XXXVIII
The next person to be told was Rowcliffe.
It was known in the village through the telegrams that Gwenda was going away. The postmistress told Mrs. Gale, who told Mrs. Blenkiron. These two persons and four or five others had known ever since Sunday that the Vicar's daughter was going away; and the Vicar did not know it yet.
And Mrs. Blenkiron told Rowcliffe on the Wednesday before Alice told him.
For it was Alice who told him, and not Gwenda. Gwenda was not at home when he called at the Vicarage at three o'clock. But he heard from Alice that she would be back at four.
And it was Alice who told Mrs. Gale that when the doctor called again he was to be shown into the study.
He had waited there thirteen minutes before Gwenda came to him.
He looked at her and was struck by a difference he found in her, a difference that recalled some look in her face that he had seen before. It was dead white, and in its whiteness her blue eyes, dark and dilated, quivered with defiance and a sort of fear. She looked older and at the same time younger, as young as Alice and as helpless in her fear. Then he remembered that she had looked like that the night she had passed him in the doorway of the house at Upthorne.
"How cold your hands are," he said.
She hid them behind her back as if they had betrayed her.
"Do you want to see me about Ally?"
"No, I don't want to see you about Ally. I want to see you about yourself."
Her eyes quivered again.
"Won't you come into the drawing-room, then?"
"I'd rather stay here if you don't mind. I say, how much time have I?"
"Till when?"
"Well—till your father comes back?"
"He won't be back for another hour. But—"
"I hear you're going away on Friday; and that you're going for good."
"Did Mary tell you?"
"No. It was Alice. She said I was to try and stop you."
"You can't stop me if I want to go."
"I'll do my best."
They stood, as they talked, in rigid attitudes that suggested that neither was going to yield an inch.
"Why didn't you tell me yourself, Gwenda?"
She closed her eyes. It was as if she had forgotten why.
"Was it because you knew I wouldn't let you? Did you want to go as much as all that?"
"It looks like it, doesn't it?"
"Yes. But you don't want to go a bit."
"Would I go if I didn't?"
"Yes. It's just the sort of thing you would do, if you thought it would annoy me. It's only what you've been doing for the last three months—getting away from me."
"Three months—?"
"Oh, I cared for you before that. It's only the last three months I've been trying to tell you."
"You never told me anything."
"Because you never gave me a chance. You kept on putting me off."
"And if I did, didn't that show that I didn't want you to tell me? I don't want you to tell me now."
He made an impatient movement.
"But you knew without telling. You knew then."
"I didn't. I didn't."
"Well, then, you know now. Will you marry me or will you not? I want it straight."
"No. No."
"And—why not?"
He was horribly cool and calm.
"Because I don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody."
"Good God! What do you want, then?"
"I want to go away and earn my own living as other women do."
The absurdity of it melted him. He could have gone down on his knees at her feet and kissed her cold hands. He wondered afterward why on earth he hadn't. Then he remembered that all the time she had kept her hands locked behind her.
"You poor child, you don't want to earn your own living. I'll tell you what you do want. You want to get away from home."
"And what if I do? You've seen what it's like. Would you stay in it a day longer than you could help if you were me?"
"Of course I wouldn't. Of course I've seen what it's like. I saw it the first time I saw you here in this detestable house. I want to take you away out of it. I think I wanted to take you away then."
"Oh, no. Not then. Not so long ago as that."
It was as if she had said, "Not that. That makes it too hard. Any cruelty you like but that, or I can't go through with it."
"Yes," he said, "as long ago as that."
"You can't take me away."
"Can't I? I can take you anywhere. And I will. Anywhere you like.
You've only got to say. I know I can make you happy."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know you."
"That's what you're always saying. And you know nothing about me.
Nothing. Nothing."
She said to herself: "He doesn't. He doesn't even know why I'm going."
"I know a lot more than you think. And a lot more than you know yourself. I know that you're not happy as you are, and I know that you can't live without happiness. If you're not happy you'll be ill; more horribly ill, perhaps, than Alice. Look at Alice."
"I'm not like Alice."
"Not now. Not next year. Not for ten years, perhaps, or twenty. But you don't know what you may be."
She raised her head.
"I shall never be like that. Never."
Rowcliffe laughed.
It struck her then that that was what she ought never to have said if she wanted to carry out her purpose.
"When I say I'm not like Ally I mean that I'm not so dependent on people. I'm not gentle like Ally. I'm not as loving and I'm not as womanly. In fact, I'm not womanly at all."
"My dear child, do you suppose it matters to me what you're not, as long as I love you as you are?"
"No," she said, "you don't love me really. You only think you do."
She clung to that.
"Why do you say that, Gwenda?"
"Because, if you did, I should have known it before now."
"Well, considering that you do know it now—"
"I mean, you'd have said so before."
"I say! I like that. I'd have said so about five times if you'd ever given me a chance."
"Oh, no. You had your chance."
"When did I have it? When?"
"The other day. Up at Bar Hill."
"You thought so then?"
"I didn't say I thought so then. I think so now."
"That's rather clever of you. Because, you see, if you thought so then that shows—"
"What does it show?"
"Why, that you knew all the time—and that you were thinking of me.
You did know. You did think—"
"No. No. It's only that I've got to—that you're making me think of you now. But I'm not thinking of you the way you want."
"If you're not—if you haven't thought of me—the way I want—then I can't make you out. You're beyond me."
They sat down, tired out with the struggle, as if they had reached the same point of exhaustion at the same instant.
"Why not leave it at that?" she said.
He rallied.
"Because I can't leave it at that. You knew I cared. You must have seen. I could have sworn you saw. I could have sworn—"
She knew what he was going to swear and she stopped him.
"I did see that you thought you cared for me. If you'd been quite sure you'd have told me. You wouldn't have waited. You're not quite sure now. You're only telling me now because I'm going away. If I hadn't said I was going away you'd never have told me. You'd just have gone on waiting till you were quite sure."
She had irritated him now beyond endurance.
"Gwenda," he said savagely, "you're enough to drive a man mad."
"You've told me that before, anyhow. Don't you see that I should go on driving you mad? Don't you see how unhappy you'd be with me, how impossible it all is?"
She laughed. It was marvelous to her how she achieved that laugh. It was as if she had just thought of it and it came.
"I can see," he said, "that you don't care for me."
He had given himself into her hands—hands that seemed to him diabolic in their play.
"Did I ever say I cared?"
"Well—of all the women—you are——! No, you didn't say it."
"Did I ever show it?"
"Good God, how do I know what you showed? If it had been any other woman—yes, I could have sworn."
"You can't swear to any woman—I'm afraid—till you've married her.
Perhaps—not then."
"You shouldn't say things like that; they sound——"
"How do they sound?"
"As if you knew too much."
She smiled.
"Well, then—there's another reason."
He softened suddenly.
"I didn't mean that, Gwenda. You don't know what you're saying. You don't know anything. It's only that you're so beastly clever."
"That's a better reason still. You don't want to marry a beastly clever woman. You really don't."
"I'd risk it. That sort of cleverness doesn't last long."
"It would last your time," she said.
She rose. It was as much as giving him his dismissal.
He stood a moment watching her. She and all her movements still seemed to him incredible.
"Do you mind telling me where you're going to?"
"I'm going to Mummy." She explained to his blankness: "My stepmother."
He remembered. Mummy was the lady who was "the very one," the lady of remarkable resources.
It seemed to him then that he saw it all. He knew what she was going for.
"I see. Instead of your sister," he sneered.
"Papa wouldn't let Ally go to her. But he can't stop me."
"Oh, no. Nobody could stop you."
She smiled softly. She had missed the brutality of his emphasis.
* * * * *
He said to himself that Gwenda was impossible. She was obstinate and conceited and wrong-headed. She was utterly selfish, a cold mass of egoism.
"Cold?" He was not so sure. She might be. But she was capable, he suspected, of adventures. Instead of taking her sister away to have her chance, she was rushing off to secure it herself. And the irony of the thing was that it was he who had put it into her head.
Well—she was no worse, and no better—than the rest of them. Only unlike them in the queerness of her fascination. He wondered how long it would have lasted?
You couldn't go on caring for a woman like that, who had never cared a rap about you.
And yet—he could have sworn—Oh, that was nothing. She had only thought of him because he had been her only chance.
He made himself think these things of her because they gave him unspeakable consolation.
All the way back to Morfe he thought them, while on his right hand Karva rose and receded and rose again, and changed at every turn its aspect and its form. He thought them to an accompaniment of an interior, persistent voice, the voice of his romantic youth, that said to him, "That is her hill, her hill—do you remember? That's where you met her first. That's where you saw her jumping. That's her hill—her hill—her hill."
XXXIX
The Vicar had been fidgeting in his study, getting up and sitting down, and looking at the clock every two minutes. Gwenda had told him that she wanted to speak to him, and he had stipulated that the interview should be after prayer time, for he knew that he was going to be upset. He never allowed family disturbances, if he could help it, to interfere with the attitude he kept up before his Maker.
He knew perfectly well she was going to tell him of her engagement to young Rowcliffe; and though he had been prepared for the news any time for the last three months he had to pull himself together to receive it. He would have to pretend that he was pleased about it when he wasn't pleased at all. He was, in fact, intensely sorry for himself. It had dawned on him that, with Alice left a permanent invalid on his hands, he couldn't really afford to part with Gwenda. She might be terrible in the house, but in her way—a way he didn't altogether approve of—she was useful in the parish. She would cover more of it in an afternoon than Mary could in a month of Sundays.
But, though the idea of Gwenda's marrying was disagreeable to him for so many reasons, he was not going to forbid it absolutely. He was only going to insist that she should wait. It was only reasonable and decent that she should wait until Alice got either better or bad enough to be put under restraint.
The Vicar's pity for himself reached its climax when he considered that awful alternative. He had been considering it ever since Rowcliffe had spoken to him about Alice.
It was just like Gwenda to go and get engaged at such a moment, when he was beside himself.
But he smoothed his face into a smile when she appeared.
"Well, what is it? What is this great thing you've come to tell me?"
It struck him that for the first time in her life Gwenda looked embarrassed; as well she might be.
"Oh—it isn't very great, Papa. It's only that I'm going away."
"Going—away?"
"I don't mean out of the country. Only to London."
"Ha! Going to London—" He rolled it ruminatingly on his tongue.
"Well, if that's all you've come to say, it's very simple. You can't go."
He bent his knees with the little self-liberating gesture that he had when he put his foot down.
"But," said Gwenda, "I'm going."
He raised his eyebrows.
"And why is this the first time I've heard of it?"
"Because I want to go without any bother, since I'm going to go."
"Oh—consideration for me, I suppose?"
"For both of us. I don't want you to worry."
"That's why you've chosen a time when I'm worried out of my wits already."
"I know, Papa. That's why I'm going."
He was arrested both by the astounding statement and by something unusually placable in her tone. He stared at her as his way was.
Then, suddenly, he had a light on it.
"Gwenda, there must be something behind all this. You'd better tell me straight out what's happened."
"Nothing has happened."
"You know what I mean. We've spoken about this before. Is there anything between you and young Rowcliffe."
"Nothing. Nothing whatever of the sort you mean."
"You're sure there hasn't been"—he paused discreetly for his word—"some misunderstanding?"
"Quite sure. There isn't anything to misunderstand. I'm going because
I want to go. There are too many of us at home."
"Too many of you—in the state your sister's in?"
"That's exactly why I'm going. I'm trying to tell you. Ally'll go on being ill as long as there are three of us knocking about the house. You'll find she'll buck up like anything when I'm gone. There's nothing the matter with her, really."
"That may be your opinion. It isn't Rowcliffe's."
"I know it isn't. But it soon will be. It was your own idea a little while ago."
"Ye—es; before this last attack, perhaps. D'you know what Rowcliffe thinks of her?"
"Yes. But I know a lot more about Ally than he does. So do you."
"Well—"
They were sitting down to it now.
"But I can't afford to keep you if you go away."
"Of course you can't. You won't have to keep me. I'm going to keep myself."
Again he stared. This was preposterous.
"It's all right, Papa. It's all settled."
"By whom?"
"By me."
"You've found something to do in London?"
"Not yet. I'm going to look—"
"And what," inquired the Vicar with an even suaver irony, "can you do?"
"I can be somebody's secretary."
"Whose?"
"Oh," said Gwenda airily, "anybody's."
"And—if I may ask—what will you do, and where do you propose to stay, while you're looking for him?" (He felt that he expressed himself with perspicacity.)
"That's all arranged. I'm going to Mummy."
The Vicar was silent with the shock of it.
"I'm sorry, Papa," said Gwenda; "but there's nowhere else to go to."
"If you go there," said Mr. Cartaret, "you will certainly not come back here."
All that had passed till now had been mere skirmishing. The real battle had begun.
Gwenda set her face to it.
"I shall not be coming back in any case," she said.
"That question can stand over till you've gone."
"I shall be gone on Friday by the three train."
"I shall not allow you to go—by any train."
"How are you going to stop me?"
He had not considered it.
"You don't suppose I'm going to give you any money to go with?"
"You needn't. I've got heaps."
"And how are you going to get your luggage to the station?"
"Oh—the usual way."
"There'll be no way if I forbid Peacock to carry it—or you."
"Can you forbid Jim Greatorex? He'll take me like a shot."
"I can put your luggage under lock and key."
He was still stern, though, he was aware that the discussion was descending to sheer foolishness.
"I'll go without it. I can carry a toothbrush and a comb, and Mummy will have heaps of nightgowns."
The Vicar leaned forward and hid his face in his hands before that poignant evocation of Robina.
Gwenda saw that she had gone too far. She had a queer longing to go down on her knees before him and drag his hands from his poor face and ask him to forgive her. She struggled with and overcame the morbid impulse.
The Vicar lifted his face, and for a moment they looked at each other while he measured, visibly, his forces against hers.
She shook her head at him almost tenderly. He was purely pathetic to her now.
"It's no use, Papa. You'd far better give it up. You know you can't do it. You can't stop me. You can't stop Jim Greatorex. You can't even stop Peacock. You don't want another scandal in the parish."
He didn't.
"Oh, go your own way," he said, "and take the consequences."
"I have taken them," said Gwenda.
She thought, "I wonder what he'd have said if I'd told him the truth?
But, if I had, he'd never have believed it."
The truth indeed was far beyond the Vicar's power of belief. He only supposed (after some reflection) that Gwenda was going off in a huff, because young Rowcliffe had failed to come to the scratch. He knew what this running up to London and earning her own living meant—she! He would have trusted Ally sooner. Gwenda was capable of anything.
And as he thought of what she might be capable of in London, he sighed, "God help her!"
XL
It was May, five weeks since Gwenda had left Garthdale.
Five Wednesdays came and went and Rowcliffe had not been seen or heard of at the Vicarage. It struck even the Vicar that considerably more had passed between his daughter and the doctor than Gwenda had been willing to admit. Whatever had passed, it had been something that had made Rowcliffe desire not to be seen or heard of.
All the same, the Vicar and his daughter Alice were both so profoundly aware of Rowcliffe that for five weeks they had not mentioned his name to each other. When Mary mentioned it on Friday, in the evening of that disgraceful day, he said that he had had enough of Rowcliffe and he didn't want to hear any more about the fellow.
Mr. Cartaret had signified that his second daughter's name was not to be mentioned, either. But, becoming as his attitude was, he had not been able to keep it up. In the sixth week after Gwenda's departure, he was obliged to hear (it was Alice, amazed out of all reticence, who told him) that Gwenda had got a berth as companion secretary to Lady Frances Gilbey, at a salary of a hundred a year.
Mummy had got it for her.
"You may well stare, Molly, but it's what she says."
The Vicar, as if he had believed Ally capable of fabricating this intelligence, observed that he would like to see that letter.
His face darkened as he read it. He handed it back without a word.
The thing was not so incredible to the Vicar as it was to Mary.
He had always known that Robina could pull wires. It was, in fact, through her ability to pull wires that Robina had so successfully held him up. She had her hands on the connections of an entire social system. Her superior ramifications were among those whom Mr. Cartaret habitually spoke and thought of as "the best people." And when it came to connections, Robina's were of the very best. Lady Frances was her second cousin. In the days when he was trying to find excuses for marrying Robina, it was in considering her connections that he found his finest. The Vicar had informed his conscience that he was marrying Robina because of what she could do for his three motherless daughters—and himself.
Preferment even lay (through the Gilbeys) within Robina's scope.
But to have planted Gwenda on Lady Frances Robina must have pulled all the wires she knew. Lady Frances was a distinguished philanthropist and a rigid Evangelical, so rigid and so distinguished that, in the eyes of poor parsons waiting for preferment, she constituted a pillar of the Church.
To the Vicar, as he brooded over it, Robina's act was more than mere protection of his daughter Gwenda. Not only was it carrying the war into the enemy's camp with a vengeance, it was an act of hostility subtler and more malignant than overt defiance.
Ever since she left him, Robina had been trying to get hold of the girls, regarding them as the finest instruments in her relentless game. For it never occurred to Mr. Cartaret that his third wife's movements could by any possibility refer to anybody but himself. Robina, according to Mr. Cartaret, was perpetually thinking of him and of how she could annoy him. She had shown a fiendish cleverness in placing Gwenda with Lady Frances. She couldn't have done anything that could have annoyed him more. More than anything that Robina had yet done, it put him in the wrong. It put him in the wrong not only with Lady Frances and the best people, but it put him in the wrong with Gwenda and kept him there. Against Gwenda, with Lady Frances and a salary of a hundred a year at her back, he hadn't the appearance of a leg to stand on. The thing had the air of justifying Gwenda's behavior by its consequences.
That was what Robina had been reckoning on. For, if it had been Gwenda she had been thinking of, she would have kept her instead of handing her over to Lady Frances. The companion secretaries of that distinguished philanthropist had no sinecure even at a hundred a year.
As for Gwenda's accepting such a post, that proved nothing as against his view of her. It only proved, what he had always known, that you could never tell what Gwenda would do next.
And because nothing could be said with any dignity, the Vicar had said nothing as he rose and went into his study.
It was there, hidden from his daughters' scrutiny, that he pondered these things.
* * * * *
They waited till the door had closed on him before they spoke.
"Well, after all, that'll be very jolly for her," said Mary.
"It isn't half as jolly as it looks," said Ally. "It means that she'll have to live at Tunbridge Wells."
"Oh," said Mary, "it won't be all Tunbridge Wells." She couldn't bear to think that it would be all Tunbridge Wells. Not that she did think it for a moment. It couldn't be all Tunbridge Wells for a girl like Gwenda. Mummy could never have contemplated that. Gwenda couldn't have contemplated it. And Mary refused to contemplate it either. She persuaded herself that what had happened to her sister was simply a piece of the most amazing luck. She even judged it probable that Gwenda had known very well what she was doing when she went away.
Besides she had always wanted to do something. She had learned shorthand and typewriting at Westbourne, as if, long ago, she had decided that, if home became insupportable, she would leave it. And there had always been that agreement between her and Mummy.
When Mary put these things together, she saw that nothing could be more certain than that, sooner or later, Ally or no Ally, Gwenda would have gone away.
But this was after it had occurred to her that Rowcliffe ought to know what had happened and that she had got to tell him. And that was on the day after Gwenda's letter came, when Mrs. Gale, having brought in the tea-things, paused in her going to say, "'Ave yo' seen Dr. Rawcliffe, Miss Mary? Ey—but 'e's lookin' baad."
"Everybody," said Mary, "is looking bad this muggy weather. That reminds me, how's the baby?"
"'E's woorse again, Miss. I tall Assy she'll navver rear 'im."
"Has the doctor seen him to-day?"
"Naw, naw, nat yat. But 'e'll look in, 'e saays, afore 'e goas."
Mary looked at the clock. Rowcliffe left the surgery at four-thirty.
It was now five minutes past.
She wondered: Did he know, then, or did he not know? Would Gwenda have written to him? Was it because she had not written that he was looking bad, or was it because she had written and he knew?
She thought and thought it over; and under all her thinking there lurked the desire to know whether Rowcliffe knew and how he was taking it, and under her desire the longing, imperious and irresistible, to see him.
She would have to ask him to the house. She had not forgotten that she had to ask him, that she was pledged to ask him on Ally's account if, as Gwenda had put it, she was to play the game.
But she had had more than one motive for her delay. It would look better if she were not in too great a hurry. (She said to herself it would look better on Ally's account.) The longer he was kept away (she said to herself, that he was kept away from Ally) the more he would be likely to want to come. Sufficient time must elapse to allow of his forgetting Gwenda. It was not well that he should be thinking all the time of Gwenda when he came. (She said to herself it was not well on Ally's account.)
And it was well that their father should have forgotten Rowcliffe.
(This on Ally's account, too.)
For of course it was only on Ally's account that she was asking
Rowcliffe, really.
Not that there seemed to be any such awful need.
For Ally, in those five weeks, had got gradually better. And now, in the first week of May, which had always been one of her bad months, she was marvelously well. It looked as if Gwenda had known what she was talking about when she said Ally would be all right when she was gone.
And of course it was just as well (on Ally's account) that Rowcliffe should not have seen her until she was absolutely well.
Nobody could say that she, Mary, was not doing it beautifully. Nobody could say she was not discreet, since she had let five weeks pass before she asked him.
And in order that her asking him should have the air of happy chance, she must somehow contrive to see him first.
Her seeing him could be managed any Wednesday in the village. It was bound, in fact, to occur. The wonder was that it had not occurred before.
Well, that showed how hard, all these weeks, she had been trying not to see him. If she had had an uneasy conscience in the matter (and she said to herself that there was no occasion for one), it would have acquitted her.
Nobody could say she wasn't playing the game.
And then it struck her that she had better go down at once and see
Essy's baby.
It was only five and twenty past four.
XLI
The Vicar was right. Rowcliffe did not want to be seen or heard of at the Vicarage. He did not want to see or hear of the Vicarage or of Gwenda Cartaret again. Twice a week or more in those five weeks he had to pass the little gray house above the churchyard; twice a week or more the small shy window in its gable end looked sidelong at him as he went by. But he always pretended not to see it. And if anybody in the village spoke to him of Gwenda Cartaret he pretended not to hear, so that presently they left off speaking.
He had sighted Mary Cartaret two or three times in the village, and once, on the moor below Upthorne, a figure that he recognised as Alice; he had also overtaken Mary on her bicycle, and once he had seen her at a shop door on Morfe Green. And each time Mary (absorbed in what she was doing) had made it possible for him not to see her. He was grateful to her for her absorption while he saw through it. He had always known that Mary was a person of tact.
He also knew that this preposterous avoidance could not go on forever.
It was only that Mary gave him a blessed respite week by week.
Presently one or other of the two would have to end it, and he didn't
yet know which of them it would be. He rather thought it would be
Mary.
And it was Mary.
He met her that first Wednesday in May, as he was leaving Mrs. Gale's cottage.
She was coming along the narrow path by the beck and there was no avoiding her.
She came toward him smiling. He had always rather liked her smile. It was quiet. It never broke up, as it were, her brooding face. He had noticed that it didn't even part her lips or make them thinner. If anything it made them thicker, it curved still more the crushed bow of the upper lip and the pensive sweep of the lower. But it opened doors; it lit lights. It broadened quite curiously the rather too broad nostrils; it set the wide eyes wider; it brought a sudden blue into their thick gray. In her cheeks it caused a sudden leaping and spreading of their flame. Her rather high and rather prominent cheek-bones gave character and a curious charm to Mary's face; they had the effect of lifting her bloom directly under the pure and candid gray of her eyes, leaving her red mouth alone in its dominion. That mouth with its rather too long upper lip and its almost perpetual brooding was saved from immobility by its alliance with her nostrils.
Such was Mary's face. Rowcliffe had often watched it, acknowledging its charm, while he said to himself that for him it could never have any meaning or fascination, any more than Mary could. There wasn't much in Mary's face, and there wasn't much in Mary. She was too ruminant, too tranquil. He sometimes wondered how much it would take to trouble her.
And yet there were times when that tranquillity was soothing. She had always, even when Ally was at her worst, smiled at him as if nothing had happened or could happen, and she smiled at him as if nothing had happened now. And it struck Rowcliffe, as it had frequently struck him before, how good her face was.
She held out her hand to him and looked at him.
And as if only then she had seen in his face the signs of a suffering she had been unaware of, her eyes rounded in a sudden wonder of distress. They said in their goodness and their candor, "Oh, I see how horribly you've suffered. I didn't know and I'm so sorry." Then they looked away, and it was like the quiet withdrawal of a hand that feared lest in touching it should hurt him.
Mary began to talk of the weather and of Essy and of Essy's baby, as if her eyes had never seen anything at all. Then, just as they parted, she said, "When are you coming to see us again?" as if he had been to see them only the other day.
He said he would come as soon as he was asked.
And Mary reflected, as one arranging a multitude of engagements.
"Well, then—let me see—can you come to tea on Friday? Or Monday?
Father'll be at home both days."
And Rowcliffe said thanks, he'd come on Friday.
Mary went on to the cottage and Rowcliffe to his surgery.
He wondered why she hadn't said a word about Gwenda. He supposed it was because she knew that there was nothing she could say that would not hurt him.
And he said to himself, "What a nice girl she is. What a thoroughly nice girl."
* * * * *
But what he wanted, though he dreaded it, was news of Gwenda. He didn't know whether he could bring himself to ask for it, but he rather thought that Mary would know what he wanted and give it him without his asking.
That was precisely what Mary knew and did.
She was ready for him, alone in the gray and amber drawing-room, and she did it almost at once, before Alice or her father could come in. Alice was out walking, she said, and her father was in the study. They would be in soon. She thus made Rowcliffe realise that if she was going to be abrupt it was because she had to be; they had both of them such a short time.
With admirable tact she assumed Rowcliffe's interest in Ally and the Vicar. It made it easier to begin about Gwenda. And before she began it seemed to her that she had better first find out if he knew. So she asked him point-blank if he had heard from Gwenda?
"No," he said.
At her name he had winced visibly. But there was hope even in his hurt eyes. It sprang from Mary's taking it for granted that he would be likely to hear from her sister.
"We only heard—really," said Mary, "the other day."
"Is that so?"
"Of course she wrote; but she didn't say much, because, at first, I'm afraid, there wasn't very much to say."
"And is there?"
Rowcliffe's hands were trembling slightly. Mary looked down at them and away.
"Well, yes."
And she told him that Gwenda had got a secretaryship to Lady Frances
Gilbey.
It would have been too gross to have told him about Gwenda's salary. But it might have been the salary she was thinking of when she added that it was of course an awfully good thing for Gwenda.
"And who," said Rowcliffe, "is Lady Frances Gilbey?"
"She's a cousin of my stepmother's."
He considered it.
"And Mrs.—er—Cartaret lives in London, doesn't she?"
"Oh, yes."
Mary's tone implied that you couldn't expect that brilliant lady to live anywhere else.
There was a moment in which Rowcliffe again evoked the image of the third Mrs. Cartaret who was "the very one." If anything could have depressed him more, that did.
But he pulled himself together. There were things he had to know.
"And does your sister like living in London?"
Mary smiled. "I imagine she does very much indeed."
"Somehow," said Rowcliffe, "I can't see her there. I thought she liked the country."
"Oh, you never can tell whether Gwenda really likes anything. She may have liked it. She may have liked it awfully. But she couldn't go on liking it forever."
And to Rowcliffe it was as if Mary had said that wasn't Gwenda's way.
"There's no doubt she's done the best thing. For herself, I mean."
Rowcliffe assented. "Perhaps she has."
And Mary, as if doubt had only just occurred to her, made a sudden little tremulous appeal.
"You don't really think Garth was the place for her?"
"I don't really think anything about it," Rowcliffe said.
Mary was pensive. Her brooding look said that she laid a secret fear to rest.
"Garth couldn't satisfy a girl like Gwenda."
Rowcliffe said no, he supposed it couldn't satisfy her. His dejection was by this time terrible. It cast a visible, a palpable gloom.
"She's a restless creature," said Mary, smiling.
She threw it out as if by way of lightening his oppression, almost as if she put it to him that if Gwenda was restless (by which Rowcliffe might understand, if he liked, capricious) she couldn't help it. There was no reason why he should be so horribly hurt. It was not as if there was anything personal in Gwenda's changing attitudes. And Rowcliffe did indeed say to himself, Restless—restless. Yes. That was the word for her; and he supposed she couldn't help it.
* * * * *
The study door opened and shut. Mary's eyes made a sign to him that said, "We can't talk about this before my father. He won't like it."
But Mr. Cartaret had gone upstairs. They could hear him moving in the room overhead.
"How is your other sister getting on?" said Rowcliffe abruptly.
"Alice? She's all right. You wouldn't know her. She can walk for miles."
"You don't say so?"
He was really astonished.
"She's off now somewhere, goodness knows where."
"Ha!" Rowcliffe laughed softly.
"It's really wonderful," said Mary. "She's generally so tired in the spring."
It was wonderful. The more he thought of it the more wonderful it was.
"Oh, well——" he said, "she mustn't overdo it."
It was Mary he suspected of overdoing it. On Ally's account, of course. It wasn't likely that she would give the poor child away.
At that point Mrs. Gale came in with the tea-things. And presently the
Vicar came down to tea.
He was more than courteous this time. He was affable. He too greeted Rowcliffe as if nothing had happened, and he abstained from any reference to Gwenda.
But he showed a certain serenity in his restraint. Leaning back in his armchair, his legs crossed, his hands joined lightly at the finger-tips, his forehead smoothed, conversing affably, Mr. Cartaret had the air of a man who might indeed have suffered through his outrageous family, but for whom suffering was passed, a man without any trouble or anxiety. And serenity without the memory of suffering was in Mary's good and happy face.
The house was very still, it seemed the stillness of life that ran evenly and with no sound. And it was borne in upon Rowcliffe as he sat there and talked to them that this quiet and tranquillity had come to them with Gwenda's going. She was a restless creature, and she had infected them with her unrest. They had peace from her now.
Only for him there could be no peace from Gwenda. He could feel her in the room. Through the open door she came and went—restless, restless!
He put the thought of her from him.
* * * * *
After tea the Vicar took him into his study. If Rowcliffe had a moment to spare, he would like, he said, to talk to him.
Rowcliffe looked at his watch. The idea of being talked to frightened him.
The Vicar observed his nervousness.
"It's about my daughter Alice," he said.
And it was.
The Vicar wanted him to know and he had brought him into his study in order to tell him that Alice had completely recovered. He went into it. The girl was fit. She was happy. She ate well. She slept well (he had kept her under very careful supervision) and she could walk for miles. She was, in fact, leading the healthy natural life he had hoped she would lead when he brought her into a more bracing climate.
Rowcliffe expressed his wonder. It was, he said, very wonderful.
But the Vicar would not admit that it was wonderful at all. It was exactly what he had expected. He had never thought for a moment that there was anything seriously wrong with Alice—anything indeed in the least the matter with her.
Rowcliffe was silent. But he looked at the Vicar, and the Vicar did not even pretend not to understand his look.
"I know," he said, "the very serious view you took of her. But I think, my dear fellow, when you've seen her you'll admit that you were mistaken."
Rowcliffe said there was nothing he desired more than to have been mistaken, but he was afraid he couldn't admit it. Miss Cartaret's state, when he last saw her, had been distinctly serious.
"You will perhaps admit that whatever danger there may have been then is over?"
"I haven't seen her yet," said Rowcliffe. "But"—he looked at him—"I told you the thing was curable."
"That's my point. What is there—what can there have been to cure her?"
Rowcliffe ignored the Vicar's point.
"Can you date it—this recovery?"
"I date it," said the Vicar, "from the time her sister left. She seemed to pull herself together after that."
Rowcliffe said nothing. He was reviewing all his knowledge of the case. He considered Ally's disastrous infatuation for himself. In the light of his knowledge her recovery was not only wonderful, it was incomprehensible. So incomprehensible that he was inclined to suspect her father of lying for some reason of his own. Family pride, no doubt. He had known instances.
The Vicar went on. He gave himself a long innings. "But that does not account for it altogether, though it may have started it. I really put it down to other things—the pure air—the quiet life—the absence of excitement—the regular work that takes her out of herself——"
Here the Vicar fell into that solemn rhythm that marked the periods of his sermons.
He perorated. "The simple following out of my prescription. You will remember" (he became suddenly cheery and conversational) "that it was mine."
"It certainly wasn't mine," said Rowcliffe.
He saw it all. That was why the Vicar was so affable. That was why he was so serene.
And he wasn't lying. His state of mind was obviously much too simple.
He was serenely certain of his facts.
* * * * *
By courteous movement of his hand the Vicar condoned Rowcliffe's rudeness, which he attributed to professional pique very natural in the circumstances.
With admirable tact he changed the subject.
"I also wished to consult you about another matter. Nothing" (he again reassured the doctor's nervousness) "to do with my family."
Rowcliffe was all attention.
"It's about—it's about that poor girl, Essy Gale."
"Essy," said Rowcliffe, "is very well and very happy."
The Vicar's sudden rigidity implied that Essy had no business to be happy.
"If she is, it isn't your friend Greatorex's fault."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Rowcliffe.
"I suppose you know he has refused to marry her?"
"I understood as much. But who asked him to?"
"I did."
"My dear sir, if you don't mind my saying so, I think you made a mistake—if you want him to marry her. You know what he is."
"I do indeed. But a certain responsibility rests with the parson of the parish."
"You can't be responsible for everything that goes on."
"Perhaps not—when the place is packed with nonconformists. Greatorex comes of bad dissenting stock. I can't hope to have any influence with him."
He paused.
"But I'm told that you have."
"Influence? Not I. I've a sneaking regard for Greatorex. He isn't half a bad fellow if you take him the right way."
"Well, then, can't you take him? Can't you say a judicious word?"
"If it's to ask him to marry Essy, that wouldn't be very judicious, I'm afraid. He'll marry her if he wants to, and if he doesn't, he won't."
"But, my dear Dr. Rowcliffe, think of the gross injustice to that poor girl."
"It might be a worse injustice if he married her. Why should he marry her if he doesn't want to, and if she doesn't want it? There she is, perfectly content and happy with her baby. It's been a little seedy lately, but it's absolutely sound. A very fine baby indeed, and Essy knows it. There's nothing wrong with the baby."
Rowcliffe continued, regardless of the Vicar's stare: "She's better off as she is than tied to a chap who isn't a bit too sober. Especially if he doesn't care for her."
The Vicar rose and took up his usual defensive position on the hearth.
"Well, Dr. Rowcliffe, if those are your ideas of morality——?"
"They are not my ideas of morality, only my judgment of the individual case."
"Well—if that's your judgment, after all, I think that the less you meddle with it the better."
"I never meddle," said Rowcliffe.
But the Vicar did not leave him. He had caught the sound of the opening and shutting of the gate. He listened.
His manner changed again to a complete affability.
"I think that's Alice. I should like you to see her. If you—"
Rowcliffe gathered that the entrance of Alice had better coincide with his departure. He followed the Vicar as he went to open the front door.
Alice stood on the doorstep.
She was not at first aware of him where he lingered in the half-darkness at the end of the passage.
"Alice," said the Vicar, "Dr. Rowcliffe is here. You're just in time to say good-bye to him."
"It's a pity if it's good-bye," said Alice.
Her voice might have been the voice of a young woman who is sanely and innocently gay, but to Rowcliffe's ear there was a sound of exaltation in it.
He could see her now clearly in the light of the open door. The Vicar had not lied. Alice had all the appearances of health. Something had almost cured her.
But not quite. As she stood there with him in the doorway, chattering, Rowcliffe was struck again with the excitement of her voice and manner, imperfectly restrained, and with the quivering glitter of her eyes. By these signs he gathered that if Alice was happy her happiness was not complete. It was not happiness in his sense of the word. But Alice's face was unmistakably the face of hope.
Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him. He saw that Alice's eyes faced him now with the light, unseeing look of indifference, and that they turned every second toward the wall at the bottom of the garden. She was listening to something.
* * * * *
He was then aware of footsteps on the road. They came down the hill, passing close under the Vicarage wall and turning where it turned to skirt the little lane at the bottom between the garden and the churchyard. The lane led to the pastures, and the pastures to the Manor. And from the Manor grounds a field track trailed to a small wicket gate on the north side of the churchyard wall. A flagged path went from the wicket to the door of the north transept. It was a short cut for the lord of the Manor to his seat in the chancel, but it was not the nearest way for anybody approaching the church from the high road.
Now, the slope of the Vicarage garden followed the slope of the road in such wise that a person entering the churchyard from the high road could be seen from the windows of the Vicarage. If that person desired to remain unseen his only chance was to go round by the lane to the wicket gate, keeping close under the garden wall.
Rowcliffe heard the wicket gate click softly as it was softly opened and shut.
And he could have sworn that Alice heard it too.
* * * * *
He waited twenty minutes or so in his surgery. Then, instead of sending at once to the Red Lion for his trap, he walked back to the church.
Standing in the churchyard, he could hear the sound of the organ and of a man's voice singing.
He opened the big west door softly and went softly in.
XLII
There is no rood-screen in Garth church. The one aisle down the middle of the nave goes straight from the west door to the chancel-rails.
Standing by the west door, behind the font, Rowcliffe had an uninterrupted view of the chancel.
The organ was behind the choir stalls on the north side. Alice was seated at the organ. Jim Greatorex stood behind her and so that his face was turned slantwise toward Rowcliffe. Alice's face was in pure profile. Her head was tilted slightly backward, as if the music lifted it.
Rowcliffe moved softly to the sexton's bench in the left hand corner.
Sitting there he could see her better and ran less risk of being seen.
The dull stained glass of the east window dimmed the light at that end of the church. The organ candles were lit. Their jointed brackets, brought forward on each side, threw light on the music book and the keys, also on the faces of Alice and Greatorex. He stood so close to her as almost to touch her. She had taken off her hat and her hair showed gold against the drab of his waist-coat.
On both faces there was a look of ecstasy.
It was essentially the same ecstasy; only, on Alice's face it was more luminous, more conscious, and at the same time more abandoned, as if all subterfuge had ceased in her and she gave herself up, willing and exulting, to the unspiritual sense that flooded her.
On the man's face this look was more confused. It was also more tender and more poignant, as if in soaring Jim's rapture gave him pain. You would have said that he had not given himself to it, but that he was driven by it, and that yet, with all its sensuous trouble, there ran through it, secret and profoundly pure, some strain of spiritual longing.
And in his thick, his poignant and tender half-barytone, half-tenor,
Greatorex sang:
"'At e-ee-vening e-er the soon was set,
The sick, oh Lo-ord, arou-ound thee laay—
Oh, with what divers pains they met,
And with what joy they went a-waay—'"
But Alice stopped playing and Rowcliffe heard her say, "Don't let's have that one, Jim, I don't like it."
It might have passed—even the name—but that Rowcliffe saw Greatorex put his hand on Alice's head and stroke her hair.
Then he heard him say, "Let's 'ave mine," and he saw that his hand was on Alice's shoulders as he leaned over her to find the hymn.
"Good God!" said Rowcliffe to himself. "That explains it."
He got up softly. Now that he knew, he felt that it was horrible to spy on her.
But Greatorex had begun singing again, and the sheer beauty of the voice held Rowcliffe there to listen.
"'Lead—Kindly Light—amidst th' encircling gloo-oom,
Lead Thou me o-on.
Keep—Thou—my—feet—I do not aa-aassk too-oo see-ee-ee
Ther di-is-ta-aant scene, woon step enoo-oof for mee-eea.'"
Greatorex was singing like an angel. And as he sang it was as if two passions, two longings, the earthly and the heavenly, met and mingled in him, so that through all its emotion his face remained incongruously mystic, queerly visionary.
"'O'er moor and fen—o'er crag and torrent ti-ill——'"
The evocation was intolerable to Rowcliffe.
He turned away and Greatorex's voice went after him.
"'And—with—the—morn tho-ose angel fa-a-ce-es smile
Which I-i—a-ave looved—long since—and lo-ost awhi-ile.'"
Again Rowcliffe turned; but not before he had seen that Greatorex had his hand on Alice's shoulder a second time, and that Alice's hand had gone up and found it there.
The latch of the west door jerked under Rowcliffe's hand with a loud clashing. Alice and Greatorex looked round and saw him as he went out.
Alice got up in terror. The two stood apart on either side of the organ bench, staring into each other's faces.
Then Alice went round to the back of the organ and addressed the small organ-blower.
"Go," she said, "and tell the choir we're waiting for them. It's five minutes past time."
Johnny ran.
Alice went back to the chancel where Greatorex stood turning over the hymn books of the choir.
"Jim," she said, "that was Dr. Rowcliffe. Do you think he saw us?"
"It doesn't matter if he did," said Greatorex. "He'll not tell."
"He might tell Father."
Jim turned to her.
"And if he doos, Ally, yo' knaw what to saay."
"That's no good, Jim. I've told you so. You mustn't think of it."
"I shall think of it. I shall think of noothing else," said Greatorex.
* * * * *
The choir came in, aggrieved, and explaining that it wasn't six yet, not by the church clock.