Joanna Godden by Sheila Kaye Smith

S >> Sheila Kaye Smith >> Joanna Godden

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

JOANNA GODDEN

by

Sheila Kaye-Smith

1921

To

W.L. GEORGE

CONTENTS

PART I SHEPHERD'S HEY

PART II FIRST LOVE

PART III THE LITTLE SISTER

PART IV LAST LOVE

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

Sec.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 praeaperly 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
spaced 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.

Sec.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.

Sec.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 praeaperly 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 praeaperly 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 plaeace 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 woean'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 doean'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 woean't taeake 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 maeaster, and one as
we'll all be tediously regretting in a week or two if we aeun'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 aeun't right, starting you like that on bad ways."

Sec.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 _passe_ 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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26