WHEN the two drove away on the first stage of their experiment, Mr. and
Mrs. Waring, the Rector and Mrs. Fellowes, Dacre and a few others stood
watching them from the great stone steps of the hall.
Mrs. Fellowes was reflecting with mixed feelings on Gwen’s good-bye to
her mother, which by chance she had witnessed. The girl had already, in
the face of everyone, bidden her a quiet and emotionless farewell, but
just at the last she had swept round suddenly, as if she were driven,
and had caught the little dazed creature—a deal too young to be her
mother—in her arms, and had given her an imperative hug of the volcanic
order. As it was a first experience, no one could blame the little woman
from shrinking visibly from it, and, when it was over, for escaping with
a sigh to the side of her husband, and slipping her hand into his with
the air of one who has escaped a danger. Gwen allowed one flash of angry
pain to shoot from her eyes, then she walked grandly out of the house
with her hand quite properly on her father’s arm, which Dacre took good
care to have in readiness.
“Dacre!” said Mrs. Fellowes, as soon as they were well off, “we must get
rid of these people. I am sure we have all done our duty by them, and
your father and mother have, very obviously, had enough of them.”
“I am ready to swear that Admiral Trowe has had a good sight too much of
the governor. He has been hammering into him the life and blow-up of
that gray rock at Henty’s they are always grubbing at, for a solid ten
minutes. Now he’s on selection, and the Admiral has murder in his
eye—look!”
“Yes, and your mother, see how tired she looks! She is telling Mrs.
Irvine the most wonderful new facts about babies. Mrs. Irvine has ten,
two sets of twins among them, and she is the champion mother of the
parish. Dacre, you cover one wing, I shall manœuvre the other, there’s
not a minute to lose.”
In next to no time they had cleared the field, and Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes
were just about to say good-bye and to carry Dacre off to dinner, when
to their amazement, after a hurried consultation, Mr. and Mrs. Waring
begged them to stay, and drew them into the library, utterly ignoring
the furious Dacre, who betook himself, softly swearing, to the stables,
where he wandered disconsolately, scathing the screws that lumbered the
stalls and thanking God lustily that his stud was elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes were closeted together in the library.
While the other two looked silently and questioningly at one another
Mrs. Fellowes telegraphed despairing signals to her husband.
“It has been a most wearing day,” said Mr. Waring at last, “I feared my
wife would break down under the strain. No doubt you felt it too?” he
went on with his brows raised, looking concernedly at his guests. “I
thought, my dear,” and he pressed her hand, “I thought, my dear, that
our daughter Gwen bore it admirably, the girl appears to have much
courage, the courage of your race, my love.”
He beamed softly down on her, and paused for an unconscionable time,
then suddenly he remembered himself and started.
“Our daughter Gwen is a very beautiful person,” he went on, musing
aloud. “I do not think I ever noticed the fact until lately, until that
night she went to some—h’m—party with Lady Mary. Dearest, do you
recollect?”
“Perfectly,” said Mrs. Waring, getting a shade paler, and with a
troubled look in her eyes, “you saw her, Mrs. Fellowes,” she said with
sudden eagerness, “that night?”
“I did indeed, Gwen’s beauty was a shock to me. But I didn’t know—that
is, I thought you were busy.”
“Ah yes, very busy, I remember, but we came out to see Gwen, she was on
the stairs, and we got no farther than the door, the lamplight shone on
her and cast soft strange lovely shadows on her white silk—it was silk,
was it not, Mrs. Fellowes?”—She nodded. “And her arms and neck were
like—down—”
“Snow,” murmured her husband.
“No, dear, they looked too warm for that, and her face! We were, I
think, a little frightened at its beauty.”
She gave a little shy laugh.
“We should have come out, but just then I do not think I could have
spoken. My husband thought I was not very well and he brought me
back—Henry spoils me, Mrs. Fellowes—but to-day I shall never forget
Gwen’s look, never!” and her small face got still one shade whiter.
She tried to say something but she only made a little husky noise, she
turned to Mrs. Fellowes and tried again.
“You know Gwen,” she said faintly, “do you think she was happy to-day,
as a bride should be?”
Mrs. Fellowes looked keenly at her and turned to her husband.
“Mrs. Waring must lie down, she is worn out,” she said.
He made ready the sofa and drew the trembling small creature down on it.
Mr. Waring yielded her up with a disturbed and astonished gaze, and
stood aside contemplating events patiently.
“Henry,” she said softly, after resting silently for a minute, “ask Mrs.
Fellowes what we want to know—tell her our—our fears.”
He came over and laid his hand on her sunny head, that time seemed to
have quite forgotten.
“My dear friends,” he said solemnly, “my wife and I are in some
perplexity. The fact is—h’m—we have never, so to speak, known much of
our daughter Gwen, she is a difficult person to know. From time to time
we have attempted to gain some nearer knowledge of her, but she—ahem—in
fact, did not seem inclined to encourage our advances. From her very
babyhood,” he went on more fluently, “the girl has interested us very
keenly, she has been quite a study to us, but I regret to say we have
never arrived at any very definite conclusions about her, we have never
quite understood her.”
“Never!” said Mrs. Waring, suddenly bending towards Mrs. Fellowes, with
a look very like terror in her face.
“Of course you more than I, dear,” said Mr. Waring, “you have your
woman’s instincts to guide you, and they, as a rule, are trustworthy.”
“I have never known Gwen,” said she, with very unusual decision.
“What is your opinion on this matter?” said Mr. Waring, turning to Mr.
Fellowes, “you know our daughter.”
It was all cruelly pathetic, his voice, and his face, and his gesture,
and the strained hopeless look in his small wife’s eyes.
“Gwen is not ready yet for complete happiness,” said Mr. Fellowes; “when
she is, it will come to her in full measure.”
“But—she is a person of intelligence and what is called grown-up,” said
Mr. Waring anxiously, “and very perfect in her development—outwardly,”
he added, a doubtful look fleeting across his face.
“Yes, to look at, she is perfect, but does it not strike you,” said Mrs.
Fellowes slowly, “that much of Gwen’s womanhood is still elemental? Do
you not think that some of her senses are also still in that condition?”
“Ah!” murmured Mr. Waring, looking sadly down on his wife, “Ah! I have
thought, I have feared this. I cannot see in our daughter Gwen a
complete creature, but I thought, knowing so little of women as I do,
that I might be mistaken. Do you hope for ultimate completeness in our
daughter?” he asked suddenly, watching curiously for the answer.
The Rector’s superior knowledge of Gwen had fixed him very uncomfortably
on a pedestal, there was no getting off it just yet, he had to make the
best of the situation.
“Indeed I do, no half development will content Gwen when she learns her
deficiencies, nor her husband either.”
“These elements then may develop to ultimate greatness or wither and
die—to reappear, of course, in some form or other. But to disappear from
our knowledge untimely! Ah! that would be sad waste. We will hope it may
not occur. Do you happen to know if her husband looks on our daughter as
we do, in relation to her ultimate possibilities of development, or if
he has chosen her for the thing she looks—a most beautiful and finished
young woman of fair intelligence?”
“I am quite sure that Strange loves Gwen strongly and truly,” began Mr.
Fellowes evasively.
It was a difficult subject to thrash out thoroughly with this wonderful
pair, it might be better to let it fade gradually from their minds, and
to aid them to glide back into their own still waters.
“Yes, but on what grounds?” went on Mr. Waring with strange persistence.
“Have you ever spoken to Strange himself on the subject?” asked Mr.
Fellowes.
“Ahem, no. In fact, under like circumstances,” he reddened and coughed a
little, “I should myself have resented any attempt of such nature. No, I
did not put any questions to Strange. But will you not favour us with an
opinion, you, who know our daughter so well?”
“I think that, in a measure, Strange knows what he is about, and we are
bound to trust his judgment. It would be folly to suppose that he sees
the entire truth clearly, he is under the usual conditions of a man in
love. Gwen dominates him as she does even us old married people, hearts
and brains will always fall before our Gwen.”
“What is the entire truth?” said Mrs. Waring, pushing her hair back and
sitting up.
“The truth as it strikes me,” said Mr. Fellowes very gently, “is, that
Gwen is at present incapable of loving.”
“You refer—ahem, to that phase of the emotion known as sexual love?”
said Mr. Waring hurriedly.
“Or of any other yet.”
“I knew it, we both knew it, but it was hard to speak out,” murmured
Mrs. Waring sadly.
“She was in no way constrained,” said Mr. Waring in a frightened way.
His wife sat still with sad wide eyes.
“It seems a reasonless thing in one in Gwen’s position,” he went on with
a fine touch of pride, “to marry without love. I know such things do
happen now and again with young portionless women—women have a feline
craving for soft living and pretty things, but our daughter Gwen—ah!”
“I thought all this, I knew it,” said Mrs. Waring quietly, “I wished so
often to ask Gwen definitely for the truth, but I did not seem able to
do so, I wish now I had.”
Mrs. Fellowes put her hands tenderly on her shoulders and made her lie
down again.
“She will love, she will be happy!” she whispered softly, “she is in
good hands.”
“Too soon, too soon!” murmured the mother, “she should be in mine still.
But they never held her. She should be happy now, now,” she cried with
sudden passion, her voice still in soft minors, “not in the future! Why
should she have to reach her happiness and her love ‘through much
tribulation’? It should come by divine right. She is so strong, she will
suffer strongly, she is so strong that when passion comes to her it will
tear her, torture her, break her to pieces! Henry, Henry,” she gasped,
“we are to blame, we have failed miserably! We never had any right to
have children. While we have been worrying over the dry fossils of the
past we have allowed the living—the young—to wither around us. Ah, how
sad it all is, how sad!” she sighed, “how sad!”
The Rector came and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder softly. He well
knew how awful this too-late awakening of the other woman’s motherhood
was to her, with her own so terribly, persistently wide-awake and alive
with the throbbing of unsatisfied pain.
There was nothing further to be said, nothing, altogether unsatisfactory
as everything was. Mr. Fellowes felt this and said in his bright frank
way.
“We are all very tired, and you—” he said, turning to his wife, “you are
frightfully washed out! And, good gracious! Dacre is waiting all this
time!”
To her own intense amazement, Mrs. Fellowes stooped down and gave Mrs.
Waring a kiss.
The other’s tremor went through her like an electric shock and she did
not get over it for the rest of the evening.