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Updated: June 12, 2025
It was not an old house, nor had the Quinns lived in it from the time it was built, and so Henry could not feel about it what Ninian must have felt about Boveyhayne Manor, in which his ancestors had lived for four centuries. But it was his home, in which he had been born, in which his mother and father had died, and it seemed to him to be as full of memories and tradition as Mary's home.
They had eaten sandwiches on the Common, and in the afternoon, had climbed down the steep side of the combe to a farm to tea, and, then they had climbed up the combe again, and had sat in their corner, watching the Boveyhayne trawlers blowing home; and as they sat there, they became very quiet. In this solitude and peace, the outrage of war seemed to have no meaning.... Ninian stirred slightly.
The vicar of Boveyhayne and his wife were to dine at the Manor that night, and so they were bidden to put on their company manners and their evening clothes. Ninian grumbled lustily when he heard the news, for he had made arrangements with a fisherman to "clean" a skate that evening when the trawlers came home. "I bet him thruppence I could do it as good as he could, and now I'll have to pay up.
The first Graham to own it received it and the lands adjacent to it from Henry the Second, and ever since that time a Graham had been lord of the manor of Boveyhayne. Ninian was the last of his line. If he were to die, there would be no more Grahams at Boveyhayne. That was the fear that haunted Mrs. Graham....
He would go to Boveyhayne and marry Mary, and then he would take her to his home ... he must do that ... and when he had given his house to her, he would enlist as a soldier. "Life isn't worth while, if one is afraid to lose it ... a year or two more, what do they matter if a job be shirked?" "It isn't the time one lives that matters," he went on, "it's what one does in the time!"
They had habits and customs so old that no one knew the meaning of them. When Widger's wife died, Widger and his family had gone to church on the Sunday after her burial, as all the Boveyhayne bereaved do, and had sat through the service, taking no part in it, neither kneeling to pray nor rising to sing nor responding to the invocations.
Ninian might invite some chap from Cambridge to Boveyhayne.... That would be like Ninian, to go and spoil everything without thinking for a moment of what he was doing.... If only Mary and he were a few years older, they could become formally engaged, and then everything would be all right, but Mary was so young ... Soon after Henry had returned to Ballymartin, John Marsh came to Mr.
Ninian, in a hurry to catch the train for Boveyhayne at Waterloo, had left them at Charing Cross. Henry nodded his head. "This marrying and giving in marriage is the devil, isn't it?" Gilbert went on. "We ought to cheer ourselves up, Quinny!" "We ought, Gilbert!" "Let's go and see my play. Perhaps that'll make us feel merry and bright!..." "No," said Henry. "It wouldn't. It 'ud depress us.
He had seen Roger and Rachel, and was now on his way back to Boveyhayne.... Roger had agreed that he would not join without Henry. "I can't go yet," he had said. "When I've saved a little more, I'll go in. I want to leave Rachel and Eleanor as secure as I can!" There was another boom in recruiting just then, following on another German outrage.
People come to Boveyhayne in the summer, but they can't spoil it because the villagers don't depend on visitors for a living: they depend on themselves ... and the sea. There isn't a man in Boveyhayne who is pretending to be a fisherman and is really a cadger on summer visitors. Some of them won't be bothered to take people out in rowing-boats they feel that that is work for the old.
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