OLWEN AT HOME
The large family of the Reverend James Wilson had been brought up on the
fringes of Dartmoor. His income there was, however, of so inadequate a
nature, in view of his domestic requirements, that when the question of
education demanded heroic measures, he accepted the living of Gratfield,
a very large town in the industrial Midlands--a post for which both his
temperament and his habit of life hitherto made him singularly
ill-fitted.
Of his seven children, four were girls. They were fine creatures, with
white limbs, blonde hair, complexion of cream and roses. Their natures
were placidly bovine, except during that brief period in which a girl's
own sense of her own beauty and the power it bestows kindles in her a
fictitious vivacity, and nature, for her own purposes, lends a charm
which is incredibly fugitive.
The young ladies made quite a sensation upon their arrival in Gratfield.
Not long before, Madoc Innes, a clever young Welsh journalist, had
bought the _Gratfield Courier_ and settled in the place. He was
handsome on a small scale, and passed for rich--drove good horses,
smoked expensive cigars, and was much in demand in a society where such
young men are rare.
The sight of Clara Wilson at a ball set his Celtic blood on fire. Her
Juno-like loveliness made so powerful an appeal to his senses that the
limits of her mind or the faults of her disposition did not enter the
question. She was stupid, and she was essentially Philistine, but he
shut his eyes to it until too late. They were married, and he committed
his first enormity by the purchase of a little old Elizabethan farm up
on the moor outside Gratfield, planning to drive to his work each day.
Clara detested the place. She had had as much of moors and heather in
her childhood as would last her all her life. What she desired was
shops and fine clothes, plenty of company, the chance to show off and be
admired. For these things she had married, and not for love of Madoc,
with whose tastes she had no sympathy, and whose disposition she would
have disliked had she ever given a thought to the subject.
After the blind fashion of a man in love, the young husband felt that he
had not won his wife's devotion long before he consciously admitted
anything of the kind. He began by spoiling her outrageously, giving her
all she craved, in the vain hope that gifts might propitiate her and
incline her to a more favourable--one might say a more
interested--attitude towards himself.
Unhappily, a year or two after the marriage his rising fortunes
underwent a sharp change.
Being a Welshman, he was a violent partisan, and his knowledge of the
temper and prejudices of the North was very imperfect. He attacked a
certain public character, and found himself up against a stone wall of
implacable hostility. A costly libel action left him a ruined man. He
being thus deprived of what had been his sole asset in his wife's eyes,
their lack of unity became at once nakedly apparent.
He had plenty of courage and belief in himself. He took his wife and
baby girl to London, where he got work on a big "daily," and hoped for
better things.
Clara, however, had no forgiveness for him. She had married with one
object, that of being well off; and her failure was more sharply
accentuated in her eyes by the fact that Ethel, her next sister, had
made a conquest of George Whitefield, only son and heir of the richest
mill-owner in Gratfield.
Hopelessly out of sympathy, the Innes pair drifted wider and wider
apart. The discovery of his wife's indifference warped Madoc's unstable
temperament. Miserable at home, he consoled himself elsewhere. They ran
continually into debt, there was even an execution in the house. Scenes
grew frequent and even violent, At last, when Olwen was about seven
years old, her father disappeared completely, leaving behind an
envelope, addressed to his wife, containing a hundred pounds in
bank-notes.
Clara, her beauty gone, broken in health, soured in temper, returned,
with her little daughter, to her father's rectory.
She came at an unlucky turn in the family fortunes.
It had long been apparent that twenty years of sloth in a tiny parish,
in a mild and balmy climate, had permanently unfitted the Rev. James
Wilson for strenuous work and the rushing life of a big town. After a
struggle, hopeless from the first, against his constitutional inertia,
and the growing dissatisfaction of his parishioners, he was stricken
down by severe illness. His return to health was seriously retarded by
the sad climax of Clara's marriage, and the failure of his sons to do
anything to lighten his burden of undone work and unpaid bills.
At this point his old college offered him the living of St Agnes,
Bramforth, about fifty miles further north. It was a depressing
district, semi-suburban, semi-industrial, with an 1850 church,
pew-rented, and a fluctuating congregation. The income was, however, as
good as that of his present cure, and the work less than half. About
twelve months after the flight of Madoc Innes, and fifteen years before
that Christmas when Olwen decided that the bank was intolerable, the
family migrated to Bramforth, and Mr. Wilson, with the assistance of a
curate, thankfully lapsed into the stagnation which suited him.
Olwen's mother was at this time an invalid. Three years later a
prominent surgeon diagnosed serious internal trouble. She underwent an
operation, failed to rally from the shock, and died a few days later.
The two younger Miss Wilsons, Maud and Ada, did not marry. Perhaps they
looked too high, for while in Gratfield they had not been without
admirers. They were, however, still single, and had borne with fine
unselfishness their share in the strain on the meagre family resources
involved by the necessity of supporting Clara and Clara's child.
Olwen's memory of her father was vivid. In fact, she often thought that
the first seven years of her life had left a mark far deeper than those
that followed. She was always striving, in an unformed, eager way, to
arrive at the truth concerning the breach between her parents. Her
mother remained in her memory as mostly fretful and complaining,
uncertain in temper, dissatisfied and uncontrolled. She knew now that
Mrs. Innes was a deeply wronged woman; yet she could not escape the bias
of mind produced by the fact that she herself owed every hour of
happiness as a child to her father. She remembered him as invariably
sweet-tempered and gay--as a constant companion, more like a
contemporary--liable as herself to incur the sudden and capricious wrath
of the mistress of the house.
His upbringing had been cosmopolitan, his parents having lived much
abroad. To adapt himself to the Wilson standpoint had been from the
first impossible. The laborious etiquette of the provinces was a matter
of which he could never grasp the importance. That his wife's happiness
should depend upon such things as card-cases, "At Home" days, late
dinner, or a "drawing-room suite" was to him unthinkable.
Olwen remembered best of all their habit of escaping together. They
went to remote corners of Hampstead Heath or Battersea Park, or, if he
were in funds, to the Thames, where they took a boat. They spent long
days in make-believe, with a packet of picnic lunch, and a few pence for
their omnibus ride home through the magic dusk of London. His faculty
for story-telling was endless, and one romance, especially dear, went on
in sections from week to week, and was entitled: "Story of the Dandy
Lion and his four friends, the Pale Policeman, the Cheery Churchwarden,
the Sad Sweep, and the Tremendous Tramp." An illustration of this group
of friends was one of her few mementoes of her vanished boon companion.
From him, too, she heard the tales of the Mabinogion, the "Romance of
Kiluch and Olwen"--whence came her own name, so severely condemned by
the Wilson family--the "Romance of Enid and Geraint," and so on.
This all made it hard for her to apportion the blame between the
sundered pair. At the Vicarage, of course, all the guilt was heaped on
Madoc Innes. She supposed this to be in fact just. His temperament may
have been charming but his principles were apparently all wrong. She saw
only part. Yet as she grew older she found herself concentrating more
and more upon her mother's share in the debacle.
That Clara Innes was unable either to sympathise with or to understand
her husband was the result presumably of her limitations, and these, one
would suppose, she could not help. Not until Olwen read her "Pilgrim's
Progress" and learned, with a sudden shock, that Ignorance was thrust
down into hell, did it occur to her that Ignorance is a crime, since it
is a thing one may remedy if one chooses.
Grumbling, one grants, is not a sin. To fail in sympathy to your
husband is hardly a sin. To make his home uncomfortable is not a sin,
that is, not of the sort called deadly. But to be unfaithful to your
wife is a direct breach of a commandment. Therefore, in the Wilson
code, Clara was innocent and her husband criminal. To his other crimes
he added wife desertion, which is a matter for the police courts. Clara
had never done anything in her life which could conceivably have landed
her in the police court. It was all very puzzling. When Olwen had
spent time, as she often did, in considering the subject, she usually
found that she ended by wishing that her father had taken her with him
when he fled. She felt sure they could have been happy together.
In her heart she knew herself for her father's daughter, and from the
Wilson point of view wholly alien. It was typical of them that they
should so dislike her name, for no reason but because they had never
heard it before. The name of Owendolen, just as Welsh, and more
high-falutin in sound, was quite popular in Bramforth, because Owendolen
was in fairly common use. Olwen was different, and she was usually
called "Ollie" in hopes that the casual acquaintance might suppose her
baptismal name to be Olive, a name which, mysteriously enough, was under
no ban.
Her defaulting father had made no sign, and sent no message upon the
occasion of his wife's death. It was tacitly assumed that he was either
dead or had gone to some remote quarter of the globe, where he was
living most probably under an alias.
For nearly three years now Olwen had been self-supporting. At first her
post at the bank had possessed that elfin charm with which most
novelties are gilded when one is in one's teens. Life itself is then a
romance, the mere act of coming out into the streets on a fine morning
may be the beginning of endless adventure.
Now the monotony had killed the novelty. Her father's restless blood
stirred and demanded relief. She felt almost desperate as she let
herself into the Vicarage and pushed her streaming umbrella into the
untidy receptacle.
A lowered jet of gas burned dimly in the hall. Yet by its light she
could descry a letter upon the hall table, addressed "Miss O. Innes, St.
Agnes Vicarage, Bramforth."
An answer to her advertisement at last! A way of escape from the bank
or its alternative, Ben and the linoleumed villa!
Snatching it up, she hurried away to her own room, to enjoy the
excitement of reading it.
On the threshold of that sanctuary she paused. It was in a state of
upheaval. There was no bedding on the bedstead, no carpet on the floor.
Instantly she remembered that her room was being cleaned for the
reception of Marjorie Whitefield, and that she herself was to "double
up" with Aunt Maud during the period of invasion.
Ashamed of her own feeling of acute distaste, she turned and went slowly
along the passage.
Aunt Maud was washing her hands for supper, and the subdued kindness
with which she welcomed her niece and showed her how she had taken
things out of drawers and bestowed them as well as she could during the
girl's absence, made Olwen vexed at her own irritation.
Aunt Maud was very fond of "Ollie." She turned wistfully to the only
young creature left remaining in the shabby old Vicarage. She lingered
now, to explain in detail every point in her successful "packing of them
all in." It was her part to superintend the housework while her elder
sister did the catering, an arrangement which, on the whole, worked
well.
Olwen strove with courage and some success to make her interest seem
real. The way in which a certain hole in the dining-room carpet had
been triumphed over, and the report that the re-enamelling of the bath
was a complete success, were things of deep importance to Aunt Maud, and
it would have been brutal to snub her.
When at last she went downstairs, there were but five minutes before the
supper bell, but curiosity would no longer be denied. Olwen sat down on
the bed with the letter in her hand, enjoying the delights of
speculation before opening it. It was addressed in a very pretty hand,
and bore the postmark of a part of England noted for fine scenery.
"Suppose," thought Olwen, whose suppositions leaned always to the
romantic, "that I hold my destiny in my hand at this moment?"
Excuse enough, in all conscience, for some dallying with the
anticipation!
However, at last the envelope was broken and the letter lay under her
eyes:
"Dulley Vicarage.
"Mrs. Jones, having seen Miss O. Innes's advt, thinks the post she can
offer might be suitable. She is in want of a lady to live in the house
and help in the training of her children, five in number.
"A servant is kept, but Miss I. would be asked to make herself generally
useful. Her secretarial training would be very useful to Mr. Jones in
copying out his sermons and conducting his correspondence. If Miss I.
has a typewriter of her own, Mrs. Jones would have no objection to her
bringing it with her. She would be treated in all respects as one of
the family, and Mrs. Jones would give a pound a month pocket money, as
to her own daughter."
For a moment Olwen gripped the letter in her young fist as if she wished
its writer were there instead. Then her sense of humour triumphed.
Bursting into hearty laughter, she crushed the impertinence into a ball
and tossed it into the fender.
"Well," she mused, "I think that is the limit! And there is my sole
reply to an advertisement which cost me five shillings!"
Fiercely she brushed the thick mane of dun-coloured hair that shaded to
gold. "And I thought my destiny lay in that envelope!" she whispered
quite fiercely. Her eyes seemed to blaze. They were pale grey eyes,
made beautiful by noticeably fine lashes, which, with her eyebrows, were
too dark for such fair hair. She was not going to be discouraged. She
would write to London, to a first-class agency, and pay whatever fee
they demanded. To go to London would be to escape from Ben.
She laughed and sighed both at once. Aunt Maud would have liked her to
marry Ben--poor Aunt Maud, who knew nothing of the discontent which had
grown up within the daughter of Madoc Innes. She had feared it in
Ollie's early girlhood--had watched for signs of it. But by degrees she
had reached the comforting conviction that Olwen inherited from her
Wilson relatives too good a strain of steady devotion to duty to be
troubled by her father's vagabond instincts.
She loved Olwen, and confided in her. Olwen loved her, but never
reciprocated the confidences. Aunt Maud might have inferred much from
the circumstance, but she belonged to a type which does not draw
inferences.