Joanna Godden | Page 7

Great Ansdore had but fifty acres of land compared with the three hundred of its Little neighbour. Its Greatness was merely a matter of name and tradition, and had only one material aspect in the presentation to the living of Brodnyx-with-Pedlinge, which had been with Great Ansdore since the passing of the monks of Canterbury.
To-day Great Ansdore was only a patch of grey rather denser than its surroundings, and failed to inspire Joanna with her usual sense of gloating. Her eyes were almost sad as she stared out at it, her chin propped on her hands. The window was shut, as every window in every farm and cottage on the marsh was shut at night, though the ague was now little more than a name on the lips of grandfathers. Therefore the room in which two people had slept was rather stuffy, though this in itself would hardly account for Joanna's heaviness, since it was what she naturally expected a bedroom to be in the morning. Such vague sorrow was perplexing and disturbing to her practical emotions; she hurriedly attributed it to "poor father," and the propriety of the sentiment allowed her the relief of a few tears.
Turning back into the room she unbuttoned her turkey-red dressing-gown, preparatory to the business of washing and dressing. Then her eye fell on Ellen still asleep in her little iron bedstead in the corner, and a glow of tenderness passed like a lamp over her face. She went across to where her sister slept, and laid her face for a moment beside hers on the pillow. Ellen's breath came regularly from parted lips--she looked adorable cuddled there, with her red cheeks, like an apple in snow. Joanna, unable to resist the temptation, kissed her and woke her.
"Hullo, Jo--what time is it?" mumbled Ellen sleepily.
"Not time to get up yet. I'm not dressed."
She sat on the edge of the bed, stooping over her sister, and her big rough plaits dangled in the child's face.
"Hullo, Jo--hullo, old Jo," continued the drowsy murmur.
"Go to sleep, you bad girl," said Joanna, forgetting that she herself had roused her.
Ellen was not wide enough awake to have any conflicting views on the subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten minutes the room was full of small sounds--the splashing of cold water in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays, the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years ago--word for word as she had said them when she was five, even to the "make me a good girl" at the end. Then she jumped up briskly and tore the sheet off the bed, throwing it with the pillows on the floor, so that Grace Wickens the servant should have no chance of making the bed without stripping it, as was the way of her kind.
Grace was not up yet, of course. Joanna hit her door a resounding thump as she passed it on her way to the kitchen. Here the dead ashes had been raked out overnight, and the fire laid according to custom. She lit the fire and put the kettle on to boil; she did not consider it beneath her to perform these menial offices. She knew that every hand was needed for the early morning work of a farm. By the time she had finished both Grace and Martha were in the room, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
"That'll burn up nicely now," said Joanna, surveying the fire. "You'd better put the fish-kettle on too, in case Broadhurst wants hot water for a mash. Bring me out a cup of tea as soon as you can get it ready--I'll be somewhere in the yard."
She put on an old coat of her father's over her black dress, and went out, her nailed boots clattering on the cobble-stones. The men were up--they should have been up an hour now--but no sounds of activity came from the barns. The yard was in stillness, a little mist floating against the walls, and the pervading greyness of the morning seemed to be lit up by the huge blotches of yellow lichen that covered the slated roofs of barns and dwelling--the roofs were all new, having only for a year or two superseded the old roofs of osier thatch, but that queer golden rust had almost hidden their substance, covering them as it covered everything that was left exposed to the salt-thick marsh air.
Joanna stood in the middle of the yard looking keenly round her like a cat, then like a cat she pounced. The interior of the latest built barn was