Читать книгу Joanna Godden - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 8

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Mr. Huxtable was not alone in his condemnation of Joanna's choice. The whole neighbourhood disapproved of it. The joint parishes of Brodnyx and Pedlinge had made up their minds that Joanna Godden would now be compelled to marry Arthur Alce and settle down to mind her own business instead of what was obviously a man's; and here she was, still at large and her business more a man's than ever.

"She's a mare that's never been präaperly broken in, and she wants a strong man to do it," said Furnese at the Woolpack. He had repeated this celebrated remark so often that it had almost acquired the status of a proverb. For three nights Joanna had been the chief topic of conversation in the Woolpack bar. If Arthur Alce appeared a silence would fall on the company, to be broken at last by some remark on the price of wool or the Rye United's last match. Everybody was sorry for Alce, everybody thought that Thomas Godden had treated him badly by not making his daughter marry him as a condition of her inheritance.

"Three times he's asked her, as I know for certain," said Vennal, the tenant of Beggar's Bush.

"No, it's four," said Prickett, Joanna's neighbour at Great Ansdore, "there was that time coming back from the Wild Beast Show."

"I was counting that," said Vennal; "that and the one that Mr. Vine's looker heard at Lydd market, and then that time in the house."

"How do you know he asked her in the house?—that makes five."

"I don't get that—once indoors and twice out, that's three."

"Well, anyways, whether it's three or four or five, he's asked her quite enough. It's time he had her now."

"He won't get her. She'll fly higher'n him now she's got Ansdore. She'll be after young Edward Huxtable, or maybe Parson himself, him having neglected to keep himself married."

"Ha! Ha! It ud be valiant to see her married to liddle Parson—she'd forget herself and pick him up under her arm, same as she picks up her sister. But anyways I don't think she'll get much by flying high. It's all fine enough to talk of her having Ansdore, but whosumdever wants Ansdore ull have to take Joanna Godden with it, and it isn't every man who'd care to do that."

"Surelye. She's a mare that's never bin präaperly broken in. D'you remember the time she came prancing into church with a bustle stuck on behind, and everyone staring and fidgeting so as pore Mus' Pratt lost his place in the Prayers and jumped all the way from the Belief to the Royal Family?"

"And that time as she hit Job Piper over the head wud a bunch of osiers just because he'd told her he knew more about thatching than she did."

"Surelye, and knocked his hat off into the dyke, and then bought him a new one, with a lining to it."

"And there was that time when—"

Several more anecdotes to the point were contributed by the various patrons of the bar, before the conversation, having described a full circle, returned to its original starting point, and then set off again with its vitality apparently undiminished. It was more than a week before the summons of Mr. Gain, of Botolph's Bridge, for driving his gig without a light ousted Joanna from her central glory in the Woolpack's discussions.

At Ansdore itself the interest naturally lasted longer. Joanna's dependents whether in yard or kitchen were resentfully engrossed in the new conditions.

"So Joanna's going to run our farm for us, is she?" said the head man, old Stuppeny, "that'll be valiant, wud some of the notions she has. She'll have our pläace sold up in a twelve-month, surelye. Well, well, it's time maybe as I went elsewheres—I've bin long enough at this job."

Old Stuppeny had made this remark at intervals for the last sixty years, indeed ever since the day he had first come as a tow-headed boy to scare sparrows from the fields of Joanna's grandfather; so no one gave it the attention that should have been its due. Other people aired their grievances instead.

"I wöan't stand her meddling wud me and my sheep," said Fuller, the shepherd.

"It's her sheep, come to that," said Martha Tilden the chicken-girl.

Fuller dealt her a consuming glance out of his eyes, which the long distances of the marsh had made keen as the sea wind.

"She döan't know nothing about sheep, and I've been a looker after sheep since times when you and her was in your cradles, so I wöan't täake sass from neither of you."

"She'll meddle wud you, Martha, just as she'll meddle wud the rest of us," said Broadhurst, the cowman.

"She's meddled wud me for years—I'm used to it. It's you men what's going to have your time now. Ha! Ha! I'll be pleased watching it."

Martha's short, brightly-coloured face seemed ready to break in two as she laughed with her mouth wide open.

"When she's had a terrification wud me and said things as she's sorry for, she'll give me a gownd of hers or a fine hat. Sometimes I think as I make more out of her tempers than I do out of my good work what she pays me wages for."

"Well, if I wur a decent maid I'd be ashamed to wear any of her outlandish gowns or hats. The colours she chooses! Sometimes when I see her walking through a field near the lambing time, I'm scared for my ewes, thinking they'll drop their lambs out of fright. I can't help being thankful as she's in black now for this season, though maybe I shudn't ought to say it, seeing as we've lost a good mäaster, and one as we'll all be tediously regretting in a week or two if we äun't now. You take my word, Martha—next time she gives you a gownd, you give it back to her and say as you don't wear such things, being a respectable woman. It äun't right, starting you like that on bad ways."