“Oh, we never corresponded much—we met too often.”
“It was always the other way round with me ... the piles of letters I used to get.... I expect you remember.”
Jenny could remember nothing but a fat letter which appeared every other day for about three weeks, from an Indian civil servant who was presumptuous enough to think himself fit to mate with Alard.
“Well, I’ve had my good times,” continued Doris, “so I oughtn’t to grumble. Things seem to have been different when I was your age. Either it was because there were more men about, or”—she smiled reminiscently. “Anyhow, there weren’t any gaps between. I put an end to it all a little while ago—I had to—one finds these things too wearing ... and I didn’t want to go on like Ninon de l’Enclos—I don’t think it’s dignified.”
“Perhaps not,” said Jenny absently. She was wondering what Doris would say to her letter if she could see it.
After breakfast she took it up to the old schoolroom and read it again. This time it did not make her laugh. Rather, she felt inclined to cry. She thought of Ben Godfrey sitting at the kitchen table with a sheet of note-paper and a penny bottle of ink before him—she saw him wiping his forehead and biting his penholder—she saw him writing out the note over and over again because of the blots and smudges that would come. Yes, she must remember the debit side—that he was not always the splendid young man she saw walking over his fields or driving his trap. There were occasions on which he would appear common, loutish, ignorant.... But, and this was the change—she saw that she loved him all the better for these occasions—these betraying circumstances of letter writing, best parlour and best clothes, which seemed to strip him of his splendour and show him to her as something humble, pathetic and dear.
“Dear Mr. Godfrey,” she said to herself—“I shall be very humbly grateful for your freindship ... and I can’t imagine it spelt any other way.”
She found it very difficult to answer the letter, as she was uncertain of the etiquette which ruled these occasions. Evidently one said little, but said it very often. In the end all she did was to write saying she would meet him on the Tillingham bridge, as he suggested. She thought it was rather rash of him to appoint a tryst on her father’s land, but they could easily go off the road on to the marsh, where they were not likely to be seen.
She posted the letter herself in the box at the end of the drive, then gave herself up to another twenty-four hours’ in reality of waiting.