§ 3

Peter did not meet Jenny till some days later. She had been to see Vera, and came out of the house just as Peter was talking to young Godfrey, the farmer of Fourhouses. This farm did not belong to the Alards—it stood on the southern fringe of their land in Icklesham parish. At one time Sir William Alard had wanted to buy it, but the owners held tight, and his grandchildren lived to be thankful for the extra hundred acres’ weight that had been spared them. Now, the situation was reversed, and the Godfreys were wanting to buy the thirty acres of Alard land immediately adjoining Fourhouses.

Sir John was willing to sell, and the only difficulty was the usual one of the mortgage. Godfrey, however, still wished to buy, for he believed that the land would double its value if adequate money was spent on it, and this he was prepared to do, for his farm had prospered under the government guarantees. For generations the Godfreys had been a hard-working and thrifty set, and the war—though it had taken Ben Godfrey himself out to Mesopotamia—had made Fourhouses flourish as it had never done since the repeal of the Corn Laws.

The problem became entirely one of price, and Peter had done his best to persuade his father not to stand out too stiffly over this. The family badly needed hard cash—the expenses of Mary’s suit had been heavy, and as their money was tied up in land it was always difficult to put their hand on a large sum. Here was a chance which might never happen again—for no one was likely to want the Snailham land under its present disabilities, except Godfrey, whose farm it encroached on. If they did not sell it now, it might become necessary (and this was Peter’s great fear) to sell the free lands of Starvecrow. Therefore if the Snailham land brought in the ready money they wanted, they must try to forget that it was going for little more than half what Sir William had given for it seventy years ago.

“Well, I’ll talk it over with Sir John,” he said to Godfrey, who was on horseback in the drive. It was then he saw Jenny coming towards them out of the house.

“Wait a minute,” he said to her—“I want to speak to you.”

He was uncertain whether or not he ought to introduce the young farmer to his sister. Godfrey did not call himself a gentleman farmer—indeed he was inclined to despise the title—but he came of good old yeoman stock, and his name went back nearly as far as Alard into the records of Winchelsea.

“Jenny, this is Mr. Godfrey of Fourhouses—my sister, Miss Jenny Alard.”

Godfrey took off his soft hat. He had the typical face of the Sussex and Kent borders, broad, short-nosed, blue-eyed; but there was added to it a certain brownness and sharpness, which might have come from a dash of gipsy blood. A Godfrey had married a girl of the Boswells in far-back smuggling days.

He and Peter discussed the Snailham snapes a little longer—then he rode off, and Peter turned to Jenny.

“I didn’t know you’d come over,” he said, “and I wanted to talk to you a bit—it’s an age since I’ve seen you.”

He was feeling a little guilty about his attitude towards her and Jim Parish—he had, like all the rest of the family, tried to ignore the business, and he now realised how bitter it must have been to Jenny to stand alone.

“Vera told me that you’d broken off your engagement,” he added as they walked down the drive.

“So it was an engagement, was it?” said Jenny rather pertly.

“Well, you yourself know best what it was.”

“I should have called it an engagement, but as neither his family nor mine would acknowledge it, perhaps it wasn’t.”

“There was no chance of your getting married for years, so it seemed better not to make it public. I can’t tell you I’m sorry you’ve broken it off.”

“I should hardly say it’s broken off—rather that it’s rotted away.”

Her voice sounded unusually hard, and Peter felt a little ashamed of himself.

“I’m frightfully sorry, Jenny”—taking her arm—“I’m afraid we’ve all been rather unsympathetic, but——”

“Gervase hasn’t. It was he who advised me to end things.”

“The deuce it was!”

“Yes—he saw it as I did—simply ridiculous.”

“So it was, my dear—since you couldn’t get married till the Lord knows when.”

“That wasn’t what made it ridiculous. The ridiculous part was that we could have got married perfectly well if only I hadn’t been Jenny Alard of Conster Manor and he Jim Parish of Cock Marling Place.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s got over seven hundred a year. Most young couples would look upon that as riches, but it’s poverty to us—partly because he has to pay away half of it in interest on mortgages, and partly because we’ve got such an absurd standard of living that we couldn’t exist on anything less than two or three thousand.”

“Well, I hope you’d never be such a fool as to marry on seven hundred.”

“That’s just it—I’m refusing to marry on seven hundred. But I’ll tell you, Peter—I’d do it like a shot for a man who didn’t look upon it as a form of suicide. If ever I meet a man who thinks it enough for him, I promise you it’ll be enough for me.”

“That’s all very well, Jenny. But Parish must think of Cock Marling.”

“He is thinking of it. It’s Cock Marling that’s separated us just as Conster separated you and Stella.”

Peter was annoyed.

“You’ve no right to say that. What makes you think I wanted to marry Stella? It’s not fair to Vera to suggest such a thing.”

“I’m sorry, Peter. I oughtn’t to have said it. But I did once think.... But anyhow, I’m glad you didn’t.”

“So am I.”

“And I’m glad I’m not going to marry Jim.”

“Then you needn’t be angry with Cock Marling.”

“Yes, I am—because I know I could have been happy with Jim if there’d been no Cock Marling. It’s all very well for you to talk, Peter—but I think.... Oh, these big country houses make me sick. It’s all the same—everywhere I go I see the same thing—we’re all cut to a pattern. There’s always the beautifully kept grounds and the huge mortgaged estate that’s tumbling to pieces for want of money to spend on it. Then, when you go in, there are hothouse flowers everywhere, and beautiful glass and silver—and bad cooking. And we’re waited on badly because we’re too old-fashioned and dignified to employ women, so we have the cheapest butler we can get, helped by a footman taken from the plough. Upstairs the bedrooms want painting and papering, but we always have two cars—though we can’t afford motor traction for our land. We’re falling to pieces, but we hide the cracks with pots of flowers. Why can’t we sell our places and live in comfort? We Alards would be quite well-to-do if we lived in a moderate sized house with two or three women servants and either a small car or none at all. We could afford to be happy then.”

“Jenny, you’re talking nonsense. You’re like most women and can’t see the wood for the trees. If we gave up the cars tomorrow and sacked Appleby and Pollock and Wills, and sold the silver and the pictures, it wouldn’t do us the slightest good in the world. We’d still have the estate, we’d still have to pay in taxes more than the land brings in to us. You can’t sell land nowadays, even if it isn’t mortgaged. Besides—damn it all!—why should we sell it? It’s been ours for centuries, we’ve been here for centuries, and I for one am proud of it.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m ashamed. I tell you, Peter, our day is over, and we’d better retire, while we can retire gracefully—before we’re sold up.”

“Nonsense. If we hang on, the value of the land will rise, we’ll be able to pay off the mortgages—and perhaps some day this brutal government will see the wickedness of its taxation and——”

“Why should it? It wants the money—and we’ve no right to be here. We’ve outlived our day. Instead of developing the land—we’re ruining it, letting it go to pieces. We can’t afford to keep our tenants’ farms in order. It’s time we ceased to own half the country, and the land went back to the people it used to belong to.”

“I see you’ve been talking to Gervase.”

“Well, he and I think alike on this subject.”

“I’m quite sure you do.”

“And we’ve made up our minds not to let the family spoil our lives. It’s taken Jim from me—but that was his fault. It’s not going to smash me a second time. If I want to marry a poor man, I shall do so—even if he’s really poor—not only just what we call poor.”

“Well, you and Gervase are a precious couple, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

The next moment he softened towards her, because he remembered that she was unhappy and spoke out of the bitterness of her heart. But though he was sorry for her, he had a secret admiration for Jim Parish, who had refused to desert the Squires.