Sleep in Peace (32 page)

“Where are they?” she cried, looking about his person for a paper bag.

“Where are what?” said Frederick, puzzled.

“The mushrooms, of course!” cried Gwen.

“Mushrooms? Oh, mushrooms,” said Frederick vaguely. “Were you expecting me to bring some? I thought you said they cost too much?”

Gwen burst into tears.

“My darling!” cried Frederick fondly, throwing his arms round her, “What's the matter? Gwen!”

Gwen wept on his shoulder without reply. Presently she disengaged herself, and, still without a word, repaired to the kitchen and cooked some scrambled eggs. She wept at intervals throughout the evening, and received Frederick's consolations with a subdued and hopeless air. Really Frederick was impossible! She looked at him with a kind of horror, thinking, this is my husband
for all my life, and he doesn't understand a word I say. Not a word! Frederick, distressed by her distress and distressed by his failure in not understanding it, grew kinder and kinder all the evening, and Gwen at last in sheer exhaustion, sheer despair, yielded to his caresses and his love.

She woke next morning with a temper like a rasp and a tongue like a whipsaw. Poor Frederick had a wretched breakfast. As he left the house, his hand on the door-latch, he enquired humbly whether he should bring in some mushrooms. (Which, after all, were not so impossibly dear.)

“If your income were equal to Edward's, you might talk about mushrooms,” Gwen informed him with composure. “But it isn't, is it? And I don't suppose it ever will be. It isn't as though you were any
use
at the mill, is it? I mean, your father only keeps you on because you're his son.” She laughed lightly in his anguished face, kissed his flushed cheek, and said in a tone of artificial kindness: “Good-bye, Fred.”

“I shan't bring any mushrooms,” said Frederick in a stifled tone as he opened the door.

“Bring what you like, I don't care—I don't care if I never eat in this house again,” cried Gwen bitterly.

“Gwen!” pleaded Frederick, turning back to her.

His action swung open the door. “That's right!” shrilled Gwen. “Have a row on the doorstep where all the neighbours can hear!”

She almost pushed him from the house, her face distorted with anger, and slammed the door: Frederick could hear her turning the key and sliding on the chain. He walked away in an agony; Gwen on her side sobbed with rage.

Such scenes recurred frequently in the following weeks, and only Gwen's pride prevented her from rushing to Blackshaw House and confessing her unhappiness to Mr. Armistead. Once or twice she actually set out on this errand, but returned home with it uncompleted.

And then one day she began to suspect that she was with child.

It was the happiest moment of her life.

Her happiness grew with her certainty. Everything was forgiven to Frederick; had he not made her a mother? Gwen gave up arguing, ceased to bicker, laughed and joked instead and was happy; she gently teased her husband, viewed dirty boots and crumpled cushions complacently, bent affectionately over Frederick to stroke his cheek, even soothed his head against her breast. On his side Frederick was overjoyed and overawed; his adoration for Gwen intensified; he treated her like a Madonna. He poured out to her noble plans for the child's life, for the world twenty years hence in which the child would reach maturity. Gwen, sewing an exquisite layette, listened with an indulgent smile; Frederick's visions had ceased to trouble her. Why should they trouble her, why should anything trouble her; nothing mattered but her child. The outside world grew dim and vague; even Blackshaw House faded, even Laura, even Ludo, even Papa. Gwen was relieved of all sense of responsibility about them; they must get on without her in future, she could do no more, her duty in future lay with her child, and him alone. Scarcely had she patience to listen to Papa's complaints about Laura, how the child had demanded two pounds to pay her fees at those preposterous classes proposed by Frederick, and was always going out to them, morning, noon and night, and meeting the most unsuitable people. The sum of money awakened Gwen's interest, for Papa's money would one day be her child's, and it ought not to be thrown away; but as for Laura's classes, what did it matter if Laura chose to make a fool of herself? Laura did not matter, her day was over, she could not expect Gwen to bother about her any longer; Gwen was to have a child. She would not even accompany Laura to the dressmakers' to see about her “coming out” dress; let Laura take Grace instead. So long as the gown was suitably white, what did it matter? The future of the Armisteads lay with Gwen's child. Just for one moment, when, calling at Blackshaw House at Papa's express request to “look over” Laura before
they set out together for the Mayor's Ball, she saw her sister decked in rich white satin and lace, Gwen felt a slight jealous pang, remembering the days when she entered the Mayor's Ball beside Papa, and danced and was admired and courted; but then the child stirred within her womb, and she was jealous no longer; what did it matter? She was to bear a child. All the discomfort, the weariness, the nausea, necessary to this process of giving birth Gwen sustained with fortitude and equanimity; Frederick marvelled at her patience and sweetness, even Mrs. Hinchliffe admired.

At last, just at the appointed time, with everything properly prepared and the nurse in the house waiting, Gwen lay down, a smile of ecstasy on her lips, to give birth to her child. Her slight figure made parturition difficult; her labour was protracted and severe. Downstairs Frederick raged at the doctor, shouting: “Give her an anaesthetic, can't you?” The doctor pursed thin lips and said it was quite unnecessary, and indeed might be harmful; nevertheless he administered an anaesthetic earlier than he had ever done before. He admired his patient's fortitude, and said so; the nurse too spoke approvingly of women who knew how to control themselves as [they ought. After a day of agony Gwen at last gave birth; the child was a boy, small, but perfectly formed, and to Gwen's intense joy, dark in eyes and hair.

“Like Papa,” she said happily to Laura, who came to visit her next morning. “I don't think he has any look of the Hinchliffes at all.”

Laura looked odd this morning; she sat with averted eyes and hands tightly clasped. Had she been very much distressed, yesterday, for her sister? It was very nice of her to care so much, thought Gwen mildly, and she cast about in her mind for some reward for Laura.

“If you wait a little, you can see me feed Baby,” she said.

Laura started, and a look of horror came into her eyes. “No—no. I can't wait,” she said. She gathered up her gloves and bag,
and rose. Gwen saw that there was a hole in one glove finger; but she said nothing, for what did it matter? Laura was a mere spinster, barren, quite unimportant. All that mattered was Gwen's child.

“I shall call him Geoffrey,” announced Gwen. “Geoffrey Thwaite Hinchliffe.”

“Very nice,” mumbled Laura. She forced herself to kiss her sister, then fled. The whole business of sex, conception and child-bearing, seemed to her revolting; she could hardly control herself sufficiently to sit in Gwen's room.

The child was baptised according to Gwen's wishes, with Ludo, Laura and Edward for his god-parents—Edward was away, and Grace acted as his proxy—and thrived. Gwen herself made a swift recovery, thus belying her secret fear, which she had doggedly concealed, that she would die of puerperal fever, like her mother. She confessed it, one afternoon, when all was over and she was happily bathing Geoffrey, the nurse long gone, to Mrs. Hinchliffe, who smiled and gently ridiculed her. Mrs. Hinchliffe had had precisely the same fear for Gwen herself, but since the ordeal of childbirth would doubtless be several times repeated for her daughter-in-law, she did not intend to admit it now.

Babies, Frederick discovered, were costly matters. They were costly, to begin with, in money. There seemed no end to Geoffrey Thwaite's requirements. At first he wore, above the intimate garments, long clothes, sweeping silk or cambric robes twice his length, with flannel petticoats and outdoor capes, trimmed with chinchilla, to match. Silk bibs kept his chest dry; silk bonnets, thickly ruched, protected his dark head, a thin veil his pale face, white wool socks his tender toes, from the Hudley blasts. Above all this was folded a fine Shetland shawl. Mr. Armistead gave his grandson a superb pram, for which Laura bought blankets and pillows and Ludo a handsome cloth rug lined with fur; in this Geoffrey took the air. Gwen was able to feed him herself, but he had supplementary bottles, and patent foods of various kinds, and
there were bottles and pans and kettles kept specially for his use, and a gas-ring in the bedroom, and scales (white lined) to register his slowly increasing weight. There was also the doctor's bill and the nurse's bill. Mr. Hinchliffe, beaming and pushing up his moustache, observed to Frederick that now he had a son he had better put himself down on the wages sheet for another pound a week; Frederick gratefully did so, but found that an extra pound a week for a baby who had Gwen for a mother did not go far. Hitherto so economical and managing, Gwen now spent without thought for their income, ordering everything that Geoffrey might be supposed to need, in superfine quality. When Frederick ventured once to remonstrate, she turned on him savagely, demanding:

“Do you grudge the necessaries of life to your own son?”

Poor Frederick, who grudged nobody anything, was so daunted that tears came into his eyes.

Presently Geoffrey was, in the phrase of the time, “shortened”; his long silk robes were put away, and a completely new outfit of clothes which reached only to his toes was necessary. He now wore short cambric or silk dresses, exquisitely tucked, smocked and embroidered by Gwen; white petticoats, cambric and flannel, white open-work socks and white kid shoes. In the morning he sported a white wool, in the afternoon a white silk, “matinée coat”; his silk bibs grew ever more handsome; out of doors he wore a tiny white silk hat with an ostrich feather.

“Gwen keeps him beautiful,” said Mrs. Hinchliffe admiringly. “He looks beautiful at every hour of the day. And night,” she added, remembering Geoffrey's hand-embroidered nightdresses, the silk eiderdown and fluffy blankets on his white beribboned cot.

Edward, who was in Canada, rather belatedly sent a cheque for five guineas as a christening present for his godson. Frederick, delighted, observed joyfully to Gwen that the money would be handy for such and such a bill. Instantly the storm-clouds rushed across Gwen's face.

“Do you mean you're going to take Geoffrey's money?” she shrilled angrily. “That's Geoffrey's money, not yours. Edward sent it for Geoffrey—it must be put in the bank in Geoffrey's name.”

“Gwen, I think you're rather unreasonable,” said Frederick, in a quick hurt tone.

For the child was costly, he found, in other commodities as well as money. The washing and ironing of Geoffrey's clothes—he wore at least two dresses every day, three bibs and innumerable napkins—with, as the child was weaned, the preparation of Geoffrey's food and the bathing and powdering and oiling and weighing and dressing of Geoffrey, took all Gwen's time. Frederick expected this and found it natural; he would not for the world have interfered with the performance of Gwen's maternal duties, in which she seemed to him nobly and piously beautiful. He loved to watch her bath or feed the child; and soon became adept at preparing his own meals and Gwen's, to spare her. No; it was not her time he grudged, it was her affection. Naturally she was devoted to her son, Frederick told himself; but need that make her dislike her husband? Gwen was completely wrapped up in Geoffrey; she lived for him alone, and regarded Frederick's presence as a tiresome intrusion. She hated him to watch her perform services for Geoffrey; and if he approached when the small body lay naked on her knees, while she dried or powdered the eager little limbs, she would send him off sharply on some needless errand. After several evenings of this, Frederick revolted.

“He's my son as well as yours, you know, Gwen,” he told his wife, seating himself firmly near her and leaning forward to gain a better view of Geoffrey's antics.

Gwen did not speak; but her eyelashes descended and her mouth curved in a look of ineffable contempt.

She never, now, went to greet her husband on his return from the mill, and when he sought her out, she turned a cold, uninterested cheek to his kiss. Once when, as usual, she offered him her
cheek without turning her head or raising her eyes from the child in her lap, Frederick seized her face between his hands and kissed her furiously on the lips.

“Frederick!” exclaimed Gwen in a tone of disgust as soon as she was released.

“Do you want to make me jealous of my own son?” demanded Frederick hoarsely.

His eyes, so near to hers, were glittering, and he turned such a strange look downwards on Geoffrey, that Gwen in alarm instinctively threw out a hand to protect her child. But she immediately withdrew it, and with her usual skill applied herself to reconquering her husband.

“Why, Freddie!” she said fondly, putting up a hand to his cheek. “What nonsense are you talking? You startled me—I was afraid of running a pin into the newest Hinchliffe.”

Her use of the Hinchliffe name was clever, and Frederick smiled. But he remained strangely quiet all evening, and Gwen's impression of danger [persisted. She saw that she had gone too far. She must be suaver in her management of her husband for a while, she supposed, smooth him down, flatter him, support his views, till he should be once again amenable and docile.

For the next few weeks she took pains to do this; to conceal her adoration of Geoffrey, sympathise about Laura's art, support Grace's desire to visit Margherita Duchay, since Frederick seemed to care so much about these things, and in general appear loving and agreeable, to her despised husband.