The Soldier and the Gentlewoman

by Hilda Vaughan

  Smiling to think that she would soon have Dick again under her influence, she climbed into his car and set out to greet him with feelings of good-will. She had ordered him the dinner and the wine he liked and the extravagant fires for which he craved. She herself found them suffocating, but Dick was about to turn over a new leaf under her guidance, and for those whom she governed Gwenllian spared herself no pains.

  On the drive she met the new nurse pushing the heir in his large pram. Nurses had come and gone during the year since Illtyd’s birth, for his mother would suffer no will in the nursery but her own. The baby was hers, and his attendants her servants. She stopped the car, jumped out, and peeped under the pram’s hood at the sleeping infant. Very gently she touched his wrists, where the white woolly mittens she had knitted for him ended. His tiny hands were warm. She bent lower, careful not to awaken him, and sniffed. He smelled sweet as a flower. Straightening herself, she gave a sharp glance at the frilled pillow with his monogram embroidered on it, at the fleecy, satin-edged blankets, the quilted silk coverlet. The nurse stood by with an expression of resentful apprehension. Gwenllian gave her a nod of encouragement.

  “You keep him very spick and span, Nannie.”

  “I hope so, Madam. I try hard enough, I’m sure.”

  “D’you find me terribly particular?” Gwenllian asked with a smile, for this nurse promised to be worth keeping.

  The stolid face could hide nothing from her. Nannie did not like her, but she was respectful, and that was of more importance. “I shouldn’t wish to complain, Madam,” she said. “I’d rather a lady what knows. What I mean to say is, when one does one’s duty—”

  Gwenllian bestowed another smile. “We both mean my baby to be the best cared for in the world, don’t we?”

  The nurse’s thick lips moved in a grudging smile. “That’s right, Madam.”

  “But, Nannie,” the mother added with a swift glance at the wildly swaying trees, “you mustn’t ever bring him here in a gale like this. A branch might fall.”

  “Oh,” the nurse protested. “I don’t think there’s much danger.”

  “I’m not going to run any risk with him, or any shadow of risk,” Gwenllian answered in a tone that quenched dispute. “Take him round the walled garden where he’ll be perfectly safe.”

  Safe! The soft word sang in her ears as she drove up over the desolate tableland towards Llanon. With her beloved child’s safety went that of the inheritance. It must never, never go to her sister’s ragamuffin children, trained to despise property and tradition, nor must Dick be suffered to dissipate any fraction of it, before her son stepped into his father’s shoes. She had come to think of Dick as a Regent; of herself as a Queen Mother. What they possessed they held in trust.

  Below her, far away on the right, a leaden sea, flecked with white horses, stretched to the paler lead of the horizon. On her left, the mountains frowned in purple majesty against a sombre sky. All around her tossed the wintry gorse bushes and stunted thorn trees. The wailing of the storm through sodden sedges and heather was shrill above the throbbing of the car. Water and mud spurted up as she jolted along the road, rutted, and pocked with puddles. Rain had begun to fall once more, driving against the windscreen, shooting in icy arrows through chinks in the hood. As Gwenllian turned up the collar of her old leather coat, she thought the more complacently of her baby’s sheltered warmth.

  He was not strong, Dr. Roberts feared. She mustn’t try to harden him too soon. But she was confident that under her care he would grow into a tall, tough Einon-Thomas, and she remembered her madly pulsing joy, torn and feeble though she had been, when the doctors told her that she had brought into the world a living child—a son, and with dark eyes!

  “Like yourself,” they had said.

  “Like my father,” she had corrected them.

  Every day for over a year, she had watched her baby continually, asleep, waking, feeding at her breast. In his features, as they began to develop, she looked for a mirror of the past. She made plans for his future, entering him for the public school at which her father and her grandfather had been educated. She invested money in his name. What she had suffered in her body to bring him to life, had been more than repaid in the pride and pleasure she had in this exquisite small creature of her own substance, this promise of a material immortality, this gift of hers to the race she worshipped.

  Well pleased with herself, she drove along the desultory main street of Llanon, past square stone inns, and cosy whitewashed cottages, and the trim, unlovely villas of retired sea-captains, each with a flagstaff in its garden. She knew who lived in every one of these houses, and whether or not they were “deserving.” Life in a city, it seemed to her, must be lonely and dull. Dick’s pleasure in being where his name commanded no respect astonished her. At each of the small shops at which she stopped, an obsequious tradesman ran out, and stood bare-headed in the rain to take her orders.

  “You’ll get wet, Mr. Jones.”

  “No matter, Ma’am. ’Tis always a pleasure to serve you, wet or fine.”

  She enjoyed spending money on sanctioned necessities. Smiling, she returned compliment for compliment in regal fashion. “It’s a pleasure to us, too, to deal with anyone who has served us well for so many years.”

  “Oh, the best my small shop is stocking, Ma’am, is always for the Plâs.”

  Then she would ask, “How’s Minnie getting on at the Post Office?” Or, “Is your wife’s rheumatism better?” And Mr. Jones-Butcher, Mrs. Grocer-Evans or Mr. Edwards-Co-op. would continue to risk rheumatic fever while asking for news of the Einon-Thomas heir.

  When Dick’s train had been overdue a quarter of an hour, Gwenllian remarked, “I shall be late if I don’t get on to the station.”

  “No need to sweat yourself, Ma’am! We can see from here when the old train’s coming, by Mr. Pugh-the-Coffin’s hearse-horse galloping round his paddock.”

  As the grocer had foreseen, Gwenllian was there before the train, but the mistress of Plâs Einon neither fidgeted nor beat with her foot, as they are apt to do who are not bred to wait with composure. She stood quite still within the door of the general waiting-room. It was fireless and smelled musty. The rain tapped on the pavement outside and on the roof overhead, and cluck-clucked down the water-pipes. There was not another sound on the dreary little station but that of the solitary porter stamping his feet to keep them warm. But Gwenllian smiled, considering how to make Dick laugh over dinner. There were some droll new sayings of the villagers, bless them! And who could tell them so well as herself?

  Afterwards, when he and she sat close to his wasteful fire in the gently lamp-lit drawing room, she would explain that it had become imperative to find a profitable tenant for the dower house. She would make it appear that an offer had come to her by chance and that Major Stansbury had instantly recognised the propriety of quitting. If Dick was angry, she would be patient, appealing to his sense of obligation, his affection as a father. “Our child,” she would call Illtyd. “You’ve scarcely begun to take an interest in him yet; but as soon as he starts running about, you’ll feel towards him as I do.” It was not true, but she would say it. “And then you’ll be glad,” she would press her point, “that you’ve made sacrifices for his sake. An extra seventy pounds a year on the dower house will help towards his schooling. Let’s begin from to-night, my dear, working together for our boy’s future.” And if Dick’s face still wore that sulky schoolboy pout which of late had so exasperated her, she would kneel down beside him, and taking his hands in hers would summon all her resources of forbearance. “Dick dear,” she would urge, “let’s start afresh. Let’s make this evening the first of a happier life, of mutual help and understanding.” She was so touched by the tenderness of her own words that she forgot that their purpose was to bend him to her will.

  At last the train came panting in, swirled about with its own smoke and steam. Gwenllian’s face grew eager and she hurried along the platform, looking into each compartment. Ha
lf a dozen passengers clambered down, stiff and shivering from the unheated carriages. Dick was not among them. Suddenly Gwenllian became aware of the cold, which it was her habit to defy. Was ever anything so sad, she asked herself, as an emptying railway station on which one is left forlorn, where one had hoped for a hand-shake and a kiss? And her heart cried out in pain that her young husband did not like her any more. He had never been in love with her, she knew. But once he had found her company agreeable and when she chose she had been able to arouse his desire. Now she remembered that she was two and forty years of age and that, like a working woman, she had been too busy to give thought to the preservation of her looks. Dick will be thirty next month, she said, staring into the puddle at her feet. There would be no scene of reconciliation to-night. Tomorrow or the next day she would have difficulty in reconstructing her loving speeches. Her eyes began to smart; her throat to feel raw. If her self-control had deserted her she would have burst into a passion of tears. But here was old Ben Morris, the guard, trotting up the platform towards her. She must act her part.

  “Oh, Miss Gwennie—I beg your pardon, Ma’am,” he panted, “the Captain stepped off the train at Carmarthen. He told me to bring on the luggage. Here it is, Miss. How’s your little boy, Miss? Doing fine I do hope?”

  “Fine,” she replied, and repeated, “Stepped off the train? Then he was on his way here?”

  “Yes, Miss Gwennie,” the old guard nodded. “But the gentleman as is a tenant o’ yours met the Captain. He said as they’d be motoring home together in a hired car after dining at the County Club.”

  “All the way from Carmarthen,” she exclaimed, and, setting aside her personal disappointment, she began in anger to reckon the cost.

  “Yes indeed, Miss Gwennie,” the guard sympathised. “The Captain himself told me to tell you.” Slowly her dazed mind understood Dick’s treachery. So he knew I’d be here waiting for him, she thought. “It was Major Stansbury you saw meeting him, wasn’t it, Morris?” she asked, with a bitter twist of her lips.

  The old man’s pink face, crumpled like an apple that has been stored too long, shewed such distress that she made a resolution to keep her feelings better hidden in future. She would not be pitied for her husband’s neglect.

  “Yes, Miss, yes, Ma’am,” the guard answered. “’Twas a tall gentleman, whatever, with one o’ them single glasses in his eye. The gentleman as is going to all the race meetings.”

  “Thank you, Morris,” she said. “I remember now, the Captain had some business to talk over with him.” She gave her old crony a considered tip, not so large that it might seem to compete with those of the new rich, but enough to show that the right people were not grown mean.

  He kept the train waiting, that he himself might carry her husband’s suitcase to the car, while he was reminding her of the mistletoe he had brought for her every Christmas when she was a child, and of how she had once kissed him under it.

  “It’s a lucky job as the Captain isn’t here, Miss Gwennie, to hear me making so free with his lady,” he chuckled, looking at her in tender anxiety to see whether he had succeeded in cheering her.

  The station master and the porter stood by, grinning and touching their caps. They, also, enquired after Plâs Einon’s heir. How kind they were, her dear Welsh country folk! But how intolerable it would be if she should see in all their eyes the compassion she had seen in those of Ben Morris! It was her place to be compassionate, not theirs. She nodded good-bye and drove away, fighting with tears of affronted pride. The common people pitied her! No wonder! She had lowered herself to make love to the insignificant son of a nursery governess. She had borne him a child, yielded to every whim of his except when he wished to fling away money in alterations of her home. With infinite patience she had taught him all that he was capable of learning—God knew it wasn’t much! She alone had his welfare at heart, and could help him to take his place in the county. Yet he preferred the company of riff-raff, and, chief among them, of the man who had insulted her with his sneers.

  She drove back at a reckless pace over the darkening moorland. The crying of the wind had risen to a shriek and aerial hands were tearing at the hood of her car. It lurched sometimes so that she feared it would overturn. The Cwn Annwn are out tonight, she told herself, the pack of fiends, hunting the souls of the wicked.

  It was two o’clock on a black morning when Dick returned to his home. Gwenllian was in waiting for him, crouched over the embers of the fire that was to have warmed them both. When she heard him fumbling at the door, she sprang up and went into the hall. Would he beg her pardon when she told him that anxiety had kept her from sleep? He burst in with a torrent of wind that set the lamp swinging. Giant shadows of a man and a woman rushed towards each other and fled away, in a fierce dance across the armoury on the walls. He slammed the door, and she cried out, “For goodness sake think of others! You’ll wake Illtyd!”

  “Oh, rot,” he said.

  She could have struck him. For an instant she thought with furious pleasure of the red mark her hand would print on his sottish face. But she forced herself to offer her cheek for the customary kiss. He scowled and brushed it with his moustache. His breath was hot and rank with whiskey. She shrank back, looking hard into his face. It was of an unwholesome pallor and the mouth was loose. She knew now, admitting it to herself for the first time, that she had always loathed his mouth—his soft, weak, red-lipped mouth, and little girlish chin. His eyes were very bright but vacant, their pupils much enlarged.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she exclaimed, too angry now to hide her disgust.

  “And what have you been doing, I should like to know?” he retorted, in a querulous voice. “Insulting my best friend—talking about charity. It’s a charity to me his staying in this damned hole. Trying to drive him away while I’m not there to take his part! I call that a sneaking dirty trick.” He seemed to her more like a contemptible schoolboy than ever before—a tipsy schoolboy to whom she had been married in a nightmare. It was shameful and indecent. She turned her back on him and tried to fix her attention on the candles she lit, the lamp she was blowing out. It was not easy to perform these simple tasks, for her hands trembled.

  “Look here,” he brawled, “I won’t have you slinking off like that! You’ll jolly well stay and listen to me.”

  “We’ll discuss the matter in the morning,” she said, without looking at him again.

  “There isn’t going to be any discussion,” he shouted. “I’ve put my foot down. I’m sick of being preached at and ordered about by a woman. There’s no one more ridiculous than a hen-pecked husband. People are laughing. D’you know what they’re saying? There’s the soft chap who married a woman without a penny—married her out of kindness of heart, ’cos he didn’t like to turn her out of her home. And now he lets her boss him as though the property belonged to her.”

  She knew that he was quoting her enemy. Major Stansbury had kindled him against her. You weak, suggestible little fool, she said in her heart. But fighting down her fury, she went towards the stair- case. “It’s very late,” she said. “We must go to bed. Please try not to wake the whole household.”

  “I don’t care who hears me,” he persisted, following her. She felt his hot breath on her neck and with a shudder hastened on upstairs. But he kept close to her heels, bragging noisily, “Frank is going to stay, in spite of you. ‘ I won’t have you turned out,’ I told him. ‘I won’t stand it.’ And he said, ‘No, I knew it wasn’t any of your doing, my boy. You said you’d stick by me, when I stuck by you through that awful time, d’you remember?’ As though I could ever forget it! That’s why he wrote and asked me at once for a seven years’ lease, and had it made out, too, to avoid the possibility of any more upsets. Luckily the lawyer chap—what’s his name?—was in the club. Oh, I believe good old Frank had asked him there on purpose. So we signed it—signed, sealed and witnessed, stamped —before we sat down to dinner. So that’s that.”

  She had reached the head o
f the stairs, and swung round on him. The flame of the candle she held in her clenched hand threw a quivering light on to his white face a step below the level of her own. He had let the candle she had given him go out, but still, at a slant, he held the silver stick. Beneath his fitfully lit, unsteady figure, was the black gulf of the hall. She could hear the gale raging at the windows, beating on the doors. The home she loved was beleaguered. Hissing draughts, cold as snakes, shot along the dark landing and the carpet rose under her feet. She curved a hand round her shuddering spear-point of light.

  “So that cad wrote to you in London, behind my back,” she said. “Intercepted you on your way home, fuddled you with drink, had a lawyer—not our Mr. Price, he’d never have been a party to it— and a lease that’s positively dishonest, all ready prepared, and tricked you ” She could not finish her broken sentence. Her teeth had begun to chatter.

  “There was no trickery about it,” Dick cried. “I won’t have you turning my tenants out. I’ll keep old Frank about the place if I choose.”

  “He will not enter this house again as long as I am mistress here,” she cried.

  “Don’t suppose he wants to,” Dick retorted. “You make the place like a reformatory. But I shall be able to go and have a jaw with him whenever I’m bored to death here.”