Joanna Godden Part 12

Joanna was glad to see him at the Woolpack, because she knew that there was now a chance of the introduction she had unfortunately missed in Pedlinge village a few weeks ago. She had a slight market-day acquaintance with the Old Squire--as the neighbourhood invariably called him, to his intense annoyance--and now she greeted him with her broad smile.

"Good evening, Sir Harry."

"Good evening, Miss G.o.dden. I'm pleased to see you here. You're looking very well."

His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified than by all the bulging glances of the other men.

"I'm pleased to see you, too, Sir Harry. I hear you've joined the Club."

"Surelye--as a real farmer ought to say; and so has my son Martin--he's going to do most of the work. Martin, you've never met Miss G.o.dden. Let me introduce you."

Joanna's welcoming grin broke itself on the young man's stiff bow. There was a moment's silence.

"He doesn't look as if a London doctor had threatened him with consumption," said the Squire banteringly. "Sometimes I really don't, think I believe it--I think he's only come down here so as he can look after me."

Martin made some conventional remark. He was a tall, broadly built young man, with a dark healthy skin and that generally robust air which sometimes accompanies extreme delicacy in men.

"The doctor says he's been overworking," continued his father, "and that he ought to try a year's outdoor life and sea air. If you ask me, I should say he's overdone a good many things besides work--" he threw the boy a defiant, malicious glance, rather like a child who gets a thrust into an elder--"but Walland Marsh is as good a cure for over-play as for over-work. Not much to keep him up late hereabouts, is there, Miss G.o.dden?"

"I reckon it'll be twelve o'clock before any of us see our pillows to-night," said Joanna.

"Tut! Tut I What terrible ways we're getting into, just when I'm proposing the place as a rest-cure. How do you feel, Miss G.o.dden, being the only woman guest?"

"I like it."

"Bet you do--so do we."

Joanna laughed and bridled. She felt proud of her position--she pictured every farmer's wife on the Marsh lying awake that night so that she could ask her husband directly he came upstairs how Joanna G.o.dden had looked, what she had said, and what she had worn.

--5

At dinner she sat on the Chairman's right. On her other side, owing to some accident of push and shuffle, sat young Martin Trevor. At first she had not thought his place accidental, in spite of his rather stiff manner before they sat down, but after a while she realized with a pang of vexation that he was not particularly pleased to find himself next her. He replied without interest to her remarks and then entered into conversation with his right-hand neighbour. Joanna was annoyed--she could not put down his constraint to shyness, for he did not at all strike her as a shy young man. Nor was he being ungracious to Mr.

Turner of Beckett's House, though the latter could not talk of turnips half so entertainingly as Joanna would have done. He obviously did not want to speak to her. Why? Because of what had happened in Pedlinge all that time ago? She remembered how he had drawn back ... he had not liked the way she had spoken to Mr. Pratt. She had not liked it herself by the time she got to the road's turn. But to think of him nursing his feelings all this time ... and something she had said to Mr. Pratt ...

considering that she had bought them all a new harmonium ... the lazy, stingy louts with their half-crowns....

She had lost her serenity, her sense of triumph--she felt vaguely angry with the whole company, and snapped at Arthur Alce when he spoke to her across the table. He had asked after Ellen, knowing she had been to Folkestone.

"Ellen's fine--and learning such good manners as it seems a shame to bring her into these parts at Christmas for her to lose 'em."

"On the other hand. Miss G.o.dden, she might impart them to us," said the Squire from a little farther down.

"She's learning how to dance and make curtsies right down to the floor,"

said Joanna.

"Then she's fit to see the Queen. You really mustn't keep her away from us at Christmas--on the contrary, we ought to make some opportunities for watching her dance; she must be as pretty as a sprite."

"That she is," agreed Joanna, warming and mollified, "and I've bought her a new gown that pulls out like an accordion, so as she can wave her skirts about when she dances."

"Well, the drawing-room at North Farthing would make an excellent ball-room ... we must see about that--eh, Martin?"

"It'll want a new floor laid down--there's rot under the carpet," was his son's disheartening reply. But Joanna had lost the smarting of her own wound in the glow of her pride for Ellen, and she ate the rest of her dinner in good-humoured contempt of Martin Trevor.

When the time for the speeches came her health was proposed by the Chairman.

"Gentlemen," he said, "let us drink to--the Lady."

The chivalry of the committee had prompted them to offer her Southland to respond to this toast. But Joanna had doubts of his powers as an orator, whereas she had none of her own. She stood up, a glow of amber brightness above all the black coats, and spoke of her gratification, of her work at Ansdore and hopes for south-country farming. Her speech, as might have been expected, was highly dogmatic. She devoted her last words to the Marsh as a grain-bearing district--on one or two farms, where pasture had been broken, the yield in wheat had been found excellent. Since that was so, why had so few farms. .h.i.therto shown enterprise in this direction? There was no denying that arable paid better than pasture, and the only excuse for neglecting it was poverty of soil. It was obvious that no such poverty existed here--on the contrary, the soil was rich, and yet no crops were grown in it except roots and here and there a few acres of beans or lucerne. It was the old idea, she supposed, about breaking up gra.s.s. It was time that old idea was bust--she herself would lead the way at Ansdore next spring.

As she was the guest of the evening, they heard her with respect, which did not, however, survive her departure at the introduction of pipes and port.

"Out on the rampage again, is she?" said Southland to his neighbour.

"Well, if she busts that 'old idea' same as she bust the other 'old idea' about crossing Kent sheep, all I can say is that it's Ansdore she'll bust next."

"Whosumdever breaks pasture shall himself be broke," said Vine oracularly.

"Surelye--surelye," a.s.sented the table.

"She's got pluck all the same," said Sir Harry.

But he was only an amateur.

"I don't hold for a woman to have pluck," said Vennal of Beggar's Bush, "what do you say, Mr. Alce?"

"I say nothing, Mr. Vennal."

"Pluck makes a woman think she can do without a man," continued Vennal, "when everyone knows, and it's in Scripture, that she can't. Now Joanna G.o.dden should ought to have married drackly minute Thomas G.o.dden died and left her Ansdore, instead of which she's gone on plunging like a heifer till she must be past eight and twenty as I calculate--"

"Now, now, Mr. Vennal, we mustn't start anything personal of our lady guest," broke in Furnese from the Chair, "we may take up her ideas or take 'em down, but while she's the guest of this here Farmers' Club, which is till eleven-thirty precise, we mustn't start arguing about her age or matrimonious intentions. Anyways, I take it, that's a job for our wives."

"Hear, hear," and Joanna pa.s.sed out of the conversation, for who was going to waste time either taking up or taking down a silly, tedious, foreign, unsensible notion like ploughing gra.s.s?...

Indeed, it may be said that her glory had gone up in smoke--the smoke of twenty pipes.

She had been obliged to leave the table just when it was becoming most characteristic and convivial, and to retire forlorn and chilly in her silken gown to the Woolpack parlour, where she and the landlady drank innumerable cups of tea. It was an unwelcome reminder of the fact that she was a woman, and that no matter how she might s.h.i.+ne and impress the company for an hour, she did not really belong to it. She was a guest, not a member, of the Farmers' Club, and though a guest has more honour, he has less fellows.h.i.+p and fun. It was for fellows.h.i.+p and fun that she hungrily longed as she sat under the green lamp-shade of the Woolpack's parlour, and discoursed on servants and the price of turkeys with Mrs.

Jupp, who was rather constrained and absent-minded owing to her simultaneous efforts to price Miss G.o.dden's gown. Now and then a dull roar of laughter came to her from the Club room. What were they talking about, Joanna wondered. Had there been much debate over her remarks on breaking pasture?...

--6

On the whole, the Farmers' Club Dinner left behind it a rankling trail--for one thing, it was not followed as she had hoped and half expected by an invitation to join the Farmers' Club. No, they would never have a woman privileged among them--she realized that, in spite of her success, certain doors would always be shut on her. The men would far rather open those doors ceremonially now and then than allow her to go freely in and out. After all, perhaps they were right--hadn't she got her own rooms that they were shut out of?... Women were always different from men, even if they did the same things ... she had heard people talk of "woman's sphere." What did that mean? A husband and children, of course--any fool could tell you that. When you had a husband and children you didn't go round knocking at the men's doors, but shut yourself up snugly inside your own ... you were warm and cosy, and the firelight played on the ceiling.... But if you were alone inside your room--with no husband or child to keep you company ... then it was terrible, worse than being outside ... and no wonder you went round to the men's doors, and knocked on them and begged them to give you a little company, or something to do to help you to forget your empty room....

"Well, I could marry Arthur Alce any day I liked," she thought to herself.