Chapter II: Part 2

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 ..."