GWEN dropped quite easily into the ways of her new home, she could
generally adapt herself to mere physical conditions, her unnatural
unrest and craving for excitement, in the first few weeks of her married
life, were, of course, the symptoms of an abnormal mental condition.
So when she had to face the inevitable, and to stay her albatross-flight
and betake herself to the domestic roost she did it gracefully enough,
and if her wings did strain and stretch themselves now and again, till
they often came near snapping, and would pull and tug at her as if they
wanted to drag the heart out of her body, no one but herself—and one
other, who guessed very near to the truth—was any the wiser.
But it was perhaps the unconfessed humdrumness of life when her flight
had ceased, that set her off on her new track—that, and her sense of
justice, which began to fret and peak in her again, now there was no
longer constant outer stir and movement to shut thought’s mouth.
The necessity to touch dogs that will sleep no longer is a hideous one,
but it must be dealt with.
When Gwen found this necessity a real and absolute one, and no imaginary
demand that could be shelved, she faced it, and proceeded to thrash out
the ground with an organized exhaustiveness, that was almost brutal in
its uncompromising frankness.
She had gone through it all, by bits, in a desultory way, several times
since her home-coming. This was unsatisfactory; the matter must be laid
out in its full bearings and fundamentally cleared up. But the time to
do this was hard to find between callers and calling.
This afternoon she was quite idle, however. Humphrey was off attending a
meeting in the neighbouring town, and it was snowing heavily.
“The most daring visitor must jib to-day!” thought Gwen, “I shall claim
it unreservedly, and I must have open air for this business.”
Her maid naturally thought her mad; that mattered little. She was
dressed and right out in the storm in ten minutes from the time she had
taken her resolution.
An old hound of Strange’s that had taken to her from the first, was as
much scandalized as the maid, but he was not the one to be outdone by
any slip of a girl. He gathered up his great legs, shook himself with a
drowsy grunt, and followed her with a half-contemptuous curiosity.
The Park had a certain beauty of its own, it was big and, if its
undulations were insignificant, their curves were soft and full, and the
timber was magnificent and well-placed; the whole looked well under
snow. The great dull red-brick house stood out in fine contrast to the
dazzling white of the earth, and the glittering green of the clump of
pines that flanked its left wing, and from which the fierce wind kept
stripping the snow wreaths, that tried hard to nestle in the shelter of
the cosy branches.
When Gwen got beyond the terraces to a turn in the drive, she could see
the sluggish stream that ran through a mile or so of the Park, turned
into a torrent, rushing and foaming onward in its brilliant course.
She stopped in the very teeth of the storm, and looked round her with a
radiant face.
“The whole place is transformed!” she thought. “It generally reminds me
of a great soft white cow, chewing the cud knee-deep in water in the
shade of a full silky beech, it has all that beast’s ample, contented,
intolerably depressing beauty; but to-day it is grand, glorious, like
anything but a cow, the heart of it is alive and throbbing under that
driving storm, it is the birth of passion in that suave smooth green
sod, and the snow is the christening robe. Oh, I wish it were always
like this!”
She threw off her veil and turned round, that the blast might strike
every part of her.
“It’s magnificent!” she shouted in her excitement, “and—after all,
passion’s a wonderful thing!”
She laughed as she bent to the blast. “But it’s amazing the way it
subsides without leaving a token of its presence—what’s a broken bough
or two as a witness to these wonders? In two days, in less, this place
will be as uncompromisingly smooth and smug as ever. Ah, passion is a
fraud then, or else it requires explanation!”
She hurried on to the little ivy-covered bridge that spanned the stream,
and looked down into the roaring seething waters with laughing parted
lips.
She wanted to stay, the hurrying foaming mass of unrest had a
fascination for her, but she dragged herself from it and turned off from
the drive on to a narrow path that led to a sheltered wooded glade about
half a mile from the gates.
“I see the deer and the sheep have taken refuge there!” she said to
herself, “I suppose the fury of the storm goes over their heads. I can
think of nothing I ought to here, I shall follow the deer. Bran, what do
you mean to do?”
She pointed significantly to the antlers peeping through the snow-laden
branches. The hound gave a solemn nod. Seemingly he understood her, at
any rate he kept by her side and refrained from sport for that
afternoon.
When she got to the trees she looked round for a seat.
The snow on the ground was too soft for sitting purposes, even for her
reckless strength to venture on, but she found at last safe anchorage on
a broad wooden fence that skirted the grove, then she turned all her
senses in on herself.
She fixed her eyes advisedly on a peaceful group of sheep, cuddled
together on the lee side of an old beech, as being less disturbing to
the mind than the tossing antlers of the deer, and then she fell to
meditation.
“To begin with,” she said, “I am married. That is the one solid fact to
argue from. Into the bargain I was, I believe, sane when I committed the
deed which is beyond recall, even on the plea of insanity—that idea
struck me once in the early days with tremendous force. I must then give
up crying over spilt milk, it is a degrading pursuit and offers no
loophole of escape, I must just face the future—ah, my dear, that wrings
your withers, does it?” she muttered, as a cold shiver ran down her
spine.
“Humphrey and I are playing at cross-purposes now, that must be put a
stop to—well, perhaps it is as well to leave that to time which will do
the business for him quite effectually. Ah, that picture! That has
deluded the man, he has hampered himself with two wives—the sooner he
returns to monogamy, the better for himself. This,” she said, touching
her breast, “this is as nothing to that other! Men might fall down
before her and call her blessed; they fall down before me, sure enough,
but they don’t call me blessed—quite the contrary!—even Humphrey can’t
go the length of that, but fancy him before that other! I wish I had
never looked at her, I shall get to hate her yet, she confuses me, she
complicates matters in the most annoying way! Pah! I never intended to
dissect her to-day, why can’t I keep to myself, me, who belongs body and
soul—soul!”
She looked down on herself with curling lips, “Soul! Well, any soul I
have and _all_ my body belongs to Humphrey Strange, as sure as any horse
in his stable does. And he calls this thing wife and loves it, loves it,
bless you! and in a most astonishing way. Then this wife, she honours
Humphrey Strange, she obeys him, I have never gone contrary to him in
one solitary thing and I never will—that is vulgar. But as for love! I
don’t love the man; I see every good point in him; he dominates me in a
way that is simply horrible; but love him! Why, every day it seems less
possible to do it, yet it seems that one’s first and paramount duty in
this amazing contract is to love—and now I have got to face this duty.
How, I wonder?—Am I to set diligently to fall in love with this husband
of mine, and how? And how?” she cried, with a short hard laugh.
Then she stopped thinking, and looked out on the whitened earth and the
sheep huddled together still closer under a sudden sharp side blast,
that whisked round their shelter and set the branches above them sighing
and moaning.
The sun had sunk further into the West and had carried its glow away,
and the snow had lost its glitter. Gwen shivered.
“It chokes one to think of it!” she said. Pulling her hands out of her
muff, and taking off her hat, she turned her face to the blast, and let
it beat her at its savage will.
“Oh, my hair—how heavy it is!” she muttered, and began pulling out the
hairpins until the whole heavy mass fell about her and was caught by the
wind, which shrieked with delight at its prize. “Ah, that’s better!
Well—now, this duty! After all, it’s only sheer justice. I must, must,
must face it! If only an earthquake would come into our lives, if I were
dying or Humphrey mortally wounded, or if some catastrophe could fall on
us, in the general shock and upheaval something might snap in me, some
undiscovered spring might burst up and I might feel as duty demands! But
in this everyday existence, in this flat country, among the flatter
squires and squiresses, nothing ever happens, no one dies, no one gets a
mortal wound, there is never a sign of an earthquake of any description,
and yet this duty stands out as clear and as aggressive as ever.”
A strand of her long hair got caught in a nail in the fence, she
lingered over the disentangling of it, then she turned to Bran and had a
little talk with him, but the patient love in his eyes vexed her.
“Go!” she said, giving him a little shove with her foot, “go! You look
like that other woman! Oh, this duty, this duty! Well, I will make one
solitary conscientious try at it, I will begin this very day!”
She drew a long breath.
“Touches and caresses and things of that sort bring thrills and shakes
and trembles and flushes, every female novelist assures one of that
fact. Well, I must practise touches and such, and hope for results;
also, I must not let myself shiver and feel sick when I in my turn get
them bestowed upon me. I wish to goodness I had thought of all this
before, it would have been far easier to have begun right from the
first.”
She suddenly hid her face in her muff.
“How awful that was, how awful! oh!—gr—”
She began to drum her feet with some slight violence on the lower rail
of the fence and she beat her hands together—“to keep them warm,” she
assured herself.
“That picture person must be put down and this, this,” she whispered,
taking her face with a sudden soft pathos between her hands, “this must
be brought forward, made inevitable, so to speak; then, then, perhaps,
with time and custom the other will be allowed to rest, and—rot!” she
cried sharply, lifting her face and turning it again to the blast. “Ugh!
how vulgar I am, that painted creature demoralizes me altogether! Ah,
there comes Humphrey, walking and leading his horse, I will call him and
launch out on my duty. Look at him, it’s a wonder I can say ‘No,’ to
that ‘pulse’s magnificent come and go!’ I can though, it doesn’t move me
the eighth of an inch.”
She stood up on the fence and waved her handkerchief to him.
“Now, enter duty, exit vague speculation!” she cried with a laugh, as
she jumped off the fence.