“What did she turn him down for?”
“Oh, simply that there was no chance of their marrying, and they were getting thoroughly tired of each other.”
“A nice look-out if they’d married.”
“That would have been different. They might not have got tired of each other then. It’s these long engagements, that drag on and on without hope of an ending. I must say I’m sorry for poor Jenny. She’s been kept hanging about for three years, and she’s had frightfully little sympathy from anyone—except perhaps Mary. They were all too much afraid that if they encouraged her she’d dash off and get married on a thousand a year or some such pittance.”
“I’ve always understood Parish paid three hundred a year towards the interest on the Cock Marling mortgages—that would leave him with only seven hundred,” said Peter gravely.
“Impossible, of course. They’d have been paupers. But do you know that till I came down here I’d no idea how fashionable mortgages are among the best county families?”
§ 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.