LXV
Five minutes passed before Rowcliffe came to Gwenda in the study.
"Forgive me," he said. "I had a troublesome patient."
"Don't be afraid. You're not going to have another."
"Come, you haven't troubled me much, anyhow. This is the first time, isn't it?"
Yes, she thought, it was the first time. And it would be the last. There had not been many ways of seeing Steven, but this way had always been open to her if she had cared to take it. But it had been of all ways the most repugnant to her, and she had never taken it till now when she was driven to it.
"Mary tells me you're not feeling very fit."
He was utterly gentle, as he was with all sick and suffering things.
"I'm all right. That's not why I want to see you."
He was faintly surprised. "What is it, then? Sit down and tell me."
She sat down. They had Steven's table as a barrier between them.
"You've been thinking of leaving Rathdale, haven't you?" she said.
"I've been thinking of leaving it for the last seven years. But I haven't left it yet. I don't suppose I shall leave it now."
"Even when you've got the chance?"
"Even when I've got the chance."
"You said you wanted to go, and you do, don't you?"
"Well, yes—for some things."
"Would you think me an awful brute if I said I wanted you to go?"
He gave her a little queer, puzzled look.
"I wouldn't think you a brute whatever you wanted. Do you mind my smoking a cigarette?"
"No."
She waited.
"Steven—
"I wish I hadn't made you stay."
"You're not making me stay."
"I mean—that time. Do you remember?"
He smiled a little smile of reminiscent tenderness.
"Yes, yes. I remember."
"I didn't understand, Steven."
"Well, well. There's no need to go back on that now. It's done,
Gwenda."
"Yes. And I did it. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what it meant. I didn't think it would have been like this."
"Like what?"
Rowcliffe's smile that had been reminiscent was now vague and obscurely speculative.
"I ought to have let you go when you wanted to," she said.
Rowcliffe looked down at the table. She sat leaning sideways against it; one thin arm was stretched out on it. The hand gripped the paper weight that he had pushed away. It was this hand, so tense and yet so helpless, that he was looking at. He laid his own over it gently. Its grip slackened then. It lay lax under the sheltering hand.
"Don't worry about that, my dear," he said. "It's been all right——"
"It hasn't. It hasn't."
Rowcliffe's nerves winced before her fierce intensity. He withdrew his sheltering hand.
"Just at first," she said, "it was all right. But you see—it's broken down. You said it would."
"You mustn't keep on bothering about what I said."
"It isn't what you said. It's what is. It's this place. We're all tied up together in it, tight. We can't get away from each other. It isn't as if I could leave. I'm stuck here with Papa."
"My dear Gwenda, did I ever say you ought to leave?"
"No. You said you ought. It's the same thing."
"It isn't. And I don't say it now. What is the earthly use of going back on things? That's what makes you ill. Put it straight out of your mind. You know I can't help you if you go on like this."
"You can."
"My dear, I wish I knew how. You asked me to stay and I stayed. I can understand that."
"If I asked you to go, would you go, Steven? Would you understand that too?"
"My dear child, what good would that do you?"
"I want you to go, Steven."
"You want me to go?"
He screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to see the thing clearly.
"Yes," she said.
He shook his head. He had given it up.
"No, my dear, you don't want me to go. You only think you do. You don't know what you want."
"I shouldn't say it if I didn't."
"Wouldn't you! It's exactly what you would say. Do you suppose I don't know you?"
She had both her arms stretched before him on the table now. The hands were clasped. The little thin hands implored him. Her eyes implored him. In the tense clasp and in the gaze there was the passion of entreaty that she kept out of her voice.
But Rowcliffe did not see it. He had shifted his position, sinking a little lower into his chair, and his head was bowed before her. His eyes, somberly reflective, looked straight in front of him under their bent brows.
He seemed to be really considering whether he would go or stay.
"No," he said presently. "No, I'm not going."
But he was dubious and deliberate. It was as if he still weighed it, still watched for the turning of the scale.
The clock across the market-place struck eight. He gathered himself together. And it was then as if the strokes, falling on his ear, set free some blocked movement in his brain.
"No," he said, "I don't see how I can go, as things are. Besides—it isn't necessary."
"I see," she said.
* * * * *
She rose. She gave him a long look. A look that was still incredulous of what it saw.
His eyes refused to meet it as he rose also.
They stood so for a moment without any speech but that of eyes lifted and eyes lowered.
Still without a word, she turned from him to the door.
He sprang to open it.
* * * * *
Five minutes later he was aware that his wife had come into the room.
"Has Gwenda gone?" he said.
"Yes. Steven——" There was a small, fluttering fright in Mary's eyes.
"Is there anything the matter with her?"
"No," he said. "Nothing. Except living with your father."
LXVI
Gwenda had no feeling in her as she left Rowcliffe's house. Her heart hid in her breast. It was so mortally wounded as to be unaware that it was hurt.
But at the turn of the white road her heart stirred in its hiding-place. It stirred at the sight of Karva and with the wind that brought her the smell of the flowering thorn-trees.
It discerned in these things a power that would before long make her suffer.
She had no other sense of them.
* * * * *
She came to the drop of the road under Karva where she had seen
Rowcliffe for the first time.
She thought, "I shall never get away from it."
Far off in the bottom the village waited for her.
It had always waited for her; but she was afraid of it now, afraid of what it might have in store for her. It shared her fear as it crouched there, like a beaten thing, with its huddled houses, naked and blackened as if fire had passed over them.
And Essy Gale stood at the Vicarage gate and waited. She had her child at her side. The two were looking for Gwenda.
"I thought mebbe something had 'appened t' yo," she said.
As if she had seen what had happened to her she hurried the child in out of her sight.
Ten minutes to ten.
In the small dull room Gwenda waited for the hour of her deliverance.
She had taken up her sewing and her book.
The Vicar sat silent, waiting, he too, with his hands folded on his lap.
And, loud through the quiet house, she heard the sound of crying and Essy's voice scolding her little son, avenging on him the cruelty of life.
On Greffington Edge, under the risen moon, the white thorn-trees flowered in their glory.
THE END.
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