“You don’t believe in it yourself, though?”
He shifted his gaze and shrugged, evidently made uneasy by so direct a question. “Well, indeed now, what are you thinking yourself o’ such things, Ma’am? They are reckoned a bit old fashioned like, aren’t they, now-a-days?”
“I am believed in my family to have second sight,” she told him.
“You don’t say! Could you spot the winner of a horse-race, now?”
She did not answer, but presently she said: “Would you take a message for me to the Plâs in about half-an-hour?”
“Anything to pleasure one o’ your family, Ma’am,” he assured her. “Isn’t it the most highly respected in the district?”
“My sister will be home from church by then,” Frances continued with a frown. “Will you please explain to her that I’ve a feeling I simply must return at once to my own home? Say I will write to her.”
He repeated the message, darting inquisitive looks at her and seeming to relish the mystery. “Is that right, Ma’am?”
“That’s right.” She would write to Gwenllian, saying only that she had nothing to fear. Gwenllian would understand. They would never meet again.
“But hadn’t I better be fetching a car from the Plâs to drive you to the station,” he suggested. “’Tis a terrible long step for a lady.”
“I prefer to go on my own feet,” she told him. Gwenllian and I shall never meet again, she was thinking. I shall never come to beautiful, devouring Plâs Einon again.
He pocketed her half-crown, and in return began to pay her Celtic compliments, that started with her well-preserved appearance, and ended with the magnitude of her sister’s possessions.
“This old tump be a grand place to see her estate from,” he said, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. “Unrolled like a map, just as it is below us, woods, and mansion, and farms and all. You couldn’t have a prettier property, now could you, Ma’am, not if you were to search the earth over for ’en? Ah, Miss Gwenllian, she did ought to be a happy lady.”
Frances was gazing down upon the patchwork of little fields. She was trying to discover the trees in the park she used to climb, and the river’s silver shallows across which she had waded. The scent of sap and woodland moisture came up to her and her eyes filled with tears. The curve of the valley with oak and beech and feathery mountain-ash, blurred into a shapeless smudge of green. Only the ring of ancient yews by the lodge remained darkly distinguishable through her tears.
“Good-bye,” she murmured.
“Good day to you, Ma’am,” said her companion in a cheerful tone. But discovering that she had not spoken to him, and that she was silently weeping, he tactfully turned away and began to whistle a mournful hymn tune. “Ah,” he said, at last, “I mind the day when first I shewed this fine view to the poor Captain. ‘All o’ this is yours, Sir,’ I was telling him. Indeed, Ma’am, I felt as grand as Satan hisself must have done, shewing the Lord all the kingdoms o’ the earth. And if I was a proud man that day, Ma’am, what must the Captain have been?” Without answering, she smiled and held out her hand. He shook it with hearty pleasure. After all, queer lady though she might be, she was an Einon-Thomas of Plâs Einon. As she turned away, he became eager to detain her.
“Some do say one thing and some another,” he began, as though settling down to prolonged conversation. “Perhaps you could be telling me what this place where we are standing rightly is?”
With her eyes upon Plâs Einon, she answered that it had been a place of burial.
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Published by Honno
‘Ailsa Craig’, Heol y Cawl, Dinas Powys,
South Glamorgan, Wales, CF64 4AH
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz, 1932
First published by Honno in 2014
© Introduction Lucy Thomas 2014
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Print ISBN: 978-1-909983-11-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-909983-18-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.
Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.
Cover image: Taken from the US edition, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. Honno has made every effort to trace the copyright holder of this image without success. If you have any information regarding this, please contact Honno.
The Soldier and the Gentlewoman Page 22
