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  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.

  Three generations of land-people ago, a greedy merchant had cheated the sea-people who had rescued him from drowning, and they had been angry. But when they asked the town councillors to right this wrong, the town councillors had said that as the merchant was of the land, like themselves, they would not decide against him.

  The sea-people are no more cruel than those on land. But they had lost several of their own in the storm that had foundered the false merchant’s ship, and they guessed—correctly—that the land-merchant’s faithlessness was for no better cause than a desire to recoup financially. So then the king and queen of the sea-people had let their wrath run free, for they had asked for redress to be offered honestly and had been denied.

  The water had risen in the harbour and beaten against its walls till all the ship docks were washed away. And the sea-people said: This is what you have earned, for your greed and your treachery, that this kind harbour shall never be kind to you again, and the merchant trade of which you have been so proud is denied you for as long as the sea-people shall remember you and your decision, and the sea-people’s memory is long. If any shall set a boat in this harbour, it shall be overturned; and if any shall set foot on the bridge at the head of the harbour, then shall a wave rise up and sweep them off and into the sea where they shall drown, as your merchant might have done.

  And so it was. At first the towns, who had been rich and fat for a long time, could not believe it; and they set to work rebuilding the docks, and repairing their ships, and repaving the bridge at the head of the harbour, and they grumbled as they did it, and p
articularly they grumbled at the greedy merchant who had brought them to this pass. But in a year’s time they had all but bankrupted themselves, all the merchants of both towns, and the banks that had loaned them money, and the outfitters that had provided the goods; and there were no longer any workers who would take jobs on docks or ships either, because there had been too many freak waves, too many sudden storms, too many drownings.

  Over the three generations since then, the towns had shrunk back from the harbour, and looked inland for their commerce, and the farmers, who had once been considered very much inferior to the merchants of the sailing trade, were now the most important citizens. The merchants and bankers and outfitters either died of broken hearts or moved away; and the hired workers learned to cut a straight furrow instead of a straight mast, and the sailors mostly went north or south, although a goodly number of them, too, went inland, and became coopers and cordwainers. It was said that the original merchant who had caused the trouble changed his name, and took his family to the other side of the world, but that bad luck had pursued him even there, and he had died in poverty.

  Jenny’s family had been farmers on their farm for many generations, and were little touched by the change in their status. They were farmers who cared about farming, and what the people around them thought of farming seemed to them only amusing, because everyone must eat, and that is what farming is for. Perhaps they had a few more cousins on the town council in the three generations since the collapse of the sailing trade than they had previously, but this did not greatly change their outlook either, so long as the towns continued to provide markets and fairs, and enough hungry and prosperous folk to buy farm produce. There had never been any sailors or fisherfolk in their family, and they believed in their blood and bone that the sea was an unchancy thing at best, and better left alone. Even the tale of the sea-people’s curse could not stir them much; it was too much what they would expect of sea-people, had they ever thought about it.

  A system of longer inland roads sprang up to connect the two towns, for even without the harbour their people had too long been closely involved with each other to break off relations now. The new connecting road curved far inland, staying high on the ridge above the harbour so that the road might cross while the stream that fed it still lay underground, and as a result it was an hour on a fresh horse even between the two towns, and nearer three between outlying farms.

  Once the betrothal had been officially set and posted, the parents of Jenny and Robert relaxed, a little, about letting them visit each other; and if Robert rode over to see Jenny in the afternoon, her parents expected to put him up overnight and he rode home the next day, and vice versa. There were some words spoken between Jenny and her parents, for her parents felt that it was not proper that she ride all that way alone, and sent someone with her, usually right to the gate of Robert’s family’s farm; and let her know further that they would still not allow this at all if it hadn’t been clearly understood that there was a sister still at home as well as Robert’s mother, and that Jenny would share the sister’s bedroom. Jenny, scarlet with shame, said this was nonsense, and that furthermore it was unnecessarily tiring and tedious for whoever was sent with her; but her parents said that it was in this wise or not at all, and so she yielded, but with a less good grace than was usual with her.

  It had been tacitly assumed by each family that the extra pair of hands would be put to use, in a little way to make up for when the pair of hands they were used to having available weren’t there for a long afternoon and overnight; but because the parents of each child were very cautious with the parents of the other child, they did not exchange any words about the relative usefulness of their two children. It would have been very awkward if they had been less cautious, since Jenny could lay her hand to almost anything, indoors and out, while Robert seemed capable of almost nothing without so much explanation that it became easier to do it yourself—or so Jenny’s father said to Jenny’s mother, more than once, in exasperation. Jenny’s parents had begun to try to teach Robert the running of their farm—much of which should have been familiar to him already but mysteriously seemed not to be—and tried to believe that all would be well, once the boy was married and settled.

  It was but two weeks before the wedding, and the final frenzy of preparation was beginning. It was not to be a grand wedding, but it was to be a large one, with many people staying through the day and into the evening, and much food eaten, and plenty of musicians for plenty of dancing. Jenny’s parents could not but notice that there was a growing edge to her excitement that was not . . . what they would expect or want in a bride-to-be, and all their previous fears about Robert rushed upon them again. Her mother tried to talk to her, but she would not listen; and the odd edge to her excitement grew more pronounced; till at last her mother, desperate, said: “Child, you know we love you. We will not ask you any more questions that you do not wish to answer. But if—for any reason—you wish to call the wedding off, for pity’s sake, tell us, and we will do it for you.”

  Jenny rounded on her mother then, in a way she never had, and screamed at her, and said that her parents were determined to destroy her happiness, that they did not need to tell her again that they did not like Robert, that of course she wanted the wedding to go as planned, and to leave her alone!

  Her mother, shaken, pulled away from her daughter, turned and left her, and Jenny threw herself sobbing on her bed.

  Jenny’s mother said to her husband, “There is nothing we can do. Something is wrong, dreadfully wrong, but we must let her bear it herself, for she will accept no help from us.”

  They left her alone that day, shut up in her room, and went on about the farm work and the wedding preparations with heavy hearts.

  And Jenny, after several solitary and gloomy hours, crept out of her room and down the stairs, and to the barns. She saddled her mare, Flora, and led her down a soft path where the mare’s iron shoes would not ring and give them away, and mounted and rode off. Jenny looked back after she had run off her first misery with a gallop, and saw that her long-legged wolfhound bitch had followed her. She scolded her, and Gruoch’s ears drooped, but she peered at her mistress up under her hairy brows, and clung to Flora’s heels, and showed no sign of going home as ordered. So they went on together, the three of them.

  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.