CHAPTER XV
BEN BAMSEY'S DOUBTS
As the summer advanced, Jane Bamsey let it be known that she proposed to wed Enoch Withycombe's son, Jerry. For some time her parents refused to believe it, but as Jane persisted and brought Jerry to see them, they began to accept the fact. Benjamin felt hopeful of the match, while Jane's mother did not. In the first place she was disappointed, for while a fine and amiable man, of good repute, not lacking in respect, Jerry could not be considered a very promising husband. He was too old; he was only a woodman and would always remain a woodman. Mrs. Bamsey held that a daughter of hers should have looked higher.
Jane, however, now declared her undying love, and, for the moment, it was undoubtedly true that she did love and desire the son of the huntsman better than anything in the world. She did not share her parents' estimate of him but perceived possibilities and believed that, with her help and supported by the dowry she expected to bring him on their marriage, Jerry would prove—not her head, but her right hand. For Jane had her own private ambitions, and though they staggered Jerry when he heard them, such was his devotion that he agreed to propositions for the future inevitably destined to upset his own life and plunge it into a wrong environment. Their absurdity and futility were not as yet apparent to him, though Jane's ideas from anybody else had been greeted with contempt. They embraced a radical change in his own existence that had been unbearable to contemplate save in one light. But that light his sweetheart created; and when she described her ambitions to leave Dart Vale and set up a little shop in town, Jerry, after some wondering protests, found that the choice might actually lay between this enterprise and Jane herself. Therefore, he did not hesitate. He stated his case, however, when she agreed to marriage on her own conditions.
"Away from trees, I'm much afraid I should be but a lost man," declared Jerry.
"And in the country, I'm but a lost woman," replied Jane. "I'm sick of trees, and fields too."
She had never hinted at the possibility of accepting him at all before the occasion of these speeches; and it was natural that no stipulation could long daunt Jerry in the glorious hour of success. Jane was actually prepared to accept him at last, and since life with Jane in a dungeon had been better than life without her under any conditions whatsoever, Jerry, after a display of argument that lasted not five minutes, agreed to her terms, and found his sweetheart on his knees, his arms round her, the astounding softness of her cheek against the roughness of his own.
How far Jane might be looking ahead, neither her future husband, nor anybody else knew; but one guessed; and since it was Enoch Withycombe who received this spark of divination, he kept it to himself for the present. Now the invalid spoke to Jane's father, who came to see him upon the subject; but both old men considered the situation without knowledge of the facts, because Jane, with greater insight than Jerry and shrewd convictions that her terms would meet with very hearty protests from her lover's family, if not her own, had counselled Jerry, indeed commanded him, to say nothing of their future intentions until the marriage day was fixed.
"And how's yourself, Enoch?" asked Benjamin, as he smiled and took Mr. Withycombe's hand.
"Middling, but slipping down, Ben. The end's getting nearer and the bad days getting thicker sprinkled in the pudding. I shan't be sorry to go."