The Soldier and the Gentlewoman Read online

  “I dare say you notice the difference,” he observed, still relying on timber to keep the conversation from collapse, “but I’ve never seen this country before, you know, and to me the valleys look jolly well wooded. It’s awfully pretty, anyway”

  That would please her, he thought.

  But Gwenllian’s dark eyes flashed on him, large and beautiful as an angry cat’s. He was startled.

  “It’s ruined,” she said. “There’s almost nothing left.”

  Was she thinking of men as well as of trees? His face burned as though she had slapped it; but an instant later she had risen, and he watched her go down the long room with the quiet assurance of movement that he had always envied. A faint glow of satisfaction at being in the intimate company of a gentlewoman whose dignity none could dispute warmed his being. How different she was in voice and carriage and manner from the girls he had taken on the river at Maidenhead before he was Einon-Thomas of Plâs Einon! As he studied her, he became aware for the first time that the large drawing-room at Plâs Einon fitted her as a frame its picture.

  There were many portraits in oils of dark, handsome folk, evidently her ancestors, and beside the hearth was a case of miniatures mounted on black velvet. Several of the Persian rugs were threadbare, and the striped wall-paper was stained by damp. There was no means of lighting but by candles in mirrored sconces or by oil-lamps with shades of puckered silk flounced with lace—such shades as reminded him of ladies’ hats in his childhood. There were people, Dick knew, who wouldn’t like the room as he did, but even they wouldn’t dare to call it dowdy. It was full of the flower-like gaiety of old china. Out of the darkness of walnut cabinets sprang the brilliance of apple-green, the bouquets and birds of Nantgarw, the rich gold of Crown Derby. “Pretty they are,” he said, boldly picking up from the mantelshelf one of the many figures that posed there—arch little ladies and gentlemen of Chelsea and Bow. What a mixture! But he liked it. He was proud of being able to recognise so much—the harp of the Regency with its drooping strings, the Jacobean chairs with tapestried seats of faded blue and green, the fat bunch of wax fruit under glass, which, he guessed, dated from the ’sixties. Nothing here was out of place, for even the chintz covers on the chubby armchairs of King Edward’s latter days were washed so dim that they also belonged naturally to this family museum. His mother had wistfully studied books on the applied arts, borrowed from the free library, and the habit of her early profession as a teacher had survived her marriage. What she knew, she imparted. Lucky, Dick thought; some fellows would be all at sea in a room like this. He would drop a remark about these treasures presently—perhaps about the fluted, handleless cups which, he’d bet, were old Worcester.

  And suddenly, flattered by his kinship with the room and with his cousin Gwenllian, he imagined himself walking into a smart restaurant in London with her at his side. Flash Frank would be there. “Hello!” he’d say, trying to stare a fellow out of countenance, “What the deuce are you doin’ here, Scrub?” Then, seeing the lady, he’d rise. His whole manner would change, conveying, as it always did, the precise measure of respect to which a woman was entitled. He would know Gwenllian for what she was. Dick saw his eyebrows go up a little, at the introduction: “My cousin, Miss Einon-Thomas.” It would, of course, be very casually spoken.

  The pleasing vision faded. Dick rubbed his small blond moustache. She had turned round, her hand on the bell rope, and was looking over his head as though he did not exist.

  “Shall I ring for tea, Cecily?” and she had rung before the mistress of the house replied.

  When tea was brought, it was to her that the parlourmaid turned for orders.

  “Do pour out, dear,” said the widow, as if this were a regular formula. “We always have an old-fashioned sit-down tea. Draw up your chair—Captain Einon-Thomas.” She hesitated at his name.

  “This is absurd,” Mrs. Blake said. “We’re all relations. What d’you answer to—Richard?”

  “Dick,” he answered, feeling that it had a foolish sound; but it was better than Scrub.

  “Right,” she said. “I shall start at once. And I am Frances. No-one asked you if you’d have preferred a whiskey and soda?”

  He gave her a confused glance, and took a cup of tea from Gwenllian’s hand. “Oh no, thanks,” he said. “I’d rather this.”

  Frances’s broad smile expressed her disbelief. “I’m used to Service tastes,” she announced.

  He struggled in difficult conversation with the widow on bee-keeping, gardening and poultry while Gwenllian remained silent, her fine brows drawn together. When tea was over, Frances again came to the rescue.

  “What are your politics?” she demanded.

  “Oh, Unionist, of course.”

  “Why ’of course’? I keep on changing mine with youthful optimism. I’m a good deal older than you are, but I still hope to find a party that combines a bit of honesty with a gleam of intelligence.”

  “Oh, I say,” he laughed, “you don’t really mean to use your vote, now you’ve got one, first one way and then another?”

  “ I mean to keep an open mind.”

  “But people who keep on changing look such asses.”

  “They’re alive at any rate. When you can’t change, you’re dead.”

  Dick thought that annoyingly clever; and she made it worse.

  “My husband’s going to stand as a Labour candidate, if they’ll give him a show.”

  “You don’t really expect me to believe that,” Dick retorted with a smile which turned to blankness on his face. Too late he perceived in the mild distress of her sister-in-law’s look and the undisguised contempt of Gwenllian’s, that Frances had been serious.

  She began to talk subversive politics, like the young fools from Oxford and Cambridge who had no studs to their shirts and wore their hair long; and he grew so angry, recalling the discipline of his subaltern days and contrasting it with the licence permitted to civilian cubs, that he forgot his shyness and flatly contradicted her.

  “ Frances doesn’t mean half she says,” put in the widow in a non-committal tone.

  “Does anyone?” Frances laughed, and she began to mock at the Prime Minister whom in the spring of 1919 it was still the fashion to applaud. She even derided the coming Peace Treaty.

  Dick quoted the defence of Lloyd George that he had so often heard on his Colonel’s lips. “If one can forgive him his Limehouse past, the little devil’s done pretty well.”

  Frances shrugged her shoulders. “The verdict of history may prefer Limehouse.”

  Such perversity was too much. Dick made a gesture of impatience, and at once became aware that Gwenllian’s eyes were on him. And how she had changed! Her resentful scorn had given place to eager speculation. He had caught her studying him from head to foot as though he were an object of supreme interest and curiosity. Deeply surprised, he tried to return her gaze. She stooped at once and began to pat one of the Sealyhams.

  “You’re a Unionist like myself, I take it?” he ventured.

  “I?” she answered, her head still bent over the dog so that the light shone on the rich mass of her hair and the whiteness of its parting. “Oh, yes. Like yourself—more than a Unionist, a staunch Conservative, a Tory in all things.”

  He thought how pleasant it was to see a woman again with abundant and well-kept hair.

  “Good,” he said, “you and I’ll agree better than I shall with your sister, Cousin——” but he could not for the life of him remember her outlandish name.

  “Gwenllian,” she said, raising her head, and at last according him a softening of the lips that was almost a smile. “Until you’re used to our Welsh names, you’d better call me Gwen.”

  “Oh, thanks awfully,” he said.

  The ormolu clock struck half-past five. Afraid that he had stayed too long, he stumbled into apologies.

  “Oh, but you have not seen the house yet,” the widow said.

  “We can go into all that later,” he stammered with a return
of his former distress. “You mustn’t feel under any obligation, you know.”

  “But really you’ve been much too kind to us already—hasn’t he, Gwenllian?—letting us stay on so long.”

  “Not at all. Not at all. I couldn’t have got home from Mespot any sooner, or got clear of the Army. And if it’s any convenience to you—”

  “Much too generous,” she sighed. “But my plans are all made—really—thank you so much. I shall be starting on a round of visits the end of next week. And Gwenllian too. Frances, of course, will be rejoining her husband.”

  “In that case,” he said, much relieved, “you’d like to go over things with that lawyer chap and myself pretty soon?”

  “Well yes,” she agreed wearily. “Perhaps if you would both come to lunch on Thursday? We have everything in order, I think, haven’t we, Gwenllian? There’s the inventory, and the cellar book, and the keys and so forth. You’ll be taking your time, later, over the gardens and the home farm and the estate. The agent, Mr. Lloyd, will present all the tenants to you—won’t he, Gwenllian? We shall just have to tell you a few things about the indoor servants.”

  “Quite,” he said, “quite.”

  “May I make a suggestion?” said a voice of quiet authority at his elbow.

  “Yes, rather.”

  “Wouldn’t it be pleasanter,” Gwenllian continued, “if we showed you round first—just a family party? There are Einon-Thomas jokes and histories we shouldn’t care to tell in front of little Price the solicitor.”

  Dick warmed to her instantly. “Capital,” he said, more flattered than he cared to admit, and he turned with eagerness to the widow to confirm the invitation.

  Her faded, pretty face wore a look of surprise. “If you really think it worth your while,” she replied with hesitation.

  “Come to lunch alone at one o’clock on Wednesday,” Gwenllian said, “and again on Thursday, bringing Mr. Price with you. Will you ring up his office to-night from the Green Dragon? We aren’t on the telephone here.”

  “Delighted,” said Dick.

  But still the widow murmured something about going over the same ground twice. “And then I promised to motor Frances over to luncheon with her godmother.”

  “That was on Tuesday, dear,” Gwenllian told her.

  “Are you quite sure, dear?”

  “Quite. It is in the engagement calendar.”

  “Very well,” the widow said, giving Dick her limp hand, “we shall have the pleasure of seeing you by yourself on Wednesday?” The arrangement still seemed to surprise her. Really, he thought, Cousin Gwen, who had been so standoffish at first, turned out to be the more considerate of the two! An Einon-Thomas family party—a capital idea!

  Frances rose and stretched herself. “I think you ought to see the crocuses now, whatever you may see on Wednesday and Thursday,” she said. “This house is full of the worst art of every age. But the crocuses look gorgeous to-day—all their little faces open to the sun. It’s sure to be pelting again by then. I suppose you’ve been warned that it rains here nine days out of ten, have you, Dick? Come on, everybody, for a stroll before the heavens descend.”

  Dick opened the door for them and the married ladies passed through. But when Gwenllian came abreast of him she stopped abruptly as though stayed by some new idea. “I’ll say au revoir to you here.”

  “Oh come on,” called Frances from the hall. “You were shut up with accounts all the morning.” “It’s not accounts,” Gwenllian answered. “I’ve just remembered I ought to visit Ifor Cobbler. While you’re taking Cousin Dick round the garden, I’ll go down to the village…till Wednesday then, Dick.’’

  “Till Wednesday,” he said, and heartily shook her hand. But he felt too awkward to add, “Gwen.” She was, after all, so much older than himself.

  Chapter III

  SHE REMEMBERS THE PAST

  Centuries ago the yew trees had been planted in a circle. Their trunks had now the bulk of the piers of a Roman amphitheatre. Though set far apart, they were linked by their branches which met and interlocked, forming at the circumference of the arena a low, knotted aisle less than the height of a man. Towards the centre, the level, inky limbs stretched out, but did not meet there. Light from above, bleached by the surrounding darkness, fell in rigid arrows through the interval of the roof. No breeze entered here; no bird sang.

  When she was a child, Gwenllian had said, in her father’s hearing, that it was “a gorgeous place to hate in.” He had laughed at her, and she, driven in upon her secret, had spoken of it no more, but she had continued to visit the place in all the bitter seasons of her life, and came to it now, with fearful eagerness, out of the flecked sunshine of the drive where the graceful winter tracery of beech was softened by a foam of green and the chestnuts were already putting on the first shrill gaiety of spring. Crouching her way under the boughs, she entered the inner ring and stood there for a little while, stiff and trembling; then, with lowered head and the smooth, rapid gait of a troubled animal, began to move upon the arc of the lighted circle, never completing her journey in one direction, but twining upon her own track, twisting always to and fro.

  If she had been bred a nun, she might have ignored men; but in her world, there was no power but through them; they were in possession, hour by hour and generation by generation, of all that she desired to possess; they invaded her integrity, usurped the inheritance of her soul. Without them, how little evil there would be in her, she thought, and how peaceful the colours of her life—grey, with the formal piety that was natural in her: green, with the calm hours she loved to spend in the open air. It was they who streaked her quiet, decorous years with hatred and passion—the black and the scarlet, and they always who drove her into this cage.

  She had come here first in flight from their injustice, her small fists clenched, her cheeks scalded by tears, beside herself in a child’s tragic, impotent rage. She had been riding the roan pony every day— since Easter she had ridden it, and her father had allowed her to follow him round the estate on Taffy, the new grey cob. She had been frightened of Taffy but had mastered him; it had been a victory of her own solitary determination. But Howel and Evan had come home from school, each bringing a friend with him, and the four boys had emptied the stables every morning and afternoon. Howel had given her favourite a sore back: Evan had raced the roan on the high road and lamed him. They were excused, because they were boys. And when they were not galloping over the countryside, they went ferreting with Daniel Keeper. The white ferrets were hers, not theirs. For months past she had fed them; she could handle them as her brothers dared not. But the boys had the fun of them, excluding her.

  She must go for walks with Nannie and baby Frances at a pram’s pace, with no consolation, no chance to do and make, except when she could escape to the shed where Ifor Carpenter had taught her the use of tools. She was neat with her fingers as Howel would never be, but the day came when he snatched her work from her and tried to shut her out of the carpenter’s shed. “Give it to me,” he had commanded. “Girls can’t carpenter.” All the supposed disabilities of girlhood had rung for her in his voice. Girls can’t shoot. Girls can’t ride astride. Girls can’t play cricket.…Her long resentment was focused now. She hated him with a blind hatred as he thrust her towards the door, their feet scuffling among the chips and shavings, and suddenly with all her strength she had struck him and pulled his hair and kicked and struck him again. When he tried to ward her off with his hand, she had bitten it and drawn blood. There had been fierce delight in her power to hurt and frighten a boy.

  Disgrace and punishment had followed. Her explanations went unheard; that she had been attacked was of no account. Boys might fight; her father encouraged them to use their fists; she must submit. In flight from that humiliation, she had come among the yew trees for the first time, to burn in solitude, to weep and beat her head upon the earth; then to grow calm, steel herself, re-order her battle.

  After this, she endured in silence her brother
s’ invasion of her home three times a year. They shattered the life she built up round her father and she hated them more and more. But she learned to hide her detestation with increasing skill, until nursery quarrels were forgotten by all but herself and she was held up in other families as a model sister. If one of the boys had an unstrung tennis racquet, she lent him hers. It did not matter, she would say calmly, for in any case she could not play a man’s hard game. Howel accepted her sacrifices as a matter of course. Women were by nature unselfish, their mother was for ever saying, with a sigh, and it was part of his romanticism that he should agree with her.

  For years, while her mother half lived upon a sofa, Gwenllian had held the reins of the household. On the day when she walked with downcast eyes behind her mother’s coffin, she was sorry to lose so harmless a presence, but she had not been touched by her brothers’ sense of irreparable calamity. Howel mourned for two years with intense, lover- like grief; then married a girl with his mother’s mild blue eyes. For Gwenllian there were from the first rich compensations. At the graveside she knew that henceforth she would sit at the head of her father’s table, the acknowledged mistress of his house, and she glanced up at his handsome face, coarsened by drink, reddened by all weathers, sullen now with the solemnity of the burial service. There was no grief in it for the woman who had been his loyal and patient slave for more than twenty years. He was bored; and though Gwenllian loved him, though he was for her the very splendour of manhood, she cursed him and his sex in the name of the meek dead and of all women living.

  Remembering that surge of bitterness against him, she checked herself in her pacing to and fro. She wanted to understand the rage of triumph and grief that confused her mind when she thought that he also was now in the vault where her mother had been laid. Reason told her that it was wrong to judge all men by him. There were good husbands and good fathers whom there was no cause to hate; there were men, perhaps, without his courage in the saddle or his bold fling at life itself, whom she might admire. But for good and evil her judgment of men was rooted in her judgment of him. He had been as careless of his children’s future as of his wife’s health. Though the estate had meant more to him than any human affection, he had encumbered it with debt. Her labour and economy had been pitted continuously against his extravagance. She had nursed him night and day through his last illness when, abusing her always, he would have none other to attend him. And when he died, she had nothing but her brothers’ charity and what little her mother had left to her.