their surroundings of mellowed tiles and brick. After much
deliberation she had chosen yellow for her colour, tastefully picked out
with green. She had always been partial to yellow--it was a colour that
"showed up" well, and she was also influenced by the fact that there was
no other yellow-piped dwelling on the Marsh.
Her neighbours disapproved of her choice for the same reasons that had
induced her to make it. They were shocked by the fact that you could see
her front door from half a mile off on the Brodnyx Road; it was just
like Joanna Godden to choose a colour that shrieked across the landscape
instead of merging itself unobtrusively into it. But there was a still
worse shock in store for public opinion, and that was when she decided
to repaint her waggons as well as her house.
Hitherto there had been only one shape and colour of waggon on the
Marsh--a plain low-sided trough of deep sea-blue. The name was always
painted in white on a small black wooden square attached to the side.
Thomas Godden's waggons had been no departure from this rule. It was
left to his daughter to flout tradition, and by some obscure process of
local reasoning, bring discredit to her dead father by painting her
waggons yellow instead of blue. The evil went deeper than mere colour.
Joanna was a travelled woman, having once been to the Isle of Wight, and
it suddenly struck her that, since she was repainting, she might give
her three waggons the high gondola-shaped fronts that she had admired in
the neighbourhood of Shanklin and Ventnor. These she further beautified
with a rich, scrolled design, and her name in large, ornate
lettering--"Joanna Godden. Little Ansdore. Walland Marsh"--so that her
waggons went forth upon the roads very much as the old men o' war of
King Edward's fleet had sailed over that same country when it was
fathoms deep under the seas of Rye Bay.... With their towering,
decorated poops they were more like mad galleys of a bygone age than
sober waggons of a nineteenth century farm.
Her improvements gave her a sense of adventurous satisfaction--her house
with its yellow window frames and doors, with its new curtains of
swaggering design--her high-pooped waggons--the coat with the brass
buttons that old Stuppeny wore when he drove behind her to market--her
dreams of giant sheep upon her innings--all appealed to something
fundamental in her which was big and boastful. She even liked the gossip
with which she was surrounded, the looks that were turned upon her when
she drove into Rye or Lydd or New Romney--the "there goes Joanna Godden"
of folk she passed. She had no acute sense of their disapproval; if she
became aware of it she would only repeat to herself that she would "show
'em the style"--which she certainly did.
§11
Arthur Alce was very much upset by the gossip about Joanna.
"All you've done since you started running Ansdore is to get yourself
talked about," he said sadly.
"Well, I don't mind that."
"No, but you should ought to. A woman should ought to be modest and
timid and not paint her house so's it shows up five mile off--first your
house, and then your waggons--it'll be your face next."
"Arthur Alce, you're very rude, and till you learn to be civil you can
keep out of my house--the same as you can see five mile off."
Alce, who really felt bitter and miserable, took her at her word and
kept away for nearly a fortnight. Joanna was not sorry, for he had been
highly disapproving on the matter of the Spanish sheep, and she was
anxious to carry out her plan in his absence. A letter to Garlinge Green
had revealed the fact that Socknersh's late master had removed to a farm
near Northampton; he still bred Spanish sheep, but the risk of Joanna's
venture was increased by the high price she would have to pay for
railway transport as well as in fees. However, once she had set her
heart on anything, she would let nothing stand in her way. Socknersh was
inclined to be aghast at all the money the affair would cost, but Joanna
soon talked him into an agreeable "Surelye."
"We'll get it all back," she told him. "Our lambs ull be the biggest at
market, and ull fetch the biggest prices too."
It pleased Joanna to talk of Socknersh and herself as "we," though she
would bitterly have resented any idea of joint responsibility in the
days of Fuller. The rites of lambing and shearing had not dimmed her
faith in the high priest she had chosen for Ansdore's most sacred
mysteries. Socknersh was a man who was automatically "good with sheep."
The scared and trembling ewes seemed to see in him a kind of affinity
with themselves, and lay still under his big, brown, quiet hands. He had
not much "head," but he had that queer inward kinship with animals which
is sometimes found in intensely simple natures, and Joanna felt equal to
managing the "head" part of the business for both. It pleased her to
think that the looker--who is always the principal man on a farm such as
Ansdore, where sheep-rearing is the main business--deferred to her
openly, before the other hands, spoke to her with drawling respect, and
for ever followed her with his humble eyes.
She liked to feel those eyes upon her. All his strength and bigness, all
his manhood, huge and unaware, seemed to lie deep in them like a monster
coiled up under the sea. When he looked at her he seemed to lose that
heavy dumbness, that inarticulate stupidity which occasionally stirred
and vexed even her good disposition; his mouth might still be shut, but
his eyes were fluent--they told her not only of his manhood but of her
womanhood besides.
Socknersh lived alone in the looker's cottage which had always belonged
to Ansdore. It stood away on the Kent Innings, on the very brink of the
Ditch, which here gave a great loop, to allow a peninsula of Sussex to
claim its rights against the Kentish monks. It was a lonely little
cottage, all rusted over with lichen, and sometimes Joanna felt sorry
for Socknersh away there by himself beside the Ditch. She sent him over
a flock mattress and a woollen blanket, in case the old ague-spectre of
the Marsh still haunted that desolate corner of water and reeds.
§12
Towards the end of that autumn, Joanna and Ellen Godden came out of
their mourning. As was usual on such occasions, they chose a Sunday for
their first appearance in colours. Half mourning was not worn on the
Marsh, so there was no interval of grey and violet between Joanna's
hearse-like costume of crape and nodding feathers and the tan-coloured
gown in which she astonished the twin parishes of Brodnyx and Pedlinge
on the first Sunday in November. Her hat was of sage green and contained
a bird unknown to natural history. From her ears swung huge jade
earrings, in succession to the jet ones that had dangled against her
neck on Sundays for a year--she must have bought them, for everyone knew
that her mother, Mary Godden, had left but one pair.
Altogether the sight of Joanna was so breathless, that a great many
people never noticed Ellen, or at best only saw her hat as it went past
the tops of their pews. Joanna realized this, and being anxious that no
one should miss the sight of Ellen's new magenta pelisse with facings of
silver braid, she made her stand on the seat while the psalms were sung.
The morning service was in Brodnyx church--in the evening it would be at
Pedlinge. Brodnyx had so far escaped the restorer, and the pews were
huge wooden boxes, sometimes fitted with a table in the middle, while
Sir Harry Trevor's, which he never occupied, except when his sons were
at home, was further provided with a stove--all the heating there was in
the three aisles. There was also a two-decker pulpit at the east end and
over the dim little altar hung an escutcheon of Royal George--the lion
and the unicorn fighting for the crown amid much scroll-work.
Like most churches on the Marsh it was much too big for its parish, and
if the entire population of Brodnyx and Pedlinge had flocked into it,
it would not have been full. This made Joanna and Ellen all the more
conspicuous--they were alone in their great horse-box of a pew, except
for many prayer books and hassocks--There were as many hassocks in
Brodnyx church as there were sheep on the Brodnyx innings. Joanna, as
usual, behaved very devoutly, and did not look about her. She had an
immense respect for the Church, and always followed the service word for
word in her huge calf-bound prayer book, expecting Ellen to do the
same--an expectation which involved an immense amount of scuffling and
angry whispering in their pew.
However, though her eyes were on her book, she was proudly conscious
that everyone else's eyes were on her. Even the rector must have seen
her--as indeed from his elevated position on the bottom deck of the
pulpit he could scarcely help doing--and his distraction was marked by
occasional stutters and the intrusion of an evening Collect. He was a
nervous, deprecating little man, terribly scared of his flock, and
ruefully conscious of his own shortcomings and the shortcomings of his
church. Visiting priests had told him that Brodnyx church was a
disgrace, with its false stresses of pew and pulpit and the lion and the
unicorn dancing above the throne of the King of kings. They said he
ought to have it restored. They did not trouble about where the money
was to come from, but Mr. Pratt knew he could not get it out of his
congregation, who did not like to have things changed from the manner of
their fathers--indeed there had been complaints when he had dislodged
the owls that had nested under the gallery from an immemorial rector's
day.
The service came to an end with the singing of a hymn to an
accompaniment of grunts and wheezes from an ancient harmonium and the
dropping of pennies and threepenny bits into a wooden plate. Then the
congregation hurried out to the civilities of the churchyard.
From outside, Brodnyx Church looked still more Georgian and abandoned.
Its three aisles were without ornament or architecture; there was no
tower, but beside it stood a peculiar and unexplained erection, shaped
like a pagoda, in three tiers of black and battered tar-boarding. It
had a slight cant towards the church, and suggested nothing so much as a
disreputable Victorian widow, in tippet, mantle and crinoline, seeking
the support of a stone wall after a carouse.
In the churchyard, among the graves, the congregation assembled and
talked of or to Joanna. It was noticeable that the women judged her more
kindly than the men.
"She can't help her taste," said Mrs. Vine, "and she's a kind-hearted
thing."
"If you ask me," said Mrs. Prickett, "her taste ain't so bad, if only
she'd have things a bit quieter. But she's like a child with her yallers
and greens."
"She's more like an organist's monkey," said her husband. "What ud I do
if I ever saw you tricked out like that, Mrs. Prickett?"
"Oh, I'd never wear such clothes, master, as you know well. But then I'm
a different looking sort of woman. I wouldn't go so far as to say them
bright colours don't suit Joanna Godden."
"I never thought much of her looks."
"Nor of her looker--he! he!" joined in Furnese with a glance in Joanna's
direction.
She was talking to Dick Socknersh, who had been to church with the other
hands that could be spared from the farm. She asked him if he had liked
the sermon, and then told him to get off home quickly and give the tegs
their swill.
"Reckon he don't know a teg from a tup," said Furnese.
"Oh, surelye, Mr. Furnese, he äun't a bad looker. Jim Harmer said he wur
just about wonderful with the ewes at the shearing."
"Maybe--but he'd three sway-backed lambs at Rye market on Thursday."
"Sway-backs!"
"Three. 'Twas a shame."
"But Joanna told me he was such a fine, wonderful man with the sheep--as
he got 'em to market about half as tired and twice as quick as Fuller
used to in his day."
"Ah, but then she's unaccountable set on young Socknersh. He lets her
do what she likes with her sheep, and he's a stout figure of a man, too.
Joanna Godden always was partial to stout-looking men."
"But she'd never be such a fool as to git sweet on her looker."
"Well, that's wot they're saying at the Woolpack."
"The Woolpack! Did you ever hear of such a talk-hole as you men get into
when you're away from us! They say some unaccountable fine things at the
Woolpack. I tell you, Joanna ain't such a fool as to get sweet on Dick
Socknersh."
"She's been fool enough to cross Spanish sheep with her own. Three rams
she had sent all the way from furrin parts by Northampton. I tell you,
after that, she'd be fool enough for anything."
"Maybe she'll do well by it."
"Maybe she'll do well by marrying Dick Socknersh. I tell you, you döan't
know näun about it, missus. Whosumdever heard of such an outlandish,
heathen, foolish notion?"
On the whole Joanna was delighted with the success of her appearance.
She walked home with Mrs. Southland and Maggie Furnese, bridling a
little under their glances, while she discussed servants, and
food-prices, and a new way of pickling eggs.
She parted from them at Ansdore, and she and Ellen went in to their
Sunday's dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. After this the day
would proceed according to the well-laid ceremonial that Joanna loved.
Little Ellen, with a pinafore tied over her Sabbath splendours, would go
into the kitchen to sit with the maids--get into their laps, turn over
their picture Bibles, examine their one or two trinkets and strings of
beads which they always brought into the kitchen on Sunday. Meanwhile
Joanna would sit in state in the parlour, her feet on a footstool, on
her lap a volume of Spurgeon's sermons. In the old days it had always
been her father who read sermons, but now he was dead she had taken over
this part of his duties with the rest, and if the afternoon generally
ended in sleep, sleep was a necessary part of a well-kept Sabbath day.
§13
When Christmas came that year, Joanna was inspired to celebrate it with
a party. The Christmas before she had been in mourning, but in her
father's day it had been usual to invite a few respectable farmers to a
respectable revel, beginning with high tea, then proceeding through
whist to a hot supper. Joanna would have failed in her duty to "poor
father" if she had not maintained this custom, and she would have failed
in consistency with herself if she had not improved upon it--embellished
it with one or two ornate touches, which lifted it out of its prosaic
rut of similarity to a dozen entertainments given at a dozen farms, and
made it a rather wonderful and terrible occasion to most dwellers on the
Marsh.
To begin with, the invitations were not delivered, according to custom,
verbally in the churchyard after Morning Prayer on Sunday--they were
written on cards, as Mrs. Saville of Dungemarsh Court wrote them, and
distributed through the unwonted and expensive medium of the post. When
their recipients had done exclaiming over the waste of a penny stamp,
they were further astonished to see the word "Music" written in the
corner--Joanna had stuck very closely to her Dungemarsh Court model.
What could the music be? Was the Brodnyx Brass Band going to play? Or
had Joanna hired Miss Patty Southland, who gave music lessons on the
Marsh?
She had done neither of these things. When her visitors assembled,
stuffed into her two parlours, while the eatables were spread in a
kitchen metamorphosed with decorations of crinkled paper, they found,
buttressed into a corner by the freshly tuned piano, the Rye Quartet,
consisting of the piano-tuner himself, his wife, who played the 'cello,
and his two daughters with fiddles and white piqué frocks. At first the
music was rather an embarrassment, for while it played eating and
conversation were alike suspended, and the guests stood with open mouths
and cooling cups of tea till Mr. Plummer's final chords released their
tongues and filled their mouths with awkward simultaneousness. However,
after a time the general awe abated, and soon the Rye Quartet was
swamped in a terrific noise of tongues and mastication.
Everyone was staring at Joanna's dress, for it was Low--quite four
inches of her skin must have shown between its top most frill and the
base of her sturdy throat. The sleeves stopped short at the elbow,
showing a very soft, white forearm, in contrast with brown, roughened
hands. Altogether it was a daring display, and one or two of the Miss
Vines and Southlands and Furneses wondered "how Joanna could do it."
Proudly conscious of the eyes fixed upon her, she moved--or rather, it
must be confessed, squeezed--about among her guests. She had put on new
manners with her new clothes, and was full of a rather mincing civility.
"Pray, Mrs. Cobb, may I get you another cup of tea?"--"Just one more
piece of cake, Mr. Alce?"--"Oh, please, Miss Prickett--just a leetle bit
of ham."
Ellen followed her sister about, pulling at her skirt. She was dressed
in white, and her hair was crimped, and tied with pink ribbons. At eight
o'clock she was ordered up to bed and there was a great uproar, before,
striking out in all directions, she was carried upstairs under Joanna's
stalwart arm. The Rye Quartet tactfully started playing to drown her
screams, which continued for some time in the room overhead.
The party did not break up till eleven, having spent five hours standing
squeezed like herrings under the Ansdore beams, eating and drinking and
talking, to the strains of "The Blue Danube" and "See Me Dance the
Polka." Local opinion was a little bewildered by the entertainment--it
had been splendid, no doubt, and high-class to an overwhelming degree,
but it had been distinctly uncomfortable, even tiresome, and a great
many people were upset by eating too much, since the refreshments had
been served untiringly from six to eleven, while others had not had
enough, being nervous of eating their food so far from a table, and
clinging throughout the evening to their first helpings.
To Joanna, however, the evening was an uncriticized success, and she was
inspired to repeat it on a humbler scale for the benefit of her
servants. She knew that at big houses there was often a servants' ball
at Christmas, and though she had at present no definite ambition to push
herself into the Manor Class, she was anxious that Ansdore should have
every pomp and that things should be "done proper." The mere solid
comfort of prosperity was not enough for her--she wanted the glitter and
glamour of it as well, she wanted her neighbours not only to realize it
but to exclaim about it.
Thus inspired she asked Prickett, Vine, Furnese and other yeomen and
tenants of the Marsh to send their hands, men and maids, to Ansdore, for
dancing and supper on New Year's Eve. She found this celebration even
more thrilling than the earlier one. Somehow these humbler preparations
filled more of her time and thought than when she had prepared to
entertain her peers. She would not wear her low dress, of course, but
she would have her pink one "done up"--a fall of lace and some beads
sewn on, for she must look her best. She saw herself opening the ball
with Dick Socknersh, her hand in his, his clumsy arm round her waist....
Of course old Stuppeny was technically the head man at Ansdore, but he
was too old to dance--she would see he had plenty to eat and drink
instead--she would take the floor with Dick Socknersh, and all eyes
would be fixed upon her.
They certainly were, except when they dropped for a wink at a neighbour.
Joanna waltzing with Socknersh to the trills of Mr. Elphick, the Brodnyx
schoolmaster, seated at the tinkling, ancient Collard, Joanna in her
pink gown, close fitting to her waist and then abnormally bunchy, with
her hair piled high and twisted with a strand of ribbon, with her face
flushed, her lips parted and her eyes bright, was a sight from which no
man and few women could turn their eyes. Her vitality and happiness
seemed to shine from her skin, almost to light up the dark and heavy
figure of Socknersh in his Sunday blacks, as he staggered and stumbled,
for he could not dance. His big hand pawed at her silken waist, while
the other held hers crumpled in it--his hair was greased with butter,
and his skin with the sweat of his endeavour as he turned her round.
That was the only time Joanna danced that night. For the rest of the
evening she went about among her guests, seeing that all were well fed
and had partners. As time went on, gradually her brightness dimmed, and
her eyes became almost anxious as she searched among the dancers. Each
time she looked she seemed to see the same thing, and each time she saw
it, it was as if a fresh veil dropped over her eyes.
At last, towards the end of the evening, she went up again to Socknersh.
"Would you like me to dance this polka with you that's coming?"
"Thank you, missus--I'd be honoured, missus--but I'm promised to Martha
Tilden."
"Martha!--You've danced with her nearly all the evening."
"She's bin middling kind to me, missus, showing me the steps and hops."
"Oh, well, since you've promised you must pay."
She turned her back on him, then suddenly smarted at her own
pettishness.
"You've the makings of a good dancer in you, if you'll learn," she said
over her shoulder. "I'm glad Martha's teaching you."
§14
Lambing was always late upon the Marsh. The wan film of the winter
grasses had faded off the April green before the innings became noisy
with bleating, and the new-born lambs could match their whiteness with
the first flowering of the blackthorn.
It was always an anxious time--though the Marsh ewes were hardy--and
sleepless for shepherds, who from the windows of their lonely lambing
huts watched the yellow spring-dazzle of the stars grow pale night after
night. They were bad hours to be awake, those hours of the April dawn,
for in them, the shepherds said, a strange call came down from the
country inland, straying scents of moss and primroses reaching out
towards the salt sea, calling men away from the wind-stung levels and
the tides and watercourses, to where the little inland farms sleep in
the sheltered hollows among the hop-bines, and the sunrise is warm with
the scent of hidden flowers.
Dick Socknersh began to look wan and large-eyed under the strain--he
looked more haggard than the shepherd of Yokes Court or the shepherd of
Birdskitchen, though they kept fast and vigil as long as he. His
mistress, too, had a fagged, sorrowful air, and soon it became known all
over the Three Marshes that Ansdore's lambing that year had been a
gigantic failure.
"It's her own fault," said Prickett at the Woolpack, "and serve her
right for getting shut of old Fuller, and then getting stuck on this
furrin heathen notion of Spanish sheep. Anyone could have told her as
the lambs ud be too big and the ewes could never drop them safe--she
might have known it herself, surelye."
"It's her looker that should ought to have known better," said Furnese.
"Joanna Godden's a woman, fur all her man's ways, and you can't expéct
her to have präaper know wud sheep."
"I wonder if she'll get shut of him after this," said Vine.
"Not she! She don't see through him yet."
"She'll never see through him," said Prickett solemnly. "The only kind
of man a woman ever sees through is the kind she don't like to look at."
Joanna certainly did not "see through" Dick Socknersh. She knew that she
was chiefly to blame for the tragedy of her lambing, and when her reason
told her that her looker should have discouraged instead of obeyed and
abetted her, she rather angrily tossed the thought aside. Socknersh had
the sense to realize that she knew more about sheep than he, and he had
not understood that in this matter she was walking out of her knowledge
into experiment. No one could have known that the scheme would turn out
so badly--the Spanish rams had not been so big after all, only a little
bigger than her ewes ... if anyone should have foreseen trouble it was
the Northampton farmer who knew the size of Spanish lambs at birth, and
from his Kentish experience must also have some knowledge of Romney
Marsh sheep.
But though she succeeded in getting all the guilt off her looker and
some of it off herself, she was nevertheless stricken by the greatness
of the tragedy. It was not only the financial losses in which she was
involved, or the derision of her neighbours, or the fulfilment of their
prophecy--or even the fall of her own pride and the shattering of that
dream in which the giant sheep walked--there was also an element of
almost savage pity for the animals whom her daring had betrayed. Those
dead ewes, too stupid to mate themselves profitably and now the victims
of the farm-socialism that had experimented with them.... At first she
ordered Socknersh to save the ewes even at the cost of the lambs, then
when in the little looker's hut she saw a ewe despairingly lick the
fleece of its dead lamb, an even deeper grief and pity smote her, and
she burst suddenly and stormily into tears.
Sinking on her knees on the dirty floor, she covered her face, and
rocked herself to and fro. Socknersh sat on his three-legged stool,
staring at her in silence. His forehead crumpled slightly and his mouth
twitched, as the slow processes of his thought shook him. The air was
thick with the fumes of his brazier, from which an angry red glow fell
on Joanna as she knelt and wept.
§15
When the first sharpness of death had passed from Ansdore, Joanna's
sanguine nature, her hopeful bumptiousness, revived. Her pity for the
dead lambs and her fellow-feeling of compassion for the ewes would
prevent her ever dreaming of a new experiment, but already she was
dreaming of a partial justification of the old one--her cross-bred lambs
would grow so big both in size and price that they would, even in their
diminished numbers pay for her daring and proclaim its success to those
who jeered and doubted.
Certainly those lambs which had survived their birth now promised well.
They were bigger than the purebred Kent lambs, and seemed hardy enough.
Joanna watched them grow, and broke away from Marsh tradition to the
extent of giving them cake--she was afraid they might turn bony.
As the summer advanced she pointed them out triumphantly to one or two
farmers. They were fine animals, she said, and justified her experiment,
though she would never repeat it on account of the cost; she did not
expect to do more than cover her expenses.
"You'll be lucky if you do that," said Prickett rather brutally, "they
look middling poor in wool."
Joanna was not discouraged, nor even offended, for she interpreted all
Prickett's remarks in the light of Great Ansdore's jealousy of Little
Ansdore.
Later on Martha Tilden told her that they were saying much the same at
the Woolpack.
"I don't care what they say at the Woolpack," cried Joanna, "and what
business have you to know what they say there? I don't like my gals
hanging around pubs."
"I didn't hang aräound, ma'am. 'Twas Socknersh töald me."
"Socknersh had no business to tell you--it's no concern of yours."
Martha put her hand over her mouth to hide a grin, but Joanna could see
it in her eyes and the dimples of her cheeks.
A sudden anger seized her.
"I won't have you gossiping with Socknersh, neither--you keep away from
my men. I've often wondered why the place looks in proper need of
scrubbing, and now I know. You can do your work or you can pack off. I
won't have you fooling around with my men."
"I döan't fool aräound wud your men," cried Martha indignantly. She was
going to add "I leave that to you," but she thought better of it,
because for several reasons she wanted to keep her place.
Joanna flounced off, and went to find Socknersh at the shearing. In the
shelter of some hurdles he and one or two travelling shearers were busy
with the ewes' fleeces. She noticed that the animal Socknersh was
working on lay quiet between his feet, while the other men held theirs
with difficulty and many struggles. The July sunshine seemed to hold the
scene as it held the Marsh in a steep of shining stillness. The silence
was broken by many small sounds--the clip of the shears, the panting of
the waiting sheep and of the dogs that guarded them, and every now and
then the sudden scraping scuttle of the released victim as it sprang up
from the shearer's feet and dashed off to where the shorn sheep huddled
naked and ashamed together. 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.
"Seemingly," continued Joanna, "everyone on this farm hears everything
before I do, and it ain't right. Next time you hear a lot of tedious
gossip, Dick Socknersh, you come and tell me, and don't waste it on the
gals, making them idle."
She went away, her eyes bright with anger, and then suddenly her heart
smote her. Suppose Socknersh took offence and gave notice. She had
rebuked him publicly before the hired shearers--it was enough to make
any man turn. But what should she do if he went?--He must not go. She
would never get anyone like him. She almost turned and went back, but
had enough sense to stop--a public apology would only make a worse
scandal of a public rebuke. 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....
"Good sakes! Whatever's the matter with me?" thought Joanna.
§16
Her apology took the discreet form of a side of bacon, and Socknersh did
not give notice--had evidently never thought of it. Of course the
shearers spread the story of Joanna's outburst when they went on to
Slinches and Birdskitchen and other farms, but no one was surprised that
the shepherd stayed on.
"He'd never be such a fool as to give up being looker a day before she
makes him master," said Cobb of Slinches.
"And when he's master," said Mrs. Cobb, "he'll get his own back for her
sassing him before Harmer and his men."
A few weeks later Socknersh brought the first of the cross-bred lambs to
market at Rye, and Joanna's wonderful sheep-breeding scheme was finally
sealed a failure. The lambs were not only poor in wool, but coarse in
meat, and the butchers would not deal, small mutton being the fashion.
Altogether they fetched lower prices than the Kent lambs, and the rumour
of Ansdore's losses mounted to over four hundred pounds.
Rumour was not very wide of the fact--what with hiring fees, railway
expenses, the loss of ewes and lambs at the lambing, and the extra diet
and care which panic had undertaken for the survivors, the venture had
put about two hundred and sixty pounds on the debit side of Joanna's
accounts. She was able to meet her losses--her father had died with a
comfortable balance in Lewes Old Bank, and she had always paid ready
money, so was without any encumbrance of debt--but Ansdore was bound to
feel the blow, which had shorn it of its fleece of pleasant profits.
Joanna was for the first time confronted by the need for economy, and
she hated economy with all the lavish, colour-loving powers of her
nature. Even now she would not bend herself to retrenchment--not a man
less in the yard, not a girl less in the kitchen, as her neighbours had
expected.
But the failure of the cross-bred lambs did not end the tale of
Ansdore's misadventures. There was a lot of dipping for sheep-scab on
the Marsh that August, and it soon became known that several of Joanna
Godden's sheep and lambs had died after the second dip.
"That's her valiant Socknersh again," said Prickett--"guv 'em a double
arsenic dip. Good sakes! That woman had better be quick and marry him
before he does any more harm as her looker."
"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.
"I shouldn't say it, Joanna, if it wasn't true, but a man who puts a
sheep into poison-wash twice in a fortnight isn't fit to be anyone's
looker."
"But we were dipping for sheep-scab--that takes something stronger than
Keatings."
"Yes, but the point is, d'you see, that you give 'em the first dip in
arsenic stuff, and the next shouldn't ought to be poison at all--there's
a lot of good safe dips on the market, that ull do very well for a
second wash."
"Socknersh knows his business."
"He don't--that's why I'm speaking. Fuller ud never have done what he's
done. He's lost you a dozen prime sheep on the top of all your other
losses."
The reference was unfortunate. Joanna's cheekbones darkened ominously.
"It's all very well for you to talk, Arthur Alce, for you think no one
can run Ansdore except yourself who'll never get the chance. It's well
known around, in spite of what you say, that Socknersh is valiant with
sheep--no one can handle 'em as he can; at the shearing Harmer and his
men were full of it--how the ewes ud keep quiet for him as for nobody
else--and 'twas the same at the lambing. It wasn't his fault that the
lambs died, but because that chap at Northampton never told us what he
should ought.... I tell you, I've never had anyone like him for handling
sheep--they're quite different with him from what they were with that
rude old Fuller, barking after 'em like a dog along the Brodnyx road and
bringing 'em up to Rye all raggled and draggled and dusty as mops ... he
knows how to manage sheep--he's like one of themselves."
"That's just about it--he's like another sheep, so they ain't scared of
him, but he can do no more for 'em than another sheep could, neither.
He's ignorant--he's got no sense nor know, or he'd never have let you
breed with them Spanishes, or given 'em a poisonous double-dip--and he's
always having sway-backs up at market, too, and tic and hoose and
fluke.... Oh, Joanna, if you're any bit wise you'll get shut of him
before he messes you all up. And you know what folks say--they say you'd
have got shut of him months agone if you hadn't been so unaccountable
set on him, so as they say--yes, they say one day you'll marry him and
make him master of Ansdore."
Alce's face flamed as red as his whiskers and nearly as red as Joanna's
cheeks. For a moment she faced him speechless, her mouth open.
"Oh, that's what they say, is it!" she broke out at last. "They say I'd
marry Dick Socknersh, who looks after my sheep, and who's like a sheep
himself. They think I'd marry a man who's got no more'n two words on his
tongue and half that number of ideas in his head--who can't think
without its giving him a headache--who comes of no class of people--his
father and mother were hedge people up at Anvil Green--who gets eighteen
bob a week as my looker--who--"
"Don't get so vrothered, Joanna. I'm only telling you what folk say, and
if you'll stop and think you'll see they've got some reason. Your
looker's done things that no farmer on this Marsh ud put up with a
month, and yet you keep him on, you with all your fine ideas about
farming and running Ansdore as your poor father ud have had it ... and
then he's a well set-up young man too, nice-looking and stout as I won't
deny, and you're a young woman that I'd say was nice-looking too, and
it's only natural folks should talk when they see a pretty woman hanging
on to a handsome chap in spite of his having half bust her."
"He hasn't half bust me, nor a quarter, neither--and I ain't hanging on
to him, as you're elegant enough to say. I keep him as my looker because
he's valiant with the sheep and manages 'em as if born to it, and
because he minds what I say and doesn't sass me back or meddle, as some
I could name. As for being set on him, I'm not so far below myself as
all that. You must think unaccountable low of me, Arthur Alce, if you
figure I'd get sweet on a man who's courting my chicken-gal, which is
what Dick Socknersh is doing."
"Courting Martha Tilden?"
"Yes, my chicken-gal. And you think I'd look at him!--I!... You must
think middling low of me, Arthur Alce ... a man who's courting my
chicken-gal."
"I'd always thought as Martha Tilden--but you must know best. Well, if
he's courting her I hope as he'll marry her soon and show folks they're
wrong about him and you."
"They should ought to be ashamed of themselves to need showing. I look
at a man who's courting my chicken-gal!--I never! I tell you what I'll
do--I'll raise his wages, so as he can marry her at once--my
chicken-gal--and so as folk ull know that I'm satisfied with him as my
looker."
And Joanna marched off up the drive, where this conversation had taken
place.
§17
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. I'd sooner he
married a cleaner, steadier sort of gal."
Grace Wickens had already departed, her cocoa-making tendencies having
lately passed into mania--and her successor was an older woman, a widow,
who had fallen on evil days. She was a woman of few words, and Joanna
wondered a little when one afternoon she said to her rather anxiously:
"I'd lik to speak to you, ma'am--in private, if you please."
They went into the larder and Mrs. Tolhurst began:
"I hardly lik to say it to you, Miss Joanna, being a single
spinster ..."
This was a bad beginning, for Joanna flamed at once at the implication
that her spinsterhood put her at any disadvantage as a woman of the
world.
"Don't talk nonsense, Mrs. Tolhurst; I may be unwed as yet, but I'm none
of your Misses."
"No, ma'am--well, it's about this Martha Tilden--"
Joanna started.
"What about her?"
"Only, ma'am, that she's six months gone."
There was no chair in the larder, or Joanna would have fallen into
it--instead she staggered back against the shelves, with a great rattle
of crockery. Her face was as white as her own plates, and for a moment
she could not speak.
"I made bold to tell you, Miss Joanna, for all the neighbourhood's
beginning to talk--and the gal getting near her time and all.... I
thought maybe you'd have noticed.... Don't be in such a terrification
about it, Miss Joanna.... I'm sorry I told you--maybe I shud ought to
have spuck to the gal fust ..."
"Don't be a fool ... the dirty slut!--I'll learn her ... under my very
roof--"
"Oh, no, ma'am,'twasn't under your roof--we shouldn't have allowed it.
She used to meet him in the field down by Beggar's Bush ..."
"Hold your tongue."
Mrs. Tolhurst was offended; she thought her mistress's behaviour
unwarranted either by modesty or indignation. There were burning tears
in Joanna's eyes as she flung herself out of the room. She was blind as
she went down the passage, twisting her apron furiously in her hands.
"Martha Tilden!" she called--"Martha Tilden!"
"Oh," she thought in her heart, "I raised his wages so's he could marry
her--for months this has been going on ... the field down by Beggar's
Bush ... Oh, I could kill her!" Then shouting into the yard--"Martha
Tilden! Martha Tilden!"
"I'm coming, Miss Joanna," Martha's soft drawly voice increased her
bitterness; her own, compared with it, sounded harsh, empty,
inexperienced. Martha's voice was full of the secrets of love--the
secrets of Dick Socknersh's love.
"Come into the dairy," she said hoarsely.
Martha came and stood before her. 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.
Martha began to cry.
"You know what for?"
"Yes, Miss Joanna."
"I wonder you've had the impudence to go about as you've done--eating my
food and taking my wages, while all the time you've been carrying on
with my looker."
"Your looker?--No, Miss Joanna."
"What d'you mean?"
"I don't know what _you_ mean, miss--I've never had näun to do wud Dick
Socknersh if it's him you're thinking of."
"Not Socknersh, but I ... who _is_ the man, then?"
"Well, it äun't no secret from anyone but you, Miss Joanna, so I döan't
mind telling you as my boy is Peter Relf, their looker at Old
Honeychild. We've bin walking out ever sinst the day he came after your
pläace as looker here, and we'd be married now if he hadn't his old
mother and dad to keep, and got into some nasty silly trouble wud them
fellers wot put money on horses they've never seen.... He döan't get
more'n fifteen bob a week at Honeychild, and he can't keep the old folk
on less than eight, them being always filling themselves with doctor's
stuff...."
Joanna was not listening to her--she sat amazed and pale, her heart
beating in heavy thuds of relief. Mixed with her happiness there was a
little shame, for she saw that the mistake had arisen from her putting
herself too realistically in Martha's place. Why had she jumped to the
conclusion that the girl's lover was Socknersh? It is true that he had
danced with her very often at the Christmas party nine months ago, and
once since then she had scolded him for telling the chicken-woman some
news he ought first to have told the mistress ... but that was very
little in the way of evidence, and Martha had always been running after
boys....
Seeing her still silent, Martha began to cry again.
"I'm sure I'm unaccountable sorry, Miss Joanna, and what's to become of
me I don't know, nuther. Maybe I'm a bad lot, but it's hard to love and
wait on and on for the wedding ... and Pete was sure as he could do
summat wud a horse running in the Derby race, and at the Woolpack they
told him it wur bound to win.... I've always kept straight up till this,
Miss Joanna, and a virtuous virgin for all I do grin and laugh a lot ...
and many's the temptation I've had, being a lone gal wudout father or
mother ..."
"Keep quiet, Martha, and have done with so much excuse. You've been a
very wicked gal, and you shouldn't ought to think any different of
yourself. But maybe I was too quick, saying you were to go at once. You
can finish your month, seeing as you were monthly hired."
"Thank you, Miss Joanna, that'll give me time to look around for another
pläace; though--" bursting out crying again--"I don't see what good
that'll do me, seeing as my time's three months from hence."
A great softness had come over Joanna. There were tears in her eyes as
she looked at Martha, but they were no longer tears of anger.
"Don't cry, child," she said kindly, "I'll see you don't come to want."
"Oh, thank you, Miss Joanna ... it's middling good of you, and Pete will
repay you when we're married and have säaved some tin."
"I'll do my best, for you've worked well on the whole, and I shan't
forget that Orpington hen you saved when she was egg-bound. But don't
you think, Martha," she added seriously, "that I'm holding with any of
your goings-on. I'm shocked and ashamed at you, for you've done
something very wicked--something that's spoken against in the Bible, and
in church too--it's in the Ten Commandments. I wonder you could kneel in
your place and say 'Lord have mercy upon us,' knowing what you'd been up
to"--Martha's tears flowed freely--"and it's sad to think you've kept
yourself straight for years as you say, and then gone wrong at last,
just because you hadn't patience to wait for your lawful wedding ... and
all the scandal there's been and ull be, and folks talking at you and at
me ... and you be off now, and tell Mrs. Tolhurst you're to have the
cream on your milk and take it before it's skimmed."
§18
For the rest of the day Joanna was in a strange fret--dreams seemed to
hang over life like mist, there was sorrow in all she did, and yet a
queer, suffocating joy. She told herself that she was upset by Martha's
revelation, but at the same time she knew it had upset her not so much
in itself as in the disturbing new self-knowledge it had brought. She
could not hide from herself that she was delighted, overjoyed to find
that her shepherd did not love her chicken-girl, that the thoughts she
had thought about them for nine months were but vain thoughts.
Was it true, then, that she was moving along that road which the
villages had marked out for her--the road which would end before the
Lion and the Unicorn in Brodnyx church, with her looker as her
bridegroom? The mere thought was preposterous to her pride. She, her
father's daughter, to marry his father's son!--the suspicion insulted
her. She loved herself and Ansdore too well for that ... and Socknersh,
fine fellow as he was, had no mind and very little sense--he could
scarcely read and write, he was slow as an ox, and had common ways and
spoke the low Marsh talk--he drank out of his saucer and cut his bread
with his pocket-knife--he spat in the yard. How dared people think she
would marry him?--that she was so undignified, infatuated and
unfastidious as to yoke herself to a slow, common boor? Her indignation
flamed against the scandal-mongers ... that Woolpack! She'd like to see
their licence taken away, and then perhaps decent women's characters
would be safe....
But folk said it was queer she should keep on Socknersh when he had
done her such a lot of harm--they made sure there must be something
behind it. For the first time Joanna caught a glimpse of his
shortcomings as a looker, and in a moment of vision asked herself if it
wasn't really true that he ought to have known about that dip. Was she
blinding herself to his incapacity simply because she liked to have him
about the place--to see his big stooping figure blocked against the
sunset--to see his queer eyes light up with queer thoughts that were
like a dog's thoughts or a sheep's thoughts ... to watch his hands, big
and heavy and brown, with the earth worked into the skin ... and his
neck, when he lifted his head, brown as his hands, and like the trunk of
an oak with roots of firm, beautiful muscle in the field of his broad
chest?
Then Joanna was scared--she knew she ought not to think of her looker
so; and she told herself that she kept him on just because he was the
only man she'd ever had about the place who had minded her properly....
When evening came, she began to feel stifled in the house, where she had
been busy ironing curtains, and tying on her old straw hat went out for
a breath of air on the road. There was a light mist over the
watercourses, veiling the pollards and thorn trees and the reddening
thickets of Ansdore's bush--a flavour of salt was in it, for the tides
were high in the channels, and the sunset breeze was blowing from Rye
Bay. Northward, the Coast--as the high bank marking the old shores of
England before the flood was still called--was dim, like a low line of
clouds beyond the marsh. The sun hung red and rayless above Beggar's
Bush, a crimson ball of frost and fire.
A queer feeling of sadness came to Joanna--queer, unaccountable, yet
seeming to drain itself from the very depths of her body, and to belong
not only to her flesh but to the marsh around her, to the pastures with
their tawny veil of withered seed-grasses, to the thorn-bushes spotted
with the red haws, to the sky and to the sea, and the mists in which
they merged together....
"I'll get shut of Socknersh," she said to herself--"I believe folks are
right, and he's too like a sheep himself to be any real use to them."
She walked on a little way, over the powdery Brodnyx road.