SHE DOES HER DUTY
Gwenllian crouched over the hearth in his bedroom. Her elbows dug into her knees. She felt the hard pressure of her jaw-bone thrust between clenched fists. The heat and the jigging light of the fire made her wince. But she moved only to turn Dick’s night clothes, that were hung upon a towel rail; and, when he fought for breath, to rise and bend over the sick man on the bed. Deftly she eased his body, propping it with pillows. He acknowledged these services with a gasp of thanks. Yet she saw that he shrank from her touch; and in angry contempt she thought: The fool’s afraid of me! Back to her chair she would go then and sit as before, shoulders hunched, muscles taut, tired beyond the longing for rest. Hours passed. There was no sound but of Dick’s distressed breathing, the unconcerned, gossiping voices of the fire, and the ticking of the clock. But, all the while, over the pale walls and ceiling, shadows were dancing; and to Gwenllian, the stillness was peopled with ghosts.
This was the bridal chamber of her race. Man and woman, betrothed in the interests of property, had lain beneath that canopy night after night through the years, until one or other, pitied by time, was put away, alone at last, in a yet straighter box. Cowering over the grate, Gwenllian pictured those proud, chaste women, her forebears, enduring such moments of rumpled shame as she could not forget. Never would she pardon Dick for what she had made him do. “The animal,” she muttered, “to be tricked by his lust!”
The fire seemed to have become fiercer. Rapidly she passed trembling hands over her face. Her hot thoughts ran on. On that night last winter, when she had danced again with the man she had once loved in virginal innocence, she, too, had learned desire. Asleep, she had dreamed warm, troubling dreams; and, waking, been restless. Curiosity, that crept and pried, had tainted her former cold compassion for young women that erred. Often of late, she had insinuated: “Tell me just how it happened? You need not be afraid to speak quite openly. You see, I’m married,” and had at once been suspicious of her own motive in making these enquiries. She found that she craved more and more detail of reply, and hating this obscene eagerness in herself, laid the blame for it on her marriage, which had awakened her to passions it could not satisfy. Dick’s shadow darkened her soul, corrupting even her deeds of mercy. Yet he himself was so small a thing, lying alone on that big hateful bed!
When the fire burned cheerful and steady, there came to her memories of childhood. Then the sense of her duty towards him was uppermost. The shaded lamp, the airing garments, the hushed warmth of the room, these were as they had been in the beginning. Forty years ago in the nursery overhead, Nanny had bidden her say her prayers. No matter how the day’s injustices and thwarted cravings for self-assertion had driven her to fury, she must beg a blessing on her relations. Often she had flung away from the firm hands tucking her in.
“I don’t want God to bless Howel! He started it, and when I hit back, Mother sent me out of the room. I hate him! I hate Mother!”
“Now Miss Gwennie, you’re talking like a bad wicked girl. Never let me hear you say such shocking things no more. Haven’t I taught you to love all your relations?”
“I can’t, Nanny!”
“But you must. You must make yourself. Now get on with Gentle Jesus meek and mild… Well? Have the naughty cross thoughts put the nice pretty hymn out of your head? That comes of hating those it’s your duty to love. ‘Look upon a little child. Pity my simplicity. Suffer me to come to Thee.’ Not so fast! ’Tisn’t reverent.”
As she recalled the unconscious irony of Nanny’s parting benediction, which no preceding rages, tears or chastisements ever altered—“Good night my little lamb. Go to sleep at once like a good girl, and you’ll have sweet dreams ”—Gwenllian’s tight lips relaxed into a smile. Of Nanny’s peasant piety she could now make light. But she could not thus dismiss the grand words of the Book of Common Prayer. Unlike Frances, she had never disturbed her faith. There had been no doubt in her mind of the doctrine contained in the marriage service when she stood before the altar rails with Dick. Yet, how could she be bound to honour a fool who brought discredit upon herself and her house? Frances would say that promises, which could not be kept, might without blame be broken. But Gwenllian scorned to be as her sister was. She would continue to do her duty by the man she had married. Perhaps the end was nearer than she dared to hope. …Trapped by this thought, she flushed with guilt, assuring herself again and again that she was not evil but good, good. Then with a shudder she remembered the night on which she had modelled her husband in wax and melted him to death. She must have been mad then. Was she losing her reason again now? She had a vision of herself laying a wreath upon his coffin, and the woman in the vision smiled, drawing a widow’s long black veil across her mouth that none should see her rejoice. In imagination, Gwenllian tasted the veil upon her lips.
Something dark slid over the rug at her feet. There was no movement of running. It passed as smooth as a shadow and as soundless. She started up, clutching at her throat to stifle a scream. A moment later, the familiar scuttering behind the wainscot told her that it was but a mouse. She was twisted by a fit of silent, hysterical laughter, and, in the midst of it was checked, stricken by a new fear, hearing a new sound. This was no fancy, bred of solitude, but a footfall! Quivering, she listened, and heard it again. Someone was coming slowly up- stairs. The boards creaked beneath a heavy tread. And, with a shock that stayed her breath and made her heart leap, she exclaimed: “It’s Father I … Because I’ve failed …I can’t bear it! I can’t!” But this mocking spectre drew steadily nearer. Always, she had struggled to escape his derision. Because she was female and disinherited, she had struggled in vain. But she had sworn to convince him, in the end, that her brain, at least, was not contemptible and girlish. Had she failed in this also? Would he stand with his feet wide apart, as he used to do, and laugh at her?
Gwenllian’s head turned this way and that, like the head of a wild cat in a snare, until her eyes fell upon the sick man she had been keeping alive. On him it would be easy to avenge herself.
The white china knob shook. She seized the back of a chair with both hands to keep herself from screaming. With a choking sensation she saw the door begin to open. The crack widened. The Doctor entered on tiptoe.
“Hello,” he whispered, “I’m afraid I startled you. I made ’em give me the side door key, you know.”
She was unable to utter a word.
“You look pretty white,” she heard him say.
She dropped down on to the chair at which she had been clutching. “Just a little tired, perhaps.”
“I don’t wonder,” his voice droned over her head. “I ought to have insisted on wiring for a nurse the moment he was taken ill. You’re not fit to deal with a pneumonia case just after having the children with whooping-cough. But thank goodness, one will be here in the morning. And I’ve a good mind to send for another.”
“You mustn’t,” she heard herself protest from force of habit. “We can’t afford it.”
He went over to the bed, grumbling, below his breath, about false economy.
“You ought to get some good nights’ sleep.”
“I shall sleep all day as soon as nurse arrives.” She spoke mechanically, sitting, inert, exhausted, with hands hanging limp at her sides.
She heard the Doctor ask: “Have those linseed poultices relieved him?”
She had been given to murderous and abominable thoughts. The devil must have slipped them into her mind when she was too tired to resist. She must make amends: and, dragging herself to her feet, she crept to the bedside, and showed her carefully kept chart, and answered the Doctor’s questions with the precision of a trained nurse. “Herpes,” she heard herself whisper, and “rusty sputum. …Yes, his respiration was sixty again… The pain in his back seems to trouble him and that nasty short, dry cough keeps on disturbing his sleep.”
“The crisis won’t be for another five days,” the Doctor said. “We’ll have to look out for his heart then. It isn’t up to much, as you know. I shall have injections of strychnine ready for the nurse to give at a moment’s notice. He’ll have to be watched as a cat watches a mouse, mind—day and night—and his pulse taken constantly… Now look here, my dear girl, you’d much better let me send for a night nurse, as well, before you crock up.”
She shook her head.
“If you’re so obstinate about saving a few pounds, I shall insist—”
She clutched at his arm. “It’s not the money, only,” she protested in an urgent whisper, “it’s— oh, how can I tell you? I blame myself so! Please, please let me do something for him now that I can be of service.”
The big steadying hand of the Doctor descended on her shoulder. “Blame yourself!” he exclaimed. “Stuff and nonsense!”
“But I do,” she insisted, her eyes filling with tears, so that the Doctor loomed over her, blurred in the firelight, like a shaggy giant. “You see, he doesn’t love me.” But she did not speak the rest of her thought, “and I hate him.”
“Is that any reason,” said the Doctor, gripping her shoulder very hard, “why you should wear yourself out nursing him?”
“Yes,” she answered, in a low, strained tone.
“Have it your own way,” he grumbled.
Presently she was left in the bridal chamber where she and Dick had lain but never loved. She stood on guard beside the bed she would never share again, and stared down at the cyanosed face she loathed.