Joanna Godden

Joanna Godden

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joanna Godden, by Sheila
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Title: Joanna Godden
Author: Sheila Kaye-Smith
Release Date: May 7, 2005 [EBook #15779]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GODDEN ***

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JOANNA GODDEN
by
Sheila Kaye-Smith

1921

To
W.L. GEORGE

CONTENTS

PART I SHEPHERD'S HEY

PART II FIRST LOVE

PART III THE LITTLE SISTER

PART IV LAST LOVE

NOTE
_Though local names, both of places and people, have been used in this
story, the author states that no reference is intended to any living
person._

JOANNA GODDEN

PART I
SHEPHERD'S HEY

§1
Three marshes spread across the triangle made by the Royal Military
Canal and the coasts of Sussex and Kent. The Military Canal runs from
Hythe to Rye, beside the Military Road; between it and the flat, white
beaches of the Channel lie Romney Marsh, Dunge Marsh and Walland
Marsh, from east to west. Walland Marsh is sectored by the Kent Ditch,
which draws huge, straggling diagrams here, to preserve ancient rights
of parishes and the monks of Canterbury. Dunge Marsh runs up into the
apex of the triangle at Dunge Ness, and adds to itself twenty feet of
shingle every year. Romney Marsh is the sixth continent and the eighth
wonder of the world.
The three marshes are much alike; indeed to the foreigner they are all a
single spread of green, slatted with watercourses. No river crosses them,
for the Rother curves close under Rye Hill, though these marshes were
made by its ancient mouth, when it was the River Limine and ran into
the Channel at Old Romney. There are a few big watercourses--the
New Sewer, the Yokes Sewer, the White Kemp Sewer--there are a few
white roads, and a great many marsh villages--Brenzett, Ivychurch,
Fairfield, Snargate, Snave--each little more than a church with a
farmhouse or two. Here and there little deserted chapels lie out on the
marsh, officeless since the days of the monks of Canterbury; and
everywhere there are farms, with hundreds of sheep grazing on the
thick pastures.
Little Ansdore Farm was on Walland Marsh, three miles from Rye, and
about midway between the villages of Brodnyx and Pedlinge. It was a

sea farm. There were no hop-gardens, as on the farms inland, no
white-cowled oasts, and scarcely more than twelve acres under the
plough. Three hundred acres of pasture spread round Ansdore, dappled
over with the big Kent sheep--the road from Pedlinge to Brodnyx went
through them, curling and looping and doubling to the demands of the
dykes. Just beyond Pedlinge it turned northward and crossed the South
Eastern Railway under the hills that used to be the coast of England,
long ago when the sea flowed up over the marsh to the walls of
Lympne and Rye; then in less than a mile it had crossed the line again,
turning south; for some time it ran seawards, parallel with the Kent
Ditch, then suddenly went off at right angles and ran straight to the
throws where the Woolpack Inn watches the roads to Lydd and
Appledore.
On a dim afternoon towards the middle of October in the year 1897, a
funeral procession was turning off this road into the drive of Little
Ansdore. The drive was thick with shingle, and the mourning coaches
lurched and rolled in it, spoiling no doubt the decorum of their
occupants. Anyhow, the first two to get out at the farmhouse door had
lost a little of that dignity proper to funerals. A fine young woman of
about twenty-three, dressed handsomely but without much fashion in
black crape and silk, jumped out with a violence that sent her
overplumed black hat to a rakish angle. In one black kid-gloved hand
she grasped a handkerchief with a huge black border, in the other a
Prayer Book, so could not give any help to the little girl of ten who
stumbled out after her, with the result that the child fell flat on the
doorstep and cut her chin. She immediately began to cry.
"Now be quiet, Ellen," said the elder roughly but not unkindly, as she
helped her up, and stuffing the black-bordered handkerchief into her
pocket, took out the everyday one which she kept for use. "There, wipe
your eyes, and be a stout gal. Don't let all the company see you crying."
The last injunction evidently impressed Ellen, for