§ 18

During the next two months Jenny grew sweetly familiar with that strip of marsh between the hop-gardens and the River Tillingham. The Mocksteeple, standing out on the hill above the river’s southward bend, had become one of many joyful signs. Once more the drab, ridiculous thing looked down on Alard loves, though now it was not a cynical Alard Squire making sport of the country girls, but an Alard girl tasting true love for the first time with a yeoman. Her earlier love affairs, even that latest one with Jim Parish, became thin, frail things in comparison.

Godfrey was contemptuous of Jim.

“He couldn’t have loved you, or he’d never have let you go. He’d have let his place go first.”

“Would you let Fourhouses go for me, Ben?”

“Reckon I would.”

“Thank God you haven’t got to choose.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t got to choose, for I’d like to show you.” “Well, I’m glad, for whichever way you chose it ud be hard for you.”

“No—not hard.”

“You don’t know, because you’re safe; you haven’t even got to think of it. But I’m sorry for some of our men—yes, for Jim Parish, and even for Peter. You see, it’s not merely choosing for themselves. They have their families to consider. You can’t dish all your relations just because you want to get married.”

Love was making her soft in judgment.

“No relation that had any heart would stand in the way of a young chap’s marrying a good girl. My mother ud sooner turn out and live in a cottage than see me go without a wife.”

“But would you turn your mother out, Ben?”

“We’d all go out together—for my wife.”

His love-making was a delightful blend of diffidence and ardour. At first it had been difficult to show him that she was touchable, approachable to caresses. Yet once she had shown him the way, he had required no more leading. He had a warm, gentle nature, expressing itself naturally in fondness. His love for her seemed to consist in equal parts of passion and affection. It lacked the self-regarding element to which she was accustomed, and though it held all the eager qualities of fire, there was about it a simplicity and a shyness which were new to her. After a time she discovered that he had a mind like a young girl’s, and an experience very nearly as white. He had spent his life in the society of animals and good women, and the animals had taught him to regard them not as symbols of license but as symbols of order, and the women had taught him that they were something more than animals. He had the fundamental cleanness of a man who takes nature naturally.

There had been another surprise for her, too, and this had lain in his attitude towards her position and her family. She discovered that his deference for her was entirely for her as a woman, and he had no particular respect for her as an Alard. His courtship would have been as diffident if she had been the daughter of the farmer of Glasseye or the farmer of Ellenwhorne. He was grateful to her for loving him, and infinitely careful of her love, as a privilege which might be withdrawn, but he saw no condescension in her loving him, no recklessness in her seeking him. Indeed, the only time she found a stiffness in him was when she told him that their love would have to be secret as far as her family was concerned. He had come to see her openly and innocently at Conster, and though luckily her people had been out, and she had been able to convey to the servants that he had only called on business, she had had to warn him that he must not come again.

“But why not?—I’m not ashamed of loving you.”

“It isn’t that, Ben.”

“Nor ashamed of myself, neither.”

“Oh, darling, can’t you understand that it’s because of my parents—what they’ll think and say—and do, if they get the chance?”

“You mean they won’t hold with us marrying?”

“No—they won’t hold with it at all.”

“I expect they’d like you to marry a lord.”

“It isn’t so much a lord that they want as someone with money.”

“Well, I’ve got plenty of that, my lovely.”

“Not what they’d call plenty—they want a really rich man, who’ll be able to put us on our feet again.”

“Reckon he’d be hard to find. You’d need fifty thousand to do that, I reckon.”

Jenny nodded.

“Thank God,” he said, “my lands free.”

“You’re lucky.”

“It’s only because I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, nor my father before me. That piece I bought from your father is the first that Fourhouses has bought for sixty years. We’re not grand landlords, us. Maybe” ... he hesitated a moment ... “your father and mother ud think you were marrying beneath you to marry me. I reckon we’re not gentry, and I was sent to the National School. But my folk have had Fourhouses two hundred year, and we’ve kept ourselves honest, for all that my grandfather married a gipsy. There was a lady I met on leave in Egypt asked me to marry her,” he added naïvely, “and Lord! she was beautiful and had lovely gowns, and was a great man’s widow. But I couldn’t feel rightly towards her, so I declined the favour she would do me, but was honoured all the same. What are you laughing at, duck?”

“Not at you.”

She realised that the war was probably in part responsible for his failure to see the barriers between them—its freedoms coupled with his own inherited consciousness of a good inheritance and an honest history. She was not sorry for this—it showed that he was aware of no maladjustments in their comradeship, in their tastes, views, thoughts, ideas, which now they exchanged freely. It made their courtship much more natural. All she feared was his resentment at her family’s attitude.

But she found him unexpectedly mild on this point. His self-respect was solid and steady enough not to be shaken by what would have upset a man standing less securely. He was proud of his yeoman birth, his prosperous farm and free inheritance, and could laugh at the contempt of struggling, foundering Conster. Moreover, he loved Jenny, and, since she loved him, could forgive those who did not think him good enough for her. He agreed that their engagement should be kept from her people, though it was known to his, till she could find a proper time for disclosing it. Meanwhile they met either at Fourhouses, where the kindly, dignified welcome of his mother and sisters saved their love from any sordid touch of the clandestine, or else, nearer Jenny’s home, at Brede Eye or the Mocksteeple.

As time went on she felt the necessity of taking at least one member of her family into her confidence—partly to make contrivance more easy, and partly as a help in the ultimate crisis which must come before long. Ben was slow in his methods, and did not belong to a class who made marriages in haste, but she knew that the last months of the year would probably be crucial. She would then have somehow to declare herself, and she saw the need for an ally.

Of course there was only Gervase. She knew that he alone was in the least likely to take her part; and in spite of her growing approach to Peter, she realised that it would be folly to turn to him now. He had married a girl whose grandfather Ben Godfrey’s grandfather would have despised, nevertheless he would be horror-stricken at the marriage she proposed to make—he would talk as if she was marrying beneath her, as if she was making herself cheap and degrading her name. She could not bear it.... No, Peter would have to stay outside. Gervase was altogether different—he had accomplished his own revolt, and would encourage hers. Besides, he had always been her special brother, and though lately his new interests and long absences had a trifle estranged them, she knew she had only to turn to him to find their old alliance standing.

It was with this special decision that she came from the Mocksteeple one evening in September. She had told Ben that she meant to confide in Gervase, and he had agreed, though she knew that he too was sorry it could not be Peter. She felt the approach of relief—it would be a relief to have someone with whom she could discuss her difficulties, on whose occasional co-operation she could depend, and whose goodwill would support her during the catastrophic days of disclosure. Gervase seemed greater to her in all these capacities than he seemed to Ben. She knew that Ben thought him a mere boy, whose knowledge of their circumstances might, far from giving them support, actually lead to their confusion. But Jenny still had her queer new respect for Gervase. No doubt he was a hothead, a rather uncritical revolutionary; but his ideas seemed lately to have grown more stable; they seemed less ready-made, more the fruit of his own thinking. His contempt of his people’s gods had no longer such a patent origin in youthful bumptiousness, but seemed rather due to the fact of his having built his own holy places. She wondered what had taught him wisdom—which of the new elements that had lately come into his life. Was it work, religion, love, or merely his growing older?