Gwen Wynn: A Romance of the Wye

Volume One – Chapter Eleven

A Weed by the Wyeside

“Only she – but she!” he repeats, grasping the bottle by the neck, and pouring more brandy into the tumbler.

Though speaking sotto voce, and not supposing himself overheard, he is, nevertheless – by a woman, who, coming forth from the house, has stepped silently behind him, there pausing.

Odd-looking apparition she, seen upon the Wyeside; altogether unlike a native of it, but altogether like one born upon the banks of the Seine, and brought up to tread the Boulevards of Paris – like the latter from the crown of her head to the soles of her high-heeled boots, on whose toes she stands poised and balancing. In front of that ancient English manor-house, she seems grotesquely out of place – as much as a costermonger driving his moke-drawn cart among the Pyramids, or smoking a “Pickwick” by the side of the Sphinx.

For all there is nothing mysterious, or even strange in her presence there. She is Lewin Murdoch’s wife. If he has left his fortune in foreign lands, with the better part of his life and health, he has thence brought her, his better-half.

Physically a fine-looking woman, despite some ravages due to time, and possibly more to crime. Tall and dark as the daughters of the Latinic race, with features beautiful in the past – even still attractive to those not repelled by the beguiling glances of sin.

Such were hers, first given to him in a café chantant of the Tuileries – oft afterwards repeated in jardin, bois, and bals of the demi-monde, till at length she gave him her hand in the Église La Madeleine.

Busied with his brandy, and again gazing at Llangorren, he has not yet seen her; nor is he aware of her proximity till hearing an exclamation: —

“Eh, bien?”

He starts at the interrogatory, turning round.

“You think too loud, Monsieur – that is if you wish to keep your thoughts to yourself. And you might – seeing that it’s a love secret! May I ask who is this she you’re soliloquising about? Some of your old English bonnes amies, I suppose?”

This, with an air of affected jealousy, she is far from feeling. In the heart of the ex-cocotte there is no place for such a sentiment.

“Got nothing to do with bonnes amies, young or old,” he gruffly replies. “Just now I’ve got something else to think of than sweethearts. Enough occupation for my thoughts in the how I’m to support a wife – yourself, madame.”

“It wasn’t me you meant. No, indeed. Some other, in whom you appear to feel a very profound interest.”

“There, you’re right, it was one other, in whom I feel all that.”

“Merci, Monsieur! Ma foi! your candour deserves all thanks. Perhaps you’ll extend it, and favour me with the lady’s name? A lady, I presume. The grand Seigneur Lewin Murdock would not be giving his thoughts to less.”

Ignorance pretended. She knows, or surmises, to whom he has been giving them. For she has been watching him from a window, and observed the direction of his glances. And she has more than a suspicion as to the nature of his reflections; since she is well aware as he of that something besides a river separating them from Llangorren.

“Her name?” she again asks, in tone of more demand, her eyes bent searchingly on his.

Avoiding her glance, he still pulls away at his pipe, without making answer.

“It is a love secret, then? I thought so. It’s cruel of you, Lewin! This is the return for giving you – all I had to give!”

She may well speak hesitatingly, and hint at a limited sacrifice. Only her hand; and it more than tenderly pressed by scores – ay hundreds – of others, before being bestowed upon him. No false pretence, however, on her part. He knew all that, or should have known it. How could he help? Olympe, the belle of the Jardin Mabille, was no obscurity in the demi-monde of Paris – even in its days of glory under Napoleon le Petite.

Her reproach is also a pretence, though possibly with some sting felt. She is drawing on to that term of life termed passé, and begins to feel conscious of it. He may be the same. Not that for his opinion she cares a straw – save in a certain sense, and for reasons altogether independent of slighted affection – the very purpose she is now working upon, and for which she needs to hold over him the power she has hitherto had. And well knows she how to retain it, rekindling love’s fire when it seems in danger of dying out, either through appeal to his pity, or exciting his jealousy, which she can adroitly do, by her artful French ways and dark flashing eyes.

As he looks in them now, the old flame flickers up, and he feels almost as much her slave as when he first became her husband.

For all he does not show it. This day he is out of sorts with himself, and her and all the world besides; so instead of reciprocating her sham tenderness – as if knowing it such – he takes another swallow of brandy, and smokes on in silence.

Now really incensed, or seeming so, she exclaims: —

“Perfide!” adding with a disdainful toss of the head, such as only the dames of the demi-monde know how to give, “Keep your secret! What care I?” Then changing tone, “Mon Dieu! France – dear France! Why did I ever leave you?”

“Because your dear France became too dear to live in.”

“Clever double entendre! No doubt you think it witty! Dear, or not, better a garret there – a room in its humblest entresol than this. I’d rather serve in a cigar shop – keep a gargot in the Faubourg Montmartre – than lead such a triste life as we’re now doing. Living in this wretched kennel of a house, that threatens to tumble on our heads!”

“How would you like to live in that over yonder?”

He nods towards Llangorren Court.

“You are merry, Monsieur. But your jests are out of place – in presence of the misery around us.”

“You may some day,” he goes on, without heeding her observation.

“Yes; when the sky falls we may catch larks. You seem to forget that Mademoiselle Wynn is younger than either of us, and by the natural laws of life will outlive both. Must, unless she break her neck in the hunting field, get drowned out of a boat, or meet some other mischance.”

She pronounces the last three words slowly and with marked emphasis, pausing after she has spoken them, and looking fixedly in his face, as if to note their effect.

Taking the meerschaum from his mouth, he returns her look – almost shuddering as his eyes meet hers, and he reads in them a glance such as might have been given by Messalina, or the murderess of Duncan. Hardened as his conscience has become through a long career of sin, it is yet tender in comparison with hers. And he knows it, knowing her history, or enough of it – her nature as well – to make him think her capable of anything, even the crime her speech seems to point to – neither more nor less than —

He dares not think, let alone pronounce, the word. He is not yet up to that; though day by day, as his desperate fortunes press upon him, his thoughts are being familiarised with something akin to it – a dread, dark design, still vague, but needing not much to assume shape, and tempt to execution. And that the tempter is by his side he is more than half conscious. It is not the first time for him to listen to fell speech from those fair lips.

To-day he would rather shun allusion to a subject so grave, yet so delicate. He has spent part of the preceding night at the Welsh Harp – the tavern spoken of by Wingate – and his nerves are unstrung, yet not recovered from the revelry. Instead of asking her what she means by “some other mischance,” he but remarks, with an air of careless indifference, —

“True, Olympe; unless something of that sort were to happen, there seems no help for us but to resign ourselves to patience, and live on expectations.”

“Starve on them, you mean?” This in a tone, and with a shrug, which seem to convey reproach for its weakness.

“Well, chérie;” he rejoins, “we can at least feast our eyes on the source whence our fine fortunes are to come. And a pretty sight it is, isn’t it? Un coup d’oeil charmant!”

He again turns his eyes upon Llangorren, as also she, and for some time both are silent.

Attractive at any time, the Court is unusually so on this same summer’s day. For the sun, lighting up the verdant lawn, also shines upon a large white tent there erected – a marquee – from whose ribbed roof projects a signal staff, with flag floating at its peak. They have had no direct information of what all this is for – since to Lewin Murdock and his wife the society of Herefordshire is tabooed. But they can guess from the symbols that it is to be a garden party, or something of the sort, there often given. While they are still gazing its special kind is declared, by figures appearing upon the lawn and taking stand in groups before the tent. There are ladies gaily attired – in the distance looking like bright butterflies – some dressed à la Diane, with bows in hand, and quivers slung by their sides, the feathered shafts showing over their shoulders; a proportionate number of gentlemen attendant; while liveried servants stride to and fro erecting the ringed targets.

Murdock himself cares little for such things. He has had his surfeit of fashionable life; not only sipped its sweets, but drank its dregs of bitterness. He regards Llangorren with something in his mind more substantial than its sports and pastimes.

With different thoughts looks the Parisian upon them – in her heart a chagrin only known to those whose zest for the world’s pleasure is of keenest edge, yet checked and baffled from indulgence – ambitions uncontrollable, but never to be attained. As Satan gazed back when hurled out of the Garden of Eden, so she at that scene upon the lawn of Llangorren. No jardin of Paris – not the Bois itself – ever seemed to her so attractive as those grounds, with that aristocratic gathering – a heaven none of her kind can enter, and but few of her country.

After long regarding it with envy in her eyes, and spleen in her soul – tantalised, almost to torture – she faces towards her husband, saying —

“And you’ve told me, between all that and us, there’s but one life – ”

“Two!” interrupts a voice – not his. Both turning, startled, behold —Father Rogier!

Volume One – Chapter Twelve

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing