The Soldier and the Gentlewoman

by Hilda Vaughan

  Once they had gone swimming together in the river below her home. It was very early on a June morning before even the country folk were astir to wonder at such “goings on.” She remembered the quivering white mist in the valleys, and the hill-tops appearing like islands of gold. How sweet the flowering may trees and the lilac had been! How the dew-drenched grass had sparkled, and the birds twittered! He and she had seemed to be the only pair of lovers in a new world—a world miraculously beautiful, created by a kindly God for their delight. They had taken hands and run down through the shrubbery together, startling a heron from the pool where he was fishing and two otters at play upon the bank. The plunge into cold water had been invigorating and had set her more than ever aglow.

  But through the long day afterwards, when he was gone, she had been dull, so dull!

  She gazed across the polished spaces of the floor from which the dancing feet were departed and thought how empty, how drear, had been the days and weeks that had dragged out into years, since she drove him away disappointed. She had grasped at the shadow of Plâs Einon and let go the substance of her happiness. Now her happiness was returned as a spectre to torment her. And with a strange terror, as if she were conversing with a ghost, she began to ask him why he was here and what he had been doing since they parted. Their talk seemed remote and thin as that of two souls in purgatory. Yet her spoken questions and his answers were plain enough. It was what they left unsaid that made their silences so hard to bear. He was staying with the Lloyds of Dolforgan, he told her. They had often urged him to revisit the district but, somehow, he had never cared to do so. Gwenllian longed, at that, to cry out in an agony of repentance. Instead, she forced herself to go on plying him with conventional enquiries. Yes. He had become a Brigadier-General during the war; had seen enough service to last his lifetime; had unexpectedly inherited a property, and retired, “to make a garden,” he said, “and replant some of the million trees that were cut down.”

  “On your estate in Norfolk?” she asked.

  And he answered, looking at her mournfully, “Oh, not there, only. I have an odd nightmare—quite often—trees, like the long avenues in Flanders after heavy shell fire, broken off, cut short, mutilated. Can’t quite explain why it should be so horrible to remember things like that. But it is.”

  She shivered and answered, “Yes, I know.”

  For a long while neither of them spoke again. At last he said: “I don’t care much for the flat country. Sometimes I’ve half a mind to sell out and come back to Wales.”

  Then we might have married after all, she mused, without my having to give up my own country for more than a few years, or the way of life to which I clung. She felt like one standing upon the scaffold with the noose about her neck, to whom the chaplain should say, “Let us contemplate the joyful years that would have stretched before you, had you but been more wise.”

  The music struck up and another dance began. After a while a stout, elaborately preserved woman came up, escorted by her last partner. Her painted lips wore a hard smile.

  “Here you are!” she cried with a shrew’s flourish of joviality. “So like a husband to forget his duty to dance with his wife!”

  He did not stop to introduce her to Gwenllian, but slid away, looking as dazed and miserable as she was feeling. She stared after him from her cold embrasure, until someone—she scarcely knew who—stood over her claiming the promised dance she had forgotten.

  “I’ve lost my programme,” she said, vaguely, holding it in her hands. “I seem to have lost everything.”

  Later in the evening, the ghost of her sweetheart came back to her. “Will you dance this with me?” She looked up at him, trembling, hoping, she dared not think for what. “I’ve asked for one of Joyce’s old waltzes. D’you remember?”

  Could she ever forget? For the thousandth time she remembered her coming-out dance—her white dress, her stiffening dread of tearing its many frills— and how, meeting him, she had discovered that she could reverse, and had lost her nervousness and been happy and proud, giving not another thought to anything, not even to her dropping hairpins.

  The lilting, sensuous music began. Soon elderly sentimentalists were looking in from the card-room to nod and beat time to the gay pathos of an old tune. But in January of the year 1926 few young couples could dance an old-fashioned waltz. Those accustomed to walk their way through a “hesitation,” knew not what to make of this faster, more exciting melody. So Gwenllian and her lover sped unhindered, like swift skaters upon ice. No man had ever waltzed, she believed, as he did, making of his body and of hers instruments on which the music played, until they were one with it, one with each other, no longer a man and a woman dancing in time to a tune, but the creations of a sweetly, a passionately vibrating song—a love song—the Song of Songs! She forgot her age and her sorrows and the years that the locust had eaten, forgot that she was an unhappy wife, an over-anxious mother, the care-worn mistress of a household burdened with debt and threatened with dissolution. She thought no more of her endangered future than of her embittered past. There was an end to the long war between her unsatisfied woman’s body and her dominating mascu- line spirit. She loved. She danced. It was enough. She had no wish to rule or lead. There was no will left in her but to abandon her will to his. Wherever he moved, she followed, as easily as one who, in a dream possesses the power of flight. Never had they danced with so delicious a rhythm, even when he and she were boy and girl, supple, full of vigour, idyl- lically in love. For then she had been virgin in spirit and in flesh. Now she knew with what fiery, joyous self-surrender she could have given herself to the man she had refused, and, in her passionate thought, a shadow fell across her motherhood. They were not his children she had borne. Therefore, they had polluted her. Never again, she thought for one wild moment, would she be able to feel their little fond- ling hands without a shudder of disgust. But she was in his arms: nothing mattered that had been or that might be.

  Why had the music of their bridal ceased? Why was she standing, dizzy and forlorn? Oh God, she thought, could I not have died while I was dancing?

  It was torment unendurable to be awakened to the life she must henceforth lead. She had dreamed she was a happy girl again, dressed in white as for her wedding. But staring down now at her gown she saw that it was black, and it reminded her that she was growing old. Elderly neighbours began to buzz round her like stinging flies.

  “Capital! Never saw a better performance in my life!”

  “I say, Gwenllian, you and your partner ought to go in for exhibition dancing!”

  “Who is he?”

  “A ghost,” she answered, and saw her questioner’s mouth drop open in astonishment.

  As arbitrarily as they had begun, they ceased to pester her and stood upright and rigid. She supposed that the band must be playing God save the King. But what she heard was only a noise like thunder. When it was over, she looked up, imploring him with her gaze to stay.

  “I must go.”

  “Why?”

  “My wife’s waiting.” And he added in a dull, expressionless tone, “We shan’t ever meet again, I’m afraid.”

  She could not bear it. “Oh no! Why not?” she gasped. “You promised—you said, I mean, something about returning to Wales?”

  “That’s only what I dream of.” He spoke heavily as before. “My wife’s rooted to Norfolk.”

  In desperation she asked what she must not ask. “Are you very fond of her?”

  “We have children,” he answered.

  “Yes. So have I.”

  Side by side they stood in a leaden silence. They were no longer a pair of lovers to whom no other people in the world were of importance. They were the father and the mother of a family, members of the Established Church and of the landed gentry, staunch upholders of sound old-fashioned morality, believers in the finality of marriage.

  Slowly she laid her hand in his. She thought he was going to speak, for his lips moved.

  “Good-bye the
n,” was all he said, at last.

  “Good—” she began, and could say no more.

  When she had watched him go towards his wife, she went into the hall, because people seemed to be going that way. I suppose I must go home, she reflected, staring about her, bemused, and perceiving a flutter of leave-taking. Parents were trying to shepherd their charges away; young people to prolong their noisy farewells. Amid the cheerful herd, shaking hands and kissing, the laughter, the running up and down stairs, Gwenllian felt sick and stunned. She sat down abruptly on the nearest chair. To steady her sight, that was become blurred, she fixed her eyes on the first man she saw before her. He was insignificant, not worth a glance, but he would serve her turn. His chest was flat, his slender shoulders sloped, and his mouth was too soft and small for a man’s mouth. There was scarcely any colour in his face and his little moustache and eyebrows were pale as straw. He had blue eyes of the light shade she disliked. They were at present bloodshot. He’s been drinking too much champagne, she told herself. He looks the sort of poor weak thing who’d drink. Suddenly he returned her stare and scowled; and she knew him.

  Chapter III

  HE RECEIVES A WARNING

  Within Plâs Einon it was cool. As Dick passed through the large airy rooms, he heard the winged flutter of curtains and saw the tall flowers in their vases gently sway, but when he went out beneath the portico, it was as though he had entered a hot-house. The lawns were steaming—scented with white jasmine and roses, like a bath, he thought. A cloud of midges danced above the carriage sweep, always in motion, for ever in the same place. Bees droned from blossom to blossom. But the birds were strangely hushed. Why was the garden so silent, he wondered, missing something but not knowing what it was he missed. Only the rippling of the river, hidden by the beech trees’ midsummer foliage, came up from the dingle.

  He stood blinking at the rich colours of the herbaceous border. The flowers had pretty names: larkspur and London-pride, sweet-william and snapdragon, peony, pansy, poppy, love-in-a-mist and golden-rod! It was a very beautiful place. Why didn’t he enjoy his ownership? Was it his fault? His brows began to wrinkle in puppyish perplexity. Could they have been mistaken, all those fellows in his regiment who believed that to own a fine house and an estate must make a man content?

  I don’t take much pleasure in all this, Dick thought, scowling at the empty lawns. Gwen would say that that was because he hadn’t been bom to it; and, though he scarcely liked to admit it to himself, he was envious of the city clerks who lived in comfortable obscurity among their own class. He’d like to have more money than they had and he didn’t want to sit in an office all day, but he wanted everything else of theirs—their girls, their motorbikes, their boat on the river with a gramophone—and he’d like working in the back garden on Saturdays. Get your coat off, work a bit, come in for tea; perhaps a game of bridge afterwards. Better than giving orders and making speeches. He imagined at the tea-table under a pink-shaded lamp a young wife whom he could banter. There’d be jokes between them; they’d chatter in bed in the dark. And when he was working in the garden she’d trip after him in high- heeled shoes. He saw her shoes very clearly. Gwen would call them bad style. Still, they were what he liked on a pretty girl’s feet.

  He was extremely sorry for himself. There was no-one here in whom he could confide, explaining that really he had very simple tastes and was quite easy to get on with if he was taken the right way. He would like to tell the truth about himself; but he never had—no, not to anyone, not to his mother— it sounded so damned silly. You couldn’t confess to a love of high-heeled shoes worn out of doors with diamond buckles and little straps criss-cross over the instep. Or was it sillier to go on pretending? He didn’t know. He had slept ill, and was in a mood, this sultry July morning, to question all the things he habitually accepted. That came of listening to Frances. Her annual visit disturbed him as much as it irritated Gwen. Frances upset everything.

  Look at her at this moment, lolling in a deck chair, supple, enviably at ease, with a litter of books at her feet! Dick scowled at the untidy back of her head. Her hair was magnificent. But why must it always seem to be on the point of tumbling down? This rubbish she had taken to reviewing for the Lord only knew what sort of papers had given her more notions than ever. To Dick there was but one kind of notion; the sort that people were better without. Luckily, the things Frances said were not intended to be taken seriously; at any rate, he supposed not. But he found it hard to remember that some folk played with ideas as he had been taught to play with balls, and he wished that Frances would take up golf instead. Then he could motor her daily to the neighbouring links. Pleasant, that would be. For, in spite of her highbrow folly, she was a companionable woman—smooth and warm, with a dash to her. She understood so many things that a decent fellow had to leave unsaid, and, unlike her sister, she had not the mind of an old maid. He wanted to interrupt her odious reading, but was withheld by fear that she might laugh at his clothes.

  This bright blue jacket and plus-fours, this scarlet tie and stockings increased his self-consciousness. And the worst of it was that he didn’t want to go otter hunting any more than she did. But, of course, he had been too civil to say so. The day she had told the Master what she thought of his pastime, Dick and his wife had been united for fully ten minutes by their feelings of disapproval.

  “Frances has shocking manners!”

  “I quite agree with you, my dear! And what rot she talked!”

  Yet Dick had memories of a good day’s sport that left him ill at ease. When the little wet head bobbed up for the last time, he had seen terror in the hunted eyes and had felt a sharp twinge of kinship. Could the creature be suffering as he had suffered when the wail of a shell sounded above the angry popping of machine guns? Nonsense, he had told himself. Otters hadn’t a human imagination. But then—why those eyes? He had been sickened by the raging of the hounds, and even more by the yelling of men and women who surrounded the pool, cutting off their victim’s retreat, upstream or down. So big a pack, so large a crowd of people armed with poles … but he had forced himself to join them. They had told him that otters showed no mercy to salmon. That had been a relief.

  Looking now at Frances, he decided that he would make the most of that argument to her. Strange that, while disagreeing with her opinions, he had come to crave for her approval! Grasping his pole, he walked across to her.

  “Change your mind?” he hailed.

  Frances let a volume of essays on economics drop through her fingers, and stretched her long arms above her head. He liked to watch her movements, graceful and unconcerned as those of a wild animal.

  “What a grind it is having to think on such a sultry day,” she yawned.

  “Chuck it then, for once!”

  She shook her head, and he tried again. “It’s an awfully pretty sight, all this colour reflected in the water.” He made a wry face at his clothes. “And the country’s looking its best.”

  She nodded. “I know. I used to love the setting.”

  “You’re such an outdoor sort, really,” he went on. “I can’t understand what made you chuck every form of sport.”

  “Decadence, I dare say,” she answered, smiling up at him. “Why do you hate killing things? Grandfather didn’t mind.”

  “Nor do I,” Dick lied valiantly. “Not when it’s a case of vermin or game. They’ve got to be kept down, you know. If you’re so squeamish,” he added, “you needn’t stay for the kill.”

  How oppressive the heat and the stillness were! When he had spoken, he noticed that she was pale, and as he watched her, she grew so much paler that he feared she was going to faint.

  “I say,” he exclaimed, “has the weather knocked you up?”

  She did not reply, but began to gaze at him as though she saw something tragic in his gaudily- clad figure. The sudden gravity of her look startled him.

  “Are you all right? I say, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she answered almost in a whi
sper.

  “Then what are you staring at me for, as if you’d seen a ghost?” He tried to laugh away a pang of fear.

  “I was thinking of what you’d just said.” Her tone was that of one in a trance.

  “What did I say? Only that you needn’t stay for the kill.”

  The word had filled her with an unaccountable foreboding. It had drawn her mind out into regions where nothing was known but all things were secretly and profoundly certain. She shivered and sat up.

  “Did you know, Dick,” she said, “that some of us Einon-Thomases are cursed with second-sight?” And she added, in a tone almost of entreaty: “I wish you hated all this!”

  “All what? Otter hunting and so on?”

  “This place—all of it. The whole way of life here.”

  “What’s wrong? It’s comfortable, isn’t it?” he asked, at once defensive, his gaze moving over the garden he admired so much and enjoyed so little. “Why should I hate it?”

  There was no warning that she could make him understand, but she said:

  “If things go on as they are, Dick, something dreadful will happen here.”

  He opened his eyes wide, alarmed by her earnestness. “There’s thunder about,” he said with a wriggle of discomfort. “It’s got on your nerves.”

  And he continued to stare at her, fascinated by the pallor of her face, until he heard his wife’s voice cry out: “Dick, I’m waiting!”

  He turned, startled, and saw her coming towards him out of the hall’s deep shadow. Dread touched him—a dread that was changed, as he looked her over, into a mood of frustrate and rebellious anger. Her short skirt and jacket were of the crude blue and her tie of the yet cruder scarlet prescribed for the killing of otters. Against these strident colours and the white of her masculine shirt, her skin looked faded and old. The collar she was wearing intensified her resemblance to those sporting spinsters of whom he had made fun in his boyhood. How could he have married such a woman, he asked himself in a sudden spasm of distaste. “What a beastly ugly kit that is,” he exclaimed.