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Joanna Godden By: Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887-1956) |
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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
ยง1 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 she stopped at once... Continue reading book >>
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