§ 17

The next day was heavy with the threat of thunder. The ragged sky hung low over the trees, and clouds of dust blew down the lanes, through the aisles of the fennel. Jenny was exactly punctual at her tryst. She did not know whether or not he would expect to be kept waiting, but she had resolved to weigh this new adventure by no false standards of coquetry, and walked boldly on to Dinglesden bridge just as the thin chimes of Conster’s stable-clock came across the fields.

He was nowhere in sight, but in a couple of minutes he appeared, riding this time on a big-boned brown horse, who swung him along at a slow, lurching pace. Evidently he had not expected to find her there before him.

Directly he caught sight of her he jerked the reins and finished the last hundred yards at a canter, pulling up beside her on the crest of the bridge.

“Good-day, Miss Alard. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

She was pale with shyness. Hitherto she had never, under any circumstances, felt ill at ease with a man, but now she was incomprehensibly too shy to speak. He had dismounted, and was leading his horse towards the gate opening on the marsh by Dinglesden Farm. She found herself walking beside him.

“Bit thundery,” he remarked—“maybe we’ll have a storm.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’m not sure—it may blow over. I hope it does, for I’ve still a couple of fields uncut.”

“The hay’s been good this year.”

“Not so bad—but a bit stalky.”

They were through the gate now, walking side by side over the grass-grown, heavy rutted track that leads past the barns of Dinglesden down the Tillingham marsh, between the river and the hop-gardens. Jenny was glad they were off the road—soon they would be out of sight of it. The hop-gardens that covered the slope and threw a steamy, drowsy scent into the heaviness of the day, would hide them completely from anyone who went by. She began to feel very much alone with Godfrey ... and still neither of them spoke. They had not spoken since they had left the road.

Only a few hundred yards brought them to the turn of the valley, where the Tillingham swings southward towards Rye. Behind them the farm and the bridge were shut out by the sloping hop-gardens, before them the marsh wound, a green street, between the sorrel-rusted meadows, with the Mocksteeple standing gaunt and solitary on the hill below Barline.

“It’s very good of you to have come,” said Ben.

“I—I wanted to come.”

He checked his horse, and they stood still.

“You—you don’t think it cheek—I mean, that I’m taking a liberty—in wanting to know you?”

“No....”

“When you came that evening to the farm, I—I wanted to say all sorts of things, and I didn’t like ... for I didn’t know....”

“I should like to be your friend.”

Her voice came firmly at last.

“I should like to be your friend,” she repeated.

She knew what the word “friend” meant in his ears. “My friend” was what a girl of his class would say when she meant “my lover.”

“Well, then....”

He took her hand and blushed.

“Let’s sit down for a bit,” he said.

A stripped and fallen tree lay on the grass, and they sat down on it when he had hitched his horse to the fence of the hop-garden. Long hours seemed to roll by as they sat there side by side ... the sun came out for a moment or two, sending the shadow of the hop-bines racing over the ground. There was a pulse of thunder behind the meadows in the north. Then suddenly, for some unfathomable reason, Jenny began to cry.

At first he seemed paralysed with astonishment, while she leaned forward over her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. But the next moment his arms came round her, drawing her gently up against him, her cheek against his homespun coat that smelt of stables.

“My dear ... my little thing ... don’t cry! What is it?—Are you unhappy? What have I done?”

She could not speak—she could only lift her face to his, trying to smile, trying to tell him with her streaming eyes that she was not unhappy, only silly, only tired. He seemed to understand, for he drew her closer, and she could feel his whole body trembling as he put his mouth shyly against hers.

One or two drops of rain splashed into the ruts, and a moan of wind suddenly came through the hop-bines. He lifted his head, still trembling. He looked at her sidelong, as if for a moment he expected her to be angry with him, to chide his presumption. He would have taken away his arm, but she held it about her.

“You’ll get wet,” he said reluctantly—“we should ought to move.”

“I don’t care—I don’t want to move. Let me stay like this.”

“Then you aren’t angry with me for——”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, we aren’t long acquainted....”