This young man lived in a neighbouring village, and was one of four sons, third from the eldest. His family too held a good farm, like hers, but they had four sons to think of. The first was a hard worker, and he would have the farm. The second was clever, and was to be apprenticed to his uncle, who was a clever businessman in the city. The fourth was grave and thoughtful, and would go into the priesthood. The third was beautiful. His name was Robert.
He knew he was beautiful, and all the girls knew it. Jenny knew it too. She had loved him for four and a half years, almost since the day that the blood that made her a woman first flowed, and her mother had explained to her what this meant, and what would happen to her on her wedding night. When she had understood, she had blushed fierily, and tried to forget. It had only been three days before that she had seen Robert for the first time, and had wondered at her own inability to think of anything else since, for such a thing had never happened to her before; boys were just boys, and their differences from girls had never been terribly intriguing. It seemed to her that her mother had just explained this too, and rather than feeling pleased and excited, she felt it was all too much, and was frightened. None of this she told her mother, who might have been able to reassure her; and she never told anyone of her feelings for Robert.
So she knew she loved this young man, but she had never done anything to draw his attention to her. But she was now eighteen, and he twenty, and he was beginning to realise that he could not go on merely being beautiful at his parents’ expense, and that it was time that he put his beauty to what he had always known was its purpose: to find himself a wife who would keep him comfortably.
He had known about Jenny for as long as she had known about him, for it was his habit to ask about every girl he saw, and he had asked about her on the very day she had first seen him. But, vain as he was, he did not know that she loved him, for she was that clever at hiding it. He found her such a dreary, dim little thing that even though he did not forget about her, in the four years since he had first been told about her parents’ farm and the fact that she was the only and much beloved child, he had not been able to bring himself to flirt with her. There were other, prettier, livelier girls that pleased him better. But this year, the year that she was eighteen and he twenty, he decided the time had come, and he had steeled himself to do what he had by this time convinced himself was his duty; and, looking for her at the harvest fair, had been astonished at the change in her, at the sparkle in her eye and the straight, elegant way she carried herself. Without inquiring about the source of the change, either to her or to himself, he found that his duty was not quite as dreadful as he had expected. He flirted with her and she, hesitantly, responded. She had seen him flirt with other girls. And he had to admit, by her response, that she might be dim but she was not unintelligent. And so to keep her interest he had to . . . put himself out a little.
He came to call on her at her parents’ farm, and was charming to her parents. She had told him that she was being sent off to stay a season with her parents’ relatives in the city, and while she did not tell him why, he could guess. She told him that they were due to leave in a fortnight’s time. The day before they would have left, he asked her to marry him.
The warmth of her kiss when she answered him yes startled him; and again he thought that perhaps doing his duty would not be so dreadful after all, for if she was not as pretty as some, still the armful of her was good to hold, and she loved him, of course, as he expected her to.
She did love him. And she believed that he loved her, for he had told her so. She thought she would have known—for such was her acuteness about anything to do with him, and her mother had many friends who came joking and gossiping around, and she always listened—if he had ever proposed marriage to any of the other girls he had been seen with over the last four years. And if he did not love her, why else would he have proposed? For marriage was for life, and a husband and wife must come first with each other for all the days of it. She knew, for she was not unintelligent, about the pragmatic facts of being a third son; but she was also innocent, and in love. She could not believe that any man would take a wife wholly on account of her inheritance.
Her parents saw that she was in love, and rejoiced for her, or they tried to, for they could not rejoice in her choice, and they were put to some difficulty not to let her know their misgivings. Their guess of the likeliest inspiration for his proposal was not clouded with love or innocence; and they too knew about his position as third son. But, they comforted themselves, they knew nothing against him, but that he was a bit over-merry in a way that they perhaps were wrong to dislike, for they were old and he was young; and they knew also that he was not much given to hard work; but this too might be on account of his youth, and his undeniable beauty, which had encouraged people to spoil him a little. Naught had ever been said truly against him. He was only twenty; perhaps he had realised it was time to settle down, and had made choice of their daughter by recognising her real worth, including that she might settle a husband she loved—perhaps he did love her, for that reason. Not for the sake of her parents’ farm. Not only for the sake of her parents’ farm, for they never tried to tell themselves that the farm had no place in his calculations. Many marriages, they said to each other, are built on less; and she loved him enough for both, and perhaps he would grow to love her as much, for he was—he was good-natured enough, they thought. There was no meanness in him, just carelessness and vanity.
But when he sat in their kitchen or sitting-room with them and their daughter, they did not like it that he did not seem to notice when she smiled, he did not seem to love that bright look of gentleness and humour and intelligence; he did not seem to see it. He petted her, as he might a little dog that sat adoringly at his feet, and her parents tried not to like him less for enjoying that their daughter adored him in such a way.
So it was; and so it went on. The wedding date was fixed, and the relatives in the city had had the situation explained to them, and had promised to come to the wedding themselves, and suggested that perhaps the young people could visit them some day. The plans for the wedding progressed, and Jenny seemed no less in love, and Robert grew no less kind to her, even if it was the casual kindness of a boy to a little dog.
The two farms lay on the opposite outskirts of two towns. The distance between was considerable, and when the young people wished to visit each other, thought had to be taken about time and weather, and who would do the work left undone. Both towns lay near a small cup of harbour, one on either side, each on a little rise of ground with the harbour at the low point between. It would have been much the quicker for anyone wishing to go from the one farm to the other to go down to the harbour and up the other side; but no one ever did go that way. There was still an old, broken road that led over what had once been a wide bridge for heavy trade and traffic between the towns at the head of the harbour, but it had lain untouched for three generations.
There is rarely much contact between sea-people and land-people, but for a while there had been a wary association between them in the vicinity of this harbour. No one remembered how it had begun, but for many years there was a limited but profitable trade in certain luxury items: the sea-people loved fine lace, for example, perhaps in part because it perished so quickly under water, and bright flowers preserved in wax or glass. The land merchants preferred pearls and narwhal horns. Neither side was able to trust the other, however, saying that each was too strange, too alien, that they could not—indeed should not—be comfortable in each other’s company. This lack of confidence grew with time instead of easing, and no doubt trouble would have come sooner or later. But when trouble came, it was grievous.