Читать книгу Joanna Godden - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 23

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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.

"I'm silly—that's what I am. Who'd have thought it? I'll send him off—but then folks ull say I'm afraid of gossip."

She chewed the bitter cud of this idea over a hurrying half mile, which took her across the railway, and then brought her back, close to the Kent Ditch.

"I can't afford to let the place come to any harm—besides, what does it matter what people think or say of me? I don't care. … But it'll be a mortal trouble getting another looker and settling him to my ways—and I'll never get a man who'll mind me as poor Socknersh does. I want a man with a humble soul, but seemingly you can't get that through advertising. … "

She had come to the bridge over the Kent Ditch, and Sussex ended in a swamp of reeds. Looking southward she saw the boundaries of her own land, the Kent Innings, dotted with sheep, and the shepherd's cottage among them, its roof standing out a bright orange under the fleece of lichen that smothered the tiles. It suddenly struck her that a good way out of her difficulty might be a straight talk with Socknersh. He would probably be working in his garden now, having those few evening hours as his own. Straining her eyes into the shining thickness of mist and sun, she thought she could see his blue shirt moving among the bean-rows and hollyhocks around the little place.

"I'll go and see him and talk it out—I'll tell him that if he won't have proper sense he must go. I've been soft, putting up with him all this time."

Being marsh bred, Joanna did not take what seemed the obvious way to the cottage, across the low pastures by the Kent Ditch; instead, she went back a few yards to where a dyke ran under the road. She followed it out on the marsh, and when it cut into another dyke she followed that, walking on the bank beside the great teazle. A plank bridge took her across between two willows, and after some more such movements, like a pawn on a chess-board, she had crossed three dykes and was at the shepherd's gate.

He was working at the farther side of the garden and did not see her till she called him. She had been to his cottage only once before, when he complained of the roof leaking, but Socknersh would not have shown surprise if he had seen Old Goodman of the marsh tales standing at his door. Joanna had stern, if somewhat arbitrary, notions of propriety, and now not only did she refuse to come inside the gate, but she made him come and stand outside it, among the seed-grasses which were like the ghost of hay.

It struck her that she had timed her visit a little too late. Already the brightness had gone from the sunset, leaving a dull red ball hanging lustreless between the clouds. There was no wind, but the air seemed to be moving slowly up from the sea, heavy with mist and salt and the scent of haws and blackberries, of dew-soaked grass and fleeces. … Socknersh stood before her with his blue shirt open at the neck. From him came a smell of earth and sweat … his clothes smelt of sheep. …

She opened her mouth to tell him that she was highly displeased with the way he had managed her flock since the shearing, but instead she only said:

"Look!"

Over the eastern rim of the Marsh the moon had risen, a red, lightless disk, while the sun, red and lightless too, hung in the west above Rye Hill. The sun and the moon looked at each other across the marsh, and midway between them, in the spell of their flushed, haunted glow, stood Socknersh, big and stooping, like some lonely beast of the earth and night. … A strange fear touched Joanna—she tottered, and his arm came out to save her. …

It was as if Marsh itself enfolded her, for his clothes and skin were caked with the soil of it. … She opened her eyes, and looking up into his, saw her own face, infinitely white and small, looking down at her out of them. Joanna Godden looked at her out of Socknersh's eyes. She stirred feebly, and she found that he had set her a little way from him, still holding her by the shoulders, as if he feared she would fall.

"Do you feel better, missus?"

"I'm all right," she snapped.

"I beg your pardon if I took any liberty, missus. But I thought maybe you'd turned fainty-like."

"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 shillun a week as my looker—twenty shillun, 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."