Joanna Godden Part 10

"You thought wrong"--her anger was mounting--"I trod on a mole-hill.

You've messed my nice alpaca body--if you can't help getting dirt all over yourself you shouldn't ought to touch a lady even if she's in a swound."

"I'm middling sorry, missus."

His voice was quite tranquil--it was like oil on the fire of Joanna's wrath.

"Maybe you are, and so am I. You shouldn't ought to have cotched hold of me like that. But it's all of a match with the rest of your doings, you great stupid owl. You've lost me more'n a dozen prime sheep by not mixing your dip proper--after having lost me the best of my ewes and lambs with your ignorant notions--and now you go and put finger marks over my new alpaca body, all because you won't think, or keep yourself clean. You can take a month's notice."

Socknersh stared at her with eyes and mouth wide open.

"A month's notice," she repeated, "it's what I came here to give you.

You're the tale of all the parish with your ignorance. I'd meant to talk to you about it and give you another chance, but now I see there'd be no sense in that, and you can go at the end of your month."

"You'll give me a character, missus?"

"I'll give you a prime character as a drover or a ploughman or a carter or a dairyman or a housemaid or a curate or anything you like except a looker. Why should I give you eighteen s.h.i.+llun a week as my looker--twenty s.h.i.+llun, as I've made it now--when my best wether could do what you do quite as well and not take a penny for it? You've got no more sense or know than a tup ..."

She stopped, breathless, her cheeks and eyes burning, a curious ache in her breast. The sun was gone now, only the moon hung flushed in the foggy sky. Socknersh's face was in darkness as he stood with his back to the east, but she could see on his features a look of surprise and dismay which suddenly struck her as pathetic in its helpless stupidity.

After all, this great hulking man was but a child, and he was unhappy because he must go, and give up his snug cottage and the sheep he had learned to care for and the kind mistress who gave him sides of bacon.... There was a sudden strangling spasm in her throat, and his face swam into the sky on a mist of tears, which welled up in her eyes as without another word she turned away.

His voice came after her piteously--

"Missus--missus--but you raised my wages last week."

--19

Her tears were dry by the time she reached home, but in the night they flowed again, accompanied by angry sobs, which she choked in her pillow, for fear of waking little Ellen.

She cried because she was humbled in her own eyes. It was as if a veil had been torn from the last two years, and she saw her motives at last.

For two years she had endured an ignorant, inefficient servant simply because his strength and good looks had enslaved her susceptible womanhood....

Her father would never have acted as she had done; he would not have kept Socknersh a single month; he would not have engaged him at all--both Relf of Honeychild and Day of Slinches were more experienced men, with better recommendations; and yet she had chosen Socknersh--because his brown eyes had held and drowned her judgment, as surely as they had held her image, so dwindled and wan, when she looked into them that evening, between the setting sun and the rising moon.

Then, after she had engaged him, he had shown just enough natural capacity for her to blind herself with--his curious affinity with the animals he tended had helped her to forget the many occasions on which he had failed to rise above them in intelligence. It had been left to another to point out to her that a man might be good with sheep simply because he was no better than a sheep himself.

And now she was humbled--in her own eyes, and also in the eyes of her neighbours. She would have to confess herself in the wrong. Everyone knew that she had just raised Socknersh's wages, so there would be no good pretending that she had known his shortcomings from the first, but had put up with them as long as she could. Everyone would guess that something had happened to make her change her mind about him ... there would be some terrible talk at the Woolpack.

And there was Socknersh himself, poor fellow--the martyr of her impulses. She thrust her face deep into the pillow when she thought of him. She had given him as sharp a blow as his thick hide would ever let him suffer. She would never forget that last look on his face....

Then she began wondering why this should have come upon her. Why should she have made a fool of herself over Socknersh, when she had borne unmoved the courts.h.i.+p of Arthur Alce for seven years? Was it just because Alce had red whiskers and red hands and red hair on his hands, while Socknersh was dark and sweet of face and limb? It was terrible to think that mere youth and comeliness and virility should blind her judgment and strip her of common sense. Yet this was obviously the lesson she must learn from to-day's disgrace.

Hot and tear-stained, she climbed out of bed, and paced across the dark room to the grey blot of the window. She forgot her distrust of the night air in all her misery of throbbing head and heart, and flung back the cas.e.m.e.nt, so that the soft marsh wind came in, with rain upon it, and her tears were mingled with the tears of the night.

"Oh G.o.d!" she mourned to herself--"why didn't you make me a man?"

_PART II_

FIRST LOVE

--1

It took Joanna nearly two years to recover from the losses of her sheep.

Some people would have done it earlier, but she was not a clever economist. Where many women on the Marsh would have thrown themselves into an orgy of retrenchment--ranging from the dismissal of a dairymaid to the subst.i.tution of a cheaper brand of tea--she made no new occasions for thrift, and persevered but lamely in the old ones. She was fond of spending--liked to see things trim and bright; she hated waste, especially when others were guilty of it, but she found a positive support in display.

She was also generous. Everybody knew that she had paid d.i.c.k Socknersh thirty s.h.i.+llings for the two weeks that he was out of work after leaving her--before he went as cattleman to an inland farm--and she had found the money for Martha Tilden's wedding, and for her lying-in a month afterwards, and some time later she had helped Peter Relf with ready cash to settle his debts and move himself and his wife and baby to West Wittering, where he had the offer of a place with three s.h.i.+llings a week more than they gave at Honeychild.

She might have indulged herself still further in this way, which gratified both her warm heart and her proud head, if she had not wanted so much to send Ellen to a good school. The school at Rye was all very well, attended by the daughters of tradesmen and farmers, and taught by women whom Joanna recognized as ladies; but she had long dreamed of sending her little sister to a really good school at Folkestone--where Ellen would wear a ribbon round her hat and go for walks in a long procession of two-and-two, and be taught wonderful, showy and intricate things by ladies with letters after their names--whom Joanna despised because she felt sure they had never had a chance of getting married.

She herself had been educated at the National School, and from six to fourteen had trudged to and fro on the Brodnyx road, learning to read and write and reckon and say her catechism.... But this was not good enough for Ellen. Joanna had made up her mind that Ellen should be a lady; she was pretty and lazy and had queer likes and dislikes--all promising signs of vocation. She would never learn to care for Ansdore, with its coa.r.s.e and crowding occupations, so there was no reason why she should grow up like her sister in capable commonness. Half unconsciously Joanna had planned a future in which she ventured and toiled, while Ellen wore a silk dress and sat on the drawing-room sofa--that being the happiest lot she could picture for anyone, though she would have loathed it herself.

In a couple of years Ansdore's credit once more stood high at Lewes Old Bank, and Ellen could be sent to a select school at Folkestone--so select indeed that there had been some difficulty about getting her father's daughter into it. Joanna was surprised as well as disgusted that the schoolmistress should give herself such airs, for she was very plainly dressed, whereas Joanna had put on all her most gorgeous apparel for the interview; but she had been very glad when her sister was finally accepted as a pupil at Rose Hill House, for now she would have as companions the daughters of clergymen and squires, and learn no doubt to model herself on their refinement. She might even be asked to their homes for her holidays, and, making friends in their circle, take a short cut to silken immobility on the drawing-room sofa by way of marriage.... Joanna congratulated herself on having really done very well for Ellen, though during the first weeks she missed her sister terribly. She missed their quarrels and caresses--she missed Ellen's daintiness at meals, though she had often smacked it--she missed her strutting at her side to church on Sunday--she missed her noisy, remonstrant setting out to school every morning and her noisy affectionate return--her heart ached when she looked at the little empty bed in her room, and being sentimental she often dropped a tear where she used to drop a kiss on Ellen's pillow.

Nevertheless she was proud of what she had done for her little sister, and she was proud too of having restored Ansdore to prosperity, not by stinging and paring, but by her double capacity for working hard herself and for getting all the possible work out of others. If no one had gone short under her roof, neither had anyone gone idle--if the tea was strong and the b.u.t.ter was thick and there was always prime bacon for breakfast on Sundays, so was there also a great clatter on the stairs at five o'clock each morning, a rattle of brooms and hiss and slop of scrubbing-brushes--and the mistress with clogs on her feet and her father's coat over her gown, poking her head into the maids' room to see if they were up, hurrying the men over their snacks, shouting commands across the yard, into the barns or into the kitchen, and seemingly omnipresent to those slackers who paused to rest or chat or "put their feet up."

That time had scarred her a little--put some lines into the corners of her eyes and straightened the curling corners of her mouth, but it had also heightened the rich healthy colour on her cheeks, enlarged her fine girth, her strength of shoulder and depth of bosom. She did not look any older, because she was so superbly healthy and superbly proud. She knew that the neighbours were impressed by Ansdore's thriving, when they had foretold its downfall under her sway.... She had vindicated her place in her father's shoes, and best of all, she had expiated her folly in the matter of Socknersh, and restored her credit not only in the bar of the Woolpack but in her own eyes.

--2

One afternoon, soon after Ellen had gone back to school for her second year, when Joanna was making plum jam in the kitchen, and getting very hot and sharp-tongued in the process, Mrs. Tolhurst saw a man go past the window on his way to the front door.

"Lor, miss! There's Parson!" she cried, and the next minute came sounds of struggle with Joanna's rusty door-bell.

"Go and see what he wants--take off that sacking ap.r.o.n first--and if he wants to see me, put him into the parlour."

Mr. Pratt lacked "visiting" among many other accomplishments as a parish priest--the vast, strewn nature of his parish partly excused him--and a call from him was not the casual event it would have been in many places, but startling and portentous, requiring fit celebration.

Joanna received him in state, supported by her father's Bible and stuffed owls. She had kept him waiting while she changed her gown, for like many people who are sometimes very splendid she could also on occasion be extremely disreputable, and her jam-making costume was quite unfit for the masculine eye, even though negligible. Mr. Pratt had grown rather nervous waiting for her--he had always been afraid of her, because of her big, breathless ways, and because he felt sure that she was one of the many who criticized him.

"I--I've only come about a little thing--at least it's not a little thing to me, but a very big thing--er--er--"

"What is it?" asked Joanna, a stuffed owl staring disconcertingly over each shoulder.

"For some time there's been complaints about the music in church. Of course I'm quite sure Mr. Elphick does wonders, and the ladies of the choir are excellent--er--gifted ... I'm quite sure. But the harmonium--it's very old and quite a lot of the notes won't play ... and the bellows ... Mr. Saunders came from Lydd and had a look at it, but he says it's past repair--er--satisfactory repair, and it ud really save money in the long run if we bought a new one."

Joanna was a little shocked. She had listened to the grunts and wheezes of the harmonium from her childhood, and the idea of a new one disturbed her--it suggested sacrilege and ritualism and the moving of landmarks.