“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.