THE WOODEN WOMAN
If a girl were the least bit inclined to fall in love with Billy
Waters—and I see now that some girls might be; though not, of course,
any girl of my type, capable of this kind of frank friendship that puts
anything else out of the question!—well, if she were, she’d find it much
easier to complete the process here at Porth Cariad than anywhere else
that I can imagine him.
Some men—generally the nicest—are so much more _themselves_ in the depths
of the country. He is.
I noticed that the very first evening he arrived here, when I went down
to meet him—to keep up appearances before his family—at this tiny station
on the branch line. Before the train stopped I saw his head and shoulders
blocking up the open window of his compartment in his hurry to arrive.
Catching sight of me on the platform, he took the pipe from between his
strong white teeth and flourished it over his head in greeting—his face
one broad smile because his holiday had begun; then the train slowed
down; he was out of the carriage door and taking a running stride towards
me.
“Hullo, Nancy!” he said, and grasped my hands. “You came? I wondered if
you would. It’s very—appropriate of you. How are you? You look very fit.
A sun-bonnet, eh?”—It was a haymaker’s cotton one, that I’d bought for
a shilling and a ha’penny at the post office, and rather becoming—“I’ve
never seen you in a pink sun-bonnet before.”
“You wouldn’t be likely to in Leadenhall Street,” I retorted. “How’s the
dear office?”
“I don’t know or care. I’m here to forget it,” he said gaily as we left
the station for the road between the sand-hills. “I think I shall take to
wearing a sun-bonnet myself!”
* * * * *
But what he wears here is just a soft white shirt with a turn-down collar
and a pair of loose grey flannel bags belted at the waist; no hat at
all—his hair has got to look as if it must be permanently rumpled; no
one from the office would recognize him! Even his eyes seem a different
colour; so much warmer and bluer for the deepening of his tan. He drops
a year a day from his age, too. When one sees him striding about these
sandy lanes, or terrifying his mother by those efforts to walk on his
hands in six foot of water in the bay, or when he’s pretending to jabber
back Welsh to Mrs. Roberts and Blodwen, who openly adore him—yes, I can
imagine quite a number of people finding him positively attractive here
in the country.
In the country, too, as I’ve always heard, it’s so much easier to fall in
love than it is in town. Town, with its rush and racket and roar, seems
to insist that the things that really matter are getting on and making
money—or even the bare living for which half these grimy crowds are
struggling and toiling! But the country!—_that_ has a way of suggesting
itself as a series of lovely backgrounds for a grouping of Two, and of
coaxing home the idea that all that matters is Love. To a falling-in-love
kind of person the country here would seem as bad as Hamlet for being
“_so full of quotations_” from every poet who ever wrote about trysts,
and gathering rosebuds, and loves in valleys, and foolish, pretty
nonsense of that sort. _They’d_ be reminded of it by every dance of a
pair of blue butterflies over the dunes; every spread of the rosy arms
of sea-anemones in the pool towards the incoming wave; and as for these
other waves of scented gold that are poured over all the waste ground
hereabouts——
“It’s a blessing there’s such a lot of it out just now!” as Theo remarked
this morning at breakfast. “I suppose engaged people _would_ want to be
where there was plenty of gorse!”
Whereat her brother and I exchanged glances, across the table, of amused
intelligence. For it’s all very well for this child to think she can
“chip” us with that old tag about kissing and the gorse in bloom. We’ve
only got to remember how little she suspects that the only kiss between
us is that “duty good night” one of Uncle Albert’s visit, and the laugh
is all on our side!
* * * * *
“You needn’t laugh, Billy,” Theo added. “You know you’re really
frightfully cross because you won’t be able to get Nancy all to yourself
this afternoon, with these people coming!”
It was the first I’d heard of any visitors, for I’d come down rather
late that morning. I hadn’t slept as well as I usually do. Outside the
window of my little sloping-ceilinged cottage bedroom the water, at
high tide, had seemed to make rather more noise than its usual soft
lap-lapping against the rocks. And then the moon, rising like a big round
primrose-coloured Chinese lantern in the star-sprinkled purple sky over
the Rivals on the other side of the Menai Straits, had poured a flood of
white radiance straight upon my bed, and I hadn’t bothered to get up and
pull down the yellow linen blind to shut it out. I had wanted to feel the
sea-scented night-breeze across my face. So I had lain there, tossing a
little between the snowy rough country sheets, watching the square of
light creeping inch by inch up the wall, and thinking idly of all sorts
of irrelevant things....
Of Cicely in Marconi Mansions....
Of “Smithie” at the office, and her boy. They didn’t prove much truth in
the theory that people fall more deeply in love in the country. I saw
again that crossing at the Bank, with the big motor-buses skidding across
the muddy road like beginners on skates; and there, in the middle of the
fog and the petrol-reek and the jostling luncheon-hour crowds, those two
anæmic, City-fied young faces shone as radiantly as if the lovers walked
the loneliest Eden that ever was....
Of a school-friend of my own, now very happily married, who had said to
me, long ago: “An engagement, Monica, is such a _skimpy_ time! It’s made
up of nothing but good-byes and good nights to the person you most want
to be always with!”
And of the difference between that sort of engagement and the
“arrangement” between myself and Billy Waters, which has converted itself
into such an entirely satisfactory and amusing friendship....
The result was that I’d dropped off to sleep again after Blodwen’s bang
on my bedroom door, and that I’d been the last down at breakfast.
“Who’s this that’s coming, Billy?” I asked. “Your Uncle Albert again?”
“No, thank—I mean, no, not him,” said Billy. “Some French people you
haven’t met yet. They’re touring North Wales in their car. He’s a man
I’ve had a good deal to do with in business.”
“And _she_——” began Theo, stopping uncharacteristically short as her
brother went on, tapping a letter he held.
“I’ve just heard from him that they’re in Holyhead now, and coming over
here to look us up this afternoon. So that puts a stopper on our plan of
painting that figure-head for Mrs. Roberts after lunch. We’ll have to
see if we can get it done this morning instead. Good thing I got that
paint last night at the wheelwright’s. Are you on, Nancy? Then, if you’re
ready, we’ll start now, shall we?”
“Blanche and I don’t think we’ll come, thank you,” said Theodora
punctiliously.
“What, not until you’re asked?” laughed her brother, rummaging for the
paint-pots under the southernwood bush at the cottage door. He gave me
one pot and the brushes to carry, taking the other two himself. “Well,
good-bye, all!”
“Come back, then, Cariad!” called Blanche, but the little white dog
frisked unheedingly in circles ahead of us, across the shingle at the
edge of the cove, over a couple of sand-hills, then up the steps cut in
the turf of the cliff where the Roberts have set up a flagstaff and the
wooden woman.
* * * * *
She’d been the figure-head of the _Gwladys Pritchard_, Mrs. Roberts had
told us, which had been wrecked in the bay below, many years ago; the
name and the face alike having been copied from the real girl who was
“cariad” to the owner of the vessel.
“She must have been pretty,” I thought, the first time I climbed the
cliff.
For many coats of paint, roughly applied, could not spoil or disguise the
setting of the carved girl’s eyes, nor the tender oval of the up-tilted
chin, nor the lines of the neck flowing down into the sloping shoulders
and the figure held up in an unmodern curve above the corset of the
Sixties, which must have set the fashion of Miss Pritchard’s dress. She
wore a little jacket with basques and epaulettes and shoulder-seams set
far down the sleeves; and a tiny pork-pie hat, trimmed with a wing, was
perched upon her hair, which had been last painted yellow as the gorse
that grew in hummocks all around her. The jacket had been white, with
trimmings of emerald green; the same green, too, plastered the hat and
the wooden nosegay which she held up against her breast. Yet, for all
this crude green-and-white, for all the untaught modelling of it, there
was a vitality about this graven image which I’d never seen in any
statue. Was it because it had once been part of that live thing, a ship?
I could picture that image of a slender girl, leaning breast forward
again from the prow of her lover’s vessel as she heaved and dipped like a
gull on the waves; scanning horizons, joyously riding the gale, and free
to sea and sky!
Rooted in turf, the immobility of cliff and rock was now her prison,
while the gulls still screamed and wheeled above her....
And the real Gwladys?
“Did she go down with the ship?” I’d asked Mrs. Roberts.
“No, indeed, mam. There wasn’t one drowned on the _Gwladys Pritchard_,”
Mrs. Roberts had assured us. “That Miss Pritchard she was marry to my
cousin, Captain Lloyd, since—dear me, I don’t know when. They keepin’ a
public-house in Bluemaris now. Ô! she _is_ gone stout, too!”
“It would have been _prettier_ if she’d been drowned,” Blanche had said
softly.
“Mam?” Mrs. Roberts had said.
But Mrs. Waters had finished the story by telling us gently, “Anyhow, the
Lloyds have three of the _sweetest_ little grandchildren; I’ve seen them!”
Evidently _she_ had thought that for either woman or ship to be safe in
harbour like that was better than any more picturesque finale.... Well!
I don’t know....
* * * * *
We reached the flagstaff, and set down our pots of paint among the
buffets of gorse that had sprays of purple ling and blue scabious growing
through and making a bouquet of each.
Billy’s shirt-sleeves are always rolled up to the elbow; the sleeves of
my white cotton frock are three-quarter length; so we were both equipped
for work, though I’d refused the offer of Mrs. Roberts’ sackcloth apron.
It was _too_ coal-y and butter-y and paraffiny and scented with hen! But
here the heady warm fragrance of the gorse almost drowned the smell of
our paints.
“Scarlet, and black, and white? Scarlet for her hat and jacket, eh?”
suggested Billy. “And how are we going to paint her hands and face? What
colour’s flesh?”
“Some people say it’s just the colour of honeysuckle,” I answered
absently. I can’t be perfectly certain that he _did_ retort so sharply,
below his breath, “_Does_ he, indeed!” or that the name of Sydney
Vandeleur had been threatening to crop up once more between us. Still,
I was glad of the wide pink shelter of my sun-bonnet as I added, in a
matter-of-fact way, “You _could_ get a sort of flesh-tint by mixing a
little of the red with the white paint, but I don’t think I should.
Suppose we leave the face and hands creamy-white as they are?”
“Very well; and her lips red, and the jacket and that toque affair, with
more dabs of scarlet for the flowers in her bunch,” he said, kneeling
on the sun-warmed turf on the other side of the figure from me, “with a
black wing in her hat.”
“And her hair left as it is, too,” said I.
“No, no! I got this on purpose for her hair,” he said, and drew a full
brushful of tar-black paint across the carven and crinkly locks in front,
“she must be a brunette, this time.”
“Oh, and Mrs. Roberts will be so annoyed to see her without her beautiful
golden chignon,” I protested, working away with the scarlet paint at the
back of the jacket, “she’ll think she’s quite spoilt.”
“Nonsense; looks much better like this,” he declared. “A black-haired
woman looks so much more _alive_ than the others. Like red wine, dark
grapes, crimson roses ... fairer colours are insipid, washed-out-looking!”
“No woman thinks so,” said I. “You never hear of a blonde tinting herself
dark. It’s always the other way about!”
“I know _one_ girl who wouldn’t change,” he argued, glancing over the
shoulder of the wooden woman at the border of dark hair between my bonnet
and my face. “You needn’t pretend you would, miss! Now what are you
smiling at?”
“Only something,” I said, “that I’d just remembered.”
“Yes? (You’re an unexpected sex, aren’t you?) Well, what was this?”
“Only—look out, Billy, you’ll let that black drop run down the side of
her face—only something a girl I know said about fair men being like weak
tea!”
“Meaning to say, I suppose, that she didn’t think much of _your_ taste in
_fiancés_?” suggested Billy Waters, with a mischievous laugh. I laughed
too. And for the several score of times since we have been here together,
I thought to myself what a delightful and unusual and thoroughly
satisfactory arrangement this friendship of ours had turned out to be.
I never dreamed that at that very moment _the life of that friendship had
about five more minutes to run_.
“There!” said Billy, picking himself up and taking a few steps back from
the figure, to survey it, with his fair head on one side. “You can’t say
it isn’t an improvement. What would your friend say to that coloured
hair?”
“Strong tea,” I suggested flippantly. “Tea that’s stood too long!”
“You aren’t looking at it. Come over here and see!”
I straightened myself and went and stood beside him.
“As a matter of fact, Nancy, the lady’s got rather a look of _you_!”
And actually something in the contrast of the glistening black locks
against the creamy-pale face with the now scarlet-tinted lips might have
been vaguely characteristic of what, night and morning, I see in my own
mirror.
“Well, but I hope _I_ don’t look as if I ‘made up’ my mouth!”
“Why, you _don’t_ make it up, do you?”
“Of _course_ not,” said I. And then I turned from looking at the painted
figure to the other deeper, tenderer colour of the sea washing a strip of
sand below the cliff.
“Oh, it _is_ lovely here,” I sighed, revelling in the beauty of that and
the sky. “Did you ever _see_ anything so blue as it is to-day?”
“Or so golden?” added Billy, nodding towards the hassocks of gorse in
full bloom. “I’ve never seen it like this before. D’you know that there’s
a Welsh proverb that calls this county ‘the land of thriftless gold’?
Rather pretty, isn’t it? It must have been wonderful here in the spring;
this is the second crop, you know. A man I know once told me that it was
like falling in love.”
“How d’you mean?” I asked, as he stopped. “Aren’t you going to paint the
wing in her hat while you’ve that brush full of black paint?”
“Presently.—Oh, yes, about that gorse. He said the first blooming was
more showy—more fuss made over it—first love, you know, and all that; but
that it was nothing like as sweet as the later time. Should you agree
with him, d’you think?”
“How _should_ I know?” I retorted rather flippantly, to hide my intense
surprise that Billy should possess—let alone quote!—a friend who sounded
so utterly unlike himself. “You might know me well enough by this time to
see I’m not that sort of girl!”
“Which sort of girl? The kind who doesn’t fall in love a second time?”
“The kind who doesn’t fall in love at all,” I said decidedly. “Anyhow,
I find the second blooming of the gorse, without any metaphors, quite
beautiful enough against that dragonfly-blue bit of Bay!”
“Ah, yes! You’re fond of the effect of flowering plants against the
blue sea, as I think you mentioned, the evening my uncle dined at The
Lawn,” said Billy, teasingly and unexpectedly. “Only, didn’t you specify
oleanders and myrtles and the Riviera——”
“Oh, Billy! I never thought you’d do that,” I interrupted him with real
reproach. “No; I _never_ thought you’d be so mean as to remind me, ever
again, of that ghastly evening! I didn’t!”
There was silence for a moment. He stared down at me. I wouldn’t look
at him. I turned to look at a brown velvet bee that was buzzing some
flattery or other into the golden ear of a gorse-blossom near by. Then I
heard him say slowly:
“‘Ghastly,’ you call it?”
“Well—! Of _course_!”
“I see,” he said, still more slowly. “You mean that it still rankles. You
haven’t forgotten.... You resent that still, in spite of agreeing to be
friends ... in spite of letting one suppose that—well! that it _wasn’t_
so sickeningly hard for you now, after all. You _do_ bear a grudge then,
still. You mean—” It came out, the last thing I ever expected to hear him
mention!—“that about that kiss!”
“That?” I retorted quickly, and with my airiest laugh, for this seemed
the only way in which to face the paralysingly embarrassing point
he’d seen fit to raise again. “Oh, that! I never gave it a thought,
Billy! I quite understood! Besides, you couldn’t possibly call that
private-theatricals sort of peck a _kiss_, exactly!”
“No,” he returned, as quickly. “You couldn’t, could you?”
He took a step towards me, then caught me to him by the shoulders, and
for a second I thought he was going to gratify the longing which I’d seen
in his eyes any time during that first week of my stay at The Lawn.
I thought he was going to shake me.
But no.
In quicker time than it can be told, his hands had flown from my
shoulders to the pink strings of my sun-bonnet; he’d untied them and
tossed the bonnet on to the nearest hassock of a gorse-bush. He put both
brown hands under my chin and turned my face up to his. Before I could so
much as gasp, he swooped down and kissed me, muttering, “But what could
you call this—and this—and this?” Three times—greedily—on the mouth.
* * * * *
For a second I had to clutch at his shoulder to steady myself; for sea
and cliff and gorse seemed wheeling round me in swirls of blue and green
and gold.
Then I wrenched myself away and faced him—without seeing too distinctly
what was in front of my eyes.
“Don’t say anything to me,” I heard myself tell him, in a voice that
sounded unnaturally quiet and calm. “This—this can’t be forgiven. Don’t
ask.”
I heard him begin to say something about: “Do you think I am made of——”
“Don’t speak to me again, please,” I said, still in that unnaturally
quiet voice. “Not again.”
I snatched up my sun-bonnet from the gorse-bush, rammed it down over my
hair, and tied the strings so tightly beneath my chin that they nearly
throttled me. Then I turned, saying, “I forbid you to follow me,” and
left him standing there between cliff and sky, beside the wooden woman.
I walked on until I thought I was out of his sight, then I ran; ran
blindly across the cove and up the sandy path to the cottages.
On the doorstep of the larger one Theo was sitting, emptying her white
canvas shoes of sand on to the cobbles of the garden path.
“Hullo, Nancy! Do you know that Cariad was so bored with you that he ran
home?” she said. “What have you done with Billy the Beloved? Is he——”
“Let me pass, please,” I said quietly, and walked swiftly into the house.
The kitchen door was open and Mrs. Roberts was laying the table for the
mid-day meal. She began, “Was you finiss paint the——” but I couldn’t stop
to speak to her. I ran up the rickety wooden stairs to my bedroom. There
isn’t a lock on the door; I looked. So I just latched it, and went and
sat down on my bed, with its patchwork quilt of faded pinks and mauves. I
began tracing with my fingers the pattern made by the hexagonal patches
of purple. I don’t think I thought of anything at all.
And I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there before I heard light
steps on the staircase and a tap at the door. I raised my voice a little.
“Don’t come in.”
“Nancy,”—it was Blanche—“dinner’s ready!”
“I don’t want any dinner. I am not coming down.”
“Oh!—What’s the matter, dear?”—with quick concern. “Are you ill?”
“No! I’m not ill!”
“Have you got a headache?”
“No! I haven’t got a headache. Only please go away. I don’t want to see
anybody.”
I heard her go softly downstairs again—then the kitchen door opening, and
a murmur of voices.
His voice.
* * * * *
Ah! that brought my anger surging over me at last like a great wave. I
sat bolt upright, with a crumple of the quilt clutched in each hand.
How dared he! How _dared_ he!
Taking odious advantage of a situation! _This_ was not what I agreed to
when I said I would be nominally engaged to him.
_This_ was not unavoidable, like that last time.
Oh! He needn’t have pointed out to me the difference between that time
and this! I’d _thought_ I was angry then. My anger now was as different a
thing as the difference between those two sorts of kisses.
_Oh!_
_He’s_ broken the contract—he knows that it was tacitly understood that
there should be nothing of this—In fact, it wasn’t so much as thought
of—_ever_.
_Right_ on my mouth!...
Well, I don’t owe him anything after this. I shan’t speak to him again.
I shall have nothing more to do with him. He’s a right to my name as his
official _fiancée_, he can keep that—at a distance! My name—nothing else.
I shan’t go on staying with his people after this! Let him make what
excuse he chooses to his mother about that. Let him explain it away as he
likes. I shan’t help him!
If it were to save his life, I’d never lift a finger to help him again!
I shall go away at once....
How could he! Whether it was a vulgar attempt at flirtation, or simply
that he was riled and meant to be rude to me in the most brutal manner he
could think of—I don’t care which it was!
What had I said—done—looked—that he should imagine he might?
After this, he might even say I’d encouraged him!
Hateful, _hateful_!
Well, I shall go away....
Brute!
To-morrow, I shall _go_!