It was twilight when Jenny reached Robert’s farm, and his family was not expecting her. She paused at the gate. She knew why she had come, but she did not know what to do about it, and, knowing she did not know, had put off thinking about it, and now she was here and had to do something. At last she dismounted, and led Flora through the gate—while Gruoch oiled her way between the rails—and closed it behind them; and then she tied her mare to the fence and went on alone, her wolfhound still at her heels. She went down the path towards the farm buildings, as she usually did, although usually she rode, and at the sound of hoofbeats some member of the family would come out to meet her, for they were looking out for her. But they were not expecting her now, and she and her hound made no sound of footsteps.
It was spring, and there was much to do, for it had been cold and wet till late this year, and some evenings everyone worked on in the fields till dark. She should be home, now, doing the same. The buildings seemed deserted, and she wandered among them, a little forlornly, feeling that she’d come on a fool’s errand. It was all very well, what her mother said—what her mother had offered—but it was not that easy; and as she thought this, her eyes filled up again, and tears ran down her cheeks. As she took a great, gulping breath, she thought she heard something. She turned and walked towards the nearest barn. It sounded like someone giggling.
The door was only a little ajar, and it was almost dark inside, for there was not much daylight left. But there was a hatch door left open at the far end of the barn, high up in the loft, and a little of the remains of daylight came through it, and fell on a heap of golden straw. Robert was lying there, with a very pretty girl. The very pretty girl had no clothes on.
Jenny gasped, for she could not help it. She had, slowly, over the six months of her betrothal, come to understand that Robert did not love her, and this, when she had finally faced it, had caused her much grief. She felt that she had been foolish, and did not know where to turn; it had not occurred to her that her parents were wise enough even in such things to ask them, for she knew they loved each other, and had never thought of anyone else from their first courting days. She had felt, obscurely, that she had failed them somehow by loving a man who did not love her. Nor had she wanted to call off the wedding even now; not clearly, at least; for she knew she did still love him; perhaps she was only hoping for miracles; but she thought perhaps that he might have some . . . reassurance for her, that he might have something for her, even if it was not love, if she asked him. But she did not know how to ask for what she wanted, for what she would accept in place of love. She did not know what she would accept instead of love because that was what she did want, and what he had promised her. She had come over here, dumbly, thinking to find Robert, perhaps, alone; perhaps something would come to her that she could say to him.
She was very young, and very innocent. She had not, at her worst moments, expected anything like this. She knew what her own warm blood, when his arms were around her and their mouths met, meant; this was one of the reasons she could not bring herself to call off the wedding.
And so she gasped. Robert heard the sound, soft as it was, and stood up, throwing himself away from the pretty naked girl, leaping away from her, whirling to put his back to her as if she had nothing to do with him. He was still dressed, but both his shirt and his breeches were unlaced. His mouth dropped open; for this moment even his gift of ready, flattering speech had deserted him; for a moment he forgot he was beautiful. “Darling—” he said at last, or rather, croaked; and Jenny put her hands over her ears, and turned and fled. He took a step after her, but the wolfhound paused in the barn door and turned back to him, bristling; and he heard her growl. He stopped. The wolfhound slid silently through the door, after her mistress, and disappeared.
Jenny blundered among the familiar farm buildings like a hare among hounds; she was weeping, and felt that she would die at any moment. But she came, as much by accident as anything, around the corner of the first of the buildings, and looked up to see her grey mare glimmering in the twilight. Flora was anxious, and stamped her hoofs, swung her quarters back and forth, and swished her tail. Jenny made towards her, conscious now too of the tall wolfhound at her side, and she opened the gate in spite of her shaking fingers, untied her mare and led her through, and carefully closed and latched the gate again as any child raised on a farm knew to do by second nature. Then she mounted, and Flora leaped into a gallop without any message from Jenny.
Jenny did not mean to take the dangerous way. She thought she might die of sorrow and betrayal, but there was nothing in her healthy young spirit that could make her wish to kill herself. But in her trouble the only haven she could think of was the warm safe place she had known all her short life: her parents, her parents’ farm, the farmhouse with its rosy warm kitchen and her bedroom with the quilt she and her mother had made themselves. She could not bear not to go there as quickly as possible; and the angry unfair words she had last spoken to her mother pressed on her too. She had to take them back. As quickly as possible meant the old road across the bridge at the head of the haunted harbour; but she had no thought for sea-people, or old curses, or anything, only that it was a little over an hour home this low way rather than three hours the high roundabout inland way.
She knew, of course, that the bridge was never used, but everyone from the two towns was familiar with bits of the old road that led to and away from it; the newer roads that had replaced it struck off from it. Since its bridge was shunned, it had to be; but the road itself was not fearful. As the last of the old people, who remembered their parents’ friends’ deaths by drowning, themselves died peacefully in their beds, the custom of not using the road remained while the specific details of the proscription on the bridge faded.
Furthermore, she had not seen Gruoch turn Robert back at the barn door. The possibility that he might try to follow her was more awful than any ancient malediction. So she set Flora’s nose down the valley.
The mare had already had one journey today, and she was fretted by her mistress’s mood. She went on as fast as she could, but she was tired. Jenny, who loved her, knew this, even now when she was half-distracted with her great trouble, and pulled up once they were out of sight of Robert’s farm, and let the mare breathe. They went on again, but more slowly, and the twilight was really only the end of dusk, and full night came upon them almost at once. The mare began to stumble. Jenny dismounted and led her; and discovered that her mare stumbled not only from weariness, but from the roughness of the road. They were now on the last bit of road to the bridge, which was never used, and the cobbles had been torn up from sea-storm and land-frost, and the moon was not bright enough to show their way clearly, because streaming horses’ tails of cloud dimmed her light.
But a little wind came up, and blew the wisps away, and the moon grew brighter. The implications of what had happened began to clarify themselves in Jenny’s unhappy mind as well, but the focus of her worry for the moment was her parents, who would not know what had become of her, and would be the more anxious about her disappearance after the scene with her mother. Already she was adjusting to the fact that she no longer had a betrothed; that she would not be wed in a fortnight’s time. She did not know that her sudden, desperate weariness was partly on account of that adjustment. She only thought that she had had a long journey, and that she was very unhappy, and that her parents would be worried about her. She still had not remembered the sea-people’s curse.