by Berta Ruck
CHAPTER I
A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON
The morning after Paul Dampier's arrival from the Front he and his wifestarted off on the honeymoon trip that had been for so many weeksdeferred.
They motored from the Aircraft Works to London, where they stopped to doa little shopping, and where Gwenna was in raptures of pride to see theeffect produced by the Beloved in the uniform that suited him so well.
For every passer-by in the street must turn to look, with quickenedinterest now, at an Army Aviator. Even the young men in their uniformsgave a glance at the soldier whose tunic buttoned at the side and whosecap had the tilt that gave to the shape of his blonde head somethingbird-like, falcon-like. And every girl in the restaurant where theylunched murmured, "Look," to her companion, "that's some one in theRoyal Flying Corps," and was all eyes for that kit which, at a time whenall khaki was romantic, had a special, super-glamour of its own.
But the blue eyes of the man who wore it were for no one but the girlwith whom he was taking his first meal alone together since they hadbeen man and wife.
Her own glance was still hazy with delight. Oh, to see him there facingher, over the little round table set in a corner!
They ate cold beef and crusty loaf and cheese in memory of their firstlunch together in that field, long ago. They drank cider, touchingglasses and wishing each other all luck and a happy life.
"And fine weather for the whole of our week's honeymoon," added thebridegroom as he set down his glass. "Lord, I know how it _can_ pour inyour Wales."
For it was to Wales that they went on by the afternoon train fromEuston; to Gwenna's home, arriving late that evening. The Reverend HughLloyd was away on a round of preaching-visits about Dolgelly. They hadhis black-henlike housekeeper to chirp and bustle about them with muchadoring service; and they would have the Chapel House to themselves.
"But we won't be _in_ the house much," Gwenna decided, "unless itpours."
It did not pour the next morning. It was cloudless and windless andwarm. And looking round on the familiar landscape that she had knownwhen she was a little child, it seemed now to Gwenna as if War could notbe. As if it were all a dream and a delusion. There was no khaki to bemet in that little hillside village of purple slate and grey stone. Onlyone or two well-known figures were missing from it. A keeper from one ofthe big houses on the other side of the river, and an English chauffeurhad joined the colours, but that nine-days' wonder was over now. Peacehad made her retreat in these mountain fastnesses that had once echoedto the war-shouts and the harp-music of a race so martial.
It was the music that had survived....
Paul Dampier had put on again that well-known and well-worn grey tweedjacket of his, so that he also no longer recalled War. He had come rightaway from all that, as she had known he would; come safely back to her.Here he was, with her, and with a miracle between them, in this valleyof crystal brooks and golden bracken and purple slopes. It was meantthat they two should be together thus. Nothing could have stopped it.She felt herself exulting and triumphing over all the Fates who mighthave tried to stop it; and over all the Forces that might have tried tokeep him from her. His work on the Machine? Pooh! That had actuallyhelped to bring them together! The Great War? Here he was, home from theWar!
"I've always, always wanted to be with you in the real country, and Inever have," she told him, as together they ran down the slate steps ofUncle Hugh's porch after breakfast and turned up a path between thesunny larch-grown steeps. That path would be a torrent in the wintertime. Now the slate pebbles of it were hot under the sun. "I don'treally count that _country_, that field, that day----"
"Didn't seem to mind it when we were there," he teased her as he walkedbeside her swinging the luncheon basket that Margaret had put up forthem. "I mean of course when _I_ was there."
Gwenna affected to gasp over the conceit of men. "If I've _got_ to bewith one," she told him as if wearily, "I'd rather it was in a niceplace for me to listen to his nonsense."
"Wasn't any 'nonsense,' as you call it, in that field."
"No," agreed Gwenna, "there wasn't."
He looked sideways and down at her as she climbed that hill-path,hatless, sure-footed and supple. Then a narrow turn in the path made herwalk a little ahead of him. She was wearing a very simple little sheathof a grey cotton or muslin or something frock, with a white turn-downcollar that he hadn't seen her in before, he thought. Suited her awfullywell. (Being a man, he could not be expected to recognise it for thegrey linen that she'd had on when he'd come upon her that afternoon,high up on the scaffolding at Westminster.)
"Yes, though, there was 'nonsense,'" he said, now suddenly answering herlast speech. "Fact of the matter is, it was dashed nonsense to wastesuch a lot of time."
"Time, how?" asked Gwenna guilelessly, without turning her head.
"Oh! As if you didn't know!" he retorted. "Wasting time talking aboutthe Machine, to you. Catching hold of your hand, to show you what thecamber was--and then letting it go! Instead of owning up at once, '_Yes.All right. You've got me. Pax!_' And starting to do this----"
He was close up behind her now on the mountain-path, and because of thesteep ground on which they stood, her head was on a higher level thanhis own. He drew it downwards and backwards, that brown, sun-warmedhead, to his tweed-clad shoulder.
"You'll break my neck. I know you will, one day. You are so _rough_,"complained Gwenna; twisting round, however, and taking a step down tohim.
"I love you to be," she whispered. She kissed his coat-lapel. All thered of that rose bloomed now on her mouth.... They walked on, with hisarm a close, close girdle about her. The luncheon basket was forgottenon the turfy slope on which he'd dropped it. So they lunched, late, inthe farm-house four hundred feet above the Quarry village. It was alonely place enough, a hillside outpost, fenced by stunted damson trees;a short slate-flagged end of path led to the open door where a great redbaking crock stood, full of water. Inside, the kitchen was a dark, coolcave, with ancient, smooth-worn oaken furniture that squeaked on theslate-slabbed floor, with a dresser rich with willow-pattern and lustre,and an open fire-place, through which, looking up, they could seethrough the wood smoke a glimpse of the blue sky.
And in this sort of place people still lived and worked as if it wereSeventeen Hundred and Something--and scarcely a day's journey away wasthe Aircraft Factory where people lived for the work that will remakethe modern world; oh, most romantic of all ages, that can set such sharpcontrasts side by side!
An old Welshwoman, left there by her sheep-farming sons at home in thechimney corner, set butter-milk before the lovers, and ambrosialhome-churned butter, and a farm-house loaf that tasted of nuts andpeatsmoke. They ate with astonishing appetites; Gwenna sitting in thewindow-seat under the sill crowded with flower-pots and a family Bible.Paul, man-like, stood as near as he could to the comfort of the fireeven on that warm day. The old woman, who wore clumping clogs on herfeet and a black mutch-cap on her head, beamed upon the pair with smilesas toothless and as irresistible as those of an infant.
"You must have a plenty, whatever," she urged them, bringing out anotherloaf, of _bara breeth_ (or currant bread). "Come on, Sir! Come, MissWilliams, now. Mam, I mean. Yess, yess. You married lady now. Yourhusband," with a skinny hand on his grey sleeve, "your husband is _not_a minnyster?"
"He's a soldier, Mrs. Jones," explained Gwenna, proudly, and with astrengthening of her own accent, such as occurs in any of her race whenrevisiting their wilds. "He's an Airman."
"Ur?" queried Mrs. Jones, beaming.
"He goes flying. You know. On a machine. Up in the sky."
"Well, _oh_!" ejaculated the old woman. And laughed shrilly. To her thiswas some eccentric form of English joke. Flying? Like the birds! _Dear_,dear. "What else does he do, _cariad fach_?" she asked of Gwenna.
"He's been over in France, fighting the Germans," said the girl, whilethe old woman on her settle by the fire nodded her mutched head withthe intense, delighted expression of some sma
ll child listening to afairy story. It was indeed no more, to her. She said, "Well, indeed. Hetook a very _kind_ one, too." Then she added, "I not much English.Pitty, pitty!" and said something in Welsh at which Gwenna colouredrichly and laughed a little and shook her head.
"What's she say?" demanded Paul, munching; but his girl-wife said it wasnothing--and turned her tip-tilted profile, dark against the diamondwindow panes, to admire one of the geranium plants in the pots.
Afterwards, when the couple were outside again in the fresh sunlight onthe mountain lands, young Dampier persisted with his questioning aboutwhat that old woman had said. He betted that he could guess what it wasall about. And he guessed.
Gwenna admitted that he had guessed right.
"She said," she told him shyly, "that it ought to be 'a very pretty one,whatever.'"
"I've got a very pretty present for it," Paul whispered presently.
"What?"
"Don't you remember a locket I once took? A little mother-of-pearlheart," he said. "That's what I shall keep it for----"
And there fell a little silence between them as they walked on, swinginghands above the turf, gravely contented.
They had _had_ to spend the day together thus. It seemed to Gwenna thatall her life before had been just a waiting for this day.
Below the upland on which they swung along, grey figures on the green,there lay other wide hill-spaces, spread as with turf-green carpets, onwhich the squares of mellowing, golden-brown autumn woods seemed rugsand skins cast down; below these again stretched the further valley withthe marsh, with the silver loops and windings of the river, and thelittle white moving caterpillar of smoke from the distant train. Therewas also a blue haze above the slate roofs of a town.
But here, in this sun-washed loneliness far above, here was their world;hers and his.
They walked, sometimes climbing a crest where stag's-horn moss branchedand spread through the springy turf beneath their feet, sometimesdipping into a hollow, for two miles and more. They could have walkedthere for half a day and seen no face except that of a tiny mountainsheep, cropping among the gorse; heard no voice but those of the callingplovers, beating their wings in the free air. Then, passing a gap in twohills, they came quite suddenly upon the cottage and the lake.
The sheet of water, silent, deserted, reflected the warm blue of theafternoon sky and the deep green of the overhanging boughs of greathassock-shaped bushes that covered two islands set upon its breast.
"Rhododendron bushes. When they're in blossom they're all simply_covered_ with flowers, pink and rose-colour, and reflected in thewater! It _is_ so lovely," Gwenna told the lover beside her. "Oh, Paul!You _must_ come here again and see that with me in the spring!"
On the further bank was another jungle of rhododendron and lauristinus,half-hiding the grey stone walls and the latticed windows of the squarecottage, a fishing box of a place that had evidently been built for someone who loved solitude.
Paul Dampier peered in through one of the cobwebby lattices. Just insideon the sill there stood, left there long since, a man's shaving-tackle.Blue mildew coated the piece of soap that lay in the dish. Further in hecaught a glimpse of dusty furniture, of rugs thrown down on a woodenfloor, of a man's old coat on a peg. A wall was decorated with sets ofhorns, with a couple of framed photographs, with old fishing-rods.
"Make a jolly decent billet, for some one, this," said Paul.
Gwenna said, "It belongs to some people.... They're away, I think. It'sall locked up now. So's the boat for the lake, I expect. They used tokeep a boat up here for fishing."
The long flat boat they found moored to one of the stout-trunkedrhododendron bushes that dipped its pointed leaves in the peat-brownwater fringed with rushes.
Paul stepped in, examining her, picking up the oars. "Nice afternoon fora row, Ma'am?" he said, smiling up at the girl clad in dove-grey on therushy bank, with the spongy dark-green moss about her shoes.
"Jump in, Gwenna. I'll row you across the lake."
"You can't row that old tub, boy."
"Can't I?"
"I'll race you round, then!"
"Right you are!"
The girl skipped round the clump of rhodos that hid the last flicker ofher skirt; and the boy bent to the short, home-made sculls.
The boat was a crank, unhandy little craft; and lacked thole-pins on oneside. Therefore Gwenna, swift-footed Little Thing that she was, had asgood a chance of winning as he.
"Like trying to row a bucket!" he laughed, as the boat spun. "Hi, Gwen!I ought to have some start, you know!"
He rowed. Presently he rested on his oars and called, "Hullo, have youstarted?"
"Started--" came back only the echo from the cottage roof. There was nosign of any grey-frocked running figure on the bank. He scanned it onboth sides of him, gave a look towards each of those shrub-coveredislands on the smooth expanse.
"Gwenna--Why, where are you? What's become of the girl," he muttered."Gwen-na!"
She was nowhere to be seen.
