“I daresay it sounds a silly and impertinent question. But I must ask it. Do you think he’s pulled your heart away from your judgment? And do you think it’s possible that you may have been driven towards him by reaction, the reaction from all that long, meandering, backboneless affair with Jim Parish, and all the silly, trivial things that did for it at last? Don’t be angry with me. I must put that side of the question to you, or I’d never forgive myself.”
“Do you think I’ve never put it to myself? Oh, Gervase, it was exactly what I thought at the beginning. I told myself it was only reaction—only because I was bored. But when I met him at Fourhouses I couldn’t help seeing it was more than that, and now I know it’s real—I know, I know.”
“Have you tastes and ideas in common?”
“Yes, plenty. He has very much the same sort of abstract ideas as I have—thinks the same about the war and all that. And he’s read, too—he loves Kipling, and Robert Service’s poems, though he reads boys’ books as well. He really has a better literary taste than I have—you know what Vera thinks of my reading. And he’s travelled much more than I have, seen more of the world. He’s been in Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and Greece, and France. And yet he’s so simple and unassuming. He’s much more of a ‘gentleman’ in his speech and manners than lots of men I know.”
“Have you ever seen him in his Sunday clothes?”
“Yes, I have, and survived. He wears a ready-made brown suit with a white stripe in it. And that’s the worst there is about him.”
“What are his people like?”
“They’re darlings. His mother is solid and comfortable and motherly, and the girls are about my own age, but with much better manners. When Ben and I are married, the others will live in a part of the house which is really quite separate from the rest—has a separate door and kitchen—the newest of the four houses. Oh, I tell you, Gervase, I’ve faced everything—tastes, ideas, family, Sunday clothes—and there’s nothing that isn’t worth having, or at least worth putting up with for the sake of the rest, for the sake of real comfort, real peace, real freedom, real love....”
Her eyes began to fill, and he felt her warm, sobbing breath on his cheek.
“Jennie, I want to kiss you. But I should have to make too many preparations first—take off my slops, wash my hands with soda, and clean my teeth, because I’ve been smoking woodbines all day. So I think I’d better put it off till Sunday. But I do congratulate you, dear—not only on being in love but on being so brave. I think you’re brave, Jenny; it’s so much more difficult for a woman to break away than for a man. But you’d never have found happiness in the family groove, and sometimes I was afraid that ... never mind, I’m not afraid now.”