CHAPTER VI
OWEN DAVIES AT HOME
Owen Davies tramped along the cliff with a light heart. The wild
lashing of the rain and the roaring of the wind did not disturb him in
the least. They were disagreeable, but he accepted them as he accepted
existence and all its vanities, without remark or mental comment.
There is a class of mind of which this is the prevailing attitude.
Very early in their span of life, those endowed with such a mind come
to the conclusion that the world is too much for them. They cannot
understand it, so they abandon the attempt, and, as a consequence, in
their own torpid way they are among the happiest and most contented of
men. Problems, on which persons of keener intelligence and more
aspiring soul fret and foam their lives away as rushing water round a
rock, do not even break the placid surface of their days. Such men
slip past them. They look out upon the stars and read of the mystery
of the universe speeding on for ever through the limitless wastes of
space, and are not astonished. In their childhood they were taught
that God made the sun and the stars to give light on the earth; that
is enough for them. And so it is with everything. Poverty and
suffering; war, pestilence, and the inequalities of fate; madness,
life and death, and the spiritual wonders that hedge in our being, are
things not to be inquired into but accepted. So they accept them as
they do their dinner or a tradesman's circular.
In some cases this mental state has its root in deep and simple
religious convictions, and in some it springs from a preponderance of
healthful animal instincts over the higher but more troublesome
spiritual parts. The ox chewing the cud in the fresh meadow does not
muse upon the past and future, and the gull blown like a foam-flake
out against the sunset, does not know the splendour of the sky and
sea. Even the savage is not much troubled about the scheme of things.
In the beginning he was "torn out of the reeds," and in the end he
melts into the Unknown, and for the rest, there are beef and wives,
and foes to conquer. But then oxen and gulls are not, so far as we
know, troubled with any spiritual parts at all, and in the noble
savage such things are not cultivated. They come with civilization.
But perhaps in the majority this condition, so necessary to the more
placid forms of happiness, is born of a conjunction of physical and
religious developments. So it was, at least, with the rich and
fortunate man whom we have seen trudging along the wind-swept cliff.
By nature and education he was of a strongly and simply religious
mind, as he was in body powerful, placid, and healthy to an
exasperating degree. It may be said that it is easy to be religious
and placid on ten thousand a year, but Owen Davies had not always
enjoyed ten thousand a year and one of the most romantic and beautiful
seats in Wales. From the time he was seventeen, when his mother's
death left him an orphan, till he reached the age of thirty, some six
years from the date of the opening of this history, he led about as
hard a life as fate could find for any man. Some people may have heard
of sugar drogers, or sailing brigs, which trade between this country
and the West Indies, carrying coal outwards and sugar home.
On board one of these, Owen Davies worked in various capacities for
thirteen long years. He did his drudgery well; but he made no friends,
and always remained the same shy, silent, and pious man. Then suddenly
a relation died without a will, and he found himself heir-in-law to
Bryngelly Castle and all its revenues. Owen expressed no surprise, and
to all appearance felt none. He had never seen his relation, and never
dreamed of this romantic devolution of great estates upon himself. But
he accepted the good fortune as he had accepted the ill, and said
nothing. The only people who knew him were his shipmates, and they
could scarcely be held to know him. They were acquainted with his
appearance and the sound of his voice, and his method of doing his
duty. Also, they were aware, although he never spoke of religion, that
he read a chapter of the Bible every evening, and went to church
whenever they touched at a port. But of his internal self they were in
total ignorance. This did not, however, prevent them from prophesying
that Davies was a "deep one," who, now that he had got the cash, would
"blue it" in a way which would astonish them.
But Davies did not "excel in azure feats." The news of his good
fortune reached him just as the brig, on which he was going to sail as
first-mate, was taking in her cargo for the West Indies. He had signed
his contract for the voyage, and, to the utter astonishment of the
lawyer who managed the estates, he announced that he should carry it
out. In vain did the man of affairs point out to his client that with
the help of a cheque of £100 he could arrange the matter for him in
ten minutes. Mr. Davies merely replied that the property could wait,
he should go the voyage and retire afterwards. The lawyer held up his
hands, and then suddenly remembered that there are women in the West
Indies as in other parts of the world. Doubtless his queer client had
an object in this voyage. As a matter of fact, he was totally wrong.
Owen Davies had never interchanged a tender word with a woman in his
life; he was a creature of routine, and it was part of his routine to
carry out his agreements to the letter. That was all.
As a last resource, the lawyer suggested that Mr. Davies should make a
will.
"I do not think it necessary," was the slow and measured answer. "The
property has come to me by chance. If I die, it may as well go to
somebody else in the same way."
The lawyer stared. "Very well," he said; "it is against my advice, but
you must please yourself. Do you want any money?"
Owen thought for a moment. "Yes," he said, "I think I should like to
have ten pounds. They are building a theatre there, and I want to
subscribe to it."
The lawyer gave him the ten pounds without a word; he was struck
speechless, and in this condition he remained for some minutes after
the door had closed behind his client. Then he sprung up with a single
ejaculation, "Mad, mad! like his great uncle!"
But Owen Davies was not in the least mad, at any rate not then; he was
only a creature of habit. In due course, his agreement fulfilled, he
sailed his brig home from the West Indies (for the captain was drowned
in a gale). Then he took a second-class ticket to Bryngelly, where he
had never been in his life before, and asked his way to the Castle. He
was told to go to the beach, and he would see it. He did so, leaving
his sea-chest behind him, and there, about two hundred paces from the
land, and built upon a solitary mountain of rock, measuring half a
mile or so round the base, he perceived a vast mediæval pile of
fortified buildings, with turrets towering three hundred feet into the
air, and edged with fire by the setting sun. He gazed on it with
perplexity. Could it be that this enormous island fortress belonged to
him, and, if so, how on earth did one get to it? For some little time
he walked up and down, wondering, too shy to go to the village for
information. Meanwhile, though he did not notice her, a well-grown
girl of about fifteen, remarkable for her great grey eyes and the
promise of her beauty, was watching his evident perplexity from a seat
beneath a rock, not without amusement. At last she rose, and, with the
confidence of bold fifteen, walked straight up to him.
"Do you want to get the Castle, sir?" she asked in a low sweet voice,
the echoes of which Owen Davies never forgot.
"Yes--oh, I beg your pardon," for now for the first time he saw that
he was talking to a young lady.
"Then I am afraid that you are too late--Mrs. Thomas will not show
people over after four o'clock. She is the housekeeper, you know."
"Ah, well, the fact is I did not come to see over the place. I came to
live there. I am Owen Davies, and the place was left to me."
Beatrice, for of course it was she, stared at him in amazement. So
this was the mysterious sailor about whom there had been so much talk
in Bryngelly.
"Oh!" she said, with embarrassing frankness. "What an odd way to come
home. Well, it is high tide, and you will have to take a boat. I will
show you where you can get one. Old Edward will row you across for
sixpence," and she led the way round a corner of the beach to where
old Edward sat, from early morn to dewy eve, upon the thwarts of his
biggest boat, seeking those whom he might row.
"Edward," said the young lady, "here is the new squire, Mr. Owen
Davies, who wants to be rowed across to the Castle." Edward, a gnarled
and twisted specimen of the sailor tribe, with small eyes and a face
that reminded the observer of one of those quaint countenances on the
handle of a walking stick, stared at her in astonishment, and then
cast a look of suspicion on the visitor.
"Have he got papers of identification about him, miss?" he asked in a
stage whisper.
"I don't know," she answered laughing. "He says that he is Mr. Owen
Davies."
"Well, praps he is and praps he ain't; anyway, it isn't my affair, and
sixpence is sixpence."
All of this the unfortunate Mr. Davies overheard, and it did not add
to his equanimity.
"Now, sir, if you please," said Edward sternly, as he pulled the
little boat up to the edge of the breakwater. A vision of Mrs. Thomas
shot into Owen's mind. If the boatman did not believe in him, what
chance had he with the housekeeper? He wished he had brought the
lawyer down with him, and then he wished that he was back in the sugar
brig.
"Now, sir," said Edward still more sternly, putting down his
hesitation to an impostor's consciousness of guilt.
"Um!" said Owen to the young lady, "I beg your pardon. I don't even
know your name, and I am sure I have no right to ask it, but would you
mind rowing across with me? It would be so kind of you; you might
introduce me to the housekeeper."
Again Beatrice laughed the merry laugh of girlhood; she was too young
to be conscious of any impropriety in the situation, and indeed there
was none. But her sense of humour told her that it was funny, and she
became possessed with a not unnatural curiosity to see the thing out.
"Oh, very well," she said, "I will come."
The boat was pushed off and very soon they reached the stone quay that
bordered the harbour of the Castle, about which a little village of
retainers had grown up. Seeing the boat arrive, some of these people
sauntered out of the cottages, and then, thinking that a visitor had
come, under the guidance of Miss Beatrice, to look at the antiquities
of the Castle, which was the show place of the neighbourhood,
sauntered back again. Then the pair began the zigzag ascent of the
rock mountain, till at last they stood beneath the mighty mass of
building, which, although it was hoary with antiquity, was by no means
lacking in the comforts of modern civilization, the water, for
instance, being brought in pipes laid beneath the sea from a mountain
top two miles away on the mainland.
"Isn't there a view here?" said Beatrice, pointing to the vast stretch
of land and sea. "I think, Mr. Davies, that you have the most
beautiful house in the whole world. Your great-uncle, who died a year
ago, spent more than fifty thousand pounds on repairing and
refurbishing it, they say. He built the big drawing-room there, where
the stone is a little lighter; it is fifty-five feet long. Just think,
fifty thousand pounds!"
"It is a large sum," said Owen, in an unimaginative sort of way, while
in his heart he wondered what on earth he should do with this white
elephant of a mediæval castle, and its drawing room fifty-five feet
long.
"He does not seem much impressed," thought Beatrice to herself, as she
tugged away at the postern bell; "I think he must be stupid. He looks
stupid."
Presently the door was opened by an active-looking little old woman
with a high voice.
"Mrs. Thomas," thought Owen to himself; "she is even worse than I
expected."
"Now you must please to go away," began the formidable housekeeper in
her shrillest key; "it is too late to show visitors over. Why, bless
us, it's you, Miss Beatrice, with a strange man! What do you want?"
Beatrice looked at her companion as a hint that he should explain
himself, but he said nothing.
"This is your new squire," she said, not without a certain pride. "I
found him wandering about the beach. He did not know how to get here,
so I brought him over."
"Lord, Miss Beatrice, and how do you know it's him?" said Mrs. Thomas.
"How do you know it ain't a housebreaker?"
"Oh, I'm sure he cannot be," answered Beatrice aside, "because he
isn't clever enough."
Then followed a long discussion. Mrs. Thomas stoutly refused to admit
the stranger without evidence of identity, and Beatrice, embracing his
cause, as stoutly pressed his claims. As for the lawful owner, he made
occasional feeble attempts to prove that he was himself, but Mrs.
Thomas was not to be imposed upon in this way. At last they came to a
dead lock.
"Y'd better go back to the inn, sir," said Mrs. Thomas with scathing
sarcasm, "and come up to-morrow with proofs and your luggage."
"Haven't you got any letters with you?" suggested Beatrice as a last
resource.
As it happened Owen had a letter, one from the lawyer to himself about
the property, and mentioning Mrs. Thomas's name as being in charge of
the Castle. He had forgotten all about it, but at this interesting
juncture it was produced and read aloud by Beatrice. Mrs. Thomas took
it, and having examined it carefully through her horn-rimmed
spectacles, was constrained to admit its authenticity.
"I'm sure I apologise, sir," she said with a half-doubtful courtesy
and much tact, "but one can't be too careful with all these trampseses
about; I never should have thought from the look of you, sir, how as
you was the new squire."
This might be candid, but it was not flattering, and it caused
Beatrice to snigger behind her handkerchief in true school-girl
fashion. However, they entered, and were led by Mrs. Thomas with
solemn pomp through the great and little halls, the stone parlour and
the oak parlour, the library and the huge drawing-room, in which the
white heads of marble statues protruded from the bags of brown holland
wherewith they were wrapped about in a manner ghastly to behold. At
length they reached a small octagon-shaped room that, facing south,
commanded a most glorious view of sea and land. It was called the
Lady's Boudoir, and joined another of about the same size, which in
its former owner's time had been used as a smoking-room.
"If you don't mind, madam," said the lord of all this magnificence, "I
should like to stop here, I am getting tired of walking." And there he
stopped for many years. The rest of the Castle was shut up; he
scarcely ever visited it except occasionally to see that the rooms
were properly aired, for he was a methodical man.
As for Beatrice, she went home, still chuckling, to receive a severe
reproof from Elizabeth for her "forwardness." But Owen Davies never
forgot the debt of gratitude he owed her. In his heart he felt
convinced that had it not been for her, he would have fled before Mrs.
Thomas and her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of
the matter was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love
with her then and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that
drear abyss as years went on. He never said anything about it, he
scarcely even gave a hint of his hopeless condition, though of course
Beatrice divined something of it as soon as she came to years of
discretion. But there grew up in Owen's silent, lonely breast a great
and overmastering desire to make this grey-eyed girl his wife. He
measured time by the intervals that elapsed between his visions of
her. No period in his life was so wretched and utterly purposeless as
those two years which passed while she was at her Training College. He
was a very passive lover, as yet his gathering passion did not urge
him to extremes, and he could never make up his mind to declare it.
The box was in his hand, but he feared to throw the dice.
But he drew as near to her as he dared. Once he gave Beatrice a
flower, it was when she was seventeen, and awkwardly expressed a hope
that she would wear it for his sake. The words were not much and the
flower was not much, but there was a look about the man's eyes, and a
suppressed passion and energy in his voice, which told their tale to
the keen-witted girl. After this he found that she avoided him, and
bitterly regretted his boldness. For Beatrice did not like him in that
way. To a girl of her curious stamp his wealth was nothing. She did
not covet wealth, she coveted independence, and had the sense to know
that marriage with such a man would not bring it. A cage is a cage,
whether the bars are of iron or gold. He bored her, she despised him
for his want of intelligence and enterprise. That a man with all this
wealth and endless opportunity should waste his life in such fashion
was to her a thing intolerable. She knew if she had half his chance,
that she would make her name ring from one end of Europe to the other.
In short, Beatrice held Owen as deeply in contempt as her sister
Elizabeth, studying him from another point of view, held him in
reverence. And putting aside any human predilections, Beatrice would
never have married a man whom she despised. She respected herself too
much.
Owen Davies saw all this as through a glass darkly, and in his own
slow way cast about for a means of drawing near. He discovered that
Beatrice was passionately fond of learning, and also that she had no
means to obtain the necessary books. So he threw open his library to
her; it was one of the best in Wales. He did more; he gave orders to a
London bookseller to forward him every new book of importance that
appeared in certain classes of literature, and all of these he placed
at her disposal, having first carefully cut the leaves with his own
hand. This was a bait Beatrice could not resist. She might dread or
even detest Mr. Davies, but she loved his books, and if she quarrelled
with him her well of knowledge would simply run dry, for there were no
circulating libraries at Bryngelly, and if there had been she could
not have afforded to subscribe to them. So she remained on good terms
with him, and even smiled at his futile attempts to keep pace with her
studies. Poor man, reading did not come naturally to him; he was much
better at cutting leaves. He studied the /Times/ and certain religious
works, that was all. But he wrestled manfully with many a detested
tome, in order to be able to say something to Beatrice about it, and
the worst of it was that Beatrice always saw through it, and showed
him that she did. It was not kind, perhaps, but youth is cruel.
And so the years wore on, till at length Beatrice knew that a crisis
was at hand. Even the tardiest and most retiring lover must come to
the point at last, if he is in earnest, and Owen Davies was very much
in earnest. Of late, to her dismay, he had so far come out of his
shell as to allow himself to be nominated a member of the school
council. Of course she knew that this was only to give him more
opportunities of seeing her. As a member of the council, he could
visit the school of which she was mistress as often as he chose, and
indeed he soon learned to take a lively interest in village education.
About twice a week he would come in just as the school was breaking up
and offer to walk home with her, seeking for a favourable opportunity
to propose. Hitherto she had always warded off this last event, but
she knew that it must happen. Not that she was actually afraid of the
man himself; he was too much afraid of her for that. What she did fear
was the outburst of wrath from her father and sister when they learned
that she had refused Owen Davies. It never occurred to her that
Elizabeth might be playing a hand of her own in the matter.
From all of which it will be clear, if indeed it has not become so
already, that Beatrice Granger was a somewhat ill-regulated young
woman, born to bring trouble on herself and all connected with her.
Had she been otherwise, she would have taken her good fortune and
married Owen Davies, in which case her history need never have been
written.
