Joanna Godden | Page 4

"I'd like to see the man I couldn't make mind me."
Huxtable grinned. "Oh, I've no doubt whatever that you could get
yourself obeyed; but the position--the whole thing--you'd find it a great
strain, and people aren't as a rule particularly helpful to a woman they
see doing what they call a man's job."
"I don't want anyone's help. I know my own business and my poor
father's ways. That's enough for me."
"Did your father ever say anything to you about this?"
"Oh no--he being only fifty-one and never thinking he'd be took for a
long while yet. But I know it's what he'd have wanted, or why did he

trouble to show me everything? And always talked to me about things
as free as he did to Fuller and Stuppeny."
"He would want you to do the best for yourself--he wouldn't want you
to take up a heavy burden just for his sake."
"Oh, it ain't just for his sake, it's for my own. I don't want a strange man
messing around, and Ansdore's mine, and I'm proud of it."
Huxtable rubbed his large nose, from either side of which his sharp
eyes looked disapprovingly at Joanna. He admired her, but she
maddened him by refusing to see the obvious side of her femininity.
"Most young women of your age have other things to think of besides
farming. There's your sister, and then--don't tell me that you won't soon
be thinking of getting married."
"Well, and if I do, it'll be time enough then to settle about the farm. As
for Ellen, I don't see what difference she makes, except that I must see
to things for her sake as well as mine. It wouldn't help her much if I
handed over this place to a man who'd muddle it all up and maybe
bring us to the Auctioneer's. I've known ... I've seen ... they had a bailiff
in at Becket's House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first
season, and got the fluke into their sheep. Why, even Sir Harry Trevor's
taken to managing things himself at North Farthing after the way he
saw they were doing with, that old Lambarde, and what he can do I can
do, seeing I wasn't brought up in a London square."
As Joanna's volubility grew, her voice rose, not shrilly as with most
women, but taking on a warm, hoarse note--her words seemed to be
flung out hot as coals from a fire. Mr. Huxtable grimaced. "She's a
virago," he thought to himself. He put up his hand suavely to induce
silence, but the eruption went on.
"I know all the men, too. They'd do for me what they wouldn't do for a
stranger. And if they won't, I know how to settle 'em. I've been bursting
with ideas about farming all my life. Poor Father said only a week
before he was taken 'Pity you ain't a man, Joanna, with some of the

notions you've got.' Well, maybe it's a pity and maybe it isn't, but what
I've got to do now is to act up proper and manage what is mine, and
what you and other folks have got to do is not to meddle with me."
"Come, come, my dear young lady, nobody's going to meddle with you.
You surely don't call it 'meddling' for your father's lawyer, an old man
who's known you all your life, to offer you a few words of advice. You
must go your own way, and if it doesn't turn out as satisfactorily as you
expect, you can always change it."
"Reckon I can," said Joanna, "but I shan't have to. Won't you take
another whisky, Mr. Huxtable?"
The lawyer accepted. Joanna Godden's temper might be bad, but her
whisky was good. He wondered if the one would make up for the other
to Arthur Alce or whoever had married her by this time next year.

§3
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