Gwen Wynn: A Romance of the Wye

The good dame had already set the table for tea, ready against his arrival, covered it with a cloth, snow-white of course. The tea-things superimposed, in addition a dining plate, knife and fork, these for a succulent beefsteak heard hissing on the gridiron almost as soon as the Mary made appearance at the mouth of the wash, and, soon as the boat was docked, done. It is now on the table, alongside the teapot; its savoury odour mingling with the fragrance of the freshly “drawn” tea, fills the cottage kitchen with a perfume to delight the gods.

For all, it gives no gratification to Jack Wingate the waterman. The appetising smell of the meat, and the more ethereal aroma of the Chinese shrub, are alike lost upon him. Appetite he has none, and his thoughts are elsewhere.

Less from observing his abstraction, than the slow, negligent movements of his knife and fork, the mother asks —

“What’s the matter with ye, Jack? Ye don’t eat!”

“I ain’t hungry, mother.”

“But ye been out since mornin’, and tooked nothing wi’ you!”

“True; but you forget who I ha’ been out with. The captain ain’t the man to let his boatman be a hungered. We war down the day far as Symond’s yat, where he treated me to dinner at the hotel. The daintiest kind o’ dinner, too. No wonder at my not havin’ much care for eatin’ now – nice as you’ve made things, mother.”

Notwithstanding the compliment, the old lady is little satisfied – less as she observes the continued abstraction of his manner. He fidgets uneasily in his chair, every now and then giving a glance at the little Dutch clock suspended against the wall, which in loud ticking seems to say, “You’ll be late – you’ll be late.” She suspects something of the cause, but inquires nothing of it. Instead, she but observes, speaking of the patron: – “He be very good to ye, Jack.”

“Ah! that he be; good to every one as comes nigh o’ him – and ’s desarvin’ it.”

“But ain’t he stayin’ in the neighbourhood longer than he first spoke of doin’?”

“Maybe he is. Grand gentry such as he ain’t like us poor folk. They can go and come whens’ever it please ’em. I suppose he have his reasons for remaining.”

“Now, Jack, you know he have, an’ I’ve heerd something about ’em myself.”

“What have you heard, mother?”

“Oh, what! Ye han’t been a rowin’ him up and down the river now nigh on five months without findin’ out. An’ if you haven’t, others have. It’s goin’ all about that he’s after a young lady as lives somewhere below. Tidy girl, they say, tho’ I never seed her myself. Is it so, my son? Say!”

“Well, mother, since you’ve put it straight at me in that way, I won’t deny it to you, tho’ I’m in a manner bound to saycrecy wi’ others. It be true that the Captain have some notion o’ such a lady.”

“There be a story, too, o’ her bein’ nigh drownded an’ his saving her out o’ a boat. Now, Jack, whose boat could that be if it wa’nt your’n?”

“’Twor mine, mother; that’s true enough. I would a told you long ago, but he asked me not to talk o’ the thing. Besides, I didn’t suppose you’d care to hear about it.”

“Well,” she says, satisfied, “’tan’t much to me, nor you neyther, Jack; only as the Captain being so kind, we’d both like to know the best about him. If he have took a fancy for the young lady, I hope she return it. She ought after his doin’ what he did for her. I han’t heerd her name; what be it?”

“She’s a Miss Wynn, mother. A very rich heiress. ’Deed I b’lieve she ain’t a heiress any longer, or won’t be, after next Thursday, sin’ that day she comes o’ age. An’ that night there’s to be a big party at her place, dancin’ an’ all sorts o’ festivities. I know it because the Captain’s goin’ there, an’ has bespoke the boat to take him.”

“Wynn, eh? That be a Welsh name. Wonder if she’s any kin o’ the great Sir Watkin.”

“Can’t say, mother. I believe there be several branches o’ the Wynn family.”

“Yes, and all o’ the good sort. If she be one o’ the Welsh Wynns, the Captain can’t go far astray in having her for his wife.”

Mrs Wingate is herself of Cymric ancestry, originally from the shire of Pembroke, but married to a man of Montgomery, where Jack was born. It is only of late, in her widowhood, she has become a resident of Herefordshire.

“So you think he have a notion o’ her, Jack?”

“More’n that, mother. I may as well tell ye; he be dead in love wi’ her. An’ if you seed the young lady herself, ye wouldn’t wonder at it. She be most as good-looking as – ”

Jack suddenly interrupted himself on the edge of a revelation he would rather not make, to his mother nor any one else. For he has hitherto been as careful in keeping his own secret as that of his patron.

“As who?” she asks, looking him straight in the face, and with an expression in her eyes of no common interest – that of maternal solicitude.

“Who? – well – ” he answers confusedly; “I wor goin’ to mention the name o’ a girl who the people ’bout here think the best-lookin’ o’ any in the neighbourhood – ”

“An’ nobody more’n yourself, my son. You needn’t gi’e her name. I know it.”

“Oh, mother! what d’ye mean?” he stammers out, with eyes on the but half-eaten beefsteak. “I take it they’ve been tellin’ ye some stories ’bout me.”

“No, they han’t. Nobody’s sayed a word about ye relatin’ to that. I’ve seed it for myself, long since, though you’ve tried hide it. I’m not goin’ to blame ye eyther, for I believe she be a tidy proper girl. But she’s far aboon you, my son; and ye maun mind how you behave yourself. If the young lady be anythin’ like’s good-lookin’ as Mary Morgan – ”

“Yes, mother! that’s the strangest thing o’ all – ”

He interrupts her, speaking excitedly; again interrupting himself.

“What’s strangest?” she inquires with a look of wonderment.

“Never mind, mother! I’ll tell you all about it some other time. I can’t now; you see it’s nigh nine o’ the clock.”

“Well; an’ what if’t be?”

“Because I may be too late.”

“Too late for what? Surely you arn’t goin’ out again the night?” She asks this, seeing him rise up from his chair.

“I must, mother.”

“But why?”

“Well, the boat’s painter’s got frailed, and I want a bit o’ whipcord to lap it with. They have the thing at the Ferry shop, and I must get there afores they shut up.”

A fib, perhaps pardonable, as the thing he designs lapping is not his boat’s painter, but the waist of Mary Morgan, and not with slender whipcord, but his own stout arms.

“Why won’t it do in the mornin’?” asks the ill-satisfied mother.

“Well, ye see, there’s no knowin’ but that somebody may come after the boat. The Captain mayent, but he may, changin’ his mind. Anyhow, he’ll want her to go down to them grand doin’s at Llangowen Court?”

“Llangowen Court?”

“Yes; that’s where the young lady lives.”

“That’s to be on Thursday, ye sayed?”

“True; but, then, there may come a fare the morrow, an’ what if there do? ’Tain’t the painter only as wants splicin’, there’s a bit o’ a leak sprung close to the cutwater, an’ I must hae some pitch to pay it.”

If Jack’s mother would only step out, and down to the ditch where the Mary is moored, with a look at the boat, she would make him out a liar. Its painter is smooth and clean as a piece of gimp, not a strand unravelled – while but two or three gallons of bilge water at the boat’s bottom attest to there being little or no leakage.

But she, good dame, is not thus suspicious, instead so reliant on her son’s truthfulness, that, without questioning further, she consents to his going, only with a proviso against his staying, thus appealingly put – “Ye won’t be gone long, my son! I know ye won’t!”