The Soldier and the Gentlewoman Read online

  “Dick, I can’t bear it.” The sound of her voice was muffled by his coat. “You don’t know—all this place has meant to me—all that I’ve given up because of it. I think it will kill me—leaving.”

  “Then don’t leave, my dear,” he blurted out “Are you listening? Stay on.”

  He felt her shiver and press still closer to him. “How can I?”

  He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, seeking for words. Her shivering increased, and he said, “You might marry me, for instance.” He thought that sounded a weak proposal. A man ought to be ardent and passionate. He tried again. “I’d be awfully glad if you would, you know.”

  She drew a long, quivering breath, and her crying ceased.

  “Will you?” he asked after a pause during which she had released him and brought out a pocket handkerchief. She was making small, angry noises, blowing her nose. He felt less hot and excited now that he no longer held her in his arms. She looked round at him at last, her cheeks pale, her eyelids pink and swollen. Her face seemed to have aged. It wore a strained, anxious expression.

  “Oh, Dick,” she said, “dear Dick!”

  He took her hand limply. Her fingers gripped his with convulsive eagerness.

  “For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.” The sombre words of the marriage service tolled in his brain. “Good Lord,” he thought, “that’s final!”

  Half-an-hour later Mrs. Williams was announced. She marched in dressed in tweeds, brogues and woollen stockings, but her two daughters were light and gay in frocks that reminded Dick pleasantly of the vanished summer. They were both ready to flirt with any man, particularly with so eligible a bachelor as the new owner of Plâs Einon; but the elder had a good-natured air of withholding the full battery of her smiles and glances in favour of her sister. She and her stout fool of a mother, thought Dick with irritation, seemed to imagine that he had compromised Megan with his attentions—as though a fellow couldn’t say a civil word to anyone without being tied to her for life! He sat on a sofa beside Megan and felt angry and a fool. On the ladies’ heels came Lewis Vaughan. Every speech showed that he was determined not to let his new neighbour cut him out. Mrs. Williams smiled discreetly, and Gwenllian smiled also, watching the farce. Vaughan persisted in paying Megan compliments and in trying to monopolise her in conversation, but she turned away from him to Dick. Her mother and her sister alternately came to her aid, attempting by flank attacks to keep Vaughan from interfering between the young lovers. At tea-time they drew together round the table and there fell an embarrassing silence. All at once Gwenllian set down the silver teapot, folded her hands in her lap, and smiled at Dick with undisguised tenderness.

  “Dick,” she said, speaking in a clear voice, “shall we tell them our news?”

  He saw four pairs of eyes turn, startled, from Gwen’s face to his own. “Yes,” he said, because it would have been ungentlemanly to answer, “No! For heaven’s sake don’t rush me into it like this!” While she told them, he sat rigid on the edge of his chair, aware of his two hands and his two feet, and wondering what the hell to do with them all. He suffered inside from the hollow sensation he had once experienced in a lift that was dropping too fast. How humiliating it was to be so very very hot!

  When she had made public his engagement to her, he stole a glance at each of the listeners’ faces before they had had time to assume the mask of politeness. Lewis Vaughan was contemptuously amused, glad to be free of a rival to better game. Mrs. Williams was very angry, her bland mouth for once tight shut.

  “Fancy throwing over my lovely little girl for a dried old spinster,” Dick fancied her exclaiming. The elder Miss Williams was disappointed and embarrassed, avoiding her sister’s eye. And Megan, with whom he had flirted so enjoyably, who had seemed such a good-natured girl, gave him a look of disgust.

  “I say,” he exclaimed, jumping up and seizing the first plate of cakes that came to hand, “you’re not eating anything, any of you.”

  At that, with an awkward rush, they broke out into smiling congratulations.

  Chapter VIII

  HE AND SHE FACE LIFE TOGETHER

  Call on Gwen he must, Dick told himself next day. He went down to the village on foot, that the going might be longer. Swerving, irresolute, into the general store, he bought a ball of string he did not need and lingered to turn over a pile of fly-blown postcards. Some of them represented actresses dressed in pre-war fashion. How silly such finery seemed now —those tucked blouses, those flowers and feathers in the cart-wheel hats! Three little children’ came into the shop and stared up at him, solemn as owls.

  “Like some sweets?” he asked.

  The eldest dimpled, but the toddler hid its face in her pinafore.

  “Let’s have six penn’orth of those,” Dick said, pointing to a large bottle of coagulated raspberry drops. When they had been dug out with a knife, he thrust them into the little girl’s palm.

  “Go on! Eat them! Don’t be shy!”

  He would have liked to suck one himself. They used to be a solace at school. But the stout woman behind the counter was watching him. She nudged her husband and winked.

  “The Captain ’ud like to stand the whole world treat to-day,” she chuckled.

  What the hell…! Dick thought.

  “Our Megan’s in service at the Vicarage,” she continued, beaming at him. “She was telling us last night as we might look for a happy event.”

  Dick muttered something and hurried out into the road. Women were watching him from cottage doorways. He almost ran past them. But once safe inside the Victorian Gothic porch of the Vicarage, he began to loiter, staring at the bicycle, the perambulator and the goloshes. When at last he had pulled the bell, its faint tinkling at the end of a long passage sounded mournfully in his ears.

  In the empty drawing-room he gazed at the photographs of plain people ranged upon the upright piano, and wondered why ebonized furniture had been fashionable about the time his mother was married. Ugly stuff! Then he heard footsteps approaching. They were a woman’s, light, swift, decisive. He braced himself to smile. She opened the door and, closing it softly behind her, leaned against it.

  “Hello,” he said.

  And she said, “Dick!”

  He saw that her embarrassment was as painful as his own. It was a bond of sympathy between them. He took a step towards her. She smiled nervously and looked down at her tightly clasped hands.

  “I’ve come to ask you up to tea,” he stammered, “at Plâs Einon.”

  Then she looked at him, smiling, with tears in her eyes, and he was moved to pity—she looked so very grateful. How she must love him! Poor Gwen, he thought, dear Gwen! I’ll be jolly kind to her. And hurriedly he gave her cheek an awkward little kiss.

  He had hoped that the continuance of Gwen’s half-mourning might enable her bridegroom to escape publicity. Didn’t she think they might be quietly married at once? he asked, wishing her to suppose that ardour was the reason of his haste. She was not reluctant. “Then I could wear my going-away dress—no wedding gown and so forth. Yes, it would save a lot of expense.” A woman economising on her trousseau surprised him, and he told himself that she was doing it for his sake; but the explanation was not quite satisfactory. He didn’t know what to believe, so swift and so conflicting were her decisions.

  There would be no reception after the wedding: she agreed to that. But no sooner had he escaped this ordeal than he was faced by another. Friends might be denied their entertainment and champagne, but tenants and retainers must have their customary tea and be allowed to make their traditional speeches.

  “Good Lord! But why?” asked Dick.

  “Because, dear, they always have. And they’re planning a presentation. The parish is frenzied with excitement about it. The illuminated-address-and-rose-bowl party is waging war on the inkstand-and-album-with-views-of-the-estate opposition. I’m not supposed to know, but rumours of the battle came to me throug
h my spies.”

  “Can’t we choose what we’d like?” Dick ventured.

  She laughed at him. “What a revolutionary idea!”

  “Oh well, we can always pawn what we’re given,” he remarked, trying to sound cheerful.

  To his astonishment, the smile vanished from her face. “Dick, how can you! We must keep whatever we’re given all our lives, and in a prominent place too, or the servants will tell their relations.”

  “Oh Lord! Need we always consider what the servants will say?”

  “You have to when you’ve a position to keep up,” she said. “And you must be ready with a speech of gratitude. You’d better go along to the study now and prepare it.”

  He made a wry face. “Couldn’t all this fuss be put off till we come back from abroad?”

  She shook her head. “It’s always been the custom—”

  He could have shouted at her—“I wish to heaven you wouldn’t use that damned phrase so often!” Thrusting his hands boyishly deep into his pockets, he took a turn about the room. When his irritation was a little cooled, he said, “I say, Gwen, let’s get married in town. You could run up there to-morrow on the pretext of buying clothes, what? And I’d slink off and join you.”

  “And disappoint our kind vicar and his wife, when I’ve been their guest for so long?”

  “Hang it all,” he grumbled, “it’s not their funeral.”

  “What a way to talk of our wedding,” Gwenllian exclaimed and set him an example of laughter. But he could not laugh. A childish desire to stamp assailed him, as she went on speaking with the firm brightness of a nurse exhorting her little charge to obey. “My godfather expects to officiate. He’d be shocked if I rushed off to London to get married in a hole and corner fashion.”

  “I thought a Bishop was supposed to be so busy nowadays that he wouldn’t mind missing a wedding,” Dick growled.

  “He’s a very old friend of the family,” she answered with dignity. “And it isn’t often that our poor vicar has the chance of meeting his Bishop. Our parish is so out of the world. Besides,” she added, running her fingers caressingly over Dick’s sleeve, “we mustn’t be selfish and think only of our own wishes, now that we’re so happy, must we?”

  “If you put it like that,” he stammered, shamed into compliance, “go ahead. Make what arrangements you think fit for the Bishop and this infernal tenants’ beano. I’ll foot the bill.”

  The last sentence compensated him for much.

  Next day he was turned out of the dining-room. “Miss Gwennie’s orders was to serve your meals in the study, sir,” he was told. He disliked eating surrounded by leather-bound books; they reminded him of his schooldays and of his inability to win prizes; but he submitted. For days the maids were too busy cleaning silver and washing china to attend to his comfort, and whenever he entered any room, the chair in which he wished to sit was always being carried out of it. He became increasingly nervous and restless until the tenants came, ate, made speeches and were at last dispersed.

  “Thank God,” he swore to himself; then, “that shan’t ever happen again.”

  He went into the study, and having mixed a stiff whiskey and soda, flung himself down on the horsehair sofa. It was the only downstairs room that the women had left undisturbed. The sporting-prints, the guns and fishing-rods of his predecessors encumbered it. Must chuck out this old junk, he thought, twisting his body about. What’s the good of having money if you can’t make yourself comfortable? All these antiques may look jolly fine till one comes to five with ’em. I don’t blame impoverished families for letting the Yanks have ’em. If any Yank makes me an offer—God, he was tired! His throat ached with so much talking: his hand from being wrung so often and so hard. To play the country gentleman and to be married were not the soft jobs he had imagined. Today had been hell. Tomorrow, too, there would be the commotion of restoring the house to its normal order. The next day packing must begin for the wedding tour. Why couldn’t newly married people get used to each other in some familiar place instead of having to endure the additional embarrassments of foreign hotels? He had heard too many funny tales of other men’s honeymoons not to fear that he would be made to look a fool on his own. Meanwhile, there’d be orders to leave with the servants and financial arrangements to make with the agent. He didn’t look forward to his interview with Mr. Lloyd. “I intend to act as my own agent in future,” he would say. It had sounded easy enough as Gwenllian had put it. But it wasn’t easy at all. Not only would Lloyd resent losing his job, but he’d know well enough that the new owner of Plâs Einon was incapable of managing his own estate. He wouldn’t say: “So Miss Gwenllian’s taking charge of you is she?” but he’d think it, and a sarcastic, contemptuous—yes, by God, a pitying—look would come into his eyes which Dick already knew too well. In the discomfort of the horsehair sofa, he planned rebellion. He’d go to Gwenllian now and say, “Look here, Gwen, don’t you think we’d better keep Lloyd on after all?” or perhaps he’d say decisively but casually: “Gwen, I’ve decided that for a little while at any rate…” But it was useless. She’d say they must economise. She’d say they could do it much better themselves. She’d remind him that, during the war, when Lloyd was away with the Yeomanry, she’d done it single-handed. “Then why on earth did you ever hand it back to him?” he’d ask, and she would answer that of course when the estate had passed from her brother to a stranger different arrangements had had to be made. “But you’re not a stranger any more, are you, Dick!” she would add. “I am entitled to work for you now, as I did for my own people.” They would go over the old ground again. It was useless to argue with Gwen. Easier to face Lloyd and get rid of him, he thought, and the rebellious leg which had been dropped over the side of the sofa was submissively returned to it. When Lloyd was done with, he reflected, there’d still be the lawyer with the marriage settlement; and even on the eve of his wedding, when a fellow expected a lively dinner with his bachelor friends to buck him up, he would have to entertain Gwen’s old fogey of a Bishop. What the devil did one talk about to a Bishop, and a Welsh Bishop at that?

  Little Johnnie Smith, the last of his school friends left alive, was coming down to be best man. Captain Smith, he was now, with an M.C. and a toothbrush moustache. He had no job and no particular place in society—just “blueing ” his gratuity, like so many of his class, Dick thought with superior compassion, but what good company he’d been that night at the Troc! Afterwards they’d both gone on to a night club of which neither was a member. Dick, sprawling on the prim Victorian sofa, in his quiet study, grinned over his memories. Amusing chap, Johnnie! He’d shove his way in anywhere. But perhaps it had been a mistake to invite him down here, where standards were different. And yet a man must be loyal to his old pals. But what would Gwen and her county matrons and her blessed clergy think of Johnnie? Dick’s mind swerved away from the harsh expressions “ill-bred,” “bad-form,” “suburban.” He substituted modern. That was it, he told himself, trying to justify his former choice of friends. Gwen and her circle were a bit behind the times. They expected people still to talk and behave like characters out of that dull writer’s novels his mother used to read —Strumpet or Trollope—something of the kind. Absurd in 1919. Like caged mice, his thoughts scuttered hither and thither, and he grew weary of his attempt to reconcile the claims of old friendship and social advancement. Flash Frank was the fellow he ought to have asked to be best man. No-one could accuse him of not being a sahib. But would he have deigned to come? Old wounds in Dick’s pride began to throb. When he had been a country squire longer and felt more sure of himself, then he would show Plâs Einon to the man of all others he had most dreaded and most idolised. Now his thoughts fled to the less distinguished and subtle bullies of his Dulwich schooldays. How they’d have jeered, damn them, if they’d seen him—“Little Scrub ”—blushing like a girl, this afternoon while his tenants made speech after speech addressing him as if he were a Ruritanian royalty about to espouse the world’s most beautif
ul princess! How the Welsh laid it on! And what a grotesque looking lot they were—some of the older ones bearded, some whiskered, some more like dagos than Englishmen! They had seemed to him a people, not only of a foreign race, but of a past age, having gargantuan appetites and Shakespearean humour. Their use of biblical phraseology would have shocked his Bible-reading mother, and their frank talk of the breeding of animals have discomforted his town-bred acquaintance. He himself was repelled by their toil-blunted fingers and their sweaty smell of earth and farm. They puzzled him, too; for though they expressed a feudal devotion to the house of which he was become the head, they were not curbed or ill at ease as common soldiers were in the presence of an officer. Beneath both their flattery and their joking familiarity—broad, sometimes, as that of Juliet’s nurse—he had been aware of keen observation and criticism. It seemed that they revered the name of Einon-Thomas, and that Gwenllian had won their unbounded admiration. But of himself, what was the opinion forming behind those shrewd, watchful eyes?

  What did it matter? A parcel of ignorant yokels! His mind tried to escape from its cage of self-distrust. But it was caught by the knowledge that without Gwenllian he would not have known what to do with his party. She it was who had seated the guests in order of precedence, so that none was affronted; she who enquired by name after all their absent relations; she who pressed them to eat, with an inconceivable urgency and persistence. She had capped their local anecdotes throughout what had seemed to him an endless afternoon, and had never ceased to laugh, chatter and gesticulate with the best of them. Silent and constrained, he listened to her in astonishment, using their dialect, rolling her Rs, raising her voice at the end of each phrase. Why ever did she do it? To put these common people at their ease, he supposed, though, heaven knew, they all appeared more at home in his own house than he did! Gwen was a marvel of tact, he told himself. I ought to be jolly grateful to her. Ought to be!