Gwenda

“ Gwenda's eyes were ominously somber and she had the white face of a ghost, a face that to Rowcliffe, as he looked at it, recalled the white face of Alice. He disliked Alice's face, he always had disliked it, he disliked it more than ever at that moment; yet the sight of this face that was so like it carried him away in an ecstasy of tenderness. ”

“ Night and morning she called to her sister: "Oh Gwenda, come and feel my heart. I do believe it's growing. It's getting too big for my body. It frightens me when it jumps about like that."
It frightened Gwenda.
But it did not really frighten Alice. She rejoiced in it, rather, and exulted. After all, it was a good thing that she had not got pneumonia, which might have killed her as it had killed John Greatorex. She had got what served her purpose better. It served all her purposes. ”

“ For Gwenda that night was the most tragic in her life. Deliberately she had thrust away something which was more than life itself to her. She tried to think of him as a boy, but Chick was a man, a sweet and simple man, and her senior by a year, and the realisation that she was putting him out of her life was an agony almost unendurable. ”

“ Gwenda laughed.
"There was nothing more startling in his portfolio than two Spanish grammars," she said. "Chick bought it as a compromise between a leather bag and a satchel."
Mansar took his leave of her reluctantly. Gwenda had an appeal beyond her visible charm; her sincerity and her sane, clear outlook on life had made a greater impression upon the young man than he cared to admit even to himself. ”

“ He had phrases that wrung her heart. "You're a good girl, Gwenda." "I'm only an irritable old man, my dear. You mustn't mind what I say." She suffered from the incessant drain on her pity; for she wanted all her will if she was to stand against Rowcliffe. Pity was a dangerous solvent in which her will sank and was melted away.
There were moments when she saw herself as two women. One had still the passion and the memory of freedom. The other was a cowed and captive creature who had forgotten; whose cramped motions guided her; whose instinct of submission she abhorred. ”

“ But these times which were theirs only did not count as time. They belonged to another scale of feeling and another order of reality. Their moments had another pulse, another rhythm and vibration. They burned as they beat. While they lasted Gwenda's life was lived with an intensity that left time outside its measure. Through this intensity she drew the strength to go on, to endure the unendurable with joy.
* * * * *
But Rowcliffe could not endure the unendurable at all. He was savage when he thought of it. That was her life and she would never get away from it. ”

“ The Marquis of Pelborough was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, playing dominoes with his housekeeper, when Lord Mansar's rat-tat at the street-door sent him in hasty search after his discarded coat. Gwenda was in her room, answering a letter which she had received from her late manager, asking her to return to the part she had dropped. Gwenda had a brother, now happily in Canada and unlikely to return, a blackmailing, weak, and conscienceless man, who had dogged her footsteps through life and had brought to a summary conclusion at least three good engagements. ”

“ Mary thought, "Wednesday is his day. On Wednesday I will go into the village and see all my sick people. Then I shall see him. And he will see me. He will see that I am kind and sweet and womanly." She thought, "That is the sort of woman that a man wants." But she did not know what she was thinking.
Gwenda thought, "I will go out on to the moor again. I don't care if I am late for Prayers. He will see me when he drives back and he will wonder who is that wild, strong girl who walks by herself on the moor at night and isn't afraid. ”

“ A few days after the accident which made her a prisoner, lying on the sofa in the morning-room she had fallen into a deep reverie, which had caused quite a pucker between her eyebrows. Being naturally a romantic, sentimental girl, she mentally resented the sordid necessity so continually urged by her aunts of making a "good match." It was in Gwenda to cast all their prudent manoeuvres to the winds, and to follow the bent of her own inclinations ”

“ Upon it as upon everything else connected with him, the fates seemed to smile, and Colonel Vaughan was soon won over by Gwenda's persuasions.
"Well! pommy word, you know, Gwenda, I like the young fellow myself. Somehow or other he has taken us by storm. Of course, I should have been better pleased if he were Dr. Owen's son instead of his nephew."
"Well, he is next thing to it, uncle," said the girl coaxingly. "He is his adopted son, and will inherit all his wealth, and you know how necessary it is for me to marry a rich man, as I haven't a penny myself. ”

“ She doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."
He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.
"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."
But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. ”

“ She told him that his new landlord was a lawyer's clerk, and that his wife was inclined towards spiritualism.
"Otherwise, they're ideal people," she said, and went on to talk about Gwenda. Here she was fascinating to Chick. She was the first person he had ever met who knew his friend or was anxious to talk about her. Maggie knew surprisingly little of Gwenda's early life, as it proved.
"She's never mentioned her husband to me," said Maggie, "and, Heaven knows, I've spoken enough about my little bit of trouble. Sometimes I think Mr. Gwenda Maynari must be in gaol, she's so cheery." ”

“ Gwenda stood up.
"We haven't got to do things. That's his business. We've only got to sit tight and play the game."
* * * * *
Gwenda went on with her packing.
"It will be time enough," she thought, "to tell Ally tomorrow."
Ally was in her room. She never came downstairs now; and this week she was worse and had stayed all day in bed. They couldn't rouse her.
But something had roused her this evening.
A sort of scratching on the door made Gwenda look up from her packing.
Ally stood on the threshold. She had dressed herself completely in her tweed skirt, white blouse and knitted tie. ”

“ Flesh and blood shrank from the awful sacrifice. It would be a living death. Your conscience has no business to send you to a living death.
Robina's heart ached for poor Gwenda. She wrote and said so. She said she knew she was a brute for not going back to Gwenda's father. She would do it if she could, but she simply couldn't. She hadn't got the nerve.
And Robina did more. She pulled wires and found the curate. That he was a ritualist was no drawback in Robina's eyes. In fact, she declared it was a positive advantage. Mr. Grierson's practices would wake them up in Garthdale. ”

“ She worked through the Elizabethan dramatists and all the Vicar's Tudor Classics, and came on Jowett's Translations of the Platonic Dialogues by the way, and was lured on the quest of Ultimate Reality, and found that there was nothing like Thought to keep you from thinking. She took to metaphysics as you take to dram-drinking. She must have strong, heavy stuff that drugged her brain. And when she found that she could trust her intellect she set it deliberately to fight her passion.
At first it was an even match, for Gwenda's intellect, like her body, was robust. ”

“ And her uncle had perforce to be content, for at Nantmyny there was no doubt that Gwenda "ruled the roost." Somehow she emerged from the stage of girlhood with a fair amount of knowledge, although her mother's sisters, the two Miss Gwynnes of Pentre, were much dissatisfied with her want of what they called "polish."
"She'll never make a good match," they were wont to say, "never! That plain outspokenness is all very well in a man, or even in an old woman, but it's very unbecoming in a girl, and I'm sure it will ruin her prospects." ”

“ He is curate of Llansidan, 'tis about forty miles from here; but Gethin, my eldest son, is a sailor; indeed, I don't know where he is now, but I am longing for him to come home, whatever; and Will does not come often to see me. He is too busy, I suppose, and 'tis very far."
And Gwenda, sensitive and tender, heard a tremble in the old man's voice, and detected the pain and bitterness of his speech.
"Young men," she said, "are so often taken up with their work at first, that they forget their old home, but they generally come back to it, and draw towards it as they grow older ”

“ That's the wonderful thing about real gentlemen—they are always sincere."
So she went to tea, and Gwenda was very nice, but very disconcerting, because Miss Farland's first impression was that Gwenda was his lordship's young lady. As to Chick, he was his simple, friendly self, and discussed such matters as the weather and the Cup Tie Final (she was interested in neither subject) with the greatest freedom. ”

“ You haven't seen the moon get up over Greffington Edge. If you had—if you knew what this place was like, you wouldn't lie there grizzling. You wouldn't talk about punishing. You'd wonder what you'd done to be allowed to look at it—to live in it a day. Of course I'm not going to let on to Papa that I'm in love with it."
Mary smiled again.
"It's all very well for you," she said. "As long as you've got a moor to walk on you're all right."
"Yes. I'm all right," Gwenda said. ”

“ You know he's always glad to see you."
The sting of it was in Mary's watching eyes. For, when you came to think of it, there was nothing else she could very well have said.
LXI That year, when spring warmed into summer, Gwenda's strength went from her.
She was always tired. She fought with her fatigue and got the better of it, but in a week or two it returned. Rowcliffe told her to rest and she rested, for a day or two, lying on the couch in the dining-room where Ally used to lie, and when she felt better she crawled out on to the moor and lay there.
One day she said to herself, "There's Ally. ”

“ She was pretty and slight, and Acacia Lodge had voted her "vivacious " in the days when the sensational advent of a real actress had set all the boarders the agreeable task of analysing her charm. Her popularity had not been maintained at the high level it reached during the first week following her arrival. The men she had subsequently snubbed—and with good cause—decided that she suffered from swelled head. The girls she had momentarily eclipsed set their lips tightly together and looked at one another significantly when her name cropped up in conversation. For Gwenda wore a wedding ring ”

“ He touched the portfolio. "I came back to get my money. Do you think a hundred pounds will be enough for the journey?"
She could only stare at him dumbfounded.
"Will you go to your room, Gwenda?" he asked again, and she nodded.
When she had gone, Chick motioned to a chair.
"Sit down, please, Mr. Maynard," he said. "I am sorry your sister has had this trouble. Is there anything I could do to induce you to go away?"
"You could give me the money," said Mr. Maynard, with his crooked smile.
"That I couldn't possibly do," said Chick firmly. "Why should I help a man like you? ”

“ I can only smile and hang on for something else. He is too powerful a man to sue. I should be barred by almost every management."
Chick was stunned. He had guessed the tragedy in the air when he had seen her face on the Saturday night. And this news was a tremendous blow to him. She was the first woman he had ever met on terms of equality—the first girl who had not giggled at him or been rude to him—his first and his greatest comrade, and she was going out of his fife.
Suddenly a brilliant thought struck him.
"Mrs.—Gwenda," he said excitedly, "three weeks is only seven pounds ten! ”

“ She went on talking while Gwenna, putting a gloss on her short curls with a brush in each hand, listened and laughed, and watched her from the bed with greeny-brown eyes full of an unreserved admiration. So far, Leslie Long's was the society in which Gwenna Williams most delighted. The younger, less sophisticated girl poured out upon her chum that affection which is not to be bribed or begged. It is not even to be found in any but a heart which is yet untouched, save in its dreams, by Love. ”

“ But Gwennola shook her head, laughing and blushing as she replied—
"Nay, Marie, be not too ready with thy offers, for, alas! what would the poor Job say"—she dropped her voice to a whisper—"did I bid him go by moonlight to the Chapel of the Brown Friar?"
"Merciful saints!" gasped Marie, paling as she crossed herself. "Nay, lady, you do but jest; it is not possible that a noble knight could find so fearful a resting-place?"
"I say nothing," smiled Gwennola, "because, little curious one, it is better for thee not to be too wise ”

“ But even the news of her father's unrelenting anger towards her failed to move Gwennola's heart. All thought, all feeling, was for the time being centred on her lover, after the manner of foolish and wayward maidens who, in the awakening of such passion, forget the love which has sheltered them from childhood; and in the case of Gwennola de Mereac such forgetfulness might in some measure be excused, seeing that love had been born with her twin-sister pity for a sick and innocent man, and such pity roused to the depths the finer fibres of her woman's heart. ”