HE FORESEES HER TRIUMPH
Softly, steadily, day after day, the rain had been falling. It pattered on the window-panes whenever the crackling of log fires was hushed. For hours there would be no other sound but the quiet footfall of Gwenllian’s disciplined servants, and the scurry of mice behind the wainscot. After Christmas so few people came up the drive beneath the naked, dripping branches of the trees, that to Dick any visitor would have been welcome. He had bought a gramophone and been delighted with it in the South of France, but when its dance music clashed with the quiet of Plâs Einon, he became, against his will, ashamed of it and turned it off. The small voice of the rain rose through the following silence. He awoke at night, and heard it gurgling down the pipes below the eaves. He stood in the portico, tapping the barometer for promise of change, but always there reached his ears the same hissing and whisper from among the laurels.
Gwenllian would come in from the garden, shiny and stiff as a laurel leaf, in her oilskin and sou’wester. “You haven’t been out to-day, Dick.”
“I was hoping it might clear.”
“No use to wait for that, dear. This is ‘February Fildyke.’”
“By Jove, it is. I tried to plough round the home farm to please you yesterday. It was a morass.”
“That won’t hurt you, if you’re properly shod. I’ve got the dubbin for your boots, and I’ve ordered those rubber ones I was telling you about.”
“You’re determined to have me out in all weathers,” he grumbled. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Because you’ve been growing depressed and liverish, my dear, with not enough to do. I go out, wet or fine, and I’m never ill. I haven’t the time.”
To be proud of one’s own tough constitution, he decided, was the most annoying form of self-righteousness. Since he had had rheumatic fever and a piece of shrapnel in his chest, he had learned to be interested in the variations of his health. His wife would not have been so monotonously well nor so brisk at breakfast, if she had fought in the war.
“I wish we’d stayed a bit longer on the Riviera,” he sighed.
“We couldn’t holiday-make all our lives,” she would answer, taking up a seedsman’s catalogue and beginning to compile one of her many lists.
Why not, he often wondered! There were plenty of retired Army men, like himself, who led a care-free existence in well-warmed hotels, enjoying the sunshine, enjoying golf, dancing, a game of bridge every night, and the society of their own kind.
Lucky devils! However good a woman a fellow’s wife might be, he didn’t want to see no face but hers, meal after meal, to hear only her improving conversation throughout long fireside evenings. Plâs Einon was all very well for a month or two in summer. But if it were not for Gwen, he would let it for the rest of the year. He might get a good price for it from some stout hero with a taste for standing at drenching covert sides waiting to pot pheasants, or for wading icy rivers with the patience of Job. Dick liked the friendliness and the pretty setting of a cricket pitch or a tennis court. He was a moderate batsman, and a good enough tennis player to win garden-party applause. Having no purpose in life, he craved for amusements as a child for sweets, but in sports that were chill, damp and solitary, he found no satisfaction. Already he had discovered with regret that his fine sporting estate was going to give little pleasure to him. The worst of it was he dared not tell his wife so. She seemed unable to understand that he suffered miserably from cold. She herself was capable of changing for dinner in a bedroom as big as a barn with a couple of sticks smouldering in one corner of it. His dressing-room hadn’t even a fireplace.
When he spoke of installing central heating, she provided him with a tiny oil stove and banished the subject. Secretly he had consulted the plumber and the builder at Llanon, talking valiantly of having electric light, a telephone, more and better bathrooms. When Gwenllian heard of these boasts, as she did of everything which was said in the district, she laid account books before him.
“Just go through these,” she said in a tone of authority, “before you talk any more about spending hundreds of pounds.”
For the moment he was quelled. But after next quarter, he reassured himself, I shall insist on having my own way. Hang it all, the money was his, not hers! Of course, a wife must be consulted in matters that concerned the house; and for him it was more difficult, as the house was his wife’s old home. Still, he thought, that’s no reason for her vetoing every suggestion I make as though she were my landlady and I her lodger.
One morning, while riding the cob that he was bound to exercise, he made a resolve to “have it out ” with Gwen before another day passed; but as he was composing phrases of manly firmness with which to overcome her obstinacy, he heard his name shouted. Blinking the raindrops off his lashes, he saw Lewis Vaughan cantering towards him over the sodden grass in a skelter of mud. By Jove! It was good to exchange masculine gossip again of the kind to which the Service had accustomed him— racing tips, news of winter sports from pals in Switzerland, politics treated as a sour joke, and a smoking- room story or two. Moreover, before they parted, his cheerful neighbour gave him a particular piece of news which delighted him. Flash Frank was in the district, staying at Cefnllys. Eager to share his excitement with Gwen, Dick splashed home, flung the reins to the groom in the stable yard, tossed his soaked mackintosh to Powell in the hall, and ran upstairs, two at a time, to the room where he was sure of finding the lady of the house at work. There she sat at her official desk, beneath her father’s portrait.
“I say, I have news,” he cried from the doorway. She did not look round, but he refused to be chilled by her indifference. One-stepping across the shabby carpet to her Chippendale chair, he perched himself on its arm. He felt affectionate towards her, and being in an exhilarated, optimistic mood, he resolved, here and now, to laugh her out of her pig-headed opposition to modernising the house.
“Aren’t you going to pay me any attention?” he asked.
She raised her head, but the smile she gave him was abstracted.
“Must you finish that letter before hearing my news?” he enquired, hoping to see her put away the sheet of paper.
Her pen began to move again. “Yes, if you don’t mind, dear,” she said, intent upon her writing.
“The queen must attend to her dispatches, what?”
But she was too absorbed to notice his little joke. From over her shoulder he read the words, “very pleased to address the Women’s Institute, if you know certainly that Lady Llangattoc will be prevented from doing so—”
Dick made a grimace and rose from the arm of his wife’s chair, without bestowing the kiss he had intended for the nape of her neck. He could never come close behind her and look at her abundance of dusky hair, without wishing to pull it down; for when it fell in a cloak of feminine softness about her face and breast, it almost made her seem a girl. To run his hands through it excited him. But she required him to wait until she went to bed—punctually at half-past ten every night. And even then— A fellow felt an ass, kissing a woman’s hair, winding the strange electric stuff round his tingling fingers, burying his face in it, when she looked at her wrist-watch and asked, “D’you know how late it’s growing?” And he remembered that the jolly old writer, Sterne, whom his mother did not think it proper to read, although he was “set ” in school, had written something comic about a husband and wife in bed and the winding of a clock.
Grinning ruefully, Dick walked over to the window and watched the falling rain. He had had a friend, since killed at Mons, poor devil, who had married young, in spite of his Colonel’s disapproval. She was pretty and a sport, didn’t seem to mind being poor, and spent her time on the links caddying for her husband. He said he was awfully happy, but he seemed gay, rather than content—grew jumpy, took to smoking a hundred cigarettes a day.
At last he confessed to Dick that, though he and his wife were first-rate day-time companions, she could not bear “that side of marriage.” Dick had blurted out the confidence to Flash Frank, and, too late, repented. How clearly the scene came back to him now—his admired and dreaded senior astride a chair, laughing cynically! “Let it be a warning to you never to get hooked, Scrub, my lad,” he had scoffed. “If you marry a chaste woman, she won’t respond to your advances. If you marry a hot ’un, yours won’t be the only ones to which she’ll respond. And the devil of it is, you’ll never know what on earth you’re in for until it’s too late to get out— unless she’s the sort you needn’t have married at all. That’s the safest, Scrub, if you’re careful of your health. Consort with the kind little ladies of the town, who’ll give you a good time without chasing you into matrimony.” Since his marriage, Dick had often recalled that saying. Good women, perhaps, were never very responsive. But then, he argued, in loyalty to Gwen, they had been married only three months. She loved him very much, he was sure—in her way. And her way might improve. At Nice, where he had wished to dance and she had failed in the rhythm of jazz music, there had been no sign of jealousy in her when he left her to knit and look on. She had seemed unselfishly glad that he should enjoy himself. When he took her to the Casino, too, he had been proud of being seen with her—so much more handsome in her severe clothes than the flashy, painted women surrounding her. After all, he told himself, I haven’t much to complain of, if only she wouldn’t live the whole year round in this damp hole, and would have the house brought up to date.
“Are you ever going to finish that letter?” he demanded, nerving himself for good-humoured battle.
“Oh, my dear Dick,” she answered, laying down her pen, “I quite forgot you were in the room.”
“Forgot I was in the room,” he repeated, pretending to be amused, and he forced himself to perch once more on the arm of her chair and to hug her more roughly than he would ordinarily have dared.
She disengaged herself—with annoyance, he fancied; but a moment later she wore her usual composed smile, and asked, “Well, what’s your news?”
“I met Vaughan as I was out exercising the cob.”
“Which Vaughan?”
“Oh, you know who I mean. The other’s only a farmer,” he said, thinking her wilfully stupid.
Her brows came together in a frown. “He’s by far the better man,” she answered. “Mr. Lewis Vaughan seems to lie in wait for you, Dick. Do take my advice and snub him. You’re far too indiscriminate in your friendship.”
“Vaughan’s a jolly amusing fellow,” he protested, “the only one who is about here.”
“My dear! You know he drinks.”
Dick tried to laugh at her. “You see to it that he doesn’t put away much in this house!”
“He was never an intimate of ours. Why should he become so now?”
“Because I like him.”
“My brothers didn’t,” she said.
He felt himself growing hot and flurried. “Well never mind that now. He’s met an old friend of mine, a Major Stansbury. You’ve heard me talk of Frank, haven’t you?”
“I’ve heard you speak of someone nicknamed Flash Frank,” she said, with a lift of her eyebrows. “He certainly sounds like a friend of Mr. Vaughan’s.”
“They aren’t friends in the least,” Dick burst out. “I wish to goodness you’d let me tell my story without interruption!” And he got off the arm of her chair. “Vaughan met Frank the other day by chance. He’s staying with some people called Goldman. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of them.”
She smiled in an ironic, irritating fashion. “Jews, who have rented Sir Evan Lewis’s place, Cefnllys. I hear the girls go out with the guns, made up like a musical comedy chorus. Everybody is laughing at them. They offer you these mixed American drinks, before lunch, even. We don’t want to get involved with guests of theirs.”
“My dear girl,” Dick exclaimed, “try not to be so provincial! Everybody drinks cocktails since the war. And Frank’s most awfully well connected. I daresay his family is as ancient and stuck up as yours—”
“As ours,” she corrected.
He hurried on. “There he is, staying within twenty miles of us, and I might never have known it if Vaughan hadn’t mentioned casually what an amusing chap he’d met! I’ve arranged to run over with Vaughan in the car—”
“But Dick,” Gwenllian cried, “don’t you understand? I don’t wish to know these Goldmans.”
“Well, you needn’t. I didn’t suggest taking you too.”
“How can I avoid getting to know them, if you call?”
“Call! It’s not a call.”
“They won’t miss their chance. They’ll treat it as such and return it. I shall have to receive them.”
“Well … and if you should have to bow to the lady when you see her, what does it matter?”
“In the country, Dick, one either knows people or one does not.”
“Look here,” he shouted at her, “Frank’s staying under their roof. That’s good enough for me. I don’t care if they are Jews. I’d go and ferret the dear old boy out if they were black men. So there! Vaughan’s afraid he’s leaving in a day or two,” he added in a calmer tone. “I’m going over this afternoon.”
“You can’t go this afternoon. Have you forgotten that the Vicar and Dr. Roberts are coming to discuss the War Memorial?”
“You do all the talking on these occasions,” he grumbled. “I should only sit and twiddle my thumbs, if I stayed.”
Gwenllian looked up at him with an expression of pain and entreaty. The curbed composure of her normal look, the scorn which her face expressed whenever she spoke about people of whom she disapproved, were swept away. “Dick dear,” she said earnestly, “you’ve opened the subject now that I’ve been longing to speak of ever since we came home.” “Why so portentous?” he asked, trying to laugh off a feeling of uneasiness.
“You make it difficult,” she said. “You take everything so lightly.”
“You don’t,” he grinned.
“No,” she agreed, unsmiling, “certainly not your position in the county. I take that very seriously indeed, my dear. You have a great tradition to uphold.”
“One might think I was the last of the bally Hapsburgs,” he scoffed. Frank would have known how to laugh a woman out of her solemnity; his own attempt was a failure.
“I know you needed a holiday and deserved it,” Gwenllian continued, “but it’s nearly a year now since you left the Army. It’s time you settled down. The county expects”
“Oh come,” he protested. “I’m not Nelson. Anyhow, I’ve only been asked to go on half a dozen rotten little local committees. That sort of thing bores me to death.”
“Doing one’s duty often is a bore,” she said.
“Why should it be my duty, anyway?” he asked with an impatient gesture. “There are plenty of busybodies in every parish who like having a finger in the pie. Let ’em do it.”
Gwenllian shook her head. “There are not enough of the right people in public affairs today, Dick, and you know it. Taking your part in minor parochial affairs will lead to your being elected to the County Council.”
“But I don’t want to be.”
“That’s beside the mark.”
“Look here,” he cried, “it’s all rot you’re wanting to turn me into a public man. You know I’m a damned bad, nervous speaker.”
She forced a smile. “You could overcome that. There’s the classical example of a stammerer who trained himself for the sake of the state—”
“Well I don’t propose to spend my time on the seashore with pebbles in my mouth,” he answered. “And I’ve done my bit for the precious state already. I’ve had a more rotten time than you realise in the war. I’ve never talked to you about all I’ve seen and suffered. It isn’t fit to tell a woman.” He heard his voice growing shrill as it always did when he spoke of this section of his past. Hastily he added, “I’ve been poor all my life. Now I’ve got a bit of money, I’m damned well going to enjoy myself in my own fashion.”
She rose and, coming to him, laid her hand on his arm. “Dick,” she said softly, “this is the first real difference we’ve ever had. I wish it hadn’t happened to-day.”
“Might as well have it out now as postpone it,” he said, turning his head away to avoid her pleading eyes. “I’ve been meaning to say something to you, too. There’s the question of making this house comfortable, and of where we’re going to spend next winter.”
“I shall spend it here,” she answered, with a quiet, self-confident smile.
“But why? When you know this damp cold disagrees with me?”
“Because, my dear, I’m almost sure that I’m going to have a child.”
He stared at her, open-mouthed. He had never contemplated the possibility of their having children. The prospect seemed to make her younger and to threaten him with middle-age. “Oh Lord,” he gasped.
“Aren’t you glad?”
He hastened to parade the proper feelings. “Well, yes, of course I am, if you are. It’s your trouble, dear, isn’t it?”
She dismissed his pity. “I’m not afraid,” she said, and began to pace about the room in growing excitement. “I’ve been trying to keep calm,” she told him, “to say not a word, for fear it shouldn’t be true. It’s not a fortnight since I began to hope, so we mustn’t build too much on it yet. But, if it goes on all right—oh Dick, my dear, do you realise that we may have a son of our very own to inherit after us?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “I suppose we may.” What would it matter who stepped into his shoes after he was dead? He stared at her in amazement, as she walked to and fro, clasping and unclasping her hands. The eyes she would scarcely raise to his when he kissed her were bright and fierce now, with a passion he did not understand. Her cheeks were flushed, but not for love of him. She talked and talked, her voice rising and falling in a dramatic lilt. As the torrent of her enthusiasm flowed on, he felt himself crushed beneath it. He had no spirit left for resistance. Motherhood, he perceived, would be no quiescent state in her, but an active passion. That puts the lid on my plans for the winter, he thought. It wasn’t right to thwart a pregnant woman. Until her child was born, he must submit to her whims, leave the cold, inconvenient house as it was, make a show of performing whatever she considered to be his duties. He must avoid quarrels by never contradicting her, no matter how trying her demands. He foresaw the slow months crawling by during which he must be consistently kind, patient, considerate, and for ever on his guard. That was how his mother would have expected him to behave; for she had taught him, in speaking of the sweet girl her boy would choose for his bride, that on these occasions all the virtues of chivalry were required of a husband. He shook himself out of a gloomy trance, took Gwenllian’s arm, and agreed with everything she said. The words “heir,” “estate,” “economy,” were continually on her lips. Not with regret but with fervour, she spoke of the sacrifices that must be made by parents in their position. “Have you insured your life yet, Dick? You must insure it.”
“The truth is,” he said, “it’s not insurable.” That, he thought, will make her think of me. It did, indeed, check her. She halted and gazed at him. “Poor Dick!” he expected her to say. “Is that true? Is it really true?” And perhaps she would add that doctors were often wrong. He didn’t believe they were wrong in this, but he would have liked her feminine consolations.
“Not insurable,” she repeated. “Are you sure?” “Quite sure,” he answered, almost proudly.
“I’ve tried. They all say—”
She interrupted him. “That makes it the more important,” she said, as though speaking to herself.
“Makes what more important?”
“That I should have a son now,” she answered. “There must be an heir.”