The Soldier and the Gentlewoman

by Hilda Vaughan

  “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.”

  Chapter II

  HE AND SHE GIVE HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE

  For days he had hated the starched nurse in the house. The sight of her tautened his muscles and dragged at his nerves. She reminded him of the bleak passages of a military hospital, the hard swift fingers that probed and bandaged tight, the stringent whiff of antiseptics, a prelude to pain. When the doctor was at last sent for at dawn, Thank God! he said to himself. Now it will soon be over.

  It was not soon over. Whenever he ventured out of his study, he met the scared face of one or other of the maids. Powell had burst into tears as she set before him an unappetising
lunch. “Oh, the poor lady,” she had sobbed, hurrying from the room and slamming the door. He suspected her of hating him because of her mistress’s suffering, and he took a gloomy pride in leaving the cold meat untouched. It had always been the same with these Welsh servants —devoted to Gwen, as nearly insolent as they dared be to himself. He’d like to chuck out the lot of ’em.

  He prowled about and fingered his gramophone records, longing for the blatant tunes with which the wounded had kept up their spirits. But these women would consider it indecent of him to play music or to read a novel or doze in an armchair. They hated to see him make himself comfortable. Better look at the paper, which could be dropped at the sound of an approaching step. The news was dull and he had read it over and over again since five o’clock this morning. Today’s paper would not arrive until tea-time. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and stared at the decanter. But society was not tolerant enough nowadays to pardon a husband who became drunk during his wife’s confinement, though, God knew, there was excuse enough. In the good old days—but then he remembered that until modem times women had endured their part of this ordeal without the relief of anaesthetics. He shuddered, and began to ask himself why those butchers upstairs were withholding chloroform from poor Gwen? Callous brutes, doctors and nurses. He knew what the Army ones were like. He ought to go up and insist that something was done to slacken her agony; and he drove his unwilling feet to climb the stairs, his trembling hand to knock at her bedroom door. While he waited for an answer, he clenched his fists, anticipating one of those heart-rending groans that had spoiled his breakfast. The room was quiet. Could she have been delivered?

  The nurse peeped out.

  “Is it all over? ’’

  She laughed in his face. “Of course not. D’you want to see her?”

  “No,” he exclaimed, “no, no!”

  “You can. It’ll be quite all right just for a minute. Doctor’s gone off to visit another patient. He won’t be back for an hour.”

  “He oughtn’t to leave her,” Dick cried. “What’s he thinking of?”

  “There’s plenty of time,” the nurse answered, her hard lips set in a smile. “You can’t expect a first confinement to be over in half-an-hour.”

  He longed to run away from all this, back to the little house in Streatham where he had been sheltered from the cruelty of the world. But it was like “going over the top”; a fellow couldn’t retreat. He entered his wife’s room at the nurse’s heels, fearing that he might have to see blood.

  One nervous glance reassured him. Everything was in its usual precise order. On the draped Victorian dressing-table the silver gleamed. The stiff chintz curtains and chair covers were unrumpled. An austere single bed, suggesting a ward, had been set beside the four-poster, and on it Gwen was lying, a white coverlet drawn up to her throat, a white pillow beneath her head. Her eyes were shut. Her stillness frightened him.

  Seeing him flinch, the nurse said brightly, “Things have slowed down a bit. Go and cheer her up.” Obediently he went, and looked down on her in bewildered compassion, as on some stranger he had found half dead by the road-side. Was this the well-preserved woman of forty whom he had married only a year ago? Twenty years could not have added more to her age. Her face was thin and haggard; the sharp nose and chin seemed drawn together; there was a deep furrow between her brows.

  “Buck up,” he muttered. She opened her eyes slowly, as if the lids were heavy to lift. Even those flashing, eloquent eyes of hers were dulled, like the repulsive eyes of a dead fish, he thought. He could think of nothing to say but, “You poor thing! You poor thing!” But that would not be in accordance with the nurse’s orders.

  At length he managed to stammer, “You’re not in much pain, now?”

  “No,” she said in a whisper, “unfortunately not. The pains have slackened off. It’s disappointing. They’ve been trying to make me sleep.” And there stole back into her eyes a gleam of their former fire. “Sleep,” she said contemptuously. “As though I could, until he’s safely born!”

  She was trying with dry creased lips, the lips of an old woman, to smile. A valiant grimace. Dick continued to gaze at her, fascinated. Suddenly he started. Her mouth had twisted with pain and her hands appeared, writhing, to clutch at the bedclothes.

  When the spasm had passed and Dick was wiping away the sweat that had broken out on his forehead, he heard her say, “Nurse, that was a better one. They’re coming again.”

  “Capital,” the nurse answered, as though she, too, were pleased by this horrible torment.

  Dick turned, incredulous, from one woman to the other. “I say,” he pleaded, “can’t you put her under an anzesthetic?”

  The nurse forgave his ignorance. “We haven’t reached that stage yet.” And turning to her patient she said, “That’s splendid, you’re helping the pains along fine.” Over her shoulder she said to Dick, “You’d better go.”

  Thankful to be dismissed, he fled. To witness torture was abhorrent to him. He wanted a world full of bloodless pleasure, like a perpetual seaside holiday, with nice young people strolling up and down, well, cheerful and good to look upon. Ugliness and pain should be hidden, as civilised nations hid the floggings and hangings considered necessary within their prisons. How he pitied poor Gwen! But he pitied himself more. He was proud of being so much upset on her account, but he was ashamed of the harsh words that tolled in his mind—old and ugly! Old and ugly! There was no escaping from the truth. He was married to an old and ugly woman. Old! Old and ugly! And he didn’t love her. What a caddish thing to admit, even to himself, when she lay upstairs in torment! He would be kinder to her in future, he vowed. He remembered, with contrition, having made a like vow when she told him of her pregnancy. Well? Had he not refrained from making the alterations to which she objected? Hadn’t he done many boring things to please her? At first he had; but soon he had wearied of well-doing, and had motored off to the County Club, day after day, leaving her alone. From this hour he would turn over a new leaf. She should never again have to complain of his neglect. But would his good conduct hide his feelings from her? She was devilish astute… Old, ugly, unloved… She’d know.

  “I’m an unfeeling brute,” he muttered, and mixed himself a stiff whiskey and soda. “No. The trouble is that I’m too damned sensitive.”

  An hour passed; and he thought: Supposing she were to die, while I’m pitying myself because she’s lost her looks?

  Contrite, he rushed into the hall and upstairs. At her door his heart again failed him. From within there came the moan of an animal in pain. He hurried off. He came back. He stood irresolute. At last he knocked.

  “Who’s there?” he heard Dr. Roberts’s angry voice exclaim.

  He slunk away without answering, but was too late to escape. The old doctor’s frowning face looked out.

  “Oh, you,” he said, and followed Dick downstairs.

  He commanded respect, this tall, blunt-spoken man with eyes set far apart in a face rough-hewn, like a chunk of seasoned oak. Dick, who always felt small, young and useless in his sturdy presence, had sometimes tried to get even with him by mocking his Welsh accent. “Pretty rough and common,” he had once hazarded to Gwenllian, but she had swept his criticism aside. “You don’t understand. He comes of old yeoman stock. They used to take pride in being provincial before the railways came.” Everyone but Dick spoke of him as The Doctor, as though there could be no other.

  Some day, Dick thought, as he heard the heavy footsteps overtaking him, I shall fall ill and have to be attended by him. There’s no choice in this desert. He’ll stride up to my bedside, sodden with rain, splattered with mud, reeking of the horse he’s ridden, and shout at me to follow my wife’s example, to be strong and brave, to make an effort. He despises me, I know, because I haven’t nerves and a constitution of iron. If some of these opinionated blighters had been through the war—!”

  He was trembling with nervous irritation as he turned to face his pursuer in the hall. Out of the comer
of his eye he saw with sharpened perception the wide stretch of polished floor and the trophies of chase and battle which displayed his family’s credit. The great front door stood open, and through it flowed the sunshine of an October afternoon, gilding his many possessions. You shan’t hector me, he wanted to tell the taller man. Your house is little more than a cottage. A wasp came buzzing in, and he shied away from it with a flap of his handkerchief. “They’re dangerous brutes when they’re sleepy,” he muttered, excusing himself. There it went, curse the thing, hovering over a vase of crimson dahlias—the colour of blood. Why would Gwen have red about the place? She had arranged those flowers yesterday. His mind jerked back to her with a fresh pang of remorse. How little she had allowed her condition to interfere with her household duties! How courageous, how unselfish she had been!

  “Is she going to pull through?” he asked with difficulty.

  “Now look here, my boy,” the Doctor said, “this won’t do. Pull yourself together.”

  “I’ll try,” Dick promised, forgetting the difference in their stations. “But you don’t know how I feel.” A large steadying hand descended on his shoulder, and the Doctor growled: “There isn’t a man, woman or child in this parish who doesn’t love her.”

  Excepting myself, thought Dick.

  “You don’t imagine,” the Doctor challenged, “that I’m going to shirk anything that can be done for her safety or comfort? Believe me, I knew that girl before you were bom or thought of. I’ve seen her nurse both her parents through their last illnesses. No man knows her worth better than I. But I’ve got my work cut out. I can’t have you ill, too. Go out and take a good walk.”

  “I couldn’t,” Dick protested. “Suppose—just suppose—” The fact that he wasn’t in love with her, that he wouldn’t miss her much if she died, made the thought of her death the more pitiful.

  “Don’t be a fool, man. It’s a perfectly normal labour, so far: only likely to be protracted on account of her age.”

  Her age again! She looked old enough to be my mother, Dick thought, older than I ever saw my own mother look—a poor old hag they were torturing to death because she looked like a witch! He loathed and despised himself for insulting his wife with his fancies. His eyes began to prick, his throat to contract, his mouth to twist into unmanageable shapes.