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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Three Sisters, by May Sinclair
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Three Sisters
+
+Author: May Sinclair
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2004  [eBook #11876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE SISTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Leah Moser, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE THREE SISTERS
+
+BY
+
+MAY SINCLAIR
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE SISTERS
+
+I
+
+
+North of east, in the bottom, where the road drops from the High Moor,
+is the village of Garth in Garthdale.
+
+It crouches there with a crook of the dale behind and before it,
+between half-shut doors of the west and south. Under the mystery and
+terror of its solitude it crouches, like a beaten thing, cowering from
+its topmost roof to the bowed back of its stone bridge.
+
+It is the last village up Garthdale; a handful of gray houses, old
+and small and humble. The high road casts them off and they turn their
+backs to it in their fear and huddle together, humbly, down by the
+beck. Their stone roofs and walls are naked and blackened by wind and
+rain as if fire had passed over them.
+
+They have the silence, the darkness and the secrecy of all ultimate
+habitations.
+
+North, where the high road begins to rise again, the Vicarage stands
+all alone. It turns its face toward the village, old and gray and
+humble as any house there, and looks on the road sideways, through the
+small shy window of its gable end. It has a strip of garden in front
+and on its farther side and a strip of orchard at the back. The garden
+slopes down to the churchyard, and a lane, leading to the pastures,
+runs between.
+
+And all these things of stone, the village, the Vicarage, the church,
+the churchyard and the gravestones of the dead are alike naked
+and black, blackened as if fire had passed over them. And in their
+grayness and their desolation they are one with each other and with
+the network of low walls that links them to the last solitary farm on
+the High Moor. And on the breast of the earth they show, one moment,
+solid as if hewn out of her heart, and another, slender and wind-blown
+as a tangle of gray thread on her green gown.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Through four of its five front windows the house gave back darkness
+to the dark. One, on the ground floor, showed a golden oblong, skirted
+with watery gray where the lamp-light thinned the solid blackness of
+the wall.
+
+The three sisters, Mary, Gwendolen and Alice, daughters of James
+Cartaret, the Vicar of Garth, were sitting there in the dining-room
+behind the yellow blind, doing nothing. In their supine, motionless
+attitudes they seemed to be waiting for something to happen, to happen
+so soon that, if there had been anything to do, it was not worth their
+while doing it.
+
+All three were alike in the small, broad faces that brooded, half
+sullen and half sad; in the wide eyes that watched vaguely; in the
+little tender noses, and in the mouths, tender and sullen, too; in the
+arch and sweep of the upper lips, the delicate fulness of the lower;
+in the way of the thick hair, parted and turned back over the brows in
+two wide and shallow waves.
+
+Mary, the eldest, sat in a low chair by the fireside. Her hands were
+clasped loosely on the black woolen socks she had ceased to darn.
+
+She was staring into the fire with her gray eyes, the thick gray eyes
+that never let you know what she was thinking. The firelight woke the
+flame in her reddish-tawny hair. The red of her lips was turned back
+and crushed against the white. Mary was shorter than her sisters, but
+she was the one that had the color. And with it she had a stillness
+that was not theirs. Mary's face brooded more deeply than their faces,
+but it was untroubled in its brooding.
+
+She had learned to darn socks for her own amusement on her eleventh
+birthday, and she was twenty-seven now.
+
+Alice, the youngest girl (she was twenty-three) lay stretched out on
+the sofa.
+
+She departed in no way from her sister's type but that her body was
+slender and small boned, that her face was lightly finished, that her
+gray eyes were clear and her lips pale against the honey-white of her
+face, and that her hair was colorless as dust except where the edge of
+the wave showed a dull gold.
+
+Alice had spent the whole evening lying on the sofa. And now she
+raised her arms and bent them, pressing the backs of her hands against
+her eyes. And now she lowered them and lifted one sleeve of her thin
+blouse, and turned up the milk-white under surface of her arm and lay
+staring at it and feeling its smooth texture with her fingers.
+
+Gwendolen, the second sister, sat leaning over the table with her
+arms flung out on it as they had tossed from her the book she had been
+reading.
+
+She was the tallest and the darkest of the three. Her face followed
+the type obscurely; and vividly and emphatically it left it. There was
+dusk in her honey-whiteness, and dark blue in the gray of her eyes.
+The bridge of her nose and the arch of her upper lip were higher,
+lifted as it were in a decided and defiant manner of their own. About
+Gwenda there was something alert and impatient. Her very supineness
+was alive. It had distinction, the savage grace of a creature utterly
+abandoned to a sane fatigue.
+
+Gwenda had gone fifteen miles over the moors that evening. She had run
+and walked and run again in the riotous energy of her youth.
+
+Now she was too tired to read.
+
+Gwenda was the first to speak.
+
+"Is it ten yet?"
+
+"No." Mary smiled, but the word shuddered in her throat like a weary
+moan.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Forty-three minutes."
+
+"Oh, Lord----" Gwenda laughed the laugh of brave nerves tortured.
+
+From her sofa beyond the table Alice sighed.
+
+At ten o'clock Essy Gale, the maid-servant, would come in from the
+kitchen and the Vicar from the inner room. And Essy would put the
+Bible and Prayer-book on the table, and the Vicar would read Prayers.
+
+That was all they were waiting for. It was all that could happen. It
+happened every night at ten o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Alice spoke next.
+
+"What day of the month is it?"
+
+"The thirtieth." Mary answered.
+
+"Then we've been here exactly five months to-day."
+
+"That's nothing," said Mary, "to the months and years we shall be
+here."
+
+"I can't think what possessed Papa to come and bury us all in this
+rotten place."
+
+"Can't you?" Mary's eyes turned from their brooding. Her voice was
+very quiet, barely perceptible the significant stress.
+
+"Oh, if you mean it's _me_ he wants to bury----. You needn't rub that
+in."
+
+"I'm not rubbing it in."
+
+"You are. You're rubbing it in every time you look like that. That's
+the beastly part of it. Supposing he does want to get back on me, why
+should he go and punish you two?"
+
+"If he thinks he's punishing me he's sold," said Gwenda.
+
+"He couldn't have stuck you in a rottener hole."
+
+Gwenda raised her head.
+
+"A hole? Why, there's no end to it. You can go for miles and miles
+without meeting anybody, unless some darling mountain sheep gets up
+and looks at you. It's--it's a divine place, Ally."
+
+"Wait till you've been another five months in it. You'll be as sick as
+I am."
+
+"I don't think so. You haven't seen the moon get up over Greffington
+Edge. If you had--if you knew what this place was like, you wouldn't
+lie there grizzling. You wouldn't talk about punishing. You'd wonder
+what you'd done to be allowed to look at it--to live in it a day. Of
+course I'm not going to let on to Papa that I'm in love with it."
+
+Mary smiled again.
+
+"It's all very well for you," she said. "As long as you've got a moor
+to walk on _you're_ all right."
+
+"Yes. I'm all right," Gwenda said.
+
+Her head had sunk again and rested in the hollow of her arms. Her
+voice, muffled in her sleeve, came soft and thick. It died for
+drowsiness.
+
+In the extreme immobility and stillness of the three the still house
+stirred and became audible to them, as if it breathed. They heard the
+delicate fall of the ashes on the hearth, and the flame of the lamp
+jerking as the oil sputtered in the burnt wick. Their nerves shook to
+the creeping, crackling sounds that came from the wainscot, infinitely
+minute. A tongue of fire shot hissing from the coal. It seemed to them
+a violent and terrifying thing. The breath of the house passed over
+them in thick smells of earth and must, as the fire's heat sucked at
+its damp.
+
+The church clock struck the half hour. Once, twice; two dolorous notes
+that beat on the still house and died.
+
+Somewhere out at the back a door opened and shut, and it was as if the
+house drew in its breath at the shock of the sound.
+
+Presently a tremor crept through Gwenda's young body as her heart
+shook it.
+
+She rose and went to the window.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+She was slow and rapt in her going like one walking in her sleep,
+moved by some impulse profounder than her sleep.
+
+She pulled up the blind. The darkness was up against the house,
+thick and close to the pane. She threw open the window, and the night
+entered palpably like slow water, black and sweet and cool.
+
+From the unseen road came the noise of wheels and of a horse that in
+trotting clanked forever one shoe against another.
+
+It was young Rowcliffe, the new doctor, driving over from Morthe to
+Upthorne on the Moor, where John Greatorex lay dying.
+
+The pale light of his lamps swept over the low garden wall.
+
+Suddenly the four hoofs screamed, grinding together in the slide of
+their halt. The doctor had jerked his horse up by the Vicarage gate.
+
+The door at the back opened and shut again, suddenly, sharply, as if
+in fear.
+
+A voice swung out like a mournful bell into the night. A dalesman's
+voice; such a voice as the lonely land fashions sometimes for its own
+delight, drawling and tender, hushed by the hills and charged with the
+infinite, mysterious sadness of their beauty.
+
+It belonged to young Greatorex and it came from the doorway of the
+Vicarage yard.
+
+"That yo, Dr. Rawcliffe? I wuss joost gawn oop t'road t' see ef yo
+wuss coomin'."
+
+"Of course I was coming."
+
+The new doctor was short and stern with young Greatorex.
+
+The two voices, the soft and the stern, spoke together for a moment,
+low, inaudible. Then young Greatorex's voice was heard again, and in
+its softness there was the furtive note of shame.
+
+"I joost looked in to Vicarage to leave woord with Paason."
+
+The noise of the wheels and hoofs began again, the iron shoes clanked
+together and struck out the rhythm that the sisters knew.
+
+And with the first beat of it, and with the sound of the two voices in
+the road, life, secret and silent, stirred in their blood and nerves.
+It quivered like a hunting thing held on the leash.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Their stillness, their immobility were now intense. And not one spoke
+a word to the other.
+
+All three of them were thinking.
+
+Mary thought, "Wednesday is his day. On Wednesday I will go into the
+village and see all my sick people. Then I shall see him. And he
+will see me. He will see that I am kind and sweet and womanly." She
+thought, "That is the sort of woman that a man wants." But she did not
+know what she was thinking.
+
+Gwenda thought, "I will go out on to the moor again. I don't care if I
+_am_ late for Prayers. He will see me when he drives back and he will
+wonder who is that wild, strong girl who walks by herself on the moor
+at night and isn't afraid. He has seen me three times, and every time
+he has looked at me as if he wondered. In five minutes I shall go."
+She thought (for she knew what she was thinking), "I shall do nothing
+of the sort. I don't care whether he sees me or not. I don't care if I
+never see him again. I don't care."
+
+Alice thought, "I will make myself ill. So ill that they'll _have_ to
+send for him. I shall see him that way."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Alice sat up. She was thinking another thought.
+
+"If Mr. Greatorex is dead, Dr. Rowcliffe won't stay long at Upthorne.
+He will come back soon. And he will have to call and leave word. He
+will come in and I shall see him."
+
+But if Mr. Greatorex wasn't dead? If Mr. Greatorex were a long time
+over his dying? Then he might be kept at Upthorne, perhaps till
+midnight, perhaps till morning. Then, even if he called to leave
+word, she would not see him. When she looked deep she found herself
+wondering how long Mr. Greatorex would be over his dying. If she had
+looked a little deeper she would have found herself hoping that Mr.
+Greatorex was already dead.
+
+If Mr. Greatorex was dead before he got to Upthorne he would come very
+soon, perhaps before prayer-time.
+
+And he would be shown into the drawing-room.
+
+Would he? Would Essy have the sense? No. Not unless the lamp was lit
+there. Essy wouldn't show him into a dark room. And Essy was stupid.
+She might have _no_ sense. She might take him straight into the study
+and Papa would keep him there. Trust Papa.
+
+Alice got up from her sofa and left the room; moving with her weary
+grace and a little air of boredom and of unconcern. She was always
+most unconcerned when she was most intent.
+
+Outside in the passage she stood a moment, listening. All the ways
+of the house gave upon the passage in a space so narrow that by
+stretching out one arm she could have touched both walls.
+
+With a door open anywhere the passage became a gully for the north
+wind. Now, with all doors shut, it was as if the breath of the house
+was being squeezed out there, between closing walls. The passage,
+instead of dividing the house, drew it together tight. And this
+tightness was intolerable to Alice.
+
+She hated it. She hated the whole house. It was so built that there
+wasn't a corner in it where you could get away from Papa. His study
+had one door opening into the passage and one into the dining-room.
+The window where he sat raked the garden on the far side. The window
+of his bedroom raked the front; its door commanded the stairhead. He
+was aware of everything you did, of everything you didn't do. He could
+hear you in the dining-room; he could hear you overhead; he could hear
+you going up and downstairs. He could positively hear you breathe, and
+he always knew whether you were in bed or not. She drew in her breath
+lest he should hear it now.
+
+At the far end of the passage, on the wall-space between the staircase
+and the kitchen door, raised on a small bracket, a small tin lamp
+showed a thrifty flame. Under it, on a mahogany table-flap, was a row
+of bedroom candlesticks with their match-boxes.
+
+Her progress to the table-flap was stealthy. She exalted this business
+of lighting the drawing-room lamp to a desperate, perilous adventure.
+The stone floor deadened her footsteps as she went.
+
+Her pale eyes, half sullen, half afraid, slewed round to the door of
+the study on her right. With a noiseless hand she secured her matches
+and her candle. With noiseless feet she slid into the darkness of the
+drawing-room. She dared not light her candle out there in the passage.
+For the Vicar was full of gloom and of suspicion in the half hour
+before prayer-time, and at the spurt of the match he might come out
+blustering and insist on knowing what she was doing and where she was
+going, whereas presently he would know, and he might be quiet as long
+as he was satisfied that she wasn't shirking Prayers.
+
+Stealthily, with her air of desperate adventure, she lit the
+drawing-room lamp. She shook out the puffs and frills of its yellow
+paper shade. Under its gaudy skirts the light was cruel to the cramped
+and shabby room, to the huddled furniture, to the tarnished gilt, the
+perishing tones of gray and amber.
+
+Alice set the lamp on the top of the cottage piano that stood
+slantwise in a side window beyond the fireplace. She had pulled back
+the muslin curtains and opened both windows wide so that the room was
+now bared to the south and west. Then, with the abrupt and passionate
+gesture of desire deferred, she sat down at the little worn-out Erard
+and began to play.
+
+Sitting there, with the open window behind her, she could be seen, and
+she knew that she could be seen from over the wall by anybody driving
+past in a high dog-cart.
+
+And she played. She played the Chopin Grande Polonaise, or as much of
+it as her fingers, tempestuous and inexpert, could clutch and reach.
+She played, neither with her hands nor with her brain, but with her
+temperament, febrile and frustrate, seeking its outlet in exultant
+and violent sound. She fell upon the Erard like some fierce and hungry
+thing, tearing from the forlorn, humble instrument a strange and
+savage food. She played--with incredible omissions, discords and
+distortions, but she played. She flung out her music through the
+windows into the night as a signal and an appeal. She played (on the
+little worn-out Erard) in ecstasy and expectation, as if something
+momentous hung upon her playing. There was joy and triumph and
+splendor in the Grande Polonaise; she felt them in her heart and
+nerves as a delicate, dangerous tremor, the almost intolerable on
+coming of splendor, of triumph and of joy.
+
+And as she played the excitement gathered; it swung in more and more
+vehement vibrations; it went warm and flooding through her brain
+like wine. All the life of her bloodless body swam there, poised and
+thinned, but urgent, aspiring to some great climax of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The whole house was full of the Chopin Grande Polonaise.
+
+It raged there like a demon. Tortured out of all knowledge, the Grande
+Polonaise screamed and writhed in its agony. It writhed through the
+windows, seeking its natural attenuation in the open air. It writhed
+through the shut house and was beaten back, pitilessly, by the roof
+and walls. To let it loose thus was Alice's defiance of the house and
+her revenge.
+
+Mary and Gwenda heard it in the dining-room, and set their mouths
+and braced themselves to bear it. The Vicar in his study behind the
+dining-room heard it and scowled. Essy, the maid-servant, heard it,
+she heard it worse than anybody, in her kitchen on the other side of
+the wall. Now and then, when the Polonaise screamed louder, Mary drew
+a hissing breath of pain through her locked teeth, and Gwenda grinned.
+Not that to Gwenda there was anything funny in the writhing and
+screaming of the Grande Polonaise. It was that she alone appreciated
+its vindictive quality; she admired the completeness, the audacity of
+Alice's revenge.
+
+But Essy in her kitchen made no effort to stand up to the Grande
+Polonaise. When it began she sat down and laid her arms on the kitchen
+table, and her head, muffled in her apron, on her arms, and cried. She
+couldn't have told you what the Polonaise was like or what it did to
+her; all that she could have said was that it went through and
+through her. She didn't know, Essy didn't, what had come over her; for
+whatever noise Miss Alice made, she hadn't taken any notice, not at
+first. It was in the last three weeks that the Polonaise had found her
+out and had begun to go through and through her, till it was more than
+she could bear. But Essy, crying into her apron, wouldn't have lifted
+a finger to stop Miss Alice.
+
+"Poor laass," Essy said to herself, "she looves to plaay. And Vicar,
+he'll not hold out mooch longer. He'll put foot down fore she gets
+trow."
+
+Through the screaming of the Polonaise Essy listened for the opening
+of the study door.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The study door did not open all at once.
+
+"Wisdom and patience, wisdom and patience----" The Vicar kept on
+muttering as he scowled. Those were his watchwords in his dealings
+with his womenkind.
+
+The Vicar was making a prodigious effort to maintain what seemed
+to him his god-like serenity. He was unaware that he was trying to
+control at one and the same time his temper and his temperament.
+
+He was a man of middle height and squarish build, dark, pale-skinned
+and blue-eyed like his daughter Gwendolen. The Vicar's body stretched
+tight the seams of his black coat and kept up, at fifty-seven, a false
+show of muscular energy. The Vicar's face had a subtle quality of
+deception. The austere nose, the lean cheek-bones, the square-cut
+moustache and close-clipped, pointed beard (black, slightly grizzled)
+made it appear, at a little distance, the face of an ascetic. It
+approached, and the blue of the eyes, and the black of their dilated
+pupils, the stare of the nostrils and the half hidden lines of the red
+mouth revealed its profound and secret sensuality.
+
+The interior that contained him was no less deceptive. Its book-lined
+walls advertised him as the scholarly recluse that he was not. He had
+had an eye to this effect. He had placed in prominent positions
+the books that he had inherited from his father, who had been a
+schoolmaster. You were caught at the very door by the thick red line
+of The Tudor Classics; by the eleven volumes of The Bekker's Plato,
+with Notes, bound in Russia leather, side by side with Jowett's
+Translations in cloth; by Sophocles and Dean Plumptre, the Odyssey
+and Butcher and Lang; by Ęschylus and Robert Browning. The Vicar had
+carried the illusion of scholarship so far as to hide his Aristophanes
+behind a little curtain, as if it contained for him an iniquitous
+temptation. Of his own accord and with a deliberate intention to
+deceive, he had added the Early Fathers, Tillotsen's _Sermons_ and
+Farrar's _Life of Christ_.
+
+On another shelf, rather less conspicuous, were some bound volumes
+of _The Record_, with the novels of Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Marie
+Corelli. On the ledge of his bureau _Blackwood's Magazine_, uncut, lay
+ready to his hand. The _Spectator_, in process of skimming, was on his
+knees. The _Standard_, fairly gutted, was on the floor. There was no
+room for it anywhere else.
+
+For the Vicar's study was much too small for him. Sitting there, in
+an arm-chair and with his legs in the fender, he looked as if he had
+taken flight before the awful invasion of his furniture. His bookcases
+hemmed him in on three sides. His roll-top desk, advancing on him
+from the window, had driven and squeezed him into the arm-chair. His
+bureau, armed to the teeth, leaning from its ambush in the recess of
+the fireplace, threatened both the retreat and the left flank movement
+of the chair. The Vicar was neither tall nor powerful, but his study
+made him look like a giant imprisoned in a cell.
+
+The room was full of the smell of tobacco, of a smoldering coal fire,
+of old warm leather and damp walls, and of the heavy, virile odor of
+the Vicar.
+
+A brown felt carpet and thick serge curtains shut out the draft of the
+northeast window.
+
+On a September evening the Vicar was snug enough in his cell; and
+before the Grande Polonaise had burst in upon him he had been at peace
+with God and man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when he heard those first exultant, challenging bars he scowled
+inimically.
+
+Not that he acknowledged them as a challenge. He was inclined rather
+to the manly course of ignoring the Grande Polonaise altogether. And
+not for a moment would he have admitted that there had been anything
+in his behavior that could be challenged or defied, least of all by
+his daughter Alice. To himself in his study Mr. Cartaret appeared
+as the image of righteousness established in an impregnable place.
+Whereas his daughter Alice was not at all in a position to challenge
+and defy.
+
+She had made a fool of herself.
+
+She knew it; he knew it; everybody knew it in the parish they had left
+five months ago. It had been the talk of the little southern seaside
+town. He thanked God that nobody knew it, or was ever likely to know
+it, here.
+
+For Alice's folly was not any ordinary folly. It was the kind that
+made the parish which was so aware of it uninhabitable to a sensitive
+vicar.
+
+He reflected that she would be clever if she made a fool of herself
+here. By his decisive action in removing her from that southern
+seaside town he had saved her from continuing her work. In order to do
+it he had ruined his prospects. He had thrown up a good living for a
+poor one; a living that might (but for Alice it certainly would) have
+led to preferment for a living that could lead to nothing at all; a
+living where he could make himself felt for a living where there was
+nobody to feel him.
+
+And, having done it, he was profoundly sorry for himself.
+
+So far as Mr. Cartaret could see there had been nothing else to do. If
+it had all to be done over again, he told himself that he would do it.
+
+But there Mr. Cartaret was wrong. He couldn't have done it or anything
+like it twice. It was one of those deeds, supremeful sacrificial,
+that strain a man's moral energies to breaking point and render him
+incapable of further sacrifice; if, indeed, it did not render further
+sacrifice superfluous. Mr. Cartaret honestly felt that even an
+exacting deity could require no more of him.
+
+And it wasn't the first time either, nor his daughter Alice the first
+woman who had come between the Vicar and his prospects. Looking back
+he saw himself driven from pillar to post, from parish to parish, by
+the folly or incompetence of his womankind.
+
+Strictly speaking, it was his first wife, Mary Gwendolen, the one
+the children called Mother, who had begun it. She had made his first
+parish unendurable to him by dying in it. This she had done when Alice
+was born, thereby making Alice unendurable to him, too. Poor Mamie! He
+always thought of her as having, inscrutably, failed him.
+
+All three of them had failed him.
+
+His second wife, Frances, the one the children called Mamma (the
+Vicar had made himself believe that he had married her solely on their
+account), had turned into a nervous invalid on his hands before she
+died of that obscure internal trouble which he had so wisely and
+patiently ignored.
+
+His third wife, Robina (the one they called Mummy), had run away from
+him in the fifth year of their marriage. When she implored him to
+divorce her he said that, whatever her conduct had been, that course
+was impossible to him as a churchman, as she well knew; but that he
+forgave her. He had made himself believe it.
+
+And all the time he was aware, without admitting it, that, if the
+thing came into court, Robina's evidence might be a little damaging
+to the appearances of wisdom and patience, of austerity and dignity,
+which he had preserved so well. He had had an unacknowledged vision of
+Robina standing in the witness box, very small and shy, with her eyes
+fluttering while she explained to the gentlemen of the jury that she
+ran away from her husband because she was afraid of him. He could hear
+the question, "Why were you afraid?" and Robina's answer--but at that
+point he always reminded himself that it was as a churchman that he
+objected to divorce.
+
+For his profession had committed him to a pose. He had posed for more
+than thirty years to his parish, to his three wives, to his three
+children, and to himself, till he had become unconscious of his real
+thoughts, his real motives, his real likings and dislikings. So that
+when he told himself that it would have been better if his third wife
+had died, he thought he meant that it would have been better for her
+and for his opinion of her, whereas what he really did mean was that
+it would have been better for himself.
+
+For if Robina had died he could have married again. As it was, her
+infidelity condemned him to a celibacy for which, as she knew, he was
+utterly unsuited.
+
+Therefore he thought of her as a cruel and unscrupulous woman. And
+when he thought of her he became more sorry for himself than ever.
+
+Now, oddly enough, the Grande Polonaise had set Mr. Cartaret thinking
+of Robina. It was not that Robina had ever played it. Robina did not
+play. It was not the discords introduced into it by Alice, though
+Robina had been a thing of discords. It was that something in him,
+obscurely but intimately associated with Robina, responded to that
+sensual and infernal tremor that Alice was wringing out of the
+Polonaise. So that, without clearly knowing why it was abominable,
+Mr. Cartaret said to himself that the tune Alice was playing was an
+abominable tune and must be stopped at once.
+
+He went into the drawing-room to stop it.
+
+And Essy, in the kitchen, raised her head and dried her eyes on her
+apron.
+
+"If you must make a noise," said Mr. Cartaret, "be good enough to make
+one that is less--disturbing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood in the doorway staring at his daughter Alice.
+
+Her excitement had missed by a hairsbreadth the spiritual climax. It
+had held itself in for one unspeakable moment, then surged, crowding
+the courses of her nerves. Beaten back by the frenzy of the Polonaise,
+it made a violent return; it rose, quivering, at her eyelids and her
+mouth; it broke, and, with a shudder of all her body, split itself and
+fell.
+
+The Vicar stared. He opened his mouth to say something, and said
+nothing; finally he went out, muttering.
+
+"Wisdom and patience. Wisdom and patience."
+
+It was a prayer.
+
+Alice trailed to the window and leaned out, listening for the sound of
+hoofs and wheels. Nothing there but the darkness and stillness of the
+moors. She trailed back to the Erard and began to play again.
+
+This time it was Beethoven, the Pathetic Sonata.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Mr. Cartaret sat in his study, manfully enduring the Pathetic Sonata.
+
+He was no musician and he did not certainly know when Alice went
+wrong; therefore, except that it had some nasty loud moments, he could
+not honestly say that the First Movement was disturbing. Besides, he
+had scored. He had made Alice change her tune.
+
+Wisdom and patience required that he should be satisfied, so far. And,
+being satisfied, in the sense that he no longer had a grievance, meant
+that he was very badly bored.
+
+He began to fidget. He took his legs out of the fender and put them
+back again. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, but
+without relief. He turned over his _Spectator_ to see what it had to
+say about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, and found that he was not
+interested in what it had to say. He looked at his watch and
+compared it with the clock in the faint hope that the clock might be
+behindhand.
+
+The watch and clock both agreed that it was not a minute later than
+fifteen minutes to ten. A whole quarter of an hour before Prayer-time.
+
+There was nothing but Prayer-time to look forward to.
+
+He began to fidget again. He filled his pipe and thought better about
+smoking it. Then he rang the bell for his glass of water.
+
+After more delay than was at all necessary Essy appeared, bringing the
+glass of water on a plate.
+
+She came in, soft-footed, almost furtive, she who used to enter so
+suddenly and unabashed. She put the plate down on the roll-top desk
+and turned softly, furtively, away.
+
+The Vicar looked up. His eyes were large and blue as suspicion drew in
+the black of their pupils.
+
+"Put it down here," he said, and he indicated the ledge of the bureau.
+
+Essy stood still and stared like a half-wild creature in doubt as to
+its way. She decided to make for the bureau by rounding the roll-top
+desk on the far side, thus approaching her master from behind.
+
+"What are you doing?" said the Vicar. "I said, Put it down here."
+
+Essy turned again and came forward, tilting the plate a little in her
+nervousness. The large blue eyes, the stern voice, fascinated her,
+frightened her.
+
+The Vicar looked at her steadily, remorselessly, as she came.
+
+Essy's lowered eyelids had kept the stain of her tears. Her thick
+brown hair was loose and rumpled under her white cap. But she had put
+on a clean, starched apron. It stood out stiffly, billowing, from
+her waist. Essy had not always been so careless about her hair or so
+fastidious as to her aprons. There was a little strained droop at the
+corners of her tender mouth, as if they had been tied with string. Her
+dark eyes still kept their young largeness and their light, but they
+looked as if they had been drawn tight with string at their corners
+too.
+
+All these signs the Vicar noted as he stared. And he hated Essy. He
+hated her for what he saw in her, and for her buxom comeliness, and
+for the softness of her youth.
+
+"Did I hear young Greatorex round at the back door this evening?" he
+said.
+
+Essy started, slanting her plate a little more.
+
+"I doan knaw ef I knaw, sir."
+
+"Either you know or you don't know," said the Vicar.
+
+"I doan know, I'm sure, sir," said Essy.
+
+The Vicar was holding out his hand for his glass of water, and Essy
+pushed the plate toward him, so blindly and at such a perilous slant
+that the glass slid and toppled over and broke itself against the
+Vicar's chair.
+
+Essy gave a little frightened cry.
+
+"Clever girl. She did that on purpose," said the Vicar to himself.
+
+Essy was on her knees beside him, picking up the bits of glass and
+gathering them in her apron. She was murmuring, "I'll mop it oop. I'll
+mop it oop."
+
+"That'll do," he said roughly. "That'll do, I tell you. You can go."
+
+Essy tried to go. But it was as if her knees had weights on them
+that fixed her to the floor. Holding up her apron with one hand, she
+clutched the arm of her master's chair with the other and dragged
+herself to her feet.
+
+"I'll mop it oop," she repeated, shamefast.
+
+"I told you to go," said the Vicar.
+
+"I'll fetch yo anoother glass?" she whispered. Her voice was hoarse
+with the spasm in her throat.
+
+"No," said the Vicar.
+
+Essy slunk back into her kitchen with terror in her heart.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+_"Attacca subito l'Allegro."_
+
+Alice had fallen on it suddenly.
+
+"I suppose," said Mary, "it's a relief to her to make that row."
+
+"It isn't," said Gwenda. "It's torture. That's how she works herself
+up. She's playing on her own nerves all the time. If she really
+_could_ play----If she cared about the music----If she cared about
+anything on earth except----"
+
+She paused.
+
+"Molly, it must be awful to be made like that."
+
+"Nothing could be worse for her than being shut up here."
+
+"I know. Papa's been a frightful fool about her. After all, Molly,
+what did she do?"
+
+"She did what you and I wouldn't have done."
+
+"How do you know what you wouldn't have done? How do I know? If we'd
+been in her place----"
+
+"If _I'd_ been in her place I'd have died rather."
+
+"How do you know Ally wouldn't have rather died if she could have
+chosen? She didn't want to fall in love with that young ass, Rickards.
+And I don't see what she did that was so very awful."
+
+"She managed to let everybody else see, anyhow."
+
+"What if she did? At least she was honest. She went straight for what
+she wanted. She didn't sneak and scheme to get him from any other
+girl. And she hadn't a mother to sneak and scheme _for_ her. That's
+fifty times worse, yet it's done every day and nobody thinks anything
+of it."
+
+She went on. "Nobody would have thought anything as it was, if Papa
+hadn't been such a frantic fool about it. It he'd had the pluck to
+stand by her, if he'd kept his head and laughed in their silly faces,
+instead of grizzling and growling and stampeding out of the parish as
+if poor Ally had disgraced him."
+
+"Well--it isn't a very pleasant thing for the Vicar of the parish----"
+
+"It wasn't a very pleasant thing for any of us. But it was beastly of
+him to go back on her like that. And the silliness of it! Caring so
+frightfully about what people think, and then going on so as to make
+them think it."
+
+"Think what?"
+
+"That she really _had_ done something."
+
+"Do you suppose they did?"
+
+"Yes. You can't blame them. He couldn't have piled it on more if she
+_had_. It's enough to make her."
+
+"Oh Gwenda!"
+
+"It would be his own fault. Just as it's his own fault that he hates
+her."
+
+"He doesn't hate her. He's fond of all of us, in his way."
+
+"Wot of Ally. Don't you know why? He can't look at her without
+thinking of how awful _he_ is."
+
+"And if he _is_--a little----You forget what he's had to go through."
+
+"You mean Mummy running away from him?"
+
+"Yes. And Mamma's dying. And before that--there was Mother."
+
+Gwenda raised her head.
+
+"He killed Mother."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He did. He was told that Mother would die or go mad if she had
+another baby. And he let her have Ally. No wonder Mummy ran away from
+him."
+
+"Who told you that story?"
+
+"Mummy."
+
+"It was horrid of her."
+
+"Everything poor Mummy did was horrid. It was horrid of her to run
+away from him, I suppose."
+
+"Why did you tell me that? I didn't know it. I'd rather not have
+known."
+
+"Well, now you do know, perhaps you'll be sorrier for Ally."
+
+"I am sorry for Ally. But I'm sorry for Papa, too. You're not."
+
+"I'd be sorry for him right enough if he wasn't so sorry for himself."
+
+"Gwenda, _you're_ awful."
+
+"Because I won't waste my pity? Ally's got nothing--He's got
+everything."
+
+"Not what he cares most for."
+
+"He cares most for what people think of him. Everybody thought him a
+good kind husband. Everybody thinks him a good kind father."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The music suddenly ceased. A sound of voices came instead of it.
+
+"There," said Gwenda. "He's gone in and stopped her."
+
+He had, that time.
+
+And in the sudden ceasing of the Pathetic Sonata the three sisters
+heard the sound of wheels and the clank of horseshoes striking
+together.
+
+Mr. Greatorex was not yet dead of his pneumonia. The doctor had passed
+the Vicarage gate.
+
+And as he passed he had said to himself. "How execrably she plays."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three sisters waited without a word for the striking of the church
+clock.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The church clock struck ten.
+
+At the sound of the study bell Essy came into the dining-room. Essy
+was the acolyte of Family Prayers. Though a Wesleyan she could not
+shirk the appointed ceremonial. It was Essy who took the Bible and
+Prayerbook from their place on the sideboard under the tea-urn and put
+them on the table, opening them where the Vicar had left a marker the
+night before. It was Essy who drew back the Vicar's chair from the
+table and set it ready for him. It was Essy whom he relied on for
+responses that _were_ responses and not mere mumblings and mutterings.
+She was Wesleyan, the one faithful, the one devout person in his
+household.
+
+To-night there was nothing but a mumbling and a muttering. And that
+was Mary. She was the only one who was joining in the Lord's Prayer.
+
+Essy had failed him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Prayers over, there was nothing to sit up for. All the same, it was
+Mr. Cartaret's rule to go back into the study and to bore himself
+again for a whole hour till it was bed-time. He liked to be sure that
+the doors were all bolted and that everybody else was in bed before he
+went himself.
+
+But to-night he had bored himself so badly that the thought of his
+study was distasteful to him. So he stayed where he was with his
+family. He believed that he was doing this solely on his family's
+account. He told himself that it was not right that he should leave
+the three girls too much to themselves. It did not occur to him that
+as long as he had had a wife to sit with, he hadn't cared how much
+he had left them. He knew that he had rather liked Mary and Gwendolen
+when they were little, and though he had found himself liking them
+less and less as they grew into their teens he had never troubled to
+enquire whose fault that was, so certain was he that it couldn't be
+his. Still less was it his fault if they were savage and inaccessible
+in their twenties. Of course he didn't mean that Mary was savage and
+inaccessible. It was Gwendolen that he meant.
+
+So, since he couldn't sit there much longer without saying something,
+he presently addressed himself to Mary.
+
+"Any news of Greatorex today?"
+
+"I haven't heard. Shall I ask Essy?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Cartaret, so abruptly that Mary looked at him.
+
+"He was worse yesterday," said Gwenda.
+
+They all looked at Gwenda.
+
+"Who told you that?" said Mr. Cartaret by way of saying something.
+
+"Mrs. Gale."
+
+"When did she tell you?"
+
+"Yesterday, when I was up at the farm."
+
+"What were you doing at the farm?"
+
+"Nothing. I went to see if I could do anything." She said to herself,
+"Why does he go on at us like this?" Aloud she said, "It was time some
+of us went."
+
+She had him there. She was always having him.
+
+"I shall have to go myself tomorrow," he said.
+
+"I would if I were you," said Gwenda.
+
+"I wonder what Jim Greatorex will do if his father dies."
+
+It was Mary who wondered.
+
+"He'll get married, like a shot," said Alice.
+
+"Who to?" said Gwenda. "He can't marry _all_ the girls----"
+
+She stopped herself. Essy Gale was in the room. Three months ago
+Essy had been a servant at the Farm where her mother worked once a
+fortnight.
+
+She had come in so quietly that none of them had noticed her. She
+brought a tray with a fresh glass of water for the Vicar and a glass
+of milk for Alice. She put it down quietly and slipped out of the room
+without her customary "Anything more, Miss?" and "Good-night."
+
+"What's the matter with Essy?" Gwenda said.
+
+Nobody spoke but Alice who was saying that she didn't want her milk.
+
+More than a year ago Alice had been ordered milk for her anęmia. She
+had milk at eleven, milk at her midday dinner, milk for supper, and
+milk last thing at night. She did not like milk, but she liked being
+ordered it. Generally she would sit and drink it, in the face of
+her family, pathetically, with little struggling gulps. She took a
+half-voluptuous, half-vindictive pleasure in her anęmia. She knew that
+it made her sisters sorry for her, and that it annoyed her father.
+
+Now she declared that she wasn't feeling well, and that she didn't
+want her milk.
+
+"In that case," said Mr. Cartaret, "you had better go to bed."
+
+Alice went, raising her white arms and rubbing her eyes along the
+backs of her hands, like a child dropping with sleep.
+
+One after another, they rose and followed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the half-landing five steep steps in a recess of the wall led aside
+to the door of Essy's bedroom. There Gwenda stopped and listened.
+
+A sound of stifled crying came from the room. Gwenda went up to the
+door and knocked.
+
+"Essy, are you in bed?"
+
+A pause. "Yes, miss."
+
+"What is it? Are you ill?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Is there anything wrong?"
+
+A longer pause. "I've got th' faace-ache."
+
+"Oh, poor thing! Can I do anything for you?"
+
+"Naw, Miss Gwenda, thank yo."
+
+"Well, call me if I can."
+
+But somehow she knew that Essy wouldn't call.
+
+She went on, passing her father's door at the stair head. It was shut.
+She could hear him moving heavily within the room. On the other side
+of the landing was the room over the study that she shared with Alice.
+
+The door stood wide. Alice in her thin nightgown could be seen sitting
+by the open window.
+
+The nightgown, the small, slender body showing through, the hair,
+platted for the night, in two pig-tails that hung forward, one over
+each small breast, the tired face between the parted hair made Alice
+look childlike and pathetic.
+
+Gwendolen had a pang of compassion.
+
+"Dear lamb," she said. "_That_ isn't any good. Fresh air won't do it.
+You'd much better wait till Papa gets a cold. Then you can catch it."
+
+"It'll be his fault anyway," said Alice. "Serve him jolly well right
+if I get pneumonia."
+
+"Pneumonia doesn't come to those who want it. I wonder what's wrong
+with Essy."
+
+Alice was tired and sullen. "You'd better ask Jim Greatorex," she
+said.
+
+"What do you mean, Ally?"
+
+But Ally had set her small face hard.
+
+"Can't you he sorry for her?" said Gwenda.
+
+"Why should I be sorry for her? _She's_ all right."
+
+She had sorrow enough, but none to waste on Essy. Essy's way was easy.
+Essy had only to slink out to the back door and she could have her
+will. _She_ didn't have to get pneumonia.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+John Greatorex did not die that night. He had no mind to die: he was a
+man of stubborn pugnacity and he fought his pneumonia.
+
+The long gray house at Upthorne looks over the marshes of the high
+land above Garth. It stands alone, cut off by the marshes from the
+network of gray walls that links the village to the hill farms.
+
+The light in its upper window burned till dawn, a sign to the brooding
+and solitary land. Up there, in the low room with its sunken ceiling,
+John Greatorex lay in the big bed and rallied a little as the clean
+air from the moors lapped him like water. For the doctor had thrown
+open all the windows of the house before he left. Presently Mrs. Gale,
+the untrained village nurse, would come and shut them in terror, and
+John Greatorex's pneumonia would get the upper hand. That was how the
+fight went on, with Steven Rowcliffe on John Greatorex's side and Mrs.
+Gale for the pneumonia. It was ten to one against John Greatorex and
+the doctor, for John Greatorex was most of the time unconscious and
+the doctor called but once or twice a day, while Mrs. Gale was always
+there to shut the windows as fast as he opened them. In the length and
+breadth of the Dale there wasn't another woman who would not have done
+the same. She was secure from criticism. If she didn't know how to
+nurse pneumonia, who did? Seeing that her own husband had died of it.
+
+Young Rowcliffe was a dalesman and he knew his people. In six months
+his face had grown stiff in the struggle with them. It was making his
+voice stern and his eyes hard, so that they could see nothing round
+him but stupidity and distrust and an obstinacy even greater than his
+own.
+
+Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for it. In his
+big provincial hospital he had had it practically his own way. He had
+faced a thousand horrible and intractable diseases with a thousand
+appliances and with an army of assistants and trained nurses under
+him. And if in his five years' private practice in Leeds he had come
+to grips with human nature, it had been at any rate a fair fight. If
+his work was harder his responsibility was less. He still had trained
+nurses under him; and if a case was beyond him there were specialists
+with whom he could consult.
+
+Here he was single-handed. He was physician and surgeon and specialist
+and nurse in one. He had few appliances and no assistant beside naked
+and primeval nature, the vast high spaces, the clean waters and clean
+air of the moors.
+
+Yet it was precisely these things that his romantic youth had cried
+for--that solitary combat and communion, that holy and solitary aid.
+
+At thirty Rowcliffe was still in his romantic youth.
+
+He had all its appearances about him. A life of continual labor
+and discomfort had kept his body slender; and all the edges of
+his face--clean-shaven except for its little dark moustache--were
+incomparably firm and clear. His skin was bronzed and reddened by sun
+and wind. The fine hard mouth under the little dark moustache was not
+so hard that it could not, sometimes, be tender. His irreproachable
+nose escaped the too high curve that would have made it arrogant. And
+his eyes, keen and hard in movement, by simply keeping quiet under
+lowered brows, became charged with a curious and engaging pathos.
+
+Their pathos had appealed to the little red-haired, pink-skinned,
+green-eyed nurse who had worked under him in Leeds. She was clever and
+kind--much too kind, it was supposed--to Rowcliffe. There had been one
+or two others before the little red-haired nurse, so that, though he
+was growing hard, he had not grown bitter.
+
+He was not in the least afraid of growing bitter; for he knew that his
+eyes, as long as he could keep them quiet, would preserve him from all
+necessity for bitterness.
+
+Rowcliffe had always trusted a great deal to his eyes. Because of them
+he had left several young ladies, his patients, quite heart-broken in
+Leeds. The young ladies knew nothing about the little red-haired nurse
+and had never ceased to wonder why Dr. Rowcliffe did not want to marry
+them.
+
+And Steven Rowcliffe's eyes, so disastrous to the young ladies in
+Leeds, saw nobody in Morfe whom he could possibly want to marry. The
+village of Morfe is built in a square round its green. The doctor's
+house stands on a plot of rising ground on the north side of the
+square, and from its front windows young Rowcliffe could see the
+inhabitants of Morfe coming and going before him as on a stage, and he
+kept count of them all. There were the three middle-aged maiden ladies
+in the long house on the west side of whom all he knew was that they
+ate far too many pikelets and griddle cakes for tea. There were the
+two old ladies in the white house next door who were always worrying
+him to sound their chests, one for her lungs and the other for her
+arteries. In spite of lungs and arteries they were very gay old
+ladies. The tubes of Rowcliffe's queer, new-fangled stethescope,
+appearing out of his coat pocket, sent them into ecstacies of mirth.
+They always made the same little joke about it; they called the
+stethescope his telephone. But of course he didn't want to marry them.
+There was the very old lady on the east side, who had had one stroke
+and was expecting another every day. There were the two unmarried
+daughters of a retired manufacturer on the far side of the Green. They
+were plump and had red cheeks, if he had cared for plumpness and
+red cheeks; but they had no conversation. The only pretty girl whose
+prettiness appealed to Rowcliffe had an "adenoid" mouth which he held
+to be a drawback. There was the daughter of his predecessor, but she
+again was well over forty, rigid and melancholy and dry.
+
+All these people became visibly excited when they saw young Rowcliffe
+starting off in his trap and returning; but young Rowcliffe was never
+excited, never even interested when he saw them. There was nothing
+about them that appealed to his romantic youth.
+
+As for Morfe Manor, and Garth Manor and Greffington Hall, they were
+nearly always empty, so that he had not very much chance of improving
+his acquaintance there.
+
+And he had nothing to hope for from the summer visitors, girls with
+queer clothes and queer manners and queer accents; bouncing, convivial
+girls who spread themselves four abreast on the high roads; fat, lazy
+girls who sat about on the Green; blowsed, slouching girls who tramped
+the dales with knapsacks and no hats. The hard eyes of young Rowcliffe
+never softened as he looked at the summer visitors. Their behavior
+irritated him. It reminded him that there were women in the world and
+that he missed, quite unbearably at moments, the little red-haired
+nurse who had been so clever and so kind. Moreover it offended his
+romantic youth. The little publicans and shop-keepers of Morfe did not
+offend it; neither did the peasants and the farmers; they were part
+of the place; generations of them had been born in those gray houses,
+built from the gaunt ribs of the hills; whereas the presence of the
+summer visitors was an outrage to the silent and solitary country that
+his instincts inscrutably adored. No wonder that he didn't care to
+look at them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But one night in September, when the moon was high in the south, as
+he was driving toward Garth on his way to Upthorne, the eyes of
+young Rowcliffe were startled out of their aversion by the sudden and
+incredible appearance of a girl.
+
+It was at the bend of the road where Karva lowers its head and sinks
+back on the moor; and she came swinging up the hill as Rowcliffe's
+horse scraped his way slowly down it. She was in white (he couldn't
+have missed her) and she carried herself like a huntress; slender
+and quick, with high, sharp-pointed breasts. She looked at him as she
+passed and her face was wide-eyed and luminous under the moon. Her
+lips were parted with her speed, so that, instinctively, his hands
+tightened on the reins as if he had thought that she was going to
+speak to him. But of course she did not speak.
+
+He looked back and saw her swing off the high road and go up Karva. A
+flock of mountain sheep started from their couches on the heather and
+looked at her, and she went driving them before her. They trailed up
+Karva slowly, in a long line, gray in the moonlight. Their mournful,
+musical voices came to him from the hill.
+
+He saw her again late--incredibly late--that night as the moon swept
+from the south toward Karva. She was a long way off, coming down from
+her hill, a white speck on the gray moor. He pulled up his horse and
+waited below the point where the track she followed struck the high
+road; he even got out of his trap and examined, deliberately, his
+horse's hoofs in turn, spinning out the time. When he heard her he
+drew himself upright and looked straight at her as she passed him. She
+flashed by like a huntress, like Artemis carrying the young moon on
+her forehead. From the turn of her head and the even falling of her
+feet he felt her unconscious of his existence. And her unconsciousness
+was hateful to him. It wiped him clean out of the universe of
+noticeable things.
+
+The apparition fairly cried to his romantic youth. And he said to
+himself. "Who is the strange girl who walks on the moor by herself at
+night and isn't afraid?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He saw her three times after that; once in the broad daylight, on the
+high road near Morfe, when she passed him with a still more perfect
+and inimical unconsciousness; once in the distance on the moor, when
+he caught her, short-skirted and wild, jumping the wide water courses
+as they came, evidently under the impression that she was unobserved.
+And he smiled and said to himself, "She's doing it for fun, pure fun."
+
+The third time he came upon her at dawn with the dew on her skirts
+and on her hair. She darted away at the clank of his horse's hoofs,
+half-savage, divinely shy. And he said to himself that time, "I'm
+getting on. She's aware of me all right."
+
+She had come down from Karva, and he was on his way to Morfe from
+Upthorne. He had sat up all night with John Greatorex who had died at
+dawn.
+
+The smell of the sick man, and of the bed and of the low close room
+was still in his nostrils, and in his ears the sounds of dying and of
+mourning, and at his heart the oppression (he was still young enough
+to feel it) of the secret and abominable things he knew. And in his
+eyes the unknown girl and her behavior became suddenly adorable.
+She was the darting joy and the poignant sweetness, and the sheer
+extravagant ardor and energy of life. His tempestuously romantic youth
+rose up and was troubled at the sight of her. And his eyes, that
+had stared at her in wonder and amusement and inquisitive interest,
+followed her now with that queer pathos that they had. It was the look
+that he relied on to move desire in women's eyes; and now it traveled,
+forlorn and ineffectual, abject almost in its futility, over the gray
+moorgrass where she went.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was on Wednesday the fourteenth. On Friday the sixteenth he saw
+her again at nightfall, in the doorway of John Greatorex's house.
+
+He had overtaken the cart that was carrying John Greatorex's coffin to
+Upthorne. Low lighted, the long gray house brooded over the marshes,
+waiting to be disencumbered of its dead.
+
+In the east the broken shoulders of the hills receded, winding with
+the dale like a coast line of gray cliffs above the mist that was
+their sea. Tortured, mutilated by the jagged cloud that held her, the
+moon struggled and tore her way, she lifted and freed herself high and
+struck the marshes white. Defaced and sinister, above her battlements,
+she looked at the house and made it terrible, moon-haunted. Its door,
+low lighted, stood open to the night.
+
+Rowcliffe drew back from the threshold to let a woman pass out.
+Looking up, he was aware that he had seen her again. He supposed it
+was the light of that detestable moon that gave her face its queer
+morbid whiteness.
+
+She went by without seeing him, clenching her hands and carrying her
+young head high; and he saw that her eyes still held the tears that
+she was afraid to spill.
+
+Mrs. Gale stood behind her with a lamp, lighting her passage.
+
+"Who is that young lady?" he asked.
+
+"T' Vicar's laass, Gwanda."
+
+The woman leaned to him and whispered, "She's seen t' body."
+
+And in the girl's fear and blindness and defiance he saw the pride of
+her youth beaten and offended by that which it had seen.
+
+Out there, in the bridle path leading from the high road to the farm,
+the cart had stopped. The men were lifting the coffin out, shouldering
+it, carrying it along. He saw Gwenda Cartaret swerve out of their way.
+Presently he heard her running down the road.
+
+Then he remembered what he had been sent for.
+
+He turned his attention to Mrs. Gale. She was a square-set,
+blunt-featured woman of forty-five or so, who had once been comely
+like her daughter Essy. Now her soft chin had sagged; in her cheeks
+the stagnant blood crawled through a network of little veins, and
+the gloss had gone from her dark hair. Her brown eyes showed a dull
+defiance and deprecation of the human destiny.
+
+"Where is he?" he said.
+
+"Oop there, in t' room wi' 's feyther."
+
+"Been drinking again, or what?"
+
+"Naw, Dr. Rawcliffe, 'e 'assn't. I suddn' a sent for yo all this road
+for nowt."
+
+She drew him into the house place, and whispered.
+
+"I'm feared 'e'll goa queer in 'is 'head, like. 'E's sot there by t'
+body sence yesterda noon. 'E's not takken off 'is breeches for tree
+daas. 'E caaun't sleap; 'e wunna eat and 'e wunna drink. There's work
+to be doon and 'e wunna lay haand to it. Wull yo goa oop t' 'im, Dr.
+Rawcliffe?"
+
+Rowcliffe went up.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In the low lighted room the thing that Gwenda Cartaret had seen lay
+stretched in the middle of the great bed, covered with a sheet. The
+bed, with its white mound, was so much too big for the four walls that
+held it, the white plaster of the ceiling bulging above it stooped so
+low, that the body of John Greatorex lay as if already closed up in
+its tomb.
+
+Jim Greatorex, his son, sat on a wooden chair at the head of the
+bed. His young, handsome face was loose and flushed as if he had been
+drinking. His eyes--the queer, blue, wide-open eyes that had hitherto
+looked out at you from their lodging in that ruddy, sensuous face,
+incongruously spiritual, high and above your head, like the eyes of a
+dreamer and a mystic--Jim's eyes were sunken now and darkened in their
+red and swollen lids. They stared at the rug laid down beside the bed,
+while Jim's mind set itself to count, stupidly and obstinately, the
+snippets of gray and scarlet cloth that made the pattern on the black.
+Every now and then he would recognise a snippet as belonging to some
+suit his father had worn years ago, and then Jim's brain would receive
+a shock and would stagger and have to begin its counting all over
+again.
+
+The door opened to let Rowcliffe in. And at the sound of the door,
+as if a spring had been suddenly released in his spine, Jim Greatorex
+shot up and started to his feet.
+
+"Well, Greatorex----"
+
+"Good evening, Dr. Rawcliffe." He came forward awkwardly, hanging his
+head as if detected in an act of shame.
+
+There was a silence while the two men turned their backs upon the
+bed, determined to ignore what was on it. They stood together by the
+window, pretending to stare at things out there in the night; and so
+they became aware of the men carrying the coffin.
+
+They could no longer ignore it.
+
+"Wull yo look at 'Im, doctor?"
+
+"Better not----." Rowcliffe would have laid his hand on the young
+man's arm, muttering a refusal, but Greatorex had moved to the bed and
+drawn back the sheet.
+
+What Gwenda Cartaret had seen was revealed.
+
+The dead man's face, upturned with a slight tilt to the ceiling that
+bulged so brutally above it, the stiff dark beard accentuating the
+tilt, the eyes, also upturned, white under their unclosing lids, the
+nostrils, the half-open mouth preserved their wonder and their terror
+before a thing so incredible--that the walls and roof of a man's room
+should close round him and suffocate him. On this horrified face there
+were the marks of dissolution, and, at the corners of the grim beard
+and moustache, a stain.
+
+It left nothing to be said. It was the face of the man who had drunk
+hard and had told his son that he had never been the worse for drink.
+
+Jim Greatorex stood and looked at it as if he knew what Rowcliffe was
+thinking of it and defied him to think.
+
+Rowcliffe drew up the sheet and covered it. "You'd better come out of
+this. It isn't good for you," he said.
+
+"I knaw what's good for me, Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+Jim stuck his hands in his breeches and gazed stubbornly at the
+sheeted mound.
+
+"Come," Rowcliffe said, "don't give way like this. Buck up and be a
+man."
+
+"A ma-an? You wait till yor turn cooms, doctor."
+
+"My turn came ten years ago, and it may come again."
+
+"And yo'll knaw then what good it doos ta-alkin'." He paused,
+listening. "They've coom," he said.
+
+There was a sound of scuffling on the stone floor below and on the
+stairs. Mrs. Gale's voice was heard out on the landing, calling to the
+men.
+
+"Easy with un--easy. Mind t' lamp. Eh--yo'll never get un oop that
+road. Yo mun coax un round corner."
+
+A swinging thud on the stone wall. Then more and more desperate
+scuffling with muttering. Then silence.
+
+Mrs. Gale put her head in at the door.
+
+"Jimmy, yo mun coom and gie a haand wi' t' coffin. They've got un
+faasst in t' turn o' t' stair."
+
+Through the open doorway Rowcliffe could see the broad shoulders of
+the coffin jammed in the stairway.
+
+Jim, flushed with resentment, strode out; and the struggling and
+scuffling began again, subdued, this time, and respectful. Rowcliffe
+went out to help.
+
+Mrs. Gale on the landing went on talking to herself. "They sud 'ave
+browt trestles oop first. There's naw place to stond un in. Eh dear!
+It's job enoof gettin' un oop. What'll it be gettin' un down again
+wit' 'E layin' in un? 'Ere--yo get oonder un, Jimmy, and 'eave un
+oop."
+
+Jim crouched and went backward down the stair under the coffin. His
+flushed face, with its mournful, mystic eyes, looked out at Rowcliffe
+for a moment under the coffin head. Then, with a heave of his great
+back and pushing with his powerful arms against the wall and stair
+rail, he loosened the shoulders of the coffin and bore it, steadied by
+Rowcliffe and the men, up the stair and into the room.
+
+They set it on its feet beside the bed, propped against the wall. And
+Jim Greatorex stood and stared at it.
+
+Rowcliffe went down into the kitchen, followed by Mrs. Gale.
+
+"What d'yo think o' Jimmy, Dr. Rawcliffe?"
+
+"He oughtn't to be left alone. Isn't there any sister or anybody who
+could come to him?"
+
+"Naw; 'e's got naw sisters, Jimmy 'assn't."
+
+"Well, you must get him to lie down and eat."
+
+"Get 'im? Yo can do nowt wi' Jimmy. 'E'll goa 'is own road. 'Is
+feyther an' 'e they wuss always quar'ling, yo med say. Yet when t' owd
+gentleman was taaken bad, Jimmy, 'e couldn' do too mooch for 'im. 'E
+was set on pullin' 's feyther round. And when 'e found 'e couldn't
+keep t' owd gentleman, 'e gets it on 'is mind like--broodin'. And 'e's
+got nowt to coomfort 'im."
+
+She sat down to it now.
+
+"Yo see, Dr. Rawcliffe, Jim's feyther and 'is granfeyther before 'im,
+they wuss good Wesleyans. It's in t' blood. But Jim's moother that
+died, she wuss Choorch. And that slip of a laass, when John Greatorex
+coom courtin', she turned 'im. 'E was that soft wi' laasses. 'Er
+feyther 'e was steward to lord o' t' Manor and 'e was Choorch and all
+t' family saame as t' folk oop at Manor. Yo med say, Jim Greatorex,
+'e's got naw religion. Neither Choorch nor Chapel 'e is. Nowt to
+coomfort 'im."
+
+Upstairs the scuffling and the struggling became frightful. Jim's feet
+and Jim's voice were heard above the muttering of the undertaker's
+men.
+
+Mrs. Gale whispered. "They're gettin' 'im in. 'E's gien a haand wi' t'
+body. Thot's soomthin'."
+
+She brooded ponderously. A sound of stamping and scraping at the back
+door roused her.
+
+"Eh--oo's there now?" she asked irritably.
+
+Willie, the farm lad, appeared on the threshold. His face was flushed
+and scared.
+
+"Where's Jim?" he said in a thick voice.
+
+"Ooosh-sh! Doan't yo' knaw t' coffin's coom? 'E's oopstairs w' t' owd
+maaster."
+
+"Well--'e mun coom down. T' mare's taaken baad again in 'er insi-ide."
+
+"T' mare, Daasy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Eh dear, there's naw end to trooble. Yo go oop and fatch Jimmy."
+
+Willie hesitated. His flush deepened.
+
+"I daarss'nt," he whispered hoarsely.
+
+"Poor laad, 'e 's freetened o' t' body," she explained. "Yo stay
+there, Wullie. I'll goa. T' body's nowt to me. I've seen too many o'
+they," she muttered as she went.
+
+They heard her crying excitedly overhead. "Jimmy! Yo coom to t'
+ma-are! Yo coom to t' ma-are!"
+
+The sounds in the room ceased instantly. Jim Greatorex, alert and in
+violent possession of all his faculties, dashed down the stairs and
+out into the yard.
+
+Rowcliffe followed into the darkness where his horse and trap stood
+waiting for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was lighting his lamps when Jim Greatorex appeared beside him with
+a lantern.
+
+"Dr. Rawcliffe, will yo joost coom an' taak a look at lil maare?"
+
+Jim's sullenness was gone. His voice revealed him humble and
+profoundly agitated.
+
+Rowcliffe sighed, smiled, pulled himself together and turned with
+Greatorex into the stable.
+
+In the sodden straw of her stall, Daisy, the mare, lay, heaving and
+snorting after her agony. From time to time she turned her head
+toward her tense and swollen flank, seeking with eyes of anguish the
+mysterious source of pain. The feed of oats with which Willie had
+tried to tempt her lay untouched in the skip beside her head.
+
+"I give 'er they oats an hour ago," said Willie. "An' she 'assn't so
+mooch as nosed 'em."
+
+"Nawbody but a donmed gawpie would have doon thot with 'er stoomach
+raw. Yo med 'ave killed t' mare."
+
+Willie, appalled by his own deed and depressed, stooped down and
+fondled the mare's face, to show that it was not affection that he
+lacked.
+
+"Heer--clear out o' thot and let doctor have a look in."
+
+Willie slunk aside as Rowcliffe knelt with Greatorex in the straw and
+examined the sick mare.
+
+"Can yo tell at all what's amiss, doctor?"
+
+"Colic, I should say. Has the vet seen her?"
+
+"Ye-es. He sent oop soomthing--"
+
+"Well, have you given it her?"
+
+Jim's voice thickened. "I sud have given it her yesterda."
+
+"And why on earth didn't you?"
+
+"The domned thing went clane out o' my head."
+
+He turned to the window ledge by the stable door where, among a
+confusion of cobwebs and dusty bottles and tin cans, the drench of
+turpentine and linseed oil, the little phial of chlorodyne, and the
+clean tin pannikin with its wide protruding mouth, stood ready, all
+gleaming in the lantern light, forgotten since the day before.
+
+"Thot's the stoof. Will yo halp me give it 'er, doctor?"
+
+"All right. Can you hold her?"
+
+"That I can. Coom oop, Daasy. Coom oop. There, my beauty. Gently,
+gently, owd laass."
+
+Rowcliffe took off his coat and shook up the drench and poured it into
+the pannikin, while Greatorex got the struggling mare on to her feet.
+
+Together, with gentleness and dexterity they cajoled her. Then Jim
+laid his hands upon her mouth and opened it, drawing up her head
+against his breast. Willie, suddenly competent, held the lantern while
+Rowcliffe poured the drench down her throat.
+
+Daisy, coughing and dribbling, stood and gazed at them with sad and
+terrified eyes. And while the undertaker's men screwed down the lid
+upon John Greatorex in his coffin, Jim Greatorex, his son, watched
+with Daisy in her stall.
+
+And Steven Rowcliffe watched with him, nursing the sick mare, making
+up a fresh, clean bed for her, rubbing and fomenting her swollen and
+tortured belly. When Daisy rolled in another agony, Rowcliffe gave her
+chlorodyne and waited till suddenly she lay still.
+
+In Jim's face, as he looked down at her, there was an infinite
+tenderness and pity and compunction.
+
+Rowcliffe, wriggling into his coat, regarded him with curiosity and
+wonder, till Jim drew himself up and fixed him with his queer, unhappy
+eyes.
+
+"Shall I save her, doctor?"
+
+"I can't tell you yet. I'd better send the vet up tomorrow hadn't I?"
+
+"Ay----" Jim's voice was strangled in the spasm of his throat. But he
+took Rowcliffe's hand and wrung it, discharging many emotions in that
+one excruciating grip.
+
+Rowcliffe pointed to the little phial of chlorodyne lying in the
+straw. "If I were you," he said, "I shouldn't leave that lying about."
+
+Through his long last night in the gray house haunted by the moon,
+John Greatorex lay alone, screwed down under a coffin lid, and his
+son, Jim, wrapped in a horse-blanket and with his head on a hay sack,
+lay in the straw of the stable, beside Daisy his mare. From time to
+time, as his mood took him, he turned and laid his hand on her in a
+poignant caress. As if she had been his first-born, or his bride, he
+spoke to her in the thick, soft voice of passion, with pitiful, broken
+words and mutterings.
+
+"What is it, Daasy----what is it? There, did they, then, did they? My
+beauty--my lil laass. I--I wuss a domned brute to forget tha, a domned
+brute."
+
+All that night and the next night he lay beside her. The funeral
+passed like a fantastic interlude between the long acts of his
+passion. His great sorrow made him humble to Mrs. Gale so that he
+allowed her to sustain him with food and drink. And on the third day
+it was known throughout Garthdale that young Greatorex, who had lost
+his father, had saved his mare.
+
+Only Steven Rowcliffe knew that the mare had saved young Greatorex.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And the little phial of chlorodyne was put back among the cobwebs and
+forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Down at the Vicarage the Vicar was wrangling with his youngest
+daughter. For the third time Alice declared that she was not well and
+that she didn't want her milk.
+
+"Whether you want it or not you've got to drink it," said the Vicar.
+
+Alice took the glass in her lap and looked at it.
+
+"Am I to stand over you till you drink it?"
+
+Alice put the rim of the glass to her mouth and shuddered.
+
+"I can't," she said. "It'll make me sick."
+
+"Leave the poor child alone, Papa," said Gwenda.
+
+But the Vicar ignored Gwenda.
+
+"You'll drink it, if I stand here all night," he said.
+
+Alice struggled with a spasm in her throat. He held the glass for her
+while she groped piteously.
+
+"Oh, where's my hanky?"
+
+With superhuman clemency he produced his own.
+
+"It'll serve you right if I'm ill," said Alice.
+
+"Come," said the Vicar in his wisdom and his patience. "Come."
+
+He proffered the disgusting cup again.
+
+"I'd drink it and have done with it, if I were you," said Mary in her
+soft voice.
+
+Mary's soft voice was too much for Alice.
+
+"Why c-can't you leave me alone? You--you--beast, Mary," she sobbed.
+
+And Mr. Cartaret began again, "Am I to stand here----"
+
+Alice got up, she broke loose from them and left the room.
+
+"You might have known she wasn't going to drink it," Gwenda said.
+
+But the Vicar never knew when he was beaten.
+
+"She would have drunk it," he said, "if Mary hadn't interfered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alice had not got the pneumonia that had killed John Greatorex. Such
+happiness, she reflected, was not for her. She had desired it too
+much.
+
+But she was doing very well with her anęmia.
+
+Bloodless and slender and inert, she dragged herself about the
+village. She could not get away from it because of the steep hills
+she would have had to climb. A small, unhappy ghost, she haunted the
+fields in the bottom and the path along the beck that led past Mrs.
+Gale's cottage.
+
+The sight of Alice was more than ever annoying to the Vicar. Only
+you wouldn't have known it. As she grew whiter and weaker he braced
+himself, and became more hearty and robust. When he caught her lying
+on the sofa he spoke to her in a robust and hearty tone.
+
+"Don't lie there all day, my girl. Get up and go out. What you want is
+a good blow on the moor."
+
+"Yes. If I didn't die before I got there," Alice would say, while she
+thought, "Serve him right, too, if I did."
+
+And the Vicar would turn from her in disgust. He knew what was the
+matter with his daughter Alice.
+
+At dinner time he would pull himself together again, for, after all,
+he was her father. He was robust and hearty over the sirloin and the
+leg of mutton. He would call for a glass and press into it the red
+juice of the meat.
+
+"Don't peak and pine, girl. Drink that. It'll put some blood into
+you."
+
+And Alice would refuse to drink it.
+
+Next she refused to drink her milk at eleven. She carried it out to
+Essy in the scullery.
+
+"I wish you'd drink my milk for me, Essy. It makes me sick," she said.
+
+"I don't want your milk," said Essy.
+
+"Please--" she implored her.
+
+But Essy was angry. Her face flamed and she banged down the dishes she
+was drying. "I sail not drink it. What should I want your milk for?
+You can pour it in t' pig's bucket."
+
+And the milk would be left by the scullery window till it turned sour
+and Essy poured it into the pig's bucket that stood under the sink.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks passed, and with every week Alice grew more bloodless,
+more slender, and more inert, and more and more like an unhappy
+ghost. Her small face was smaller; there was a tinge of green in its
+honey-whiteness, and of mauve in the dull rose of her mouth. And under
+her shallow breast her heart seemed to rise up and grow large, while
+the rest of Alice shrank and grew small. It was as if her fragile
+little body carried an enormous engine, an engine of infernal and
+terrifying power. When she lay down and when she got up and with every
+sudden movement its throbbing shook her savagely.
+
+Night and morning she called to her sister: "Oh Gwenda, come and feel
+my heart. I do believe it's growing. It's getting too big for my body.
+It frightens me when it jumps about like that."
+
+It frightened Gwenda.
+
+But it did not really frighten Alice. She rejoiced in it, rather,
+and exulted. After all, it was a good thing that she had not
+got pneumonia, which might have killed her as it had killed John
+Greatorex. She had got what served her purpose better. It served all
+her purposes. If she had tried she could not have hit on anything that
+would have annoyed her father more or put him more conspicuously in
+the wrong. To begin with, it was his doing. He had worried her into
+it. And he had brought her to a place which was the worst place
+conceivable for anybody with a diseased heart, since you couldn't stir
+out of doors without going up hill.
+
+Night and morning Alice stood before the looking-glass and turned out
+the lining of her lips and eyelids and saw with pleasure the pale rose
+growing paler. Every other hour she laid her hand on her heart and
+took again the full thrill of its dangerous throbbing, or felt her
+pulse to assure herself of the halt, the jerk, the hurrying of the
+beat. Night and morning and every other hour she thought of Rowcliffe.
+
+"If it goes on like this, they'll _have_ to send for him," she said.
+
+But it had gone on, the three weeks had passed, and yet they had not
+sent. The Vicar had put his foot down. He wouldn't have the doctor. He
+knew better than a dozen doctors what was the matter with his daughter
+Alice.
+
+Alice said nothing. She simply waited. As if some profound and
+dead-sure instinct had sustained her, she waited, sickening.
+
+And on the last night of the third week she fainted. She had dragged
+herself upstairs to bed, staggered across the little landing and
+fallen on the threshold of her room.
+
+They kept her in bed next day. At one o'clock she refused her
+chicken-broth. She would neither eat nor drink. And a little before
+three Gwenda went for the doctor.
+
+She had not told Alice she was going. She had not told anybody.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+She had to walk, for Mary had taken her bicycle. Nobody knew where
+Mary had gone or when she had started or when she would be back.
+
+But the four miles between Garth and Morfe were nothing to Gwenda, who
+would walk twenty for her own amusement. She would have stretched the
+way out indefinitely if she could; she would have piled Garthdale Moor
+on Greffington Edge and Karva on the top of them and put them between
+Garth and Morfe, so violent was her fear of Steven Rowcliffe.
+
+She had no longer any desire to see him or to be seen by him. He had
+seen her twice too often, and too early and too late. After being
+caught on the moor at dawn, it was preposterous that she should show
+herself in the doorway of Upthorne at night.
+
+How was he to know that she hadn't done it on purpose? Girls did these
+things. Poor little Ally had done them. And it was because Ally had
+done them that she had been taken and hidden away here where she
+couldn't do them any more.
+
+But--couldn't she? Gwenda stood still, staring in her horror as the
+frightful thought struck her that Ally could, and that she would, the
+very minute she realised young Rowcliffe. And he would think--not that
+it mattered in the least what he thought--he would think that there
+were two of them.
+
+If only, she said to herself, if only young Rowcliffe were a married
+man. Then even Ally couldn't--
+
+Not that she blamed poor little Ally. She looked on little Ally as
+the victim of a malign and tragic tendency, the fragile vehicle of an
+alien and overpowering impulse. Little Ally was doomed. It wasn't her
+fault if she was made like that.
+
+And this time it wouldn't be her fault at all. Their father would have
+driven her. Gwenda hated him for his persecution and exposure of the
+helpless creature.
+
+She walked on thinking.
+
+It wouldn't end with Ally. They were all three exposed and persecuted.
+For supposing--it wasn't likely, but supposing--that this Rowcliffe
+man was the sort of man she liked, supposing--what was still more
+unlikely--that he was the sort of man who would like her, where
+would be the good of it? Her father would spoil it all. He spoiled
+everything.
+
+Well, no, to be perfectly accurate, not everything. There was
+one thing he had not spoiled, because he had never suspected its
+existence--her singular passion for the place. Of course, if he had
+suspected it, he would have stamped on it. It was his business
+to stamp on other people's passions. Luckily, it wasn't in him to
+conceive a passion for a place.
+
+It had come upon her at first sight as they drove between twilight and
+night from Reyburn through Rathdale into Garthdale. It was when they
+had left the wooded land behind them and the moors lifted up their
+naked shoulders, one after another, darker than dark, into a sky
+already whitening above the hidden moon. And she saw Morfe, gray as
+iron, on its hill, bearing the square crown and the triple pendants of
+its lights; she saw the long straight line of Greffington Edge, hiding
+the secret moon, and Karva with the ashen west behind it. There was
+something in their form and in their gesture that called to her as
+if they knew her, as if they waited for her; they struck her with the
+shock of recognition, as if she had known them and had waited too.
+
+And close beside her own wonder and excitement she had felt the deep
+and sullen repulsion of her companions. The Vicar sat huddled in his
+overcoat. His nostrils, pinched with repugnance, sniffed as they drank
+in the cold, clean air. From time to time he shuddered, and a hoarse
+muttering came from under the gray woolen scarf he had wound round
+his mouth and beard. He was the righteous man, sent into uttermost
+abominable exile for his daughter's sin. Behind him, on the back seat
+of the trap, Alice and Mary cowed under their capes and rugs. They had
+turned their shoulders to each other, hostile in their misery. Gwenda
+was sorry for them.
+
+The gray road dipped and turned and plunged them to the bottom of
+Garthdale. The small, scattering lights of the village waited for her
+in the hollow, with something humble and sad and familiar in their
+setting. They too stung her with that poignant and secret sense of
+recognition.
+
+"This is the place," the Vicar had said. He had addressed himself
+to Alice; and it had been as if he had said, This the place, the
+infernal, the damnable place, you've brought us to with your behavior.
+
+Their hatred of it had made Gwenda love it. "You can have your old
+Garthdale all to yourself," Alice had said. "Nobody else wants it."
+
+That, to Gwenda, was the charm of it. The adorable place was her own.
+Nobody else wanted it. She loved it for itself. It had nothing but
+itself to offer her. And that was enough. It was almost, as she
+had said, too much. Her questing youth conceived no more rapturous
+adventure than to follow the sheep over Karva, to set out at twilight
+and see the immense night come down on the high moors above Upthorne;
+to get up when Alice was asleep and slip out and watch the dawn
+turning from gray to rose, and from rose to gold above Greffington
+Edge.
+
+As it happened you saw sunrise and moonrise best from the platform of
+Morfe Green. There Greffington Edge breaks and falls away, and lets
+slip the dawn like a rosy scarf from its shoulder, and sets the moon
+free of her earth and gives her to the open sky.
+
+But, just as the Vicar had spoiled Rowcliffe, so Rowcliffe had
+spoiled Morfe for Gwenda. Therefore her fear of him was mingled with
+resentment. It was as if he had had no business to be living there, in
+that house of his looking over the Green.
+
+Incredible that she should have wanted to see and to know this person.
+But now, that she didn't want to, of course she was going to see him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the bend of the road, within a mile of Morfe, Mary came riding on
+Gwenda's bicycle. Large parcels were slung from her handle bars. She
+had been shopping in the village.
+
+Mary, bowed forward as she struggled with an upward slope, was not
+aware of Gwenda. But Gwenda was aware of Mary, and, not being in the
+mood for her, she struck off the road on to the moor and descended
+upon Morfe by the steep lane that leads from Karva into Rathdale.
+
+It never occurred to her to wonder what Mary had been doing in Morfe,
+so evident was it that she had been shopping.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The doctor was at home, but he was engaged, at the moment, in the
+surgery.
+
+The maid-servant asked if she would wait.
+
+She waited in the little cold and formal dining-room that looked
+through two windows on to the Green. So formal and so cold, so utterly
+impersonal was the air of the doctor's mahogany furniture that her
+fear left her. It was as if the furniture assured her that she would
+not really _see_ Rowcliffe; as for knowing him, she needn't worry.
+
+She had sent in her card, printed for convenience with the names of
+the three sisters:
+
+  Miss Cartaret.
+  Miss Gwendolen Cartaret.
+  Miss Alice Cartaret.
+
+She felt somehow that it protected her. She said to herself, "He won't
+know which of us it is."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe was washing his hands in the surgery when the card was
+brought to him. He frowned at the card.
+
+"But--You've brought this before," he said. "I've seen the lady."
+
+"No, sir. It's another lady."
+
+"Another? Are you certain?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Quite certain."
+
+"Did she come on a bicycle?"
+
+"No, sir, that was the lady you've seen. I think this'll be her
+sister."
+
+Rowcliffe was still frowning as he dried his hands with fastidious
+care.
+
+"She's different, sir. Taller like."
+
+"Taller?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Rowcliffe turned to the table and picked up a probe and a lancet and
+dropped them into a sterilising solution.
+
+The maid waited. Rowcliffe's absorption was complete.
+
+"Shall I ask her to call again, sir?"
+
+"No. I'll see her. Where is she?"
+
+"In the dining-room, sir."
+
+"Show her into the study."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing could have been more distant and reserved than Rowcliffe's
+dining-room. But, to a young woman who had made up her mind that she
+didn't want to know anything about him, Rowcliffe's study said too
+much. It told her that he was a ferocious and solitary reader; for in
+the long rows of book shelves the books leaned slantwise across the
+gaps where his hands had rummaged and ransacked. It told her that his
+gods were masculine and many--Darwin and Spencer and Haeckel, Pasteur,
+Curie and Lord Lister, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman and Bernard
+Shaw. Their photogravure portraits hung above the bookcase. He was
+indifferent to mere visible luxury, or how could he have endured
+the shabby drugget, the cheap, country wall-paper with its design of
+dreadful roses on a white watered ground? But the fire in the grate
+and the deep arm-chair drawn close to it showed that he loved warmth
+and comfort. That his tastes made him solitary she gathered from the
+chair's comparatively unused and unworn companion, lurking and sulking
+in the corner where it had been thrust aside.
+
+The one window of this room looked to the west upon a little orchard,
+gray trunks of apple trees and plum trees against green grass, green
+branches against gray stone, gray that was softened in the liquid
+autumn air, green that was subtle, exquisite, charmingly austere.
+
+He could see his little orchard as he sat by his fire. She thought she
+rather liked him for keeping his window so wide open.
+
+She was standing by it looking at the orchard as he came in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was so quiet in his coming that she did not see or hear him till he
+stood before her.
+
+And in his eyes, intensely quiet, there was a look of wonder and of
+incredulity, almost of concern.
+
+Greetings and introductions over, the unused arm-chair was brought out
+from its lair in the corner. Rowcliffe, in his own arm-chair, sat in
+shadow, facing her. What light there was fell full on her.
+
+"I'm sorry you should have had to come to me," he said, "your sister
+was here a minute or two ago."
+
+"My sister?"
+
+"I think it _must_ have been your sister. She said it was _her_ sister
+I was to go and see."
+
+"I didn't know she was coming. She never told me."
+
+"Pity. I was coming out to see you first thing tomorrow morning."
+
+"Then you know? She told you?"
+
+"She told me something." He smiled. "She must have been a little
+overanxious. You don't look as if there was very much the matter with
+you."
+
+"But there isn't. It isn't me."
+
+"Who is it then?"
+
+"My other sister."
+
+"Oh. I seem to have got a little mixed."
+
+"You see, there are three of us."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Three! Let me get it right. I've seen Miss Cartaret. You are Miss
+Gwendolen Cartaret. And the lady I am to see is--?
+
+"My youngest sister, Alice."
+
+"Now I understand. I wondered how you managed those four miles. Tell
+me about her."
+
+She began. She was vivid and terse. He saw that she made short cuts
+to the root of the matter. He showed himself keen and shrewd. Once or
+twice he said "I know, I know," and she checked herself.
+
+"My sister has told you all that."
+
+"No, she hasn't. Nothing like it. Please go on."
+
+She went on till he interrupted her. "How old is she?"
+
+"Just twenty-three."
+
+"I see. Yes." He looked so keen now that she was frightened.
+
+"Does that make it more dangerous?" she said.
+
+He laughed. "No. It makes it less so. I don't suppose it's dangerous
+at all. But I can't tell till I've seen her. I say, you must be tired
+after that long walk."
+
+"I'm never tired."
+
+"That's good."
+
+He rang the bell. The maid appeared.
+
+"Tell Acroyd I want the trap. And bring tea--at once."
+
+"For two, sir?"
+
+"For two."
+
+Gwenda rose. "Thanks very much, I must be going."
+
+"Please stay. It won't take five minutes. Then I can drive you back."
+
+"I can walk."
+
+"I know you can. But--you see--" His keenness and shrewdness went
+from him. He was almost embarrassed. "I _was_ going round to see
+your sister in the morning. But--I think I'd rather see her to-night.
+And--" He was improvising freely now--"I ought, perhaps, to see you
+after, as you understand the case. So, if you don't _mind_ coming back
+with me--"
+
+She didn't mind. Why should she?
+
+She stayed. She sat in Rowcliffe's chair before his fire and drank his
+tea and ate his hot griddle-cakes (she had a healthy appetite, being
+young and strong). She talked to him as if she had known him a long
+time. All these things he made her do, and when he talked to her he
+made her forget what had brought her there; he made her forget Alice
+and Mary and her father.
+
+When he left her for a moment she got up, restless and eager to be
+gone. And when he came back to her she was standing by the open window
+again, looking at the orchard.
+
+Rowcliffe looked at _her_, taking in her tallness, her slenderness,
+the lithe and beautiful line of her body, curved slightly backward as
+she leaned against the window wall.
+
+Never before and never again, afterwards, never, that was to say, for
+any other woman, did Rowcliffe feel what he felt then. Looking back on
+it (afterward) he could only describe it as a sense of certainty. It
+lacked, surprisingly, the element of surprise.
+
+"You like my north-country orchard?" (He was certain that she did.)
+
+She turned, smiling. "I like it very much."
+
+They had been a long time over tea. It was half-past five before they
+started. He brought an overcoat and put it on her. He wrapped a rug
+round her knees and feet and tucked it well in.
+
+"You don't like rugs," he said (he knew she didn't), "but you've got
+to have it."
+
+She did like it. She liked his rug and his overcoat, and his little
+brown horse with the clanking hoofs. And she liked him, most decidedly
+she liked him, too. He was the sort of man you could like.
+
+They were soon out on the moor.
+
+Rowcliffe's youth rose in him and put words into his mouth.
+
+"Ripping country, this."
+
+She said it was ripping.
+
+For the life of them they couldn't have said more about it. There were
+no words for the inscrutable ecstasy it gave them.
+
+As they passed Karva Rowcliffe smiled.
+
+"It's all right," he said, "my driving you. Of course you don't
+remember, but we've met--several times before."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I'll show you where. Anyhow, that's your hill, isn't it?"
+
+"How did you know it was?"
+
+"Because I've seen you there. The first time I ever saw you--No,
+_that_ was a bit farther on. At the bend of the road. We're coming to
+it."
+
+They came.
+
+"Just here," he said.
+
+And now they were in sight of Garthdale.
+
+"Funny I should have thought it was you who were ill."
+
+"I'm never ill."
+
+"You won't be as long as you can walk like that. And run. And jump--"
+
+A horrid pause.
+
+"You did it very nicely."
+
+Another pause, not quite so horrid.
+
+And then--"Do you _always_ walk after dark and before sunrise?"
+
+And it was as if he had said, "Why am I always meeting you? What do
+you do it for? It's queer, isn't it?"
+
+But he had given her her chance. She rose to it.
+
+"I've done it ever since we came here." (It was as if she had said
+"Long before _you_ came.") "I do it because I like it. That's the best
+of this place. You can do what you like in it. There's nobody to see
+you."
+
+("Counting me," he thought, "as nobody.")
+
+"I should like to do it, too," he said--"to go out before sunrise--if
+I hadn't got to. If I did it for fun--like you."
+
+He knew he would not really have liked it. But his romantic youth
+persuaded him in that moment that he would.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Mary was up in the attic, the west attic that looked on to the road
+through its shy gable window.
+
+She moved quietly there, her whole being suffused exquisitely with a
+sense of peace, of profound, indwelling goodness. Every act of hers
+for the last three days had been incomparably good, had been, indeed,
+perfect. She had waited on Alice hand and foot. She had made the
+chicken broth refused by Alice. There was nothing that she would not
+do for poor little Ally. When little Ally was petulant and sullen,
+Mary was gentle and serene. She felt toward little Ally, lying there
+so little and so white, a poignant, yearning tenderness. Today she
+had visited all the sick people in the village, though it was not
+Wednesday, Dr. Rowcliffe's day. (Only by visiting them on other days
+could Mary justify and make blameless her habit of visiting them on
+Wednesdays.) She had put the house in order. She had done her shopping
+in Morfe to such good purpose that she had concealed even from herself
+the fact that she had gone into Morfe, surreptitiously, to fetch the
+doctor.
+
+Of course Mary was aware that she had fetched him. She had been driven
+to that step by sheer terror. All the way home she kept on saying to
+herself, "I've saved Ally." "I've saved Ally." That thought, splendid
+and exciting, rushed to the lighted front of Mary's mind; if the
+thought of Rowcliffe followed its shining trail, it thrust him back,
+it spread its luminous wings to hide him, it substituted its heavenly
+form for his.
+
+So effectually did it cover him that Mary herself never dreamed that
+he was there.
+
+Neither did the Vicar, when he saw her arrive, laden with parcels,
+wholesomely cheerful and reddened by her ride. He had said to her
+"You're a good girl, Mary," and the sadness of his tone implied that
+he wished her sister Gwendolen and her sister Alice were more like
+her. And he had smiled at her under his austere moustache, and carried
+in the biggest parcels for her.
+
+The Vicar was pleased with his daughter Mary. Mary had never given him
+an hour's anxiety. Mary had never put him in the wrong, never made him
+feel uncomfortable. He honestly believed that he was fond of her. She
+was like her poor mother. Goodness, he said to himself, was in her
+face.
+
+There had been goodness in Mary's face when she went into Alice's room
+to see what she could do for her. There was goodness in it now, up in
+the attic, where there was nobody but God to see it; goodness at peace
+with itself, and utterly content.
+
+She had been back more than an hour. And ever since teatime she had
+been up in the attic, putting away her summer gowns. She shook them
+and held them out and looked at them, the poor pretty things that she
+had hardly ever worn. They hung all limp, all abashed and broken in
+her hands, as if aware of their futility. She said to herself,
+"They were no good, no good at all. And next year they'll all be
+old-fashioned. I shall be ashamed to be seen in them." And she folded
+them and laid them by for their winter's rest in the black trunk. And
+when she saw them lying there she had a moment of remorse. After
+all, they had been part of herself, part of her throbbing, sensuous
+womanhood, warmed once by her body. It wasn't their fault, poor
+things, any more than hers, if they had been futile and unfit. She
+shut the lid down on them gently, and it was as if she buried them
+gently out of her sight. She could afford to forgive them, for she
+knew that there was no futility nor unfitness in her. Deep down in her
+heart she knew it.
+
+She sat on the trunk in the attitude of one waiting, waiting in the
+utter stillness of assurance. She could afford to wait. All her being
+was still, all its secret impulses appeased by the slow and orderly
+movements of her hands.
+
+Suddenly she started up and listened. She heard out on the road the
+sound of wheels, and of hoofs that struck together. And she frowned.
+She thought, He might as well have called today, if he's passing.
+
+The clanking ceased, the wheels slowed down, and Mary's peaceful heart
+moved violently in her breast. The trap drew up at the Vicarage gate.
+
+She went over to the window, the small, shy gable window that looked
+on to the road. She saw her sister standing in the trap and Rowcliffe
+beneath her, standing in the road and holding out his hand. She saw
+the two faces, the man's face looking up, the woman's face looking
+down, both smiling.
+
+And Mary's heart drew itself together in her breast. Through her shut
+lips her sister's name forced itself almost audibly.
+
+"_Gwen_-da!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly she shivered. A cold wind blew through the open window. Yet
+she did not move to shut it out. To have interfered with the attic
+window would have been a breach of compact, an unholy invasion of her
+sister's rights. For the attic, the smallest, the coldest, the
+darkest and most thoroughly uncomfortable room in the whole house,
+was Gwenda's, made over to her in the Vicar's magnanimity, by way of
+compensation for the necessity that forced her to share her room with
+Alice. As the attic was used for storing trunks and lumber, only two
+square yards of floor could be spared for Gwenda. But the two square
+yards, cleared, and covered with a strip of old carpet, and furnished
+with a little table and one chair; the wall-space by the window with
+its hanging bookcase; the window itself and the corner fireplace near
+it were hers beyond division and dispute. Nobody wanted them.
+
+And as Mary from among the boxes looked toward her sister's territory,
+her small, brooding face took on such sadness as good women feel in
+contemplating a character inscrutable and unlike their own. Mary was
+sorry for Gwenda because of her inscrutability and unlikeness.
+
+Then, thinking of Gwenda, Mary smiled. The smile began in pity for her
+sister and ended in a nameless, secret satisfaction. Not for a moment
+did Mary suspect its source. It seemed to her one with her sense of
+her own goodness.
+
+When she smiled it was as if the spirit of her small brooding face
+took wings and fluttered, lifting delicately the rather heavy corners
+of her mouth and eyes.
+
+Then, quietly, and with no indecorous haste, she went down into the
+drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe. She was the eldest and it was her
+duty.
+
+By the mercy of Heaven the Vicar had gone out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gwenda left Rowcliffe with Mary and went upstairs to prepare Alice for
+his visit. She had brushed out her sister's long pale hair and platted
+it, and had arranged the plats, tied with knots of white ribbon, one
+over each low breast, and she had helped her to put on a little white
+flannel jacket with a broad lace collar. Thus arrayed and decorated,
+Alice sat up in her bed, her small slender body supported by huge
+pillows, white against white, with no color about her but the dull
+gold of her hair.
+
+Gwenda was still in the room, tidying it, when Mary brought Rowcliffe
+there.
+
+It was a Rowcliffe whom she had not yet seen. She had her back to him
+as he paused in the doorway to let Mary pass through. Ally's bed faced
+the door, and the look in Ally's eyes made her aware of the change in
+him. All of a sudden he had become taller (much taller than he really
+was) and rigid and austere. His youth and its charm dropped clean away
+from him. He looked ten years older than he had been ten minutes ago.
+Compared with him, as he stood beside her bed, Ally looked more than
+ever like a small child, a child vibrating with shyness and fear, a
+child that implacable adult authority has found out in foolishness and
+naughtiness; so evident was it to Ally that to Rowcliffe nothing was
+hidden, nothing veiled.
+
+It was as a child that he treated her, a child who can conceal
+nothing, from whom most things--all the serious and important
+things--must be concealed. And Ally knew the terrible advantage that
+he took of her.
+
+It was bad enough when he asked her questions and took no more notice
+of her answers than if she had been a born fool. That might have been
+his north-country manners and probably he couldn't help them. But
+there was no necessity that Ally could see for his brutal abruptness,
+and the callous and repellent look he had when she bared her breast to
+the stethescope that sent all her poor secrets flying through the long
+tubes that attached her heart to his abominable ears. Neither (when
+he had disentangled himself from the stethescope) could she understand
+why he should scowl appallingly as he took hold of her poor wrist to
+feel her pulse.
+
+She said to herself, "He knows everything about me and he thinks I'm
+awful."
+
+It was anguish to Ally that he should think her awful.
+
+And (to make it worse, if anything could make it) there was Mary
+standing at the foot of the bed and staring at her. Mary knew
+perfectly well that he was thinking how awful she was. It was what
+Mary thought herself.
+
+If only Gwenda had stayed with her! But Gwenda had left the room when
+she saw Rowcliffe take out his stethescope.
+
+And as it flashed on Ally what Rowcliffe was thinking of her, her
+heart stopped as if it was never going on again, then staggered, then
+gave a terrifying jump.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe had done with Ally's little wrist. He laid it down on the
+counterpane, not brutally at all, but gently, almost tenderly, as if
+it had been a thing exquisitely fragile and precious.
+
+He rose to his feet and looked at her, and then, all of a sudden,
+as he looked, Rowcliffe became young again; charmingly young, almost
+boyish. And, as if faintly amused at her youth, faintly touched by
+her fragility, he smiled. With a mouth and with eyes from which all
+austerity had departed he smiled at Alice.
+
+(It was all over. He had done with her. He could afford to be kind to
+her as he would have been kind to a little, frightened child.)
+
+And Alice smiled back at him with her white face between the pale
+gold, serious bands of platted hair.
+
+She was no longer frightened. She forgot his austerity as if it had
+never been. She saw that he hadn't thought her awful in the least. He
+couldn't have looked at her like that if he had.
+
+A sense of warmth, of stillness, of soft happiness flooded her body
+and her brain, as if the stream of life had ceased troubling and
+ran with an even rhythm. As she lay back, her tormented heart seemed
+suddenly to sink into it and rest, to be part of it, poised on the
+stream.
+
+Then, still looking down at her, he spoke.
+
+"It's pretty evident," he said, "what's the matter with you."
+
+"_Is_ it?"
+
+Her eyes were all wide. He had frightened her again.
+
+"It is," he said. "You've been starved."
+
+"Oh," said little Ally, "is _that_ all?"
+
+And Rowcliffe smiled again, a little differently.
+
+Mary said nothing. She had found out long ago that silence was her
+strength. Her small face brooded. Impossible to tell what she was
+thinking.
+
+"What has become of the other one, I wonder?" he said to himself.
+
+He wanted to see her. She was the intelligent one of the three
+sisters, and she was honest. He had said to her quite plainly that he
+would want her. Why, on earth, he wondered, had she gone away and left
+him with this sweet and good, this quite exasperatingly sweet and good
+woman who had told him nothing but lies?
+
+He was aware that Mary Cartaret was sweet and good. But he had found
+that sweet and good women were not invariably intelligent. As for
+honesty, if they were always honest they would not always be sweet and
+good.
+
+Through the door he opened for the eldest sister to pass out the other
+slipped in. She had been waiting on the landing.
+
+He stopped her. He made a sign to her to come out with him. He closed
+the door behind them.
+
+"Can I see you for two minutes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They whispered rapidly.
+
+At the head of the stairs Mary waited. He turned. His smile
+acknowledged and paid deference to her sweetness and goodness, for
+Rowcliffe was sufficiently accomplished.
+
+But not more so than Mary Cartaret. Her face, wide and candid,
+quivered with subdued interrogation. Her lips parted as if they said,
+"I am only waiting to know what I am to do. I will do what you like,
+only tell me."
+
+Rowcliffe stood by the bedroom door, which he had opened for her
+to pass through again. His eyes, summoning their powerful pathos,
+implored forgiveness.
+
+Mary, utterly submissive, passed through.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He followed Gwendolen Cartaret downstairs to the dining-room.
+
+He knew what he was going to say, but what he did say was unexpected.
+
+For, as she stood there in the small and old and shabby room, what
+struck him was her youth.
+
+"Is your father in?" he said.
+
+He surprised her as he had surprised himself.
+
+"No," she said. "Why? Do you want to see him?"
+
+He hesitated. "I almost think I'd better."
+
+"He won't be a bit of good, you know. He never is. He doesn't even
+know we sent for you."
+
+"Well, then--"
+
+"You'd better tell me straight out. You'll have to, in the end. Is it
+serious?"
+
+"No. But it will be if we don't stop it. How long has it been going
+on?"
+
+"Ever since we came to this place."
+
+"Six months, you said. And she's been worse than this last month?"
+
+"Much worse."
+
+"If it was only the anęmia--"
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+"Yes--among other things."
+
+"Not--her heart?"
+
+"No--her heart's all right." He corrected himself. "I mean there's
+no disease in it. You see, she ought to have got well up here in this
+air. It's the sort of place you send anęmic people to to cure them."
+
+"The dreadful thing is that she doesn't like the place."
+
+"Ah--that's what I want to get at. She isn't happy in it?"
+
+"No. She isn't happy."
+
+He meditated. "Your sister didn't tell me that.'
+
+"She couldn't."
+
+"I mean your other sister--Miss Cartaret."
+
+"_She_ wouldn't. She'd think it rather awful."
+
+He laughed. "Heaps of people think it awful to tell the truth. Do you
+happen to know _why_ she doesn't like the place?"
+
+She was silent. Evidently there was some "awfulness" she shrank from.
+
+"Too lonely for her, I suppose?"
+
+"Much too lonely."
+
+"Where were you before you came here?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"Why did you leave it?"
+
+She hesitated again. "We couldn't help it."
+
+"Well--it seems a pity. But I suppose clergymen can't choose where
+they'll live."
+
+She looked away from him. Then, as if she were trying to divert her
+from the trail he followed, "You forget--she's been starving herself.
+Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Not in her case. You see, she isn't ill because she's been starving
+herself. She's been starving herself because she's ill. It's a
+symptom. The trouble is not that she starves herself--but that she's
+been starved."
+
+"I know. I know."
+
+"If you could get her back to that place where she was happy--"
+
+"I can't. She can never go back there. Besides, it wouldn't be any
+good if she did."
+
+He smiled. "Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Certain."
+
+"Does she know it?"
+
+"No. She never knew it. But she _would_ know it if she went back."
+
+"That's why you took her away?"
+
+She hesitated again. "Yes."
+
+Rowcliffe looked grave.
+
+"I see. That's rather unfortunate."
+
+He said to himself: "She doesn't take it in _yet_. I don't see how I'm
+to tell her."
+
+To her he said: "Well, I'll send the medicine along to-night."
+
+As the door closed behind Rowcliffe, Mary appeared on the stairs.
+
+"Gwenda," she said, "Ally wants you. She wants to know what he said."
+
+"He said nothing."
+
+"You look as if he'd said a great deal."
+
+"He said nothing that she doesn't know."
+
+"He told her there was nothing the matter with her except that she'd
+been starving herself."
+
+"He told me she'd been starved."
+
+"I don't see the difference."
+
+"Well," said Gwenda. "_He_ did."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night the Vicar scowled over his supper. And before it was ended
+he broke loose.
+
+"Which of you two sent for Dr. Rowcliffe?"
+
+"I did," said Gwenda.
+
+Mary said nothing.
+
+"And what--do you--mean by doing such a thing without consulting me?"
+
+"I mean," said Gwenda quietly, "that he should see Alice."
+
+"And _I_ meant--most particularly--that he shouldn't see her. If I'd
+wanted him to see her I'd have gone for him myself."
+
+"When it was a bit too late," said Gwenda.
+
+His blue eyes dilated as he looked at her.
+
+"Do you suppose I don't know what's the matter with her as well as he
+does?"
+
+As he spoke the stiff, straight moustache that guarded his mouth
+lifted, showing the sensual redness and fulness of the lips.
+
+And of this expression on her father's face Gwenda understood nothing,
+divined nothing, knew nothing but that she loathed it.
+
+"You may know what's the matter with her," she said, "but can you cure
+it?"
+
+"Can he?" said the Vicar.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+The next day, which was a Tuesday, Alice was up and about again.
+Rowcliffe saw her on Wednesday and on Saturday, when he declared
+himself satisfied with her progress and a little surprised.
+
+So surprised was he that he said he would not come again unless he was
+sent for.
+
+And then in three days Alice slid back.
+
+But they were not to worry about her, she said. There was nothing the
+matter with her except that she was tired. She was so tired that she
+lay all Tuesday on the drawing-room sofa and on Wednesday morning she
+was too tired to get up and dress.
+
+And on Wednesday afternoon Dr. Rowcliffe found a note waiting at the
+blacksmith's cottage in Garth village, where he had a room with a
+brown gauze blind in the window and the legend in gilt letters:
+
+  SURGERY
+
+  Dr. S. Rowcliffe, M.D., F.R.C.S.
+
+  Hours of Attendance
+  Wednesday, 2.30-4.30.
+
+The note ran:
+
+"DEAR DR. ROWCLIFFE: Can you come and see me this afternoon? I think
+I'm rather worse. But I don't want to frighten my people--so perhaps,
+if you just looked in about teatime, as if you'd called?
+
+  "Yours truly,
+
+  "ALICE CARTARET."
+
+Essy Gale had left the note that morning.
+
+Rowcliffe looked at it dubiously. He was honest and he had the
+large views of a man used to a large practice. His patients couldn't
+complain that he lengthened his bills by paying unnecessary visits. If
+he wanted to add to his income in that way, he wasn't going to begin
+with a poor parson's hysterical daughter. But as the Vicar of Garth
+had called on him and left his card on Monday, there was no reason why
+he shouldn't look in on Wednesday about teatime. Especially as he knew
+that the Vicar was in the habit of visiting Upthorne and the outlying
+portions of his parish on Wednesday afternoons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All day Alice lay in her little bed like a happy child and waited.
+Propped on her pillows, with her slender arms stretched out before her
+on the counterpane, she waited.
+
+Her sullenness was gone. She had nothing but sweetness for Mary and
+for Essy. Even to her father she was sweet. She could afford it. Her
+instinct was now sure. From time to time a smile flickered on her
+small face like a light almost of triumph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the
+Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her.
+
+He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the
+Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him.
+
+He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in
+the village that she was not so well.
+
+"I'm afraid she isn't."
+
+"May I see her? I don't mean professionally--just for a talk."
+
+The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the
+houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom
+bills were nightmares.
+
+She took him upstairs.
+
+On the landing she turned to him.
+
+"She doesn't _look_ worse. She looks better."
+
+"All right. She won't deceive me."
+
+She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a
+faint opaline dawn of color in her face.
+
+Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a
+quarter of an hour he kept it up.
+
+And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better.
+You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste
+all this glorious air?"
+
+"If I could live on air!" said Alice.
+
+"You can--you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live
+without it."
+
+Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered
+him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him.
+
+"But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may."
+
+"At teatime?"
+
+"Very well--at teatime."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.
+
+"She's better."
+
+"Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?"
+
+"He called--on you, I think."
+
+(Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving
+plainly that his visit was not professional.)
+
+"And you made him see her?" he insisted.
+
+"He saw her."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the
+open air."
+
+"It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She
+doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."
+
+He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He
+had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.
+
+"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's
+nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as
+long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."
+
+But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it
+meant--that air of wisdom and of patience.
+
+Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.
+
+"I won't have him sent for--do you hear?"
+
+And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give
+young Rowcliffe a hint. It was to give him a hint that he had called
+on Monday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe. For before he could brace
+himself to the effort Alice was well again.
+
+Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime
+the next Wednesday and the next after that.
+
+Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+  "'Oh Gawd, our halp in a-ages paasst,
+  Our 'awp in yeears ter coom,
+  Our shal-ter from ther storm-ee blaasst,
+  And our ee-tarnal 'oam!'"
+
+"'Ark at 'im! That's Jimmy arl over. T' think that 'is poor feyther's
+not in 'is graave aboove a moonth, an' 'e singin' fit t' eave
+barn roof off! They should tak' an' shoot 'im oop in t' owd powder
+magazine," said Mrs. Gale.
+
+"Well--but it's a wonderful voice," said Gwenda Cartaret.
+
+"I've never heard another like it, and I know something about voices,"
+Alice said.
+
+They had gone up to Upthorne to ask Mrs. Gale to look in at the
+Vicarage on her way home, for Essy wasn't very well.
+
+But Mrs. Gale had shied off from the subject of Essy. She had done it
+with the laughter of deep wisdom and a shake of her head. You couldn't
+teach Mrs. Gale anything about illness, nor about Essy.
+
+"I knaw Assy," she had said. "There's nowt amiss with her. Doan't you
+woorry."
+
+And then Jim Greatorex, though unseen, had burst out at them with his
+big voice. It came booming from the mistal at the back.
+
+Alice told the truth when she said she had never heard anything like
+it; and even in the dale, so critical of strangers, it was admitted
+that she knew. The village had a new schoolmaster who was no musician,
+and hopeless with the choir. Alice, as the musical one of the family,
+had been trained to play the organ, and she played it, not with
+passion, for it was her duty, but with mechanical and perfunctory
+correctness, as she had been taught. She was also fairly successful
+with the village choir.
+
+"Mebbe yo 'aven't 'eard anoother," said Mrs. Gale. "It's rackoned
+there isn't anoother woon like it in t' daale."
+
+"But it's just what we want for our choir--a big barytone voice. Do
+you think he'd sing for us, Mrs. Gale?"
+
+Alice said it light-heartedly, for she did not know what she was
+asking. She knew nothing of the story of Jim Greatorex and his big
+voice. It had been carefully kept from her.
+
+"I doan knaw," said Mrs. Gale. "Jim, look yo, 'e useter sing in t'
+Choorch choir."
+
+"Why ever did he leave it?"
+
+Mrs. Gale looked dark and tightened up her face. She knew perfectly
+well why Jim Greatorex had left. It was because he wasn't going to
+have that little milk-faced lass learning _him_ to sing. His pride
+wouldn't stomach it. But not for worlds would Mrs. Gale have been the
+one to let Miss Alice know that.
+
+Her eyes sought for inspiration in a crack on the stone floor.
+
+"I can't rightly tall yo', Miss Olice. 'E sang fer t' owd
+schoolmaaster, look yo, an' wann schoolmaaster gaave it oop, Jimmy, 'e
+said 'e'd give it oop too."
+
+"But don't you think he'd sing for _me_, if I were to ask him?"
+
+"Yo' may aask 'im, Miss Olice, but I doan' knaw. Wann Jim Greatorex is
+sat, 'e's sat."
+
+"There's no harm in asking him."
+
+"Naw. Naw 'aarm there isn't," said Mrs. Gale doubtfully.
+
+"I think I'll ask him now," said Alice.
+
+"I wouldn', look yo, nat ef I wuss yo, Miss Olice. I wouldn' gaw to
+'im in t' mistal all amoong t' doong. Yo'll sha-ame 'im, and yo'll do
+nowt wi' Jimmy ef 'e's sha-amed."
+
+"Leave it, Ally. We can come another day," said Gwenda.
+
+"Thot's it," said Mrs. Gale. "Coom another daay."
+
+And as they turned away Jim's voice thundered after them from his
+stronghold in the mistal.
+
+  "From av-ver-lasstin'--THOU ART GAWD!
+  To andless ye-ears ther sa-ame!"
+
+The sisters stood listening. They looked at each other.
+
+"I say!" said Gwenda.
+
+"Isn't he gorgeous? We'll _have_ to come again. It would be a sin to
+waste him."
+
+"It would."
+
+"When shall we come?"
+
+"There's heaps of time. That voice won't run away."
+
+"No. But he might get pneumonia. He might die."
+
+"Not he."
+
+But Alice couldn't leave it alone.
+
+"How about Sunday? Just after dinner? He'll be clean then."
+
+"All right. Sunday."
+
+But it was not till they had passed the schoolhouse outside Garth
+village that Alice's great idea came to her.
+
+"Gwenda! The Concert! Wouldn't he be ripping for the Concert!"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+But the concert was not till the first week in December; and it was
+in November that Rowcliffe began to form the habit that made him
+remarkable in Garth, of looking in at the Vicarage toward teatime
+every Wednesday afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Gale, informed by Essy, was the first to condole with Mrs.
+Blenkiron, the blacksmith's wife, who had arranged to provide tea for
+Rowcliffe every Wednesday in the Surgery.
+
+"Wall, Mrs. Blenkiron," she said, "yo' 'aven't got to mak' tae for
+yore doctor now?"
+
+"Naw. I 'aven't," said Mrs. Blenkiron. "And it's sexpence clane gone
+out o' me packet av'ry week."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron was a distant cousin of the Greatorexes. She had
+what was called a superior manner and was handsome, in the slender,
+high-nosed, florid fashion of the Dale.
+
+"But there," she went on. "I doan't groodge it. 'E's yoong and you
+caann't blaame him. They's coompany for him oop at Vicarage."
+
+"'E's coompany fer they, I rackon. And well yo' med saay yo' doan't
+groodge it ef yo knawed arl we knaw, Mrs. Blenkiron. It's no life fer
+yoong things oop there, long o' t' Vicar. Mind yo"--Mrs. Gale
+lowered her voice and looked up and down the street for possible
+eavesdroppers--"ef 'e was to 'ear on it, thot yoong Rawcliffe wouldn't
+be 'lowed t' putt 's nawse in at door agen. But theer--there's
+nawbody'd be thot crool an' spittiful fer to goa an' tall 'im. Our
+Assy wouldn't. She'd coot 'er toong out foorst, Assy would."
+
+"Nawbody'll get it out of _mae_, Mrs. Gale, though it's wae as 'as to
+sooffer for 't."
+
+"Eh, but Dr. Rawcliffe's a good maan, and 'e'll mak' it oop to yo',
+naw feear, Mrs. Blenkiron."
+
+"And which of 'em will it bae, Mrs. Gaale, think you?"
+
+"I caann't saay. But it woonna bae t' eldest. Nor t'
+yoongest--joodgin'."
+
+"Well--the lil' laass isn' breaaking 'er 'eart fer him, t' joodge by
+the looks of 'er. I naver saw sech a chaange in anybody in a moonth."
+
+"'T assn' takken mooch to maake 'er 'appy," said Mrs. Gale. For Essy,
+who had informed her, was not subtle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of Ally's happiness there could be no doubt. It lapped her, soaked
+into her like water and air. Her small head flowered under it and put
+out its secret colors; the dull gold of her hair began to shine again,
+her face showed a shallow flush under its pallor; her gray eyes were
+clear as if they had been dipped in water. Two slender golden arches
+shone above them. They hadn't been seen there for five years.
+
+"Who would have believed," said Mary, "that Ally could have looked so
+pretty?"
+
+Ally's prettiness (when she gazed at it in the glass) was delicious,
+intoxicating joy to Ally. She was never tired of looking at it, of
+turning round and round to get new views of it, of dressing her hair
+in new ways to set it off.
+
+"Whatever have you done your hair like that for?" said Mary on a
+Wednesday when Ally came down in the afternoon with her gold spread
+out above her ears and twisted in a shining coil on the top of her
+head.
+
+"To make it grow better," said Ally.
+
+"Don't let Papa catch you at it," said Gwenda, "if you want it to grow
+any more."
+
+Gwenda was going out. She had her hat on, and was taking her
+walking-stick from the stand. Ally stared.
+
+"You're _not_ going out?"
+
+"I am," said Gwenda.
+
+And she laughed as she went. She wasn't going to stay at home for
+Rowcliffe every Wednesday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for Ally, the Vicar did catch her at it. He caught her the very
+next Wednesday afternoon. She thought he had started for Upthorne when
+he hadn't. He was bound to catch her.
+
+For the best looking-glass in the house was in the Vicar's bedroom. It
+went the whole length and width of the wardrobe door, and Ally could
+see herself in it from head to foot. And on the Vicar's dressing-table
+there lay a large and perfect hand-glass that had belonged to Ally's
+mother. Only by opening the wardrobe door and with the aid of the
+hand-glass could Ally obtain a satisfactory three-quarters view of her
+face and figure.
+
+Now, by the Vicar's magnanimity, his daughters were allowed to use his
+bedroom twice in every two years, in the spring and in the autumn,
+for the purpose of trying on their new gowns; but this year they
+were wearing out last winter's gowns, and Ally had no business in the
+Vicar's bedroom at four o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+She was turning slowly round and round, with her head tilted back over
+her left shoulder; she had just caught sight of her little white nose
+as it appeared in a vanishing profile and was adjusting her head at
+another and still more interesting angle when the Vicar caught her.
+
+He was well in the middle of the room, and staring at her, before she
+was aware of him. The wardrobe door, flung wide open, had concealed
+his entrance, but if Ally had not been blinded and intoxicated with
+her own beauty she would have seen him before she began smiling,
+full-face first, then three-quarters, then sideways, a little tilted.
+
+Then she shut to the door of the wardrobe (for the back view that was
+to reassure her as to the utter prettiness of her shoulders and
+the nape of her neck), and it was at that moment that she saw him,
+reflected behind her in the long looking-glass.
+
+She screamed and dropped the hand-glass. She heard it break itself at
+her feet.
+
+"Papa," she cried, "how you frightened me!"
+
+It was not so much that he had caught her smiling at her own face, it
+was that _his_ face, seen in the looking-glass, was awful. And besides
+being awful it was evil. Even to Ally's innocence it was evil. If it
+had been any other man Ally's instinct would have said that he looked
+horrid without Ally knowing or caring to know what her instinct meant.
+But the look on her father's face was awful because it was mysterious.
+Neither she nor her instinct had a word for it. There was cruelty in
+it, and, besides cruelty, some quality nameless and unrecognisable,
+subtle and secret, and yet crude somehow and vivid. The horror of it
+made her forget that he had caught her in one of the most
+deplorably humiliating situations in which a young girl can be
+caught--deliberately manufacturing smiles for her own amusement.
+
+"You've no business to be here," said the Vicar.
+
+He picked up the broken hand-glass, and as he looked at it the cruelty
+and the nameless quality passed out of his face as if a hand had
+smoothed it, and it became suddenly weak and pathetic, the face of
+a child whose precious magic thing another child has played with and
+broken.
+
+Then Alice remembered that the hand-glass had been her mother's.
+
+"I'm sorry I've broken it, Papa, if you liked it."
+
+Her voice recalled him to himself.
+
+"Ally," he said, "what am I to think of you? Are you a fool--or what?"
+
+The sting of it lashed Ally's brain to a retort. (All that she had
+needed hitherto to be effective was a little red blood in her veins,
+and she had got it now.)
+
+"I'd be a fool," she said, "if I cared two straws what you think of
+me, since you can't see what I am. I'm sorry if I've broken your old
+hand-glass, though I didn't break it. You broke it yourself."
+
+Carrying her golden top-knot like a crown, she left the room.
+
+The Vicar took the broken hand-glass and hid it in a drawer. He was
+sorry for himself. The only impression left on his mind was that his
+daughter Ally had been cruel to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Ally didn't care a rap what he thought of her, or what impression
+she had left on his mind. She was much too happy. Besides, if you once
+began caring what Papa thought there would be no peace for anybody.
+He was so impossible that he didn't count. He wasn't even an effective
+serpent in her Paradise. He might crawl all over it (as indeed he did
+crawl), but he left no trail. The thought of how he had caught her at
+the looking-glass might be disagreeable, but it couldn't slime those
+holy lawns. Neither could it break the ecstasy of Wednesday, that
+heavenly day. Nothing could break it as long as Dr. Rowcliffe
+continued to look in at tea-time and her father to explore the
+furthest borders of his parish.
+
+The peace of Paradise came down on the Vicarage every Wednesday
+the very minute the garden gate had swung back behind the Vicar. He
+started so early and he was back so late that there was never any
+chance of his encountering young Rowcliffe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To be sure, young Rowcliffe hardly ever said a word to her. He always
+talked to Mary or to Gwenda. But there was nothing in his reticence to
+disturb Ally's ecstasy. It was bliss to sit and look at Rowcliffe and
+to hear him talk. When she tried to talk to him herself her brain
+swam and she became unhappy and confused. Intellectual effort was
+destructive to the blessed state, which was pure passivity, untroubled
+contemplation in its early stages, before the oncoming of rapture.
+
+The fact that Mary and Gwenda could talk to him and talk intelligently
+showed how little they cared for him or were likely to care, and
+how immeasurably far they were from the supreme act of adoration.
+Similarly, the fact that Rowcliffe could talk to Mary and to Gwenda
+showed how little _he_ cared. If he had cared, if he were ever going
+to care as Ally understood caring, his brain would have swum like hers
+and his intellect would have abandoned him.
+
+Whereas, it was when he turned to Ally that he hadn't a word to say,
+any more than she had, and that he became entangled in his talk, and
+that the intellect he tried to summon to him tottered and vanished at
+his call.
+
+Another thing--when he caught her looking at him (and though Ally was
+careful he did catch her now and then) he always either lowered his
+eyelids or looked away. He was afraid to look at her; and _that_, as
+everybody knew, was an infallible sign. Why, Ally was afraid to look
+at _him_, only she couldn't help it. Her eyes were dragged to the
+terror and the danger.
+
+So Ally reasoned in her Paradise.
+
+For when Rowcliffe was once gone her brain was frantically busy. It
+never gave her any rest. From the one stuff of its dreams it span an
+endless shining thread; from the one thread it wove an endless web of
+visions. From nothing at all it built up drama after drama. It was all
+beautiful what Ally's brain did, all noble, all marvelously pure. (The
+Vicar would have been astonished if he had known how pure.) There
+was no sullen and selfish Ally in Ally's dreams. They were all of
+sacrifice, of self-immolation, of beautiful and noble things done for
+Rowcliffe, of suffering for Rowcliffe, of dying for him. All without
+Rowcliffe being very palpably and positively there.
+
+It was only at night, when Ally's brain slept among its dreams, that
+Rowcliffe's face leaned near to hers without ever touching it, and his
+arms made as if they clasped her and never met. Even then, always
+at the first intangible approach of him, she woke, terrified because
+dreams go by contraries.
+
+"Is your sister always so silent?" Rowcliffe asked that Wednesday (the
+Wednesday when Ally had been caught).
+
+He was alone with Mary.
+
+"Who? Ally? No. She isn't silent at all. What do you think of her?"
+
+"I think," said Rowcliffe, "she looks extraordinarily well."
+
+"That's owing to you," said Mary. "I never saw her pull round so fast
+before."
+
+"No? I assure you," said Rowcliffe, "I haven't anything to do with
+it." He was very stiff and cold and stern.
+
+Rowcliffe was annoyed because it was two Wednesdays running that
+he had found himself alone with the eldest and the youngest Miss
+Cartaret. The second one had gone off heaven knew where.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+The Vicar of Garth considered himself unhappy (to say the least of it)
+in his three children, but he had never asked himself what, after all,
+would he have done without them? After all (as they had frequently
+reminded themselves), without them he could never have lived
+comfortably on his income. They did the work and saved him the
+expenses of a second servant, a housekeeper, an under-gardener, an
+organist and two curates.
+
+The three divided the work of the Vicarage and parish, according to
+the tastes and abilities of each. At home Mary kept the house and
+did the sewing. Gwenda looked after the gray and barren garden, she
+trimmed the narrow paths and the one flower-bed and mowed the small
+square of grass between. Alice trailed through the lower rooms,
+dusting furniture feebly; she gathered and arranged the flowers when
+there were any in the bed. Outside, Mary, being sweet and good, taught
+in the boys' Sunday-school; Alice, because she was fond of children,
+had the infants. For the rest, Mary, who was lazy, had taken over
+that small portion of the village that was not Baptist or Wesleyan or
+Congregational. Gwenda, for her own amusement, and regardless of sect
+and creed, the hopelessly distant hamlets and the farms scattered
+on the long, raking hillsides and the moors. Alice declared herself
+satisfied with her dominion over the organ and the village choir.
+
+Alice was behaving like an angel in her Paradise. No longer listless
+and sullen, she swept through the house with an angel's energy. A
+benign, untiring angel sat at the organ and controlled the violent
+voices of the choir.
+
+The choir looked upon Ally's innocent art with pride and admiration
+and amusement. It tickled them to see those little milk-white hands
+grappling with organ pieces that had beaten the old schoolmaster.
+
+Ally enjoyed the pride and admiration of the choir and was unaware of
+its amusement. She enjoyed the importance of her office. She enjoyed
+the massive, voluptuous vibrations that made her body a vehicle for
+the organ's surging and tremendous soul. Ally's body had become a
+more and more tremulous, a more sensitive and perfect medium for
+vibrations. She would not have missed one choir practice or one
+service.
+
+And she said to herself, "I may be a fool, but Papa or the parish
+would have to pay an organist at least forty pounds a year. It costs
+less to keep me. So he needn't talk."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then in November came the preparations for the village concert.
+
+They were stupendous.
+
+All morning the little Erad piano shook with the Grande Valse and the
+Grande Polonaise of Chopin. The diabolic thing raged through the shut
+house, knowing that it went unchallenged, that its utmost violence was
+licensed until the day after the concert.
+
+Rowcliffe heard it whenever he drove past the Vicarage on his way over
+the moors.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Rowcliffe was now beginning to form that other habit (which was to
+make him even more remarkable than he was already), the hunting down
+of Gwendolen Cartaret in the open.
+
+He was annoyed with Gwendolen Cartaret. When she had all the rest of
+the week to walk in she would set out on Wednesdays before teatime and
+continue until long after dark. He had missed her twice now. And on
+the third Wednesday he saw her swinging up the hill toward Upthorne as
+he, leaving his surgery, came round the corner of the village by the
+bridge.
+
+"I believe," he thought, "she's doing it on purpose. To avoid me."
+
+He was determined not to be avoided.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The doctor's very late this afternoon," said Mary. "I suppose he's
+been sent for somewhere."
+
+Alice said nothing. She couldn't trust herself to speak. She lived in
+sickening fear that on some Wednesday afternoon he would be sent for.
+It had never happened yet, but that made it all the more likely that
+it had happened now.
+
+They waited till five; till a quarter-past.
+
+"I really can't wait any longer," said Mary, "for a man who doesn't
+come."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By that time Rowcliffe and Gwenda were far on the road to Upthorne.
+
+He had overtaken her about a hundred yards above the schoolhouse,
+before the road turned to Upthorne Moor.
+
+"I say, how you do sprint up these hills!"
+
+She turned.
+
+"Is that you, Dr. Rowcliffe?"
+
+"Of course it's me. Where are you off to?"
+
+"Upthorne. Anywhere."
+
+"May I come too?"
+
+"If you want to."
+
+"Of course I want to."
+
+"Have you had any tea?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Weren't they in?"
+
+"I didn't stop to ask."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I saw you stampeding on in front of me, and I swore I'd
+overtake you before you got round that corner. And I have overtaken
+you."
+
+"Shall we go back? We've time."
+
+He frowned. "No. I never turn back. Let's get on. Get on."
+
+They went on at a terrific pace. And as she persisted in walking about
+half a foot in front of him he saw the movement of her fine long limbs
+and the little ripple of her shoulders under the gray tweed.
+
+Presently he spoke.
+
+"It wasn't you I heard playing the other night?"
+
+"No. It must have been my youngest sister."
+
+"I knew it wasn't you."
+
+"It might have been for all you knew."
+
+"It couldn't possibly. If you played you wouldn't play that way."
+
+"What way?"
+
+"Your sister's way. Whatever you wanted to do you'd do it beautifully
+or not at all."
+
+She made no response. She did not even seem to have heard him.
+
+"I don't mean to say," he said, "that your sister doesn't play
+beautifully."
+
+She turned malignly. He liked her when she turned.
+
+"You mean that she plays abominably."
+
+"I didn't mean to _say_ it."
+
+"Why shouldn't you say it?"
+
+"Because you don't say those things. It isn't polite."
+
+"But I know Alice doesn't play well--not those big things. The wonder
+is she can play them at all."
+
+"Why does she attempt--the big things?"
+
+"Why does anybody? Because she loves them. She's never heard them
+properly played. So she doesn't know. She just trusts to her feeling."
+
+"Is there anything else, after all, you _can_ trust?"
+
+"I don't know. You see, Alice's feeling tells her it's all right to
+play like that, and _my_ feeling tells me it's all wrong."
+
+"You can trust _your_ feelings."
+
+"Why mine more than hers?"
+
+"Because _your_ feelings are the feelings of a beautifully sane and
+perfectly balanced person."
+
+"How can you possibly tell? You don't know me."
+
+"I know your type."
+
+"My type isn't me. You can't tell by that."
+
+"You can if you're a physiologist."
+
+"Being a physiologist won't tell you anything about _me_."
+
+"Oh, won't it?"
+
+"It can't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"How can it?"
+
+"You think it can't tell me anything about your soul?"
+
+"Oh--my soul----" Her shoulders expressed disdain for it.
+
+"Do you dislike my mentioning it? Would you rather we didn't talk
+about it? Perhaps you're tired of having it talked about?"
+
+"No; my poor soul has never done anything to get itself talked about."
+
+"I only thought that as your father, perhaps, specialises in souls--"
+
+"He doesn't specialise in mine. He knows nothing about it."
+
+"The specialist never does. To know anything--the least little
+thing--about the soul, you must know everything--everything you _can_
+know--about the body. So that you're wrong even about your soul. Being
+a physiologist tells me that your sort of body--a transparently clean
+and strong and utterly unconscious body--goes with a transparently
+clean and strong and utterly unconscious soul."
+
+"Utterly unconscious?"
+
+He was silent a moment and then answered:
+
+"Utterly unconscious."
+
+They walked on in silence till they came in sight of the marshes and
+the long gray line of Upthorne Farm.
+
+"That's where I met you once," he said. "Do you remember? You were
+coming out of the door as I went in."
+
+"You seem to have been always meeting me."
+
+"Always meeting you. And then---always missing you. Just when I
+expected most to find you."
+
+"If we go much farther in this direction," said Gwenda, "we shall meet
+Papa."
+
+"Well--I suppose some day I shall have to meet him. Do you realise
+that I've never met him yet?"
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"No. Always I've been on the point of meeting him, and always some
+malignant fate has interfered."
+
+She smiled. He loved her smile.
+
+"Why are you smiling?"
+
+"I was only wondering whether the fate was really so malignant."
+
+"You mean that if he met me he'd dislike me?"
+
+"He always _has_ disliked anybody we like. You see, he's a very funny
+father."
+
+"All fathers," said Rowcliffe, "are more or less funny."
+
+She laughed. Her laughter enchanted him.
+
+"Yes. But _my_ father doesn't mean to be as funny as he is."
+
+"I see. He wouldn't really mean to dislike me. Then, perhaps, if I
+regularly laid myself out for it, by years of tender and untiring
+devotion I might win him over?"
+
+She laughed again; she laughed as youth laughs, for the pure joy of
+laughter. She looked on her father as a persistent, delightful jest.
+He adored her laughter.
+
+It proved how strong and sane she was--if she could take him like
+that. Rowcliffe had seen women made bitter, made morbid, driven into
+lunatic asylums by fathers who were as funny as Mr. Cartaret.
+
+"You wouldn't, you wouldn't," she said. "He's funnier than you've any
+idea of."
+
+"Is he ever ill?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"That of course makes it difficult."
+
+"Except colds in his head. But he wouldn't have you for a cold in his
+head. He wouldn't have you for anything if he could help it."
+
+"Well--perhaps--if he's as funny as all that, we'd better turn."
+
+They turned.
+
+They were walking so fast now that they couldn't talk.
+
+Presently they slackened and he spoke.
+
+"I say, shall you ever get away from this place?"
+
+"Never, I think."
+
+"Do you never want to get away?"
+
+"No. Never. You see, I love it."
+
+"I know you do." He said it savagely, as if he were jealous of the
+place.
+
+"So do you," she answered.
+
+"If I didn't I suppose I should have to."
+
+"Yes, it's better, if you've got to live in it."
+
+"That wasn't what I meant."
+
+After that they were silent for a long time. She was wondering what he
+did mean.
+
+When they reached the Vicarage gate he sheered off the path and held
+out his hand.
+
+"Oh--aren't you coming in for tea?" she said.
+
+"Thanks. No. It's a little late. I don't think I want any."
+
+He paused. "I've got what I wanted."
+
+He stepped backward, facing her, raising his cap, then he turned and
+hurried down the hill.
+
+Gwenda walked slowly up the flagged path to the house door. She stood
+there, thinking.
+
+"He's got what he wanted. He only wanted to see what I was like."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Rowcliffe had ten minutes on his hands while they were bringing his
+trap round from the Red Lion.
+
+He was warming his hands at the surgery fire when he heard voices in
+the parlor on the other side of the narrow passage. One voice pleaded,
+the other reserved judgment.
+
+"Do you think he'd do it if I were to go up and ask him?" It was Alice
+Cartaret's voice.
+
+"I caann't say, Miss Cartaret, I'm sure."
+
+"Could you persuade him yourself, Mrs. Blenkiron?"
+
+"It wouldn't be a bit of good me persuadin' him. Jim Greatorex wouldn'
+boodge _that_ mooch for me."
+
+A pause. Alice was wavering, aware, no doubt, of the folly of her
+errand. Rowcliffe had only to lie low and she would go.
+
+"Could Mr. Blenkiron?"
+
+No. Rowcliffe in the surgery smiled all to himself as he warmed his
+hands. Alice was holding her ground. She was spinning out the time.
+
+"Not he. Mr. Blenkiron's got soomat alse to do without trapseing after
+Jim Greatorex."
+
+"Oh."
+
+Alice's voice was distant and defensive. He was sorry for Alice. She
+was not yet broken in to the north country manner, and her softness
+winced under these blows. There was nobody to tell her that Mrs.
+Blenkiron's manner was a criticism of her young kinsman, Jim
+Greatorex.
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron presently made this apparent.
+
+"Jim's sat oop enoof as it is. You'd think there was nawbody in this
+village good enoof to kape coompany wi' Jimmy, the road he goas. Ef I
+was you, Miss Olice, I should let him be."
+
+"I would, but it's his voice we want. I'm thinking of the concert,
+Mrs. Blenkiron. It's the only voice we've got that'll fill the room."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron laughed.
+
+"Eh--he'll fill it fer you, right enoof. You'll have all the yoong
+laads and laasses in the Daale toomblin' in to hear Jimmy."
+
+"We want them. We want everybody. You Wesleyans and all."
+
+Another pause. Rowcliffe was interested. Alice was really displaying
+considerable intelligence. Almost she persuaded him that her errand
+was genuine.
+
+"Do you think Essy Gale could get him to come?"
+
+In the surgery Rowcliffe whistled inaudibly. _That_ was indeed a
+desperate shift.
+
+Rowcliffe had turned and was now standing with his back to the fire.
+He was intensely interested.
+
+"Assy Gaale? He would n' coom for Assy's asskin', a man like
+Greatorex."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron's blood, the blood of the Greatorexes, was up.
+
+"Naw," said Jim Greatorex's kinswoman, "if you want Greatorex to sing
+for you as bad as all that, Miss Cartaret, you'd better speak to the
+doctor."
+
+Rowcliffe became suddenly grave. He watched the door.
+
+"He'd mebbe do it for him. He sats soom store by Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+"But"--Ally's voice sounded nearer--"he's gone, hasn't he?"
+
+(The minx, the little, little minx!)
+
+"Naw. But he's joost goin'. Shall I catch him?"
+
+"You might."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron caught him on the threshold of the surgery.
+
+"Will you speak to Miss Cartaret a minute, Dr. Rawcliffe?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron withdrew. The kitchen door closed on her flight. For
+the first time in their acquaintance Rowcliffe was alone with Alice
+Cartaret, and though he was interested he didn't like it.
+
+"I thought I heard your voice," said he with reckless geniality.
+
+They stood on their thresholds looking at each other across the narrow
+passage. It was as if Alice Cartaret's feet were fixed there by an
+invisible force that held her fascinated and yet frightened.
+
+Rowcliffe had paused too, as at a post of vantage, the better to
+observe her.
+
+A moment ago, warming his hands in the surgery, he could have sworn
+that she, the little maneuvering minx, had laid a trap for him. She
+had come on her fool's errand, knowing that it was a fool's errand,
+for nothing on earth but that she might catch him, alone and
+defenseless, in the surgery. It was the sort of thing she did, the
+sort of thing she always would do. She didn't want to know (not she!)
+whether Jim Greatorex would sing or not, she wanted to know, and
+she meant to know, why he, Steven Rowcliffe, hadn't turned up that
+afternoon, and where he had gone, and what he had been doing, and the
+rest of it. There were windows at the back of the Vicarage. Possibly
+she had seen him charging up the hill in pursuit of her sister, and
+she was desperate. All this he had believed and did still believe.
+
+But, as he looked across at the little hesitating figure and the
+scared face framed in the doorway, he had compassion on her. Poor
+little trapper, so pitifully trapped; so ignorant of the first rules
+and principles of trapping that she had run hot-foot after her prey
+when she should have lain low and lured it silently into her snare.
+She was no more than a poor little frightened minx, caught in his
+trap, peering at him from it in terror. God knew he hadn't meant to
+set it for her, and God only knew how he was going to get her out of
+it.
+
+"Poor things," he thought, "if they only knew how horribly they
+embarrass me!"
+
+For of course she wasn't the first. The situation had repeated itself,
+monotonously, scores of times in his experience. It would have been
+a nuisance even if Alice Cartaret had not been Gwendolen Cartaret's
+sister. That made it intolerable.
+
+All this complex pity and repugnance was latent in his one sense of
+horrible embarrassment.
+
+Then their hands met.
+
+"You want to see me?"
+
+"I _did_--" She was writhing piteously in the trap.
+
+"You'd better come into the surgery. There's a fire there."
+
+He wasn't going to keep her out there in the cold; and he wasn't going
+to walk back with her to the Vicarage. He didn't want to meet the
+Vicar and have the door shut in his face. Rowcliffe, informed by Mrs.
+Blenkiron, was aware, long before Gwenda had warned him, that he ran
+this risk. The Vicar's funniness was a byword in the parish.
+
+But he left the door ajar.
+
+"Well," he said gently, "what is it?"
+
+"Shall you be seeing Jim Greatorex soon?"
+
+"I might. Why?"
+
+She told her tale again; she told it in little bursts of excitement
+punctuated with shy hesitations. She told it with all sorts of twists
+and turns, winding and entangling herself in it and coming out again
+breathless and frightened, like a lost creature that has been dragged
+through the brake. And there were long pauses when Alice put her head
+on one side, considering, as if she held her tale in her hands and
+were looking at it and wondering whether she really could go on.
+
+"And what is it you want me to do?" said Rowcliffe finally.
+
+"To ask him."
+
+"Hadn't you better ask him yourself?"
+
+"Would he do it for me?"
+
+"Of course he would."
+
+"I wonder. Perhaps--if I asked him prettily--"
+
+"Oh, then--he couldn't help himself."
+
+There was a pause. Rowcliffe, a little ashamed of himself, looked at
+the floor, and Alice looked at Rowcliffe and tried to fathom the full
+depth of his meaning from his face. That there was a depth and that
+there was a meaning she never doubted. This time Rowcliffe missed the
+pathos of her gray eyes.
+
+An idea had come to him.
+
+"Look here--Miss Cartaret--if you can get Jim Greatorex to sing for
+you, if you can get him to take an interest in the concert or in any
+mortal thing besides beer and whisky, you'll be doing the best day's
+work you ever did in your life."
+
+"Do you think I _could_?" she said.
+
+"I think you could probably do anything with him if you gave your mind
+to it."
+
+He meant it. He meant it. That was really his opinion of her. Her
+lifted face was radiant as she drank bliss at one draught from the cup
+he held to her. But she was not yet satisfied.
+
+"You'd _like_ me to do it?"
+
+"I should very much."
+
+His voice was firm, but his eyes looked uneasy and ashamed.
+
+"Would you like me to get him back in the choir?"
+
+"I'd like you to get him back into anything that'll keep him out of
+mischief."
+
+She raised her chin. There was a more determined look on her small,
+her rather insignificant face than he would have thought to see there.
+
+She rose.
+
+"Very well," she said superbly. "I'll do it."
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"I don't say, Miss Cartaret, that you'll reclaim him."
+
+"Nor I. But--if you want me to, I'll try."
+
+They parted on it.
+
+Rowcliffe smiled as he closed the surgery door behind him.
+
+"That'll give her something else to think about," he said to himself.
+"And it'll take her all her time."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+The next Sunday, early in the afternoon, Alice went, all by herself,
+to Upthorne.
+
+Hitherto she had disliked going to Upthorne by herself. She had no
+very subtle feeling for the aspects of things; but there was something
+about the road to Upthorne that repelled her. A hundred yards or so
+above the schoolhouse it turned, leaving behind it the wide green
+bottom and winding up toward the naked moor. To the north, on her
+right, it narrowed and twisted; the bed of the beck lay hidden. A
+thin scrub of low thorn trees covered the lower slopes of the further
+hillside. Here and there was a clearing and a cottage or a farm. On
+her left she had to pass the dead mining station, the roofless walls,
+the black window gaps, the melancholy haunted colonnades, the three
+chimneys of the dead furnaces, square cornered, shooting straight and
+high as the bell-towers of some hill city of the South, beautiful and
+sinister, guarding that place of ashes and of ruin. Then the sallow
+winter marshes. South of the marshes were the high moors. Their flanks
+showed black where they have been flayed by the cuttings of old mines.
+At intervals, along the line of the hillside, masses of rubble rose in
+hummocks or hung like avalanches, black as if they had been discharged
+by blasting. Beyond, in the turn of the Dale, the village of Upthorne
+lay unseen.
+
+And hitherto, in all that immense and inhuman desolation nothing (to
+Alice) had been more melancholy, more sinister, more haunted than the
+house where John Greatorex had died. With its gray, unsleeping face,
+its lidless eyes, staring out over the marshes, it had lost (for
+Alice) all likeness to a human habitation. It repudiated the living;
+it remembered; it kept a grim watch with its dead.
+
+But Alice's mind, acutely sensitive in one direction, had become
+callous in every other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greatorex was in the kitchen, smoking his Sunday afternoon pipe in
+the chimney corner, screened from the open doorway by the three-foot
+thickness of the house wall.
+
+Maggie, his servant, planted firmly on the threshold, jerked her head
+over her shoulder to call to him.
+
+"There's a yoong laady wants to see yo, Mr. Greatorex!"
+
+There was no response but a sharp tapping on the hob, as Greatorex
+knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
+
+Maggie stood looking at Alice a little mournfully with her deep-set,
+blue, pathetic eyes. Maggie had once been pretty in spite of her
+drab hair and flat features, but where her high color remained it had
+hardened with her thirty-five years.
+
+"Well yo' coom?"
+
+Maggie called again and waited. Courageous in her bright blue Sunday
+gown, she waited while her master rose, then, shame-faced as if driven
+by some sharp sign from him, she slunk into the scullery.
+
+Jim Greatorex appeared on his threshold.
+
+On his threshold, utterly sober, carrying himself with the assurance
+of the master in his own house, he would not have suffered by
+comparison with any man. Instead of the black broadcloth that Alice
+had expected, he wore a loose brown shooting jacket, drab corduroy
+breeches, a drab cloth waistcoat and brown leather leggings, and he
+wore them with a distinction that Rowcliffe might have envied. His
+face, his whole body, alert and upright, had the charm of some shy,
+half-savage animal. When he stood at ease his whole face, with all
+its features, sensed you and took you in; the quivering eyebrows were
+aware of you; the nose, with its short, high bridge, its fine, wide
+nostrils, repeated the sensitive stare of the wide eyes; his mouth,
+under its golden brown moustache, was somber with a sort of sullen
+apprehension, till in a sudden, childlike confidence it smiled. His
+whole face and all its features smiled.
+
+He was smiling at Alice now, as if struck all of a sudden by her
+smallness.
+
+"I've come to ask a favor, Mr. Greatorex," said Alice.
+
+"Ay," said Greatorex. He said it as if ladies called every day to ask
+him favors. "Will you coom in, Miss Cartaret?" It was the mournful
+and musical voice that she had heard sometimes last summer on the road
+outside the back door of the Vicarage.
+
+She came in, pausing on the threshold and looking about her, as if
+she stood poised on the edge of an adventure. Her smallness, and the
+delicious, exploring air of her melted Jim's heart and made him smile
+at her.
+
+"It's a roough plaace fer a laady," he said.
+
+"It's a beautiful place, Mr. Greatorex," said Alice.
+
+And she did actually think it was beautiful with its stone floor, its
+white-washed walls, its black oak dresser and chest and settle;
+not because of these things but because it was on the border of her
+Paradise. Rowcliffe had sent her there. Jim Greatorex had glamour
+for her, less on his own account than as a man in whom Rowcliffe was
+interested.
+
+"You'd think it a bit loansoom, wouldn' yo', ef yo' staayed in it
+yeear in and yeear out?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alice doubtfully. "Perhaps--a little," she
+ventured, encouraged by Greatorex's indulgent smile.
+
+"An' loansoom it is," said Greatorex dismally.
+
+Alice explored, penetrating into the interior.
+
+"Oh--but aren't you glad you've got such a lovely fireplace?"
+
+"I doan' knaw as I've thought mooch about it. We get used to our own."
+
+"What are those hooks for in the chimney?"
+
+"They? They're fer 'angin' the haams on--to smoak 'em."
+
+"I see."
+
+She would have sat there on the oak settle but that Greatorex was
+holding open the door of an inner room.
+
+"Yo'd better coom into t' parlor, Miss Cartaret. It'll be more
+coomfortable for you."
+
+She rose and followed him. She had been long enough in Garth to know
+that if you are asked to go into the parlor you must go. Otherwise you
+risk offending the kind gods of the hearth and threshold.
+
+The parlor was a long low room that continued the line of the house
+to its southern end. One wide mullioned window looked east over the
+marsh, the other south to the hillside across a little orchard of
+dwarfed and twisted trees.
+
+To Alice they were the trees of her Paradise and the hillside was its
+boundary.
+
+Greatorex drew close to the hearth the horsehair and mahogany armchair
+with the white antimacassar.
+
+"Sit yo' down and I'll putt a light to the fire."
+
+"Not for me," she protested.
+
+But Greatorex was on his knees before her, lighting the fire.
+
+"You'll 'ave wet feet coomin' over t' moor. Cauld, too, yo'll be."
+
+She sat and watched him. He was deft with his great hands, like a
+woman, over his fire-lighting.
+
+"There--she's burning fine." He rose, turning triumphantly on his
+hearth as the flame leaped in the grate.
+
+"Yo'll let me mak' yo' a coop of tae, Miss Cartaret."
+
+There was an interrogative lilt at the end of all his sentences, even
+when, as now, he was making statements that admitted of no denial. But
+his guest missed the incontrovertible and final quality of what was
+said.
+
+"Please don't trouble."
+
+"It's naw trooble--naw trooble at all. Maaggie'll 'ave got kettle on."
+
+He strode out of his parlor into his kitchen. "Maaggie! Maaggie!" he
+called. "Are yo' there? Putt kettle on and bring tae into t' parlor."
+
+Alice looked about her while she waited.
+
+Though she didn't know it, Jim Greatorex's parlor was a more tolerable
+place than the Vicarage drawing-room. Brown cocoanut matting covered
+its stone floor. In front of the wide hearth on the inner wall was a
+rug of dyed sheepskin bordered with a strip of scarlet snippets. The
+wooden chimney-piece, the hearth-place, the black hobs, the straight
+barred grate with its frame of fine fluted iron, belonged to a period
+of simplicity. The oblong mahogany table in the center of the room,
+the sofa and chairs, upholstered in horsehair, were of a style austere
+enough to be almost beautiful. Down the white ground of the wall-paper
+an endless succession of pink nosegays ascended and descended between
+parallel stripes of blue.
+
+There were no ornaments to speak of in Greatorex's parlor but the
+grocer's tea-caddies on the mantelshelf and the little china figures,
+the spotted cows, the curly dogs, the boy in blue, the girl in pink;
+and the lustre ware and the tea-sets, the white and gold, the blue
+and white, crowded behind the diamond panes of the two black oak
+cupboards. Of these one was set in the most conspicuous corner, the
+other in the middle of the long wall facing the east window, bare
+save for the framed photographs of Greatorex's family, the groups,
+the portraits of father and mother and of grandparents, enlarged from
+vignettes taken in the seventies and eighties--faces defiant, stolid
+and pathetic; yearning, mournful, tender faces, slightly blurred.
+
+All these objects impressed themselves on Ally's brain, adhering
+to its obsession and receiving from it an immense significance and
+importance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She heard Maggie's running feet, and the great leisurely steps of
+Greatorex, and his voice, soft and kind, encouraging Maggie.
+
+"Theer--that's t' road. Gently, laass--moor' 'aaste, less spead. Now
+t' tray--an' a clane cloth--t' woon wi' laace on 't. Thot's t' road."
+
+Maggie whispered, awestruck by these preparations:
+
+"Which coops will yo' 'ave, Mr. Greatorex?"
+
+"T' best coops, Maaggie."
+
+Maggie had to fetch them from the corner cupboard (they were the white
+and gold). At Greatorex's command she brought the little round oak
+table from its place in the front window and set it by the hearth
+before the visitor. Humbly, under her master's eye, yet with a sort of
+happy pride about her, she set out the tea-things and the glass dishes
+of jam and honey and tea-cakes.
+
+Greatorex waited, silent and awkward, till his servant had left the
+room. Then he came forward.
+
+"Theer's caake," he said. "Maaggie baaked un yesterda'. An' theer's
+hooney."
+
+He made no servile apologies for what he set before her. He was giving
+her nothing that was not good, and he knew it.
+
+And he sat down facing her and watched her pour out her tea and help
+herself with her little delicate hands. If he had been a common man, a
+peasant, his idea of courtesy would have been to leave her to herself,
+to turn away his eyes from her in that intimate and sacred act of
+eating and drinking. But Greatorex was a farmer, the descendant of
+yeomen, and by courtesy a yeoman still, and courtesy bade him watch
+and see that his guest wanted for nothing.
+
+That he did not sit down at the little table and drink tea with her
+himself showed that his courtesy knew where to draw the dividing line.
+
+"But why aren't you having anything yourself?" said Alice. She really
+wondered.
+
+He smiled. "It's a bit too early for me, thank yo'. Maaggie'll mak' me
+a coop by and bye."
+
+And she said to herself, "How beautifully he did it."
+
+He was indeed doing it beautifully all through. He watched her little
+fingers, and the very instant they had disposed of a morsel he offered
+her another. It was a deep and exquisite pleasure to him to observe
+her in that act of eating and drinking. He had never seen anything
+like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it. He
+had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray
+tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so
+distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and
+collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of
+blue peacock's breast laid on one side of it like a folded wing.
+
+As he watched her he thought, "If I was to touch her I should break
+her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the conversation began.
+
+"I was sorry," he said, "to hear yo was so poorly, Miss Cartaret."
+
+"I'm all right now. You can see I'm all right."
+
+He shook his head. "I saw yo' a moonth ago, and I didn't think then I
+sud aver see yo' at Oopthorne again."
+
+He paused.
+
+"'E's a woonderful maan, Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+"He is," said Alice.
+
+Her voice was very soft, inaudible as a breath. All the blood in
+her body seemed to rush into her face and flood it and spread up her
+forehead to the roots of the gold hair that the east wind had crisped
+round the edges of her hat. She thought, "It'll be awful if he
+guesses, and if he talks." But when she looked at Greatorex his face
+reassured her, it was so utterly innocent of divination. And the next
+moment he went straight to the matter in hand.
+
+"An' what's this thing you've coom to aassk me, Miss Cartaret?"
+
+"Well"--she looked at him and her gray eyes were soft and charmingly
+candid--"it _was_ if you'd be kind enough to sing at our concert.
+You've heard about it?"
+
+"Ay, I've heard about it, right enoof."
+
+"Well--_won't_ you? You _have_ sung, you know."
+
+"Yes. I've soong. But thot was in t' owd schoolmaaster's time. Yo'
+wouldn't care to hear my singin' now. I've got out of the way of it,
+like."
+
+"You haven't, Mr. Greatorex. I've heard you. You've got a magnificent
+voice. There isn't one like it in the choir."
+
+"Ay, there's not mooch wrong with my voice, I rackon. But it's like
+this, look yo. I joost soong fer t' schoolmaaster. He was a friend--a
+personal friend of mine. And he's gone. And I'm sure I doan' knaw--"
+
+"I know, Mr. Greatorex. I know exactly how you feel about it. You
+sang to please your friend. He's gone and you don't like the idea of
+singing for anybody else--for a set of people you don't know."
+
+She had said it. It was the naked truth and he wasn't going to deny
+it.
+
+She went on. "We're strangers and perhaps you don't like us very much,
+and you feel that singing for us would be like singing the Lord's song
+in a strange country; you feel as if it would be profanation--a kind
+of disloyalty."
+
+"Thot's it. Thot's it." Never had he been so well interpreted.
+
+"It's that--and it's because you miss him so awfully."
+
+"Wall--" He seemed inclined, in sheer honesty, to deprecate the
+extreme and passionate emotion she suggested. I would n' saay--O'
+course, I sort o' miss him. I caann't afford to lose a friend--I
+'aven't so many of 'em."
+
+"I know. It's the waters of Babylon, and you're hanging up your
+voice in the willow tree." She could be gay and fluent enough with
+Greatorex, who was nothing to her. "But it's an awful pity. A willow
+tree can't do anything with a big barytone voice hung up in it."
+
+He laughed then. And afterward, whenever he thought of it, he laughed.
+
+She saw that he had adopted his attitude first of all in resentment,
+that he had continued it as a passionate, melancholy pose, and that he
+was only keeping it up through sheer obstinacy. He would be glad of a
+decent excuse to abandon it, if he could find one.
+
+"And your friend must have been proud of your voice, wasn't he?"
+
+"He sat more store by it than what I do. It was he, look yo, who
+trained me so as I could sing proper."
+
+"Well, then, he must have taken some trouble over it. Do you think
+he'd like you to go and hang it up in a willow tree?"
+
+Greatorex looked up, showing a shamefaced smile. The little lass had
+beaten him.
+
+"Coom to think of it, I doan' knaw as he would like it mooch."
+
+"Of course he wouldn't like it. It would be wasting what he'd done."
+
+"So 't would. I naver thought of it like thot."
+
+She rose. She knew the moment of surrender, and she knew, woman-like,
+that it must not be overpassed. She stood before him, drawing on her
+gloves, fastening her squirrel collar and settling her chin in the
+warm fur with the movement of a small burrowing animal, a movement
+that captivated Greatorex. Then, deliberately and finally, she held
+out her hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Greatorex. It's all right, isn't it? You're coming to
+sing for _him,_ you know, not for _us_."
+
+"I'm coomin'," said Greatorex.
+
+She settled her chin again, tucked her hands away in the squirrel muff
+and went quickly toward the door. He followed.
+
+"Let me putt Daasy in t' trap, Miss Cartaret, and drive yo' home."
+
+"I wouldn't think of it. Thank you all the same."
+
+She was in the kitchen now, on the outer threshold. He followed her
+there.
+
+"Miss Cartaret--"
+
+She turned. "Well?"
+
+His face was flushed to the eyes. He struggled visibly for expression.
+"Yo' moosn' saay I doan' like yo'. Fer it's nat the truth."
+
+"I'm glad it isn't," she said.
+
+He walked with her down the bridle path to the gate. He was dumb after
+his apocalypse.
+
+They parted at the gate.
+
+With long, slow, thoughtful strides Greatorex returned along the
+bridle path to his house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alice went gaily down the hill to Garth. It was the hill of Paradise.
+And if she thought of Greatorex and of how she had cajoled him into
+singing, and of how through singing she would reclaim him, it was
+because Greatorex and his song and his redemption were a small, hardly
+significant part of the immense thought of Rowcliffe.
+
+"How pleased he'll be when he knows what I've done!"
+
+And her pure joy had a strain in it that was not so pure. It pleased
+her to please Rowcliffe, but it pleased her also that he should
+realise her as a woman who could cajole men into doing for her what
+they didn't want to do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I've got him! I've got him!" she cried as she came, triumphant, into
+the dining-room where her father and her sisters still sat round the
+table. "No, thanks. I've had tea."
+
+"Where did you get it?" the Vicar asked with his customary suspicion.
+
+"At Upthorne. Jim Greatorex gave it me."
+
+The Vicar was appeased. He thought nothing of it that Greatorex should
+have given his daughter tea. Greatorex was part of the parish.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Rowcliffe was coming to the concert. Neither floods nor tempests, he
+declared, would keep him away from it.
+
+For hours, night after night, of the week before the concert, Jim
+Greatorex had been down at Garth, in the schoolhouse, practicing with
+Alice Cartaret until she assured him he was perfect.
+
+Night after night the schoolhouse, gray in its still yard, had a door
+kept open for them and a light in the solemn lancet windows. The tall
+gray ash tree that stood back in the angle of the porch knew of their
+coming and their going. The ash tree was friendly. When the north wind
+tossed its branches it beckoned to the two, it summoned them from up
+and down the hill.
+
+And now the tables and blackboards had been cleared out of the big
+schoolroom. The matchboarding of white pine that lined the lower half
+of its walls had been hung with red twill, with garlands of ivy and
+bunches of holly. Oil lamps swung from the pine rafters of the ceiling
+and were set on brackets at intervals along the walls. A few boards
+raised on joists made an admirable platform. One broad strip of red
+felt was laid along the platform, another hid the wooden steps that
+led to it. On the right a cottage piano was set slantwise. In the
+front were chairs for the principal performers. On the left, already
+in their places, were the glee-singers chosen from the village choir.
+Behind, on benches, the rest of the choir.
+
+Over the whole scene, on the chalk white of the dado, the blond yellow
+of varnished pinewood, the blazing scarlet of the hangings, the dark
+glitter of the ivy and the holly; on the faces, ruddy and sallow,
+polished with cleanliness, on the sleek hair, on the pale frocks of
+the girls, the bright neckties of the men, the lamplight rioted and
+exulted; it rippled and flowed; it darted; it lay suave and smooth as
+still water; it flaunted; it veiled itself. Stately and tall and in a
+measured order, the lancet windows shot up out of the gray walls, the
+leaded framework of their lozenges gray on the black and solemn night
+behind them.
+
+A smell of dust, of pine wood, of pomade, of burning oil, of an iron
+stove fiercely heated, a thin, bitter smell of ivy and holly; that
+wonderful, that overpowering, inspiring and revolting smell, of
+elements strangely fused, of flying vapors, of breathing, burning,
+palpitating things.
+
+Greatorex, conspicuous in his front seat on the platform, drew it
+in with great heavings of his chest. He loved that smell. It fairly
+intoxicated him every time. It soared singing through his nostrils
+into his brain, like gin. There could be no more violent and
+voluptuous contrast of sensations than to come straight from the cold,
+biting air of Upthorne and to step into that perfect smell. It was a
+thick, a sweet, a fiery and sustaining smell. It helped him to face
+without too intolerable an agony the line of alien (he deemed them
+alien) faces in the front row of the audience: Mr. Cartaret and Miss
+Cartaret (utter strangers; he had never got, he never would get used
+to them) and Dr. Rowcliffe (not altogether a stranger, after what he
+had done one night for Greatorex's mare Daisy); then Miss Gwendolen
+(not a stranger either after what she had done, and yet formidably
+strange, the strangest, when he came to think of it, and the queerest
+of them all). Rowcliffe, he observed, sat between her and her sister.
+Divided from them by a gap, more strangers, three girls whom Rowcliffe
+had driven over from Morfe and afterward (Greatorex observed that
+also, for he kept his eye on him) had shamelessly abandoned.
+
+If Greatorex had his eye on Rowcliffe, Rowcliffe had his eye, though
+less continuously, on him. He did not know very much about Greatorex,
+after all, and he could not be sure that his man would turn
+up entirely sober. He was unaware of Greatorex's capacity for
+substituting one intoxication for another. He had no conception of
+what the smell of that lighted and decorated room meant for this man
+who lived so simply and profoundly by his senses and his soul. It was
+interfused and tangled with Greatorex's sublimest feelings. It was the
+draw-net of submerged memories, of secret, unsuspected passions. It
+held in its impalpable web his dreams, the divine and delicate things
+that his grosser self let slip. He would forget, forget for ages,
+until, in the schoolroom at concert time, at the first caress of the
+magical smell, those delicate and divine, those secret, submerged, and
+forgotten things arose, and with the undying poignancy and subtlety of
+odors they entered into him again. And besides these qualities which
+were indefinable, the smell was vividly symbolic. It was entwined with
+and it stood for his experience of art and ambition and the power to
+move men and women; for song and for the sensuous thrill and spiritual
+ecstasy of singing and for the subsequent applause. It was the only
+form of intoxication known to him that did not end in headache and in
+shame.
+
+Suddenly the charm that had sustained him ceased to work.
+
+Under it he had been sitting in suspense, waiting for something,
+knowing and not daring to own to himself what it was he waited
+for. The suspense and the waiting seemed all part of the original
+excitement.
+
+Then Alice Cartaret came up the room.
+
+Her passage had been obscured and obstructed by the crowd of villagers
+at the door. But they had cleared a way for her and she came.
+
+She carried herself like a crowned princess. The cords of her cloak
+(it was of dove color, lined with blue) had loosened in her passage,
+and the cloak had slipped, showing her naked shoulders. She wore a
+little dove-gray gown with some blue about it and a necklace of pale
+amber. Her white arms hung slender as a child's from the immense puffs
+of the sleeves. Her fair hair was piled in front of a high amber comb.
+
+As she appeared before the platform Rowcliffe rose and took her cloak
+from her (Greatorex saw him take it, but he didn't care; he knew more
+about the doctor than the doctor knew himself). He handed her up the
+steps on to the platform and then turned, like a man who has done all
+that chivalry requires of him, to his place between her sisters. The
+hand that Rowcliffe had let go went suddenly to her throat, seizing
+her necklace and loosening it as if it choked her. Rowcliffe was not
+looking at her.
+
+Still with her hand at her throat, she smiled and bowed to the
+audience, to the choir, to Greatorex, to the schoolmaster who came
+forward (Greatorex cursed him) and led her to the piano.
+
+She sat down, wiped her hands on her handkerchief, and waited,
+enduring like an angel the voices of the villagers and the shuffling
+of their feet.
+
+Then somebody (it was the Vicar) said, "Hush!" and she began to play.
+In her passion for the unattainable she had selected Chopin's Grande
+Valse in A Flat, beginning with the long shake of eight bars.
+
+Greatorex did not know whether she played well or badly. He only knew
+it looked and sounded wonderful. He could have watched forever her
+little hands that were like white birds. He had never seen anything
+more delicious and more amusing than their fluttering in the long
+shake and their flying with spread wings all over the piano.
+
+Then the jumping and the thumping began; and queer noises, the like of
+which Greatorex had never heard, came out of the piano. It jarred him;
+but it made him smile. The little hands were marvelous the way they
+flew, the way they leaped across great spaces of piano.
+
+Alice herself was satisfied. She had brought out the air; she had made
+it sing above the confusion of the bass and treble that evidently had
+had no clear understanding when they started; as for the bad bits, the
+tremendous crescendo chords that your hands must take at a flying leap
+or miss altogether, Rowcliffe had already assured her that they were
+impracticable anyhow; and Rowcliffe knew.
+
+Flushed and softened with the applause (Rowcliffe had joined in
+it), she took her place between Greatorex and the schoolmaster. The
+glee-singers, two men and two women, came forward and sang their
+glees, turning and bowing to each other like mummers. The schoolmaster
+recited the "Pied Piper of Hamelin." A young lady who had come over
+from Morfe expressly for that purpose sang the everlasting song about
+the miller.
+
+Leaning stiffly forward, her thin neck outstretched, her brows bent
+toward Rowcliffe, summoning all that she knew of archness to her eyes,
+she sang.
+
+  "Oh miller, miller, miller, miller, miller, let me go!"
+
+sang the young lady from Morfe. Alice could see that she sang for
+Rowcliffe and at Rowcliffe; she sang into his face until he turned it
+away, and then, utterly unabashed, she sang into his left ear.
+
+The presence and the song of the young lady from Morfe would have been
+torture to Alice, but that her eyelids and her face were red as if
+perpetually smitten by the east wind and scarified with weeping. To
+Alice, at the piano, it was terrible to be associated with the song of
+the young lady from Morfe. She felt that Rowcliffe was looking at her
+(he wasn't) and she strove by look and manner to detach herself.
+As the young lady flung herself into it and became more and more
+intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the
+accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew
+graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge
+of the last hope of the young lady from Morfe.
+
+When it ceased there rose from the piano that was its grave the
+Grande Polonaise of Chopin. It rose in splendor and defiance; Alice's
+defiance of the young lady from Morfe. It brought down the schoolhouse
+in a storm of clapping and thumping, of "Bravos" and "Encores." Even
+Rowcliffe said, "Bravo!"
+
+But Alice, still seated at the piano, smiled and signaled.
+
+And Jim Greatorex stood up to sing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood facing the room, but beside her, so that she could sign to
+him if anything went wrong.
+
+  "'Oh, that we two-oo were May-ing
+  Down the stream of the so-oft spring breeze,
+  Like children with vi-olets pla-aying.'"
+
+Greatorex's voice was a voice of awful volume and it ranged somewhere
+from fairly deep barytone almost to tenor. It was at moments
+unmanageable, being untrained, yet he seemed to do as much with it as
+if it had been bass and barytone and tenor all in one. It had grown
+a little thick in the last year, but he brought out of its very
+thickness a brooding, yearning passion and an intolerable pathos.
+
+The song, overladen with emotion, appealed to him; it expressed as
+nothing else could have expressed the passions that were within him at
+that moment. It swept the whole range of his experiences, there were
+sheep in it and a churchyard and children (his lady could never be
+anything more to him than a child).
+
+  "'Oh, that we two-oo were ly-ing
+  In our nest in the chu-urch-yard sod,
+  With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast,
+  And our souls--at home--with God!'"
+
+That finished it. There was no other end.
+
+And as he sang it, looking nobly if a little heavily over the heads of
+his audience, he saw Essy Gale hidden away, and trying to hide herself
+more, beside her mother in the farthest corner of the room.
+
+He had forgotten Essy.
+
+And at the sight of her his nobility went from him and only his
+heaviness remained.
+
+It didn't matter that they shouted for him to sing again, that they
+stamped and bellowed, and that he did sing, again and again, taking
+the roof off at the last with "John Peel."
+
+Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered. Nothing could matter now.
+
+And then something bigger than his heart, bigger than his voice,
+something immense and brutal and defiant, asserted itself and said
+that Come to that Essy didn't matter. She had put herself in his way.
+And Maggie had been before and after her. And Maggie didn't matter
+either.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the magical smell had wrapped itself round Alice Cartaret, and her
+dove-gray gown and dove-gray eyes, and round the thought of her. It
+twined and tangled her in the subtle mesh. She was held and embalmed
+in it forever.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+It was Wednesday, the day after the concert.
+
+Mr. Cartaret was standing before the fire in his study. He had just
+rung the bell and now he waited in an attitude of wisdom and of
+patience. It was only ten o'clock in the morning and wisdom and
+patience should not be required of any man at such an hour. But the
+Vicar had a disagreeable duty to perform.
+
+Whenever the Vicar had a disagreeable duty to perform he performed
+it as early as possible in the morning, so that none of its
+disagreeableness was lost. The whole day was poisoned by it.
+
+He waited a little longer. And as he waited his patience began to
+suffer imperceptibly, though his wisdom remained intact.
+
+He rang again. The bell sounded through the quiet house, angry and
+terrifying.
+
+In another moment Essy came in. She had on a clean apron.
+
+She stood by the roll-top desk. It offered her a certain cover and
+support. Her brown eyes, liquid and gentle, gazed at him. But for all
+her gentleness there was a touch of defiance in her bearing.
+
+"Did you not hear me ring?" said the Vicar.
+
+"Naw, sir."
+
+Nothing more clear and pure than the candor of Essy's eyes. They
+disconcerted him.
+
+"I have nothing to say to you, Essy. You know why I sent for you."
+
+"Naw, sir." She thought it was a question.
+
+He underlined it.
+
+"You--know--why."
+
+"Naw. I doan' knaw, sir."
+
+"Then, if you don't know, you must find out. You will go down to the
+surgery this afternoon and see Dr. Rowcliffe, and he will report on
+your case."
+
+She started and the red blood rose in her face.
+
+"I s'all not goa and see him, Mr. Cartaret."
+
+She was very quiet.
+
+"Very good. Then I shall pay you a month's wages and you will go on
+Saturday."
+
+It was then that her mouth trembled so that her eyes shone large
+through her tears.
+
+"I wasn't gawn to staay, sir--to be a trooble. I sud a gien yo'
+nawtice in anoother moonth."
+
+She paused. There was a spasm in her throat as if she swallowed with
+difficulty her bitter pride. Her voice came thick and hoarse.
+
+"Woan't yo' kape me till th' and o' t' moonth, sir?" Her voice cleared
+suddenly. "Than I can see yo' trow Christmas."
+
+The Vicar opened his mouth to speak; but instead of speaking he
+stared. His open mouth stared with a supreme astonishment. Up till
+now, in his wisdom and his patience, he had borne with Essy, the Essy
+who had come before him one evening in September, dejected and afraid.
+He hated Essy and he hated her sin, but he had borne with her then
+because of her sorrow and her shame.
+
+And here was Essy with not a sign of sorrow or of shame about her,
+offering (in the teeth of her deserved dismissal), actually offering
+as a favor to stay over Christmas and to see them through. The naked
+impudence of it was what staggered him.
+
+"I have no intention of keeping you over Christmas. You will take your
+notice and your wages from to-day, and you will go on Saturday."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+In her going Essy turned.
+
+"Will yo' taake me back, sir, when it's all over?"
+
+"No. No. I shouldn't think of taking you back."
+
+The Vicar hid his hands in his pockets and leaned forward, thrusting
+his face toward Essy as he spoke.
+
+"I'm afraid, my girl, it never will be all over, as long as you regard
+your sin as lightly as you do."
+
+Essy did not see the Vicar's face thrust toward her. She was sidling
+to the door. She had her hand on the doorknob.
+
+"Come back," said the Vicar. "I have something else to say to you."
+
+Essy came no nearer. She remained standing by the door.
+
+"Who is the man, Essy?"
+
+At that Essy's face began to shake piteously. Standing by the door,
+she cried quietly, with soft sobs, neither hiding her face nor drying
+her tears as they came.
+
+"You had better tell me," said the Vicar.
+
+"I s'all nat tall yo'," said Essy, with passionate determination,
+between the sobs.
+
+"You must."
+
+"I s'all nat--I s'all nat."
+
+"Hiding it won't help you," said the Vicar.
+
+Essy raised her head.
+
+"I doan' keer. I doan' keer what 'appens to mae. What wae did--what
+wae did--lies between him and mae."
+
+"Did he tell you he'd marry you, Essy?"
+
+Essy sobbed for answer.
+
+"He didn't? Is he going to marry you?"
+
+"'Tisn' likely 'e'll marry mae. An' I'll not force him."
+
+"You think, perhaps, it doesn't matter?"
+
+She shook her head in utter helplessness.
+
+"Come, make a clean breast of it."
+
+Then the storm burst. She turned her tormented face to him.
+
+"A clane breast, yo' call it? I s'all mak' naw clane breasts, Mr.
+Cartaret, to yo' or anybody. I'll 'ave nawbody meddlin' between him
+an' mae!"
+
+"Then," said the Vicar, "I wash my hands of you."
+
+But he said it to an empty room. Essy had left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the outer room the three sisters sat silent and motionless. Their
+faces were turned toward the closed door of the study. They were
+listening to the sounds that went on behind it. The burden of Essy
+hung heavy over them.
+
+The study door opened and shut. Then the kitchen door.
+
+"Poor Essy," said Gwenda.
+
+"Poor Essy," said Alice. She was sorry for Essy now. She could afford
+to be sorry for her.
+
+Mary said nothing, and from her silence you could not tell what she
+was thinking.
+
+The long day dragged on to prayer time.
+
+The burden of Essy hung heavy over the whole house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, at a quarter to ten, fifteen minutes before prayer time,
+Gwenda came to her father in his study.
+
+"Papa," she said, "is it true that you've sacked Essy at three days'
+notice?"
+
+"I have dismissed Essy," said the Vicar, "for a sufficient reason."
+
+"There's no reason to turn her out before Christmas."
+
+"There is," said the Vicar, "a very grave reason. We needn't go into
+it."
+
+He knew that his daughter knew his reason. But he ignored her
+knowledge as he ignored all things that were unpleasant to him.
+
+"We must go into it," said Gwenda. "It's a sin to turn her out at
+three days' notice."
+
+"I know what I'm doing, Gwenda, and why I'm doing it."
+
+"So do I. We all do. None of us want her to go--yet. You could easily
+have kept her another two months. She'd have given notice herself."
+
+"I am not going to discuss it with you."
+
+The Vicar put his head under the roll top of his desk and pretended to
+be looking for papers. Gwenda seated herself familiarly on the arm of
+the chair he had left.
+
+"You'll have to, I'm afraid," she said. "Please take your head out of
+the desk, Papa. There's no use behaving like an ostrich. I can see you
+all the time. The trouble is, you know, that you won't _think_. And
+you _must_ think. How's Essy going to do without those two months'
+wages she might have had? She'll want every shilling she can lay her
+hands on for the baby."
+
+"She should have thought of that before."
+
+The Vicar was answering himself. He did not acknowledge his daughter's
+right to discuss Essy.
+
+"She'll think of it presently," said Gwenda in her unblushing calm.
+"Look here, Papa, while you're trying how you can make this awful
+thing more awful for her, what do you think poor Essy's bothering
+about? She's not bothering about her sin, nor about her baby. She's
+bothering about how she's landed _us_."
+
+The Vicar closed his eyes. His patience was exhausted. So was his
+wisdom.
+
+"I am not arguing with you, Gwenda."
+
+"You can't. You know perfectly well what a beastly shame it is."
+
+That roused him.
+
+"You seem to think no more of Essy's sin than Essy does."
+
+"How do you know what Essy thinks? How do I know? It isn't any
+business of ours what Essy thinks. It's what we do. I'd rather do what
+Essy's done, any day, than do mean or cruel things. Wouldn't you?"
+
+The Vicar raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. It was the gesture of
+a man helpless before the unspeakable.
+
+He took refuge in his pathos.
+
+"I am very tired, Gwenda; and it's ten minutes to ten."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may have been because the Vicar was tired that his mind wandered
+somewhat that night during family prayers.
+
+Foremost among the many things that the Vicar's mind refused to
+consider was the question of the status, of the very existence, of
+family prayers in his household.
+
+But for Essy, though the Vicar did not know it, it was doubtful
+whether family prayers would have survived what he called his
+daughters' godlessness. Mary, to be sure, conformed outwardly. She was
+not easily irritated, and, as she put it, she did not really _mind_
+prayers. But to Alice and Gwendolen prayers were a weariness and
+an exasperation. Alice would evade them under any pretext. By her
+father's action in transporting her to Gardale, she considered that
+she was absolved from her filial allegiance. But Gwendolen was loyal.
+In the matter of prayers, which--she made it perfectly clear to Alice
+and Mary--could not possibly annoy them more than they did her, she
+was going to see Papa through. It would be beastly, she said, not to.
+They couldn't give him away before Essy.
+
+But of the clemency and generosity of Gwendolen's attitude Mr.
+Cartaret was not aware. He believed that the custom of prayers was
+maintained in his household by his inflexible authority and will. He
+gloried in them as an expression of his power. They were a form of
+coercion which it seemed he could apply quite successfully to his
+womenkind, those creatures of his flesh and blood, yet so alien and
+intractable. Family prayers gave him a keener spiritual satisfaction
+than the church services in which, outwardly, he cut a far more
+imposing figure. In a countryside peopled mainly by abominable
+Wesleyans and impure Baptists (Mr. Cartaret spoke and thought of
+Wesleyans and Baptists as if they were abominable and impure pure) he
+had some difficulty in procuring a congregation. The few who came
+to the parish church came because it was respectable and therefore
+profitable, or because they had got into the habit and couldn't well
+get out of it, or because they liked it, not at all because his
+will and his authority compelled them. But to emerge from his
+study inevitably at ten o'clock, an hour when the souls of Mary
+and Gwendolen and Alice were most reluctant and most hostile to the
+thought of prayers, and by sheer worrying to round up the fugitives,
+whatever they happened to be doing and wherever they happened to be,
+this (though he said it was no pleasure to him) was more agreeable to
+Mr. Cartaret than he knew. The very fact that Essy was a Wesleyan
+and so far an unwilling conformist gave a peculiar zest to the
+performance.
+
+It was always the same. It started with a look through his glasses,
+leveled at each member of his household in turn, as if he desired to
+satisfy himself as to the expression of their faces while at the same
+time he defied them to protest. For the rest, his rule was that of his
+father, the schoolmaster, before him. First, a chapter from the Bible,
+the Old Testament in the morning, the New Testament in the evening,
+working straight through from Genesis to Revelation (omitting
+Leviticus as somewhat unsuitable for family reading). Then prayers
+proper, beginning with what his daughter Gwendolen, seventeen years
+ago, had called "fancy prayers," otherwise prayers not lifted from
+the Liturgy, but compiled and composed in accordance with the freer
+Evangelical taste in prayers. Then (for both Mr. Cartaret and the
+schoolmaster, his father, held that the Church must not be ignored)
+there followed last Sunday's Collect, the Collect for Grace, the
+Benediction, and the Lord's Prayer.
+
+Now, as his rule would have it, that evening of the fifth of December
+brought him to the Eighth chapter of St. John, in the one concerning
+the woman taken in adultery, which was the very last chapter which
+Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always
+considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as
+a defense of laxity.
+
+"'Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?'
+
+"She said, 'No man, Lord.' And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I
+condemn thee.'"
+
+Mr. Cartaret lowered his voice and his eyes as he read, for he felt
+Gwendolen's eyes upon him.
+
+But he recovered himself on the final charge.
+
+"'Go'"--now he came to think of it, that was what he had said to
+Essy--"'and sin no more.'"
+
+(After all, he was supported.)
+
+Casting another and more decidedly uneasy glance at his family, he
+knelt down. He felt better when they were all kneeling, for now he had
+their backs toward him instead of their faces.
+
+He then prayed. On behalf of himself and Essy and his family he prayed
+to a God who (so he assumed his Godhead) was ever more ready to hear
+than they to pray, a God whom he congratulated on His ability to
+perform for them far more than they either desired or deserved; he
+thanked him for having mercifully preserved them to the close of
+another blessed day (as in the morning he would thank him for having
+spared them to see the light of another blessed day); he besought him
+to pardon anything which that day they had done amiss; to deliver them
+from disobedience and self-will, from pride and waywardness (he had
+inserted this clause ten years ago for Gwendolen's benefit) as well as
+from the sins that did most easily beset them, for the temptations to
+which they were especially prone. This clause covered all the things
+he couldn't mention. It covered his wife, Robina's case; it covered
+Essy's; he had dragged Alice's case as it were from under it; he had a
+secret fear that one day it might cover Gwendolen's.
+
+Gwendolen was the child who, he declared and believed, had always
+given him most trouble. He recalled (perversely) a certain thing that
+(at thirteen) she had said about this prayer.
+
+"It oughtn't to be prayed," she had said. "You don't really think you
+can fool God that way, Papa? If I had a servant who groveled to me
+like that I'd tell him he must learn to keep his chin up or go."
+
+She had said it before Robina who had laughed. And Mr. Cartaret's
+answer to it had been to turn his back on both of them and leave the
+room. At least he thought it was his answer. Gwendolen had thought
+that in a flash of intellectual honesty he agreed with her, only that
+he hadn't quite enough honesty to say so before Mummy.
+
+All this he recalled, and the question she had pursued him with about
+that time. "_What_ are the sins that do most easily beset us? _What_
+are the temptations to which we are especially prone?" And his own
+evasive answer. "Ask yourself, my child."
+
+Another year and she had left off asking him questions. She drew back
+into herself and became every day more self-willed, more solitary,
+more inaccessible.
+
+And now, if he could have seen things as they really were, Mr.
+Cartaret would have perceived that he was afraid of Gwenda. As it was,
+he thought he was only afraid of what Gwenda might do.
+
+Alice was capable of some things; but Gwenda was capable of anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly, to Gwenda's surprise, her father sighed; a dislocating sigh.
+It came between the Benediction and the Lord's Prayer.
+
+For, even as he invoked the blessing Mr. Cartaret suddenly felt sorry
+for himself again. His children were no good to him.
+
+By which he meant that his third wife, Robina, was no good.
+
+But he did not know that he visited his wife's shortcomings on their
+heads, any more than he knew that he hated Essy and her sin because he
+himself was an enforced, reluctant celibate.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+The next day at dusk, Essy Gale slipped out to her mother's cottage
+down by the beck.
+
+Mrs. Gale had just cleared the table after her tea, had washed up
+the tea-things and was putting them away in the cupboard when Essy
+entered. She looked round sharply, inimically.
+
+Essy stood by the doorway, shamefaced.
+
+"Moother," she said softly, "I want to speaak to yo."
+
+Mrs. Gale struck an attitude of astonishment and fear, although she
+had expected Essy to come at such an hour and with such a look, and
+only wondered that she had not come four months ago.
+
+"Yo're nat goain' t' saay as yo've got yoresel into trooble?"
+
+For four months Mrs. Gale had preserved an innocent face before her
+neighbors and she desired to preserve it to the last possible moment.
+And up to the last possible moment, even to her daughter, she was
+determined to ignore what had happened.
+
+But she knew and Essy knew that she knew.
+
+"Doan yo saay it, Assy. Doan yo saay it."
+
+Essy said nothing.
+
+"D'yo 'ear mae speaakin' to yo? Caann't yo aanswer? Is it thot, Assy?
+Is it thot?"
+
+"Yas, moother, yo knaw 'tis thot."
+
+"An' yo dare to coom 'ear and tell mae! Yo dirty 'oossy! Toorn an'
+lat's 'ave a look at yo."
+
+Now that the innocence of her face was gone, Mrs. Gale had a stern
+duty to perform by Essy.
+
+"They've gien yo t' saack?"
+
+"T' Vicar give it mae."
+
+"Troost'im! Whan did 'e gie it yo?"
+
+"Yasterda'."
+
+"T'moonth's nawtice?"
+
+"Naw. I aassked 'im t' kape me anoother two moonths an' 'e woonna.
+I aassked 'im t' kape me over Christmas an' 'e woonna. I'm to leaave
+Saturda'."
+
+"Did yo expact 'im t' kape yo, yo gawpie? Did yo think you'd nowt to
+do but t' laay oop at t' Vicarage an' 'ave th yoong laadies t' do yore
+wark for yo, an' t' waait on yo 'and an' foot? Miss Gwanda t' mak'
+yore bafe-tae an' chicken jally and t' Vicar t' daandle t' baaby?
+
+"'Oo's goan t' kape yo? Mae? I woonna kape yo an' I canna' kape yo. Yo
+ain' t' baaby! I doan' waant naw squeechin', squallin' brats mookin'
+oop t' plaace as faast as I clanes it, An' '_E_ woonna kape yo--ef
+yo're raakonin' on 'im. Yo need na tall mae oo t' maan is. I knaw."
+
+"'Tis'n 'im, Moother. 'Tis'n 'im."
+
+"Yo lil blaack liar! '_Tis_ 'im. Ooo alse could it bae? Yo selly!
+Whatten arth possessed yo t' goa an' tak oop wi' Jim Greatorex? Ef yo
+mun get into trooble yo medda chawsen battern Jim. What for did I tak'
+yo from t' Farm an' put yo into t' Vicarage ef 't wasn't t' get yo out
+o' Jimmy's road? '_E_'ll naver maarry yo. Nat 'e! Did 'e saay as 'e'd
+maarry yo? Naw, I warrant yo did na waat fer thot. Yo was mad t' roon
+affter 'im afore 'e called yo. Yo dirty cat!"
+
+That last taunt drew blood. Essy spoke up.
+
+"Naw, naw. 'E looved mae. 'E wanted mae bad."
+
+"'E wanted yo? Coorse 'e wanted yo. Yo sud na 'ave gien in to 'im, yo
+softie. D'yo think yo're the only woon thot's tampted? Look at mae. I
+could 'a got into trooble saven times to yore woonce, ef I 'ad'n kaped
+my 'ead an' respected mysel. Yore Jim Greatorex! Ef a maan like Jim
+'ad laaid a 'and on mae, 'e'd a got soomthin' t' remamber afore I'd
+'a gien in to 'im. An' yo've naw 'scuse for disgracin' yoresel. Yo was
+brought oop ralegious an' respactable. Did yo aver 'ear saw mooch aa a
+bad woord?"
+
+"It's doon, Moother, it's doon. There's naw good taalkin'."
+
+"Eh! Yo saay it's doon, it's doon, an' yo think nowt o' 't. An' nowt
+yo think o' t' trooble yo're brengin' on mae. I sooppawse yo'll be
+tallin' mae naxt yo looved 'im! Yo looved'im!"
+
+At that Essy began to cry, softly, in her manner.
+
+"Doan' yo tall mae _thot_ taale."
+
+Mrs. Gale suddenly paused in her tirade and began to poke the fire
+with fury.
+
+"It's enoof t' sicken t' cat!"
+
+She snatched the kettle that stood upon the hob; she stamped out to
+the scullery and re-filled it at the tap. She returned, stamping, and
+set it with violence upon the fire.
+
+She tore out of the cupboard a teapot, a cup and a saucer, a loaf on
+a plate and a jar of dripping. Still with violence (slightly modulated
+to spare the comparative fragility of the objects she was handling)
+she dashed them one by one upon the table where Essy, with elbows
+planted, propped her head upon her hands and wept.
+
+Mrs. Gale sat down herself in the chair facing her, and kept one
+eye on the kettle and the other on her daughter. From time to time
+mutterings came from her, breaking the sad rhythm of Essy's sobs.
+
+"Eh dear! I'd like t' knaw what I've doon t' ave _this_ trooble!"--
+
+--"'Tis enoof t' raaise yore pore feyther clane out of 'is graave!"--
+
+--"'E'd sooner 'ave seed yo in yore coffin, Assy."--
+
+She rose and took down the tea-caddy from the chimney-piece and flung
+a reckless measure into the tea-pot.
+
+"Ef 'e'd 'a been a-livin', 'E'd a _killed_ yo. Thot's what 'e'd 'a
+doon."
+
+As she said it she grasped the kettle and poured the boiling water
+into the tea-pot.
+
+She set the tea-pot before Essy.
+
+"There's a coop of tae. An' there's bread an' drippin'. Yo'll drink it
+oop."
+
+But Essy, desolated, shook her head.
+
+"Wall," said Mrs. Gale. "I doan' want ter look at yo. 'T mak's mae
+seek."
+
+As if utterly revolted by the sight of her daughter, she turned from
+her and left the kitchen by the staircase door.
+
+Her ponderous stamping could be heard going up the staircase and
+on the floor overhead. There was a sound as of drawers opening and
+shutting and of a heavy box being dragged from under the bed.
+
+Essy poured herself out a cup of tea, tried to drink it, choked and
+pushed it from her.
+
+She was still weeping when her mother came to her.
+
+Mrs. Gale came softly.
+
+All alone in the room overhead she had evidently been doing something
+that had pleased her. The ghost of a smile still haunted her bleak
+face. She carried on her arm tenderly a pile of little garments.
+
+These she began to spread out on the table before Essy, having first
+removed the tea-things.
+
+"There!" she said. "'Tis the lil cleathes fer t' baaby. Look, Assy,
+my deear--there's t' lil rawb, wi' t' lil slaves, so pretty--an' t'
+flanny petticut--an' t' lil vasst--see. 'Tis t' lil things I maade fer
+'ee afore tha was born."
+
+But Essy pushed them from her. She was weeping violently now.
+
+"Taake 'em away!" she cried. "I doan' want t' look at 'em."
+
+Mrs. Gale sat and stared at her.
+
+"Coom," she said, "tha moos'n' taake it saw 'ard, like."
+
+Between the sobs Essy looked up with her shining eyes. She whispered.
+
+"Will yo kape mae, Moother?"
+
+"I sail 'ave t' kape yo. There's nawbody 'll keer mooch fer thot job
+but yore moother."
+
+But Essy still wept. Once started on the way of weeping, she couldn't
+stop.
+
+Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Gale's face became distorted.
+
+She got up and put her hand heavily on her daughter's shoulder.
+
+"There, there, Assy, loove," she said. "Doan' tha taake on thot road.
+It's doon, an' it caann't be oondoon."
+
+She stood there in a heavy silence. Now and again she patted the
+heaving shoulder, marking time to Essy's sobs. Then she spoke.
+
+"Tha'll feel batter whan t' lil baaby cooms."
+
+Profoundly disturbed and resentful of her own emotion Mrs. Gale seized
+upon the tea-pot as a pretext and shut herself up with it in the
+scullery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Essy, staggering, rose and dried her eyes. For a moment or so she
+stared idly at the square window with the blue-black night behind it.
+
+Then she looked down. She smiled faintly. One by one she took the
+little garments spread out in front of her. She folded them in a pile.
+
+Her face was still and dreamy.
+
+She opened the scullery door and looked in.
+
+"Good-night, Moother."
+
+"Good-night, Assy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was striking seven as she passed the church.
+
+Above the strokes of the hour she heard through the half-open door a
+sound of organ playing and of a big voice singing.
+
+And she began to weep again. She knew the singer, and the player too.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Christmas was over and gone.
+
+It was the last week in January.
+
+All through December Rowcliffe's visits to the Vicarage had continued.
+But in January they ceased. That was not to be wondered at. Even Ally
+couldn't wonder. There was influenza in every other house in the Dale.
+
+Then, one day, Gwenda, walking past Upthorne, heard wheels behind
+her and the clanking hoofs of the doctor's horse. She knew what would
+happen. Rowcliffe would pull up a yard or two in front of her. He
+would ask her where she was going and he would make her drive with him
+over the moor. And she knew that she would go with him. She would not
+be able to refuse him.
+
+But the clanking hoofs went by and never stopped. There were two men
+in the trap. Acroyd, Rowcliffe's groom, sat in Rowcliffe's place,
+driving. He touched his hat to her as he passed her.
+
+Beside him there was a strange man.
+
+She said to herself, "He's away then. I think he might have told me."
+
+And Ally, passing through the village, had seen the strange man too.
+
+"Dr. Rowcliffe must be away," she said at tea-time. "I wonder if he'll
+be back by Wednesday."
+
+Wednesday, the last day in January, came, but Rowcliffe did not come.
+The strange man took his place in the surgery.
+
+
+Mrs. Gale brought the news into the Vicarage dining-room at four
+o'clock.
+
+She had taken her daughter's place for the time being. She was a just
+woman and she bore no grudge against the Vicar on Essy's account. He
+had done no more than he was obliged to do. Essy had given trouble
+enough in the Vicarage, and she had received a month's wages that she
+hadn't worked for. Mrs. Gale was working double to make up for it.
+And the innocence of her face being gone, she went lowly and humbly,
+paying for Essy, Essy's debt of shame. That was her view.
+
+"Sall I set the tae here, Miss Gwanda," she enquired. "Sence doctor
+isn't coomin'?"
+
+"How do you know he isn't coming?" Alice asked.
+
+Mrs. Gale's face was solemn and oppressed. She turned to Gwenda,
+ignoring Alice. (Mary was upstairs in her room.)
+
+"'Aven't yo 'eerd, Miss Gwanda?"
+
+Gwenda looked up from her book.
+
+"No," she said. "He's away, isn't he?"
+
+"Away? 'El'll nat get away fer long enoof. 'E's too ill."
+
+"Ill?" Alice sent the word out on a terrified breath. Nobody took any
+notice of her.
+
+"T' poastman tell mae," said Mrs. Gale. "From what 'e's 'eerd, 'twas
+all along o' Nad Alderson's lil baaby up to Morfe. It was took wi'
+the diptheery a while back. An' doctor, 'e sat oop wi' 't tree nights
+roonin', 'e did. 'E didn' so mooch as taak 's cleathes off. Nad
+Alderson, 'e said, 'e'd navver seen anything like what doctor 'e doon
+for t' lil' thing."
+
+Mrs. Gale's face reddened and she sniffed.
+
+"'E's saaved Nad's baaby for 'm, right enoof, Dr. Rawcliffe 'as. But
+'e's down wi't hissel, t' poastman says."
+
+It was at Gwenda that she gazed. And as Gwenda made no sign, Mrs.
+Gale, still more oppressed by that extraordinary silence, gave her own
+feelings way.
+
+"Mebbe wae sall navver see 'im in t' Daale again. It'll goa 'ard, look
+yo, wi' a girt man like 'im, what's navver saaved 'isself. Naw, 'e's
+navver saaved 'issel."
+
+She ceased. She gazed upon both the sisters now. Alice, her face white
+and averted, shrank back in the corner of the sofa. Gwenda's face was
+still. Neither of them had spoken.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mary had tea alone that afternoon.
+
+Alice had dragged herself upstairs to her bedroom and locked herself
+in. She had flung herself face downward on her bed. She lay there
+while the room grew gray and darkened. Suddenly she passed from a
+violent fit of writhing and of weeping into blank and motionless
+collapses. From time to time she hiccoughed helplessly.
+
+But in the moment before Mary came downstairs Gwenda had slipped on
+the rough coat that hung on its peg in the passage. Her hat was lying
+about somewhere in the room where Alice had locked herself in. She
+went out bareheaded.
+
+There was a movement in the little group of villagers gathered on the
+bridge before the surgery door. They slunk together and turned their
+backs on her as she passed. They knew where she was going as well as
+she did. And she didn't care.
+
+She was doing the sort of thing that Alice had done, and had suffered
+for doing. She knew it and she didn't care. It didn't matter what
+Alice had done or ever would do. It didn't matter what she did
+herself. It was quite simple. Nothing mattered to her so long as
+Rowcliffe lived. And if he died nothing would ever matter to her
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For she knew now what it was that had happened to her. She could no
+longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The
+thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been
+secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it,
+not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful
+instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid. She had
+been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe. He might see in it
+something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally. She
+went in terror of the taint. Where it should have held its head up
+defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and
+skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.
+
+And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly
+defenseless, her terror of it ceased.
+
+It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.
+
+Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something
+lacking in her feeling. Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got
+more "out of" Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did. Gwenda had known
+nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or
+Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths,
+the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools. In Rowcliffe's presence
+she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy. But, if she
+stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she _stood_ there, firm on the
+solid earth. She could balance herself; she could even lean forward
+a little and look over, without losing her head, thrilled with the
+uncertainty and peril of the adventure. And of course it wasn't as if
+Rowcliffe had left her standing. He hadn't. He had held out his hand
+to her, as it were, and said, "Let's get on--get on!" which was as
+good as saying that, as long as it lasted, it was _their_ adventure,
+not hers. He had drawn her after him at an exciting pace, along the
+edge of the abyss, never losing _his_ head for a minute, so that she
+ought to have felt safe with him. Only she hadn't. She had said to
+herself, "If I knew him better, if I saw what was in him, perhaps I
+should feel safe."
+
+There was something she wanted to see in him; something that her
+innermost secret self, fastidious and exacting, demanded from him
+before it would loosen the grip that held her back.
+
+And now she knew that it _was_ there. It had been told her in four
+words: "He never saved himself."
+
+She might have known it. For she remembered things, now; how he had
+nursed old Greatorex like a woman; how he had sat up half the night
+with Jim Greatorex's mare Daisy; how he kept Jim Greatorex from
+drinking; and how he had been kind to poor Essy when she had the face
+ache; and gentle to little Ally.
+
+And now Ned Alderson's ridiculous baby would live and Rowcliffe would
+die. Was _that_ what she had required of him? She felt as if somehow
+_she_ had done it; as if her innermost secret self, iniquitously
+exacting, had thrown down the gage into the arena and that he had
+picked it up.
+
+"He saved others. Himself he"--never saved.
+
+He had become god-like to her.
+
+And the passion she had trampled on lifted itself and passed into
+the phase of adoration. It had received the dangerous sanction of the
+soul.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She turned off the high road at the point where, three months ago,
+she had seen Mary cycling up the hill from Morfe. Now, as then, she
+descended upon Morfe by the stony lane from the moor below Karva.
+
+It came over her that she was too late, that she would see rows of
+yellow blinds drawn down in the long front of Rowcliffe's house.
+
+The blinds were up. The windows looked open-eyed upon the Green. She
+noticed that one of them on the first floor was half open, and she
+said to herself, "He is up there, in that room, dying of diphtheria."
+
+The sound of the bell, muffled funereally, at the back of the house,
+fulfilled her premonition.
+
+The door opened wide. The maid stood back from it to let her pass in.
+
+"How is Dr. Rowcliffe?"
+
+Her voice sounded abrupt and brutal, as it tore its way from her tense
+throat.
+
+The maid raised her eyebrows. She held the door wider.
+
+"Would you like to see him, miss?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her throat closed on the word and choked it.
+
+Down at the end of the passage, where it was dark, a door opened, the
+door of the surgery, and a man came out, went in as if to look for
+something, and came out again.
+
+As he moved there in the darkness she thought it was the strange
+doctor and that he had come out to forbid her seeing Rowcliffe. He
+would say that she mustn't risk the infection. As if she cared about
+the risk.
+
+Perhaps he wouldn't see her. He, too, might say she mustn't risk it.
+
+While the surgery door opened and shut, opened and shut again, she saw
+that her seems him was of all things the most unlikely. She remembered
+the house at Upthorne, and she knew that Rowcliffe was lying dead in
+the room upstairs.
+
+And the man there was coming out to stop her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only--in that case--why hadn't they drawn the blinds down?
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+She was still thinking of the blinds when she saw that the man who
+came towards her was Rowcliffe.
+
+He was wearing his rough tweed suit and his thick boots, and he had
+the look of the open air about him.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Cartaret? Good!"
+
+He grasped her hand. He behaved exactly as if he had expected her. He
+never even wondered what she had come for. She might have come to say
+that her father or one of her sisters was dying, and would he go at
+once; but none of these possibilities occurred to him.
+
+He didn't want to account for her coming to him. It was natural and
+beautiful that she should come.
+
+Then, as she stepped into the lighted passage, he saw that she was
+bareheaded and that her eyelashes were parted and gathered into little
+wet points.
+
+He took her arm gently and led her into his study and shut the door.
+They faced each other there.
+
+"I say--is anything wrong?"
+
+"I thought you were ill."
+
+She hadn't grasped the absurdity of it yet. She was still under the
+spell of the illusion.
+
+"I? Ill? Good heavens, no!"
+
+"They told me in the village you'd got diphtheria. And I came to know
+if it was true. It _isn't_ true?"
+
+He smiled; an odd little embarrassed smile; almost as if he were
+owning that it was or had been true.
+
+"_Is_ it?" she persisted as he went on smiling.
+
+"Of course it isn't."
+
+She frowned as if she were annoyed with him for not being ill.
+
+"Then what was that other man here for?"
+
+"Harker? Oh, he just took my place for a day or two while I had a sore
+throat."
+
+"You _had_ a throat then?"
+
+Thus she accused him.
+
+"And you _did_ sit up for three nights with Ned Alderson's baby?"
+
+She defied him to deny it.
+
+"That's nothing. Anybody would. I had to."
+
+"And--you saved the baby?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Some thing or other pulled
+the little beggar through."
+
+"And you might have got it?"
+
+"I might but I didn't."
+
+"You _did_ get a throat. And it _might_ have been diphtheria."
+
+Thus by accusing him she endeavored to justify herself.
+
+"It might," he said, "but it wasn't. I had to knock off work till I
+was sure."
+
+"And you're sure now?"
+
+"I can tell you _you_ wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
+
+"And they told me you were dying."
+
+(She was utterly disgusted.)
+
+At that he laughed aloud. An irresistible, extravagantly delighted
+laugh. When he stopped he choked and began all over again; the idea of
+his dying was so funny; so was her disgust.
+
+"That," she said, "was why I came."
+
+"Then I'm glad they told you."
+
+"I'm not," said she.
+
+He laughed again at her sudden funny dignity. Then, as suddenly, he
+was grave.
+
+"I say--it _was_ nice of you."
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"And now--as you're not dead--I'm off."
+
+"Oh no, you're not. You're going to stay and have tea and I'm going to
+walk back with you."
+
+She stayed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked over the moor by Karva. And as they went he talked to her
+as he hadn't talked before. It was all about himself and his tone
+was very serious. He talked about his work and (with considerable
+reservations and omissions) about his life in Leeds, and about his
+ambition. He told her what he had done and why he had done it and what
+he was going to do. He wasn't going to stay in Garthdale all his life.
+Not he. Presently he would want to get to the center of things. (He
+forgot to mention that this was the first time he had thought of it.)
+Nothing would satisfy him but a big London practice and a name. He
+might--ultimately--specialise. If he did he rather thought it would be
+gynęcology. He was interested in women's cases. Or it might be nervous
+diseases. He wasn't sure. Anyhow, it must be something big.
+
+For under Gwenda Cartaret's eyes his romantic youth became fiery and
+turbulent inside him. It not only urged him to tremendous heights,
+it made him actually feel that he would reach them. For a solid
+three-quarters of an hour, walking over the moor by Karva, he had
+ceased to be one of the obscurest of obscure little country doctors.
+He was Sir Steven Rowcliffe, the great gynęcologist, or the great
+neurologist (as the case might be) with a row of letters after his
+name and a whole column under it in the Medical Directory.
+
+
+And Gwenda Cartaret's eyes never for a moment contradicted him. They
+agreed with every one of his preposterous statements.
+
+She didn't know that it was only his romantic youth and that he
+never had been and never would be more youthful than he was for that
+three-quarters of an hour. On the contrary, to _her_ youth he seemed
+to have left youth behind him, and to have grown suddenly serious and
+clear-sighted and mature.
+
+And then he stopped, right on the moor, as if he were suddenly aware
+of his absurdity.
+
+"I say," he said, "what must you think of me? Gassing about myself
+like that."
+
+"I think," she said, "it's awfully nice of you."
+
+"I don't suppose I shall do anything really big. Do you?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Honestly now, do you think I shall?"
+
+"I think the things you've done already, the things that'll never be
+heard of, are really big."
+
+His silence said, "They are not enough for me," and hers, "For me they
+are enough."
+
+"But the other things," he insisted--"the things I want to do----Do
+you think I'll do them?"
+
+"I think"--she said slowly--"in fact I'm certain that you'll do them,
+if you really mean to."
+
+"That's what you think of me?"
+
+"That's what I think of you."
+
+"Then it's all right," he said. "For what I think of _you_ is that
+you'd never say a thing you didn't really mean."
+
+They parted at the turn of the road, where, as he again reminded her,
+he had seen her first.
+
+Going home by himself over the moor, Rowcliffe wondered whether he
+hadn't missed his opportunity.
+
+He might have told her that he cared for her. He might have asked her
+if she cared. If he hadn't, it was only because there was no need to
+be precipitate. He felt rather than knew that she was sure of him.
+
+Plenty of time. Plenty of time. He was so sure of _her_.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Plenty of time. The last week of January passed. Through the first
+weeks of February Rowcliffe was kept busy, for sickness was still in
+the Dale.
+
+Whether he required it or not, Rowcliffe had a respite from decision.
+No opportunity arose. If he looked in at the Vicarage on Wednesdays
+it was to drink a cup of tea in a hurry while his man put his horse
+in the trap. He took his man with him now on his longer rounds to save
+time and trouble. Once in a while he would meet Gwenda Cartaret or
+overtake her on some road miles from Garth, and he would make her get
+up and drive on with him, or he would give her a lift home.
+
+It pleased her to be taken up and driven. She liked the rapid motion
+and the ways of the little brown horse. She even loved the noise he
+made with his clanking hoofs. Rowcliffe said it was a beastly trick.
+He made up his mind about once a week that he'd get rid of him. But
+somehow he couldn't. He was fond of the little brown horse. He'd had
+him so long.
+
+And she said to herself. "He's faithful then. Of course. He would be."
+
+It was almost as if he had wanted her to know it.
+
+Then April came and the long spring twilights. The sick people had got
+well. Rowcliffe had whole hours on his hands that he could have spent
+with Gwenda now, if he had known.
+
+And as yet he did not altogether know.
+
+
+There was something about Gwenda Cartaret for which Rowcliffe with
+all his sureness and all his experience was unprepared. Their
+whole communion rested and proceeded on undeclared, unacknowledged,
+unrealised assumptions, and it was somehow its very secrecy that made
+it so secure. Rather than put it to the test he was content to leave
+their meetings to luck and his own imperfect ingenuity. He knew
+where and at what times he would have the best chance of finding her.
+Sometimes, returning from his northerly rounds, he would send the trap
+on, and walk back to Morfe by Karva, on the chance. Once, when the
+moon was up, he sighted her on the farther moors beyond Upthorne, when
+he got down and walked with her for miles, while his man and the trap
+waited for him in Garth.
+
+Once, and only once, driving by himself on the Rathdale moors beyond
+Morfe, he overtook her, picked her up and drove her through Morfe (to
+the consternation of its inhabitants) all the way to Garth and to the
+very gate of the Vicarage.
+
+But that was reckless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And in all those hours, for his opportunities counted by hours now,
+he had never found his moment. There was plenty of time, and their
+isolation (his and hers) in Garthdale left him dangerously secure. All
+the same, by April Rowcliffe was definitely looking for the moment,
+the one shining moment, that must sooner or later come.
+
+It was, indeed, always coming. Over and over again he had caught
+sight of it; it signaled, shining; he had been ready to seize it, when
+something happened, something obscured it, something put him off.
+
+He never knew what it was at the time, but when he looked back on
+these happenings he discovered that it was always something that
+Gwenda Cartaret did. You would have said that no scene on earth could
+have been more favorable to a lover's enterprise than these long,
+deserted roads and the vast, twilit moors; and that a young woman
+could have found nothing to distract her from her lover there.
+
+But it was not so. On the open moors, as often as not, they had to go
+single file through the heather, along a narrow sheep track, Rowcliffe
+leading; and it is difficult, not to say impossible, to command the
+attention of a young woman walking in your rear. And a thousand things
+distracted Gwenda: the cry of a mountain sheep, the sound and
+sight of a stream, the whirr of dark wings and the sudden
+"Krenk-er-renk-errenk!" of the grouse shooting up from the heather.
+And on the high roads where they went abreast she was apt to be
+carried away by the pageant of earth and sky; the solid darkness
+that came up from the moor; the gray, aerial abysses of the dale; the
+awful, blank withdrawal of Greffington Edge into the night. She was
+off, Heaven knew where, at the lighting of a star in the thin blue;
+the movement of a cloud excited her; or she was held enchanted by
+the pale aura of moonrise along the rampart of Greffington Edge. She
+shared the earth's silence and the throbbing passion of the earth as
+the orbed moon swung free.
+
+And in her absorption, her estranging ecstasy, Rowcliffe at last found
+something inimical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He told himself that it was an affectation in her, or a lure to draw
+him after her, as it would have been in any other woman. The little
+red-haired nurse would have known how to turn the earth and the moon
+to her own purposes and his. But all the time he knew that it was not
+so. There was no purpose in it at all, and it was unaware of him and
+of his purposes. Gwenda's joy was pure and profound and sufficient to
+itself. He gathered that it had been with her before he came and that
+it would remain with her after he had gone.
+
+He hated to think that she should know any joy that had not its
+beginning and its end in him. It took her from him. As long as it
+lasted he was faced with an incomprehensible and monstrous rivalry.
+
+And as a man might leave a woman to his uninteresting rival in
+the certainty that she will be bored and presently return to him,
+Rowcliffe left Gwenda to the earth and moon. He sulked and was silent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, suddenly, he made up his mind.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+It was one night in April. He had met her at the crossroads on Morfe
+Green, and walked home with her by the edge of the moor. It had blown
+hard all day, and now the wind had dropped, but it had left darkness
+and commotion in the sky. The west was a solid mass of cloud that
+drifted slowly in the wake of the departing storm, its hindmost part
+shredded to mist before the path of the hidden moon.
+
+For, mercifully, the moon was hidden. Rowcliffe knew his moment.
+
+He meditated--the fraction of a second too long.
+
+"I wonder----" he began.
+
+Just then the rear of the cloud opened and cast out the moon, sheeted
+in the white mist that she had torn from it.
+
+And then, before he knew where he was, he was quarreling with Gwenda.
+
+"Oh, look at the moon!" she cried. "All bowed forward with the cloud
+wrapped round her head. Something's calling her across the sky, but
+the mist holds her and the wind beats her back--look how she staggers
+and charges head-downward. She's fighting the wind. And she goes--she
+goes!"
+
+"She doesn't go," said Rowcliffe. "At least you can't see her going,
+and the cloud isn't wrapped round her head, it's nowhere near her. And
+the wind isn't driving her, it's driving the cloud on. It's the cloud
+that's going. Why can't you see things as they are?"
+
+She was detestable to him in that moment.
+
+"Because nobody sees them as they are. And you're spoiling the idea."
+
+"The idea being so much more valuable than the truth."
+
+He longed to say cruel and biting things to her.
+
+"It isn't valuable to anybody but me, so you might have left it to
+me."
+
+"Oh, I'll leave it to you, if you're in love with it."
+
+"I'm not in love with it because it's mine. Anyhow, if I _am_ in love
+I'm in love with the moon and not with my idea of the moon."
+
+"You don't know how to be in love with anything--even the moon. But I
+suppose it's all right as long as you're happy."
+
+"Of course I'm happy. Why shouldn't I be?"
+
+"Because you haven't got anything to make you happy."
+
+"Oh, haven't I?"
+
+"You might have. But you haven't. You're too obstinate to be happy."
+
+"But I've just told you that I _am_ happy."
+
+"What have you _got?_" he persisted.
+
+"I've got heaps of things. I've got my two hands and my two feet. I've
+got my brain----"
+
+"So have I. And yet----"
+
+"It's absurd to say I've 'got' these things. They're me. Happiness
+isn't in the things you've got. It's either in you or it isn't."
+
+"It generally isn't. Go on. What else? You've got the moon and your
+idea of the moon. I don't see that you've got much more."
+
+"Anyhow, I've got my liberty."
+
+"Your liberty--if that's all you want!"
+
+"It's pretty nearly all. It covers most things."
+
+"It does if you're an incurable egoist."
+
+"You think I'm an egoist? And incurable?"
+
+"It doesn't matter what I think."
+
+"Not much. If you think that."
+
+Silence. And then Rowcliffe burst out again.
+
+"There are two things that I can't stand--a woman nursing a dog and
+a woman in love with the moon. They mean the same thing. And it's
+horrible."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because if it's humbug she's a hypocrite, and if it's genuine she's a
+monster."
+
+"And if I'm in love with the moon--and you said I was----"
+
+"I didn't. You said it yourself."
+
+"Not at all. I said _if_ I was in love with the moon, I'd be in love
+with _it_ and not with my idea of it. I want reality."
+
+"So do I. We're not likely to get it if we can't see it."
+
+"No. If you're only in love with what you see."
+
+"Oh, you're too clever. Too clever for me."
+
+"Am I too clever for myself?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+He laughed abominably.
+
+"I don't see the joke."
+
+"If you don't see it this minute you'll see it in another ten years."
+
+"Now," she said, "you're too clever for _me_."
+
+They walked on in silence again. The mist gathered and dripped about
+them.
+
+Abruptly she spoke.
+
+"Has anything happened?"
+
+"No, it hasn't."
+
+"I mean--anything horrid?"
+
+Her voice sounded such genuine distress that he dropped his hostile
+and contemptuous tone.
+
+"No," he said, "why should it?"
+
+"Because I've noticed that, when people are unusually horrid, it
+always means that something horrid's happened to them."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Papa, for instance, is only horrid to us because Mummy--my
+stepmother, you know--was horrid to him."
+
+"What did Mummy do to him?"
+
+"She ran away from him. It's always that way. People aren't horrid on
+purpose. At least I'm sure _you_ wouldn't be."
+
+"_Was_ I horrid?"
+
+"Well--for the last half-hour----"
+
+"You see, I find you a little exasperating at times."
+
+"Not always?"
+
+"No. Not by any means always."
+
+"Can I tell when I am? Or when I'm going to be?"
+
+He laughed (not at all abominably). "No. I don't think you can. That's
+rather what I resent in you."
+
+"I wish I could tell. Then perhaps I might avoid it. You might just
+give me warning when you think I'm going to be it."
+
+"I did give you warning."
+
+"When?"
+
+"When it began."
+
+"There you are. I don't know when it did begin. What were we talking
+about?"
+
+"I wasn't talking about anything. You were talking about the moon."
+
+"It was the moon that did it."
+
+"I suppose it was the moon."
+
+"I see. I bored you. How awful."
+
+"I didn't say you bored me. You never have bored me. You couldn't bore
+me."
+
+"No--I just irritate you and drive you mad."
+
+"You just irritate me and drive me mad."
+
+The words were brutal but the voice caressed her. He took her by the
+arm and steered her amicably round a hidden boulder.
+
+"Do you know many women?" she asked.
+
+The question was startling by reason of its context. The better to
+consider it Rowcliffe withdrew his protecting arm.
+
+"No," he said, "not very many."
+
+"But those you do know you get on with? You get on all right with
+Mary?"
+
+"Yes. I get on all right with 'Mary.'"
+
+"You'd be horrid if you didn't. Mary's a dear."
+
+"Well--I know where I am with _her_."
+
+"And you get on all right--really--with Papa, as long as I'm not
+there."
+
+"As long as you're not there, yes."
+
+"So that," she pursued, "_I'm_ the horrid thing that's happened to
+you? It looks like it."
+
+"It feels like it. Let's say you're the horrid thing that's happened
+to me, and leave it at that."
+
+They left it.
+
+Rowcliffe had a sort of impression that he had said all that he had
+had to say.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The Vicar had called Gwenda into his study one day.
+
+"What's this I hear," he said, "of you and young Rowcliffe scampering
+about all over the country?"
+
+The Vicar had drawn a bow at a venture. He had not really heard
+anything, but he had seen something; two forms scrambling hand in hand
+up Karva; not too distant to be recognisable as young Rowcliffe and
+his daughter Gwenda, yet too distant to be pleasing to the Vicar. It
+was their distance that made them so improper.
+
+"I don't know, Papa," said Gwenda.
+
+"Perhaps you know what was said about your sister Alice? Do you want
+the same thing to be said about you?"
+
+"It won't be, Papa. Unless you say it yourself."
+
+She had him there; for what was said about Alice had been said first
+of all by him.
+
+"What do you mean, Gwenda?"
+
+"I mean that I'm a little different from Alice."
+
+"Are you? _Are_ you? When you're doing the same thing?"
+
+"Let me see. What _was_ the dreadful thing that Ally did? She ran
+after young Rickards, didn't she? Well--if you'd really seen us
+scampering you'd know that I'm generally running away from young
+Rowcliffe and that young Rowcliffe is generally running after me. He
+says it's as much as he can do to keep up with me."
+
+"Gwenda," said the Vicar solemnly. "I won't have it."
+
+"How do you propose to stop it, Papa?"
+
+"You'll see how."
+
+(It was thus that his god lured the Vicar to destruction. For he had
+no plan. He knew that he couldn't move into another parish.)
+
+"It's no good locking me up in my room," said Gwenda, "for I can get
+out at the window. And you can't very well lock young Rowcliffe up in
+his surgery."
+
+"I can forbid him the house."
+
+"That's no good either so long as he doesn't forbid me his."
+
+"You can't go to him there, my girl."
+
+"I can do anything when I'm driven."
+
+The Vicar groaned.
+
+"You're right," he said. "You _are_ different from Alice. You're worse
+than she is--ten times worse. _You_'d stick at nothing. I've always
+known it."
+
+"So have I."
+
+The Vicar leaned against the chimney-piece and hid his face in his
+hands to shut out the shame of her.
+
+And then Gwenda had pity on him.
+
+"It's all right, Papa. I'm not going to Dr. Rowcliffe, because there's
+no need. You're not going to lock him up in his surgery and you're not
+going to forbid him the house. You're not going to do anything. You're
+going to listen to me. It's not a bit of good trying to bully me.
+You'll be beaten every time. You can bully Alice as much as you like.
+You can bully her till she's ill. You can shut her up in her bedroom
+and lock the door and I daresay she won't get out at the window. But
+even Alice will beat you in the end. Of course there's Mary. But I
+shouldn't try it on with Mary either. She's really more dangerous than
+I am, because she looks so meek and mild. But she'll beat you, too, if
+you begin bullying her."
+
+The Vicar raised his stricken head.
+
+"Gwenda," he said, "you're terrible."
+
+"No, Papa, I'm not terrible. I'm really awfully kind. I'm telling you
+these things for your good. Don't you worry. I shan't run very far
+after young Rowcliffe."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Left to himself, the Vicar fairly wallowed in his gloom. He pressed
+his hands tightly to his face, crushing into darkness the image of his
+daughter Gwenda that remained with him after the door had shut between
+them.
+
+It came over him with the very shutting of the door not only that
+there never was a man so cursed in his children (that thought had
+occurred to him before) but that, of the three, Gwenda was the one in
+whom the curse was, so to speak, most active, through whom it was most
+likely to fall on him at any moment. In Alice it could be averted.
+He knew, he had always known, how to deal with Alice. And it would be
+hard to say exactly where it lurked in Mary. Therefore, in his times
+of profoundest self-commiseration, the Vicar overlooked the existence
+of his daughter Mary. He was an artist in gloom and Mary's sweetness
+and goodness spoiled the picture. But in Gwenda the curse was imminent
+and at the same time incalculable. Alice's behavior could be fairly
+predicted and provided for. There was no knowing what Gwenda would do
+next. The fear of what she might do hung forever over his head, and it
+made him jumpy.
+
+And yet in this sense of cursedness the Vicar had found shelter for
+his self-esteem.
+
+And now his fear, his noble and righteous fear of what Gwenda might
+do, his conviction that she would do something, disguised more
+than ever his humiliating fear of Gwenda. She was, as he had said,
+terrible. There was no dealing with Gwenda; there never had been.
+Patience failed before her will and wisdom before the deadly thrust of
+her intelligence. She had stabbed him in several places before she had
+left the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The outcome of his brooding (it would have shocked the Vicar if he
+could have traced its genesis) was an extraordinary revulsion in
+Rowcliffe's favor. So far from shutting the Vicarage door in the young
+man's face, the Vicar was, positively he was, inclined to open it.
+He couldn't stand the idea of other people marrying since he wasn't
+really married himself, and couldn't be as long as Robina persisted
+in being alive (thus cruelly was he held up by that unscrupulous and
+pitiless woman) and the idea of any of his daughters marrying
+was peculiarly disagreeable to him. He didn't know why it was
+disagreeable, and it would have shocked him unspeakably if you had
+told him why. And if you had asked him he would have had half a dozen
+noble and righteous reasons ready for you at his finger-ends. But
+the Vicar with his eyes shut could see clearly that if Gwenda married
+Rowcliffe the unpleasant event would have its compensation. He would
+be rid of an everlasting source of unpleasantness at home. He didn't
+say to himself that his egoism would be rid of an everlasting fear. He
+said that if Rowcliffe married Gwenda he would keep her straight.
+
+And then another consoling thought struck him.
+
+He could deal with Alice more effectually than ever. Neither Mary nor
+Alice knew what he knew. They hadn't dreamed that it was Gwenda that
+young Rowcliffe wanted. He would use his knowledge to bring Alice to
+her senses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Wednesday that he dealt with her.
+
+He was coming in some hours earlier than usual from his rounds when
+she delivered herself into his hands by appearing at the foot of the
+staircase with her hair extravagantly dressed, and wearing what he
+took, rightly, to be a new blue gown.
+
+He opened the study door, and, with a treacherous smile, invited her
+to enter. Then he looked at her.
+
+"Is that another new dress you've got on?" he inquired, still with his
+bland treachery.
+
+"Yes, Papa," said Alice. "Do you like it?"
+
+The Vicar drew himself up, squared his shoulders and smiled again, not
+quite so blandly. His attitude gave him a sensation of exquisite and
+powerful virility.
+
+"Do I like it? I should, perhaps, if I were a millionaire."
+
+"It didn't cost so much as all that," said Alice.
+
+"I'm not asking you what it cost. But I think you must have
+anticipated your next allowance."
+
+Alice stared with wide eyes of innocence.
+
+"What if I did? It won't make any difference in the long run."
+
+The Vicar, with his hands plunged in his trousers pockets, jerked
+forward at her from the waist. It was his gesture when he thrust.
+
+"For all the difference it'll make to _you_, my dear child, you might
+have spared yourself the trouble and expense."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Has young Rowcliffe been here to-day?"
+
+"No," said Alice defiantly, "he hasn't."
+
+"You expected him?"
+
+"I daresay Mary did."
+
+"I'm not asking what Mary did. Did you expect him or did you not?"
+
+"He _said_ he might turn up."
+
+"He said he might turn up. You expected him. And he hasn't turned up.
+And you can't think why. Isn't that so?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Papa."
+
+"I mean, my child, that you're living in a fool's paradise."
+
+"I haven't a notion what you mean by _that_."
+
+"Perhaps Gwenda can enlighten you."
+
+The color died in Ally's scared face.
+
+"I can't see," she said, "what Gwenda's got to do with it."
+
+"She's got something to do with young Rowcliffe's not turning up, I
+think. I met the two of them half way between Upthorne and Bar Hill at
+half past four."
+
+He took out his watch.
+
+"And it's ten past six now."
+
+He sat down, turning his chair so as not to see her face. He did not,
+at the moment, care to look at her.
+
+"You might go and ask Mrs. Gale to send me in a cup of tea."
+
+Alice went out.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+"It's a quarter past six now," she said to herself. "They must come
+back from Bar Hill by Upthorne. I shall meet them at Upthorne if I
+start now."
+
+She slipped her rough coat over the new gown and started.
+
+Her fear drove her, and she went up the hill at an impossible pace.
+She trembled, staggered, stood still and went on again.
+
+The twilight of the unborn moon was like the horrible twilight of
+dreams. She walked as she had walked in nightmares, with knees, weak
+as water, that sank under her at every step.
+
+She passed the schoolhouse with its beckoning ash-tree. The
+schoolhouse stirred the pain under her heart. She remembered the
+shining night when she had shown herself there and triumphed.
+
+The pain then was so intolerable that her mind revolted from it as
+from a thing that simply could not be. The idea by which she lived
+asserted itself against the menace of destruction. It was not so much
+an idea as an instinct, blind, obstinate, immovable. It had behind it
+the wisdom and the persistence of life. It refused to believe where
+belief meant death to it.
+
+She said to herself, "He's lying. He's lying. He's made it all up. He
+never met them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had passed the turn of the hill. She had come to the high towers,
+sinister and indistinct, to the hollow walls and haunted arcades of
+the dead mining station. Upthorne was hidden by the shoulder of the
+hill.
+
+She stopped suddenly, there where the road skirted the arcades. She
+was struck by a shock of premonition, an instinct older and profounder
+than that wisdom of the blood. She had the sense that what was
+happening now, her coming, like this, to the towers and the arcades,
+had happened before, and was so related to what was about to happen
+that she knew this also and with the same shock of recognition.
+
+It would happen when she had come to the last arch of the colonnade.
+
+It was happening now. She had come to the last arch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That instant she was aware of Rowcliffe and Gwenda coming toward her
+down the hill.
+
+Their figures were almost indiscernible in the twilight. It was by
+their voices that she knew them.
+
+Before they could see her she had slipped out of their path behind the
+shelter of the arch.
+
+She knew them by their voices. Yet their voices had something in them
+that she did not know, something that told her that they had been with
+each other many times before; that they understood each other; that
+they were happy in each other and absorbed.
+
+The pain was no longer inside her heart but under it. It was dull
+rather than sharp, yet it moved there like a sharp sickle, a sickle
+that gathered and ground the live flesh it turned in and twisted. A
+sensation of deadly sickness made her draw farther yet into the corner
+of the arcade, feeling her way in the darkness with her hand on the
+wall. She stumbled on a block of stone, sank on it and cowered there,
+sobbing and shivering.
+
+Down in Garth village the church clock struck the half hour and the
+quarter and the hour.
+
+At the half hour Blenkiron, the blacksmith, put Rowcliffe's horse into
+the trap. The sound of the clanking hoofs came up the hill. Rowcliffe
+heard them first.
+
+"There's something wrong down there," he said. "They're coming for
+me."
+
+In his heart he cursed them. For it was there, at the turn of the
+road, below the arches, that he had meant to say what he had not said
+the other night. There was no moon. The moment was propitious. And
+there (just like his cursed luck) was Blenkiron with the trap.
+
+They met above the schoolhouse as the clock struck the quarter.
+
+"You're wanted, sir," said the blacksmith, "at Mrs. Gale's."
+
+"Is it Essy?"
+
+"Ay, it's Assy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the cottage down by the beck Essy groaned and cried in her agony.
+
+And on the road to Upthorne, under the arches by the sinister towers,
+Alice Cartaret, crouching on her stone, sobbed and shivered.
+
+Not long after seven Essy's child was born.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just before ten the three sisters sat waiting, as they had always
+waited, bored and motionless, for the imminent catastrophe of Prayers.
+
+"I wonder how Essy's getting on," said Gwenda.
+
+"Poor little Essy!" Mary said.
+
+"She's as pleased as Punch," said Gwenda. "It's a boy. Ally--did you
+know that Essy's had a baby?"
+
+"I don't care if she has," said Ally violently. "It's got nothing to
+do with me. I wish you wouldn't talk about her beastly baby."
+
+As the Vicar came out of his study into the dining-room, he fixed his
+eyes upon his youngest daughter.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he said.
+
+"Nothing's the matter," said Alice defiantly. "Why?"
+
+"You look," he said, "as if somebody was murdering you."
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+Ally was ill; so ill this time that even the Vicar softened to her.
+He led her upstairs himself and made her go to bed and stay there. He
+would have sent for Rowcliffe but that Ally refused to see him.
+
+Her mortal apathy passed for submission. She took her milk from her
+father's hand without a murmur. "There's a good girl," he said, as she
+drank it down.
+
+But it didn't do her any good. Nothing did. The illness itself was no
+good to her, considering that she didn't want to be ill this time. She
+wanted to die. And of course she couldn't die. It would have been too
+much happiness and they wouldn't let her have it.
+
+At first she resented what she called their interference. She
+declared, as she had declared before, that there was nothing the
+matter with her. She was only tired. Couldn't they see that she was
+tired? That _they_ tired her?
+
+"Why can't you leave me alone? If only you'd go away," she moaned,
+"--all of you--and leave me alone."
+
+But very soon she was too tired even to be irritable. She lay quiet,
+sunk in the hollow of her bed, and kept her eyes shut, so that she
+never knew, she said, whether they were there or not. And it didn't
+matter. Nothing mattered so long as she could just lie there.
+
+It was only when they talked of sending for Rowcliffe that they roused
+her. Then she sat up and became, first vehement, then violent.
+
+"You shan't send for him," she cried. "I won't see him. If he comes
+into the house I'll crawl out of it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day (it was the last Wednesday in April) Gwenda came to her and
+told her that Rowcliffe was there and had asked to see her.
+
+Ally's pale eyes lightened and grew large. They were transparent as
+glass in her white face.
+
+"Did _you_ send for him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Who did then?"
+
+"Papa."
+
+She closed her eyes. The old sense of ecstasy came over her, of
+triumph too, of solemn triumph, as if she, whom they thought so
+insignificant, had vindicated her tragic dignity at last.
+
+For if her father had sent for Rowcliffe it could only mean that she
+was really dying. Nothing else--nothing short of that--would have made
+him send.
+
+And of course that was what she wanted, that Rowcliffe should see her
+die. He wouldn't forget her then. He would be compelled to think of
+her.
+
+"You _will_ see him, won't you, Ally?"
+
+Ally smiled her little triumphant and mysterious smile.
+
+"Oh yes, I'll see him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Vicar did not go on his rounds that afternoon. He stayed at home
+to talk to Rowcliffe. The two were shut up together in his study for
+more than half an hour.
+
+As they entered the drawing-room at tea-time it could be seen from
+their manner and their faces that something had gone wrong. The Vicar
+bore himself like a man profoundly aggrieved, not to say outraged, in
+his own house, who nevertheless was observing a punctilious courtesy
+towards the offending guest. Rowcliffe's shoulders and his jaw were
+still squared in the antagonism that had closed their interview.
+He too observed the most perfect courtesy. Only by the consummate
+restraint of his manner did he show how impossible he had found the
+Vicar, while his face betrayed a grave preoccupation in which the
+Vicar counted not at all.
+
+Mary began to talk to him about the weather. Neither she nor Gwenda
+dared ask him what he thought of Alice.
+
+And in ten minutes he was gone. The Vicar went with him to the gate.
+
+Still standing as they had stood to take leave of Rowcliffe, the
+sisters looked at each other. Mary spoke first.
+
+"Whatever _can_ Papa have said to him?"
+
+This time Gwenda knew what Mary was thinking.
+
+"It isn't that," she said. "It's something he's said to Papa."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+That night, about nine o'clock, Gwenda came for the third time to
+Rowcliffe at his house.
+
+She was shown into his study, where Rowcliffe was reading.
+
+Though the servant had prepared him for her, he showed signs of
+agitation.
+
+Gwenda's eyes were ominously somber and she had the white face of
+a ghost, a face that to Rowcliffe, as he looked at it, recalled the
+white face of Alice. He disliked Alice's face, he always had disliked
+it, he disliked it more than ever at that moment; yet the sight
+of this face that was so like it carried him away in an ecstasy of
+tenderness. He adored it because of that likeness, because of all that
+the likeness revealed to him and signified. And it increased, quite
+unendurably, his agitation.
+
+Gwenda was supernaturally calm.
+
+In another instant the illusion that her presence had given him
+passed. He saw what she had come for.
+
+"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked.
+
+She drew in her breath sharply.
+
+"It's Alice."
+
+"Yes, I know it's Alice. _Is_ anything wrong?" he said. "What is it?"
+
+"I don't know. I want you to tell me. That's what I've come for. I'm
+frightened."
+
+"D'you mean, is she worse?"
+
+She did not answer him. She looked at him as if she were trying to
+read in his eyes something that he was trying not to tell her.
+
+"Yes," he said, "she _is_ worse."
+
+"I know that," she said impatiently. "I can see it. You've got to tell
+me more."
+
+"But I _have_ told you. You _know_ I have," he pleaded.
+
+"I know you tried to tell me."
+
+"Didn't I succeed?"
+
+"You told me why she was ill--I know all that----"
+
+"Do sit down." He turned from her and dragged the armchair forward.
+"There." He put a cushion at her back. "That's better."
+
+As she obeyed him she kept her eyes on him. The book he had been
+reading lay where he had put it down, on the hearthrug at her feet.
+Its title, "_État mental des hystériques_;" Janet, stared at him. He
+picked it up and flung it out of sight as if it had offended him. With
+all his movements her head lifted and turned so that her eyes followed
+him.
+
+He sat down and gazed at her quietly.
+
+"Well," he said, "and what didn't I tell you?"
+
+"You didn't tell me how it would end."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Is that what you told father?"
+
+"Hasn't he said anything?"
+
+"He hasn't said a word. And you went away without saying anything."
+
+"There isn't much to say that you don't know----"
+
+"I know why she was ill. You told me. But I don't know why she's
+worse. She _was_ better. She was quite well. She was running about
+doing things and looking so pretty--only the other day. And look at
+her now."
+
+"It's like that," said Rowcliffe. "It comes and goes."
+
+He said it quietly. But the blood rose into his face and forehead in a
+painful flush.
+
+"But why? Why?" she persisted. "It's so horribly sudden."
+
+"It's like that, too," said Rowcliffe.
+
+"If it's like that now what is it going to be? How is it going to end?
+That's what you _won't_ tell me."
+
+"It's difficult----" he began.
+
+"I don't care how difficult it is or how you hate it. You've got to."
+
+All he said to that was "You're very fond of her?"
+
+Her upper lip trembled. "Yes. But I don't think I knew it until now."
+
+"That's what makes it difficult."
+
+"My not knowing it?"
+
+"No. Your being so fond of her."
+
+"Isn't that just the reason why I ought to know?"
+
+"Yes. I think it is. Only----"
+
+She held him to it.
+
+"Is she going to die?"
+
+"I don't say she's _going_ to die. But--in the state she's in--she
+_might_ get anything and die of it if something isn't done to make her
+happy."
+
+"Happy----"
+
+"I mean of course--to get her married. After all, you know, you've got
+to face the facts."
+
+"You think she's dying now, and you're afraid to tell me."
+
+"No--I'm afraid I think--she's not so likely to die as to go out of
+her mind."
+
+"Did you tell my father that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said she was out of her mind already."
+
+
+"She isn't!"
+
+"Of course she isn't. No more than you and I. He talks about putting
+the poor child under restraint----"
+
+"Oh----"
+
+"It's preposterous. But he'll make it necessary if he continues his
+present system. What I tried to impress on him is that she _will_
+go out of her mind if she's kept shut up in that old Vicarage much
+longer. And that she'd be all right--perfectly all right--if she was
+married. As far as I can make out he seems to be doing his best to
+prevent it. Well--in her case--that's simply criminal. The worse of it
+is I can't make him see it. He's annoyed with me."
+
+"He never will see anything he doesn't like."
+
+"There's no reason why he should dislike it so much--I mean her
+illness. There's nothing awful about it."
+
+"There's nothing awful about Ally. She's as good as gold."
+
+"I know she's as good as gold. And she'd be as strong as iron if she
+was married and had children. I've seen no end of women like that, and
+I'm not sure they don't make the best wives and mothers. I told your
+father that. But it's no good trying to tell him the truth."
+
+"No. It's the one thing he can't stand."
+
+"He seems," said Rowcliffe, "to have such an extraordinary distaste
+for the subject. He approaches it from an impossible point of view--as
+if it was sin or crime or something. He talks about her controlling
+herself, as if she could help it. Why, she's no more responsible for
+being like that than I am for the shape of my nose. I'm afraid I told
+him that if anybody was responsible _he_ was, for bringing her to the
+worst place imaginable."
+
+"He did that on purpose."
+
+"I know. And I told him he might as well have put her in a lunatic
+asylum at once."
+
+He meditated.
+
+"It's not as if he hadn't anybody but himself to think of."
+
+"That's no good. He never does think of anybody but himself. And yet
+he'd be awfully sorry, you know, if Ally died."
+
+They sat silent, not looking at each other, until Gwenda spoke again.
+
+"Dr. Rowcliffe--"
+
+He smiled as if it amused him to be addressed so formally.
+
+"Do you _really_ mean it, or are you frightening us? Will Ally really
+die--or go mad--if she isn't--happy?"
+
+He was grave again.
+
+"I really mean it. It's a rather serious case. But it's only 'if.' As
+I told you, there are scores of women--"
+
+But she waived them all away.
+
+"I only wanted to know."
+
+Her voice stopped suddenly, and he thought that she was going to break
+down.
+
+"You mustn't take it so hard," he said. "It's not as if it wasn't
+absolutely curable. You must take her away."
+
+Suddenly he remembered that he didn't particularly want Gwenda to go
+away. He couldn't, in fact, bear the thought of it.
+
+"Better still," he said, "send her away. Is there anybody you could
+send her to?"
+
+"Only Mummy--my stepmother." She smiled through her tears. "Papa would
+never let Ally go to _her_."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because she ran away from him."
+
+He tried not to laugh.
+
+"She's really quite decent, though you mightn't think it." Rowcliffe
+smiled. "And she's fond of Ally. She's fond of all of us--except Papa.
+And," she added, "she knows a lot of people."
+
+He smiled again. He pictured the third Mrs. Cartaret as a woman of
+affectionate gaiety and a pleasing worldliness, so well surrounded by
+adorers of his own sex that she could probably furnish forth her three
+stepdaughters from the numbers of those she had no use for. He was
+more than ever disgusted with the Vicar who had driven from him a
+woman so admirably fitted to play a mother's part.
+
+"She sounds," he said, "as if she'd be the very one."
+
+"She would be. It's an awful pity."
+
+"Well," he said, "we won't talk any more about it now. We'll think of
+something. We simply _must_ get her away."
+
+He was thinking that he knew of somebody--a doctor's widow--who
+also would be fitted. If they could afford to pay her. And if they
+couldn't, he would very soon have the right----
+
+That was what his "we" meant.
+
+Presently he excused himself and went out to see, he said, about
+getting her some tea. He judged that if she were left alone for a
+moment she would pull herself together and be as ready as ever for
+their walk back to Garthdale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in that moment when he left her that she made her choice.
+Not that when her idea had come to her she had known a second's
+hesitation. She didn't know when it had come. It seemed to her that it
+had been with her all through their awful interview.
+
+It was she and not Ally who would have to go away.
+
+She could see it now.
+
+It had been approaching her, her idea, from the very instant that she
+had come into the room and had begun to speak to him. And with every
+word that _he_ had said it had come closer. But not until her final
+appeal to him had she really faced it. Then it became clear. It
+crystallised. There was no escaping from the facts.
+
+Ally would die or go mad if she didn't marry.
+
+Ally (though Rowcliffe didn't know it) was in love with him.
+
+And, even if she hadn't been, as long as they stayed in Garthdale
+there was nobody but Rowcliffe whom she could marry. It was her one
+chance.
+
+And there were three of them there. Three women to one man.
+
+And since _she_ was the one--she knew it--who stood between him and
+Ally, it was she who would have to go away.
+
+It seemed to her that long ago--all the time, in fact, ever since she
+had known Rowcliffe--she had known that this was what she would have
+to face.
+
+She faced it now with a strange courage and a sort of spiritual
+exaltation, as she would have faced any terrible truth that Rowcliffe
+had told her, if, for instance, he had told her that she was going to
+die.
+
+That, of course, was what it felt like. She had known that it would
+feel like that.
+
+And, as sometimes happens to people who are going to die and know
+it, there came to her a peculiar vivid and poignant sense of her
+surroundings. Of Rowcliffe's room and the things in it,--the chair he
+had sat in, the pipe he had laid aside, the book he had been reading
+and that he had flung away. Outside the open window the trees of the
+little orchard, whitened by the moonlight, stood as if fixed in a
+tender, pure and supernatural beauty. She could see the flags on the
+path and the stones in the gray walls. They stood out with a strange
+significance and importance. As if near and yet horribly far away, she
+could hear Rowcliffe's footsteps in the passage.
+
+It came over her that she was sitting in Rowcliffe's room--like
+this--for the last time.
+
+Then her heart dragged and tore at her, as if it fought against her
+will to die. But it never occurred to her that this dying of hers was
+willed by her. It seemed foredoomed, inevitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now she was looking up in Rowcliffe's face and smiling at him as
+he brought her her tea.
+
+"That's right," he said.
+
+He was entirely reassured by her appearance.
+
+"Look here, shall I drive you back or do you feel like another
+four-mile walk?"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"It's late," he said. "But no matter. Let's be reckless."
+
+"There's no need. I've got my bicycle."
+
+"Then I'll get mine."
+
+She rose. "Don't. I'm going back alone."
+
+"You're not. I'm coming with you. I want to come."
+
+"If you don't mind, I'd rather you didn't--to-night."
+
+"I'll drive you, then. I can't let you go alone."
+
+"But I _want_," she said, "to be alone."
+
+He stood looking at her with a sort of sullen tenderness.
+
+"You're not going to worry about what I told you?"
+
+"You didn't tell me. I knew."
+
+"Then----"
+
+But she persisted.
+
+"No. I shall be all right," she said. "There's a moon."
+
+In the end he let her have her way.
+
+Moon or no moon he saw that it was not his moment.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+What Gwenda had to do she did quickly.
+
+She wrote to the third Mrs. Cartaret that night. She told her nothing
+except that she wanted to get something to do in London and to get it
+as soon as possible, and she asked her stepmother if she could put her
+up for a week or two until she got it. And would Mummy mind wiring Yes
+or No on Saturday morning?
+
+It was then Thursday night.
+
+She slipped out into the village about midnight to post the letter,
+though she knew that it couldn't go one minute before three o'clock on
+Friday afternoon.
+
+She had no conscious fear that her will would fail her, but her
+instinct was appeased by action.
+
+On Saturday morning Mrs. Cartaret wired: "Delighted. Expect you
+Friday. Mummy."
+
+Five intolerable days. They were not more intolerable than the days
+that would come after, when the thing she was doing would be every bit
+as hard. Only her instinct was afraid of something happening within
+those five days that would make the hard thing harder.
+
+On Sunday Mrs. Cartaret's letter came. Her house, she said, was
+crammed with fiends till Friday. There was a beast of a woman in
+Gwenda's room who simply wouldn't go. But on Friday Gwenda's room
+would be ready. It had been waiting for her all the time. Hadn't they
+settled it that Gwenda was to come and live with her if things became
+impossible at home? Robina supposed they _were_ impossible? She sent
+her love to Alice and Mary, and she was always Gwenda's loving Mummy.
+And she enclosed a five-pound note; for she was a generous soul.
+
+On Monday Gwenda told Peacock the carrier to bring her a Bradshaw from
+Reyburn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She then considered how she was to account to her family for her
+departure.
+
+She decided that she would tell Mary first. And she might as well tell
+her the truth while she was about it, since, if she didn't, Mary would
+be sure to find it out. She was sweet and good. Not so sweet and good
+that she couldn't hold her own against Papa if she was driven to
+it, but sweet enough and good enough to stand by Ally and to see her
+through.
+
+It would be easy for Mary. It wasn't as if she had ever even begun to
+care for Rowcliffe. It wasn't as if Rowcliffe had ever cared for her.
+
+And she could be trusted. A secret was always safe with Mary. She was
+positively uncanny in her silence, and quite superhumanly discreet.
+
+Mary, then, should be told the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
+Her father should be told as much of it as he was likely to believe.
+Ally, of course, mustn't have an inkling.
+
+Mary herself had an inkling already when she appeared that evening in
+the attic where Gwenda was packing a trunk. She had a new Bradshaw in
+her hand.
+
+"Peacock gave me this," said Mary. "He said you ordered it."
+
+"So I did," said Gwenda.
+
+"What on earth for?"
+
+"To look up trains in."
+
+"Why--is anybody coming?"
+
+"Does anybody _ever_ come?"
+
+Mary's face admitted her absurdity.
+
+"Then"--she made it out almost with difficulty--"somebody must be
+going away."
+
+"How clever you are. Somebody _is_ going away."
+
+Mary twisted her brows in her perplexity. She was evidently thinking
+things.
+
+"Do you mean--Steven Rowcliffe?"
+
+"No, dear lamb." (What on earth had put Steven Rowcliffe into Mary's
+head?) "It's not as bad as all that. It's only a woman. In fact, it's
+only me."
+
+Mary's face emptied itself of all expression; it became a blank
+screen suddenly put up before the disarray of hurrying, eager things,
+unclothed and unexpressed.
+
+"I'm going to stay with Mummy."
+
+Gwenda closed the lid of the trunk and sat on it.
+
+(Perturbation was now in Mary's face.)
+
+"You can't, Gwenda. Papa'll never let you go."
+
+"He can't stop me."
+
+"What on earth are you going for?"
+
+"Not for my own amusement, though it sounds amusing."
+
+"Does Mummy want you?"
+
+"Whether she wants me or not, she's got to have me."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+(Mary's face was heavy with thought now.)
+
+"I don't know. I'm going to get something to do."
+
+"To _do?_"
+
+(Mary said to herself, then certainly it was not amusing. She pondered
+it.)
+
+"Is it," she brought out, "because of Steven Rowcliffe?"
+
+"No. It's because of Ally."
+
+"Ally?"
+
+"Yes. Didn't Papa tell you about her?"
+
+"Not he. Did he tell you?"
+
+"No. It was Steven Rowcliffe."
+
+And she told Mary what Rowcliffe had said to her.
+
+She had made room for her on her trunk and they sat there, their
+bodies touching, their heads drawn back, each sister staring with eyes
+that gave and took the other's horror.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Don't, Molly, don't----"
+
+Mary was crying now.
+
+"Does Papa know--that she'll die--or go mad?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But"--Mary lifted her stained face--"that's what they said about
+Mother."
+
+"If she had children. It's if Ally hasn't any."
+
+"And Papa knew it _then_. And he knows it now--how awful."
+
+"It isn't as awful as Steven Rowcliffe thinks. He doesn't really know
+what's wrong with her. He doesn't know she's in love with _him_."
+
+"Poor Ally. What's the good? He isn't in love with her."
+
+"He isn't now," said Gwenda. "But he will be."
+
+"Not he. It's you he cares for--if he cares for anybody."
+
+"I know. That's why I'm going."
+
+"Oh, Gwenda----"
+
+Mary's face was somber as she took it in.
+
+"That won't do Ally any good. If you _know_ he cares."
+
+"I don't absolutely know it. And if I did it wouldn't make any
+difference."
+
+"And if--you care for him?"
+
+"That doesn't make any difference either. I've got to clear out. It's
+her one chance, Molly. I've got to give it her. How _can_ I let her
+die, poor darling, or go mad? She'll be all right if he marries her."
+
+"And if he doesn't?"
+
+"He may, Molly, he may, if I clear out in time. Anyhow, there isn't
+anybody else."
+
+"If only," Mary said, "Papa had kept a curate."
+
+"But he hasn't kept a curate. He never will keep a curate. And if
+he does he'll choose a man with a wife and seven children--no, he'll
+choose no children. The wife mustn't have a chance of dying."
+
+"Gwenda--do you think anybody _knows?_ They did, you know--before, and
+it was awful."
+
+"Nobody knows this time, except Papa and Steven Rowcliffe and you and
+me."
+
+"I wish I didn't. I wish you hadn't told me."
+
+"You _had_ to know or I wouldn't have told you. Do you think Steven
+Rowcliffe would have told _me----_"
+
+"How could he? It was awful of him."
+
+"He could because he isn't a coward or a fool and he knew that I'm not
+a coward or a fool either. He thought Ally had nobody but me. She'll
+have nobody but you when I'm gone. You mustn't let her see you think
+her awful. You mustn't _think_ it. She isn't. She's as good as gold.
+Steven Rowcliffe said so. If she wasn't, Molly, I wouldn't ask you to
+help her--with him."
+
+"Gwenda, you mustn't put it all on me. I'd do anything for poor Ally,
+but I _can't_ make him marry her if he doesn't want to."
+
+"I think Ally can make him want to, if she gets a chance. You've only
+got to stick to her and see her through. You'll have to ask him here,
+you know. _She_ can't. And you'll have to keep Papa off her. If you're
+not very careful, he'll go and put her under restraint or something."
+
+"Oh--would it come to that?"
+
+"Yes. Papa'd do it like a shot. I believe he'd do it just to stop her
+marrying him. You mustn't tell Papa what I've told you. You mustn't
+tell Ally. And you mustn't tell him. Do you hear, Molly? You must
+never tell him."
+
+"Of course I won't tell him. But it's no use thinking we can do
+things."
+
+Gwenda stood up.
+
+"We haven't got to _do_ things. That's his business. We've only got to
+sit tight and play the game."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gwenda went on with her packing.
+
+"It will be time enough," she thought, "to tell Ally tomorrow."
+
+Ally was in her room. She never came downstairs now; and this week she
+was worse and had stayed all day in bed. They couldn't rouse her.
+
+But something had roused her this evening.
+
+A sort of scratching on the door made Gwenda look up from her packing.
+
+Ally stood on the threshold. She had dressed herself completely in her
+tweed skirt, white blouse and knitted tie. Her strength had failed her
+only in the struggle with her hair. The coil had fallen, and hung in
+a loose pigtail down her back. Slowly, in the weakness of her apathy,
+she trailed across the floor.
+
+"Ally, what is it? Why didn't you send for me?"
+
+"It's all right. I wanted to get up. I'm coming down to supper. You
+can leave off packing that old trunk. You haven't got to go."
+
+"Who told you I was going?"
+
+"Nobody. I knew it." She answered Gwenda's eyes. "I don't know how
+I knew it, but I did. And I know why you're going and it's all rot.
+You're going because you know that if you stay Steven Rowcliffe'll
+marry you, and you think that if you go he'll marry me."
+
+"Whatever put that idea into your head?"
+
+"Nothing put it. It came. It shows how awful you must think me if you
+think I'd go and do a beastly thing like that."
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Why--sneaking him away from you behind your back when I know you like
+him. You needn't lie about it. You _do_ like him.
+
+"I may be awful," she went on. "In fact I know I'm awful. But I'm
+decent. I couldn't do a caddish thing like that--I couldn't really.
+And, if I couldn't, there's no need for you to go."
+
+She was sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to
+speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge
+of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They
+ceased and she looked up.
+
+And in her look, a look that for the moment was divinely lucid, Gwenda
+saw Ally's secret and hidden kinship with herself. She saw it as if
+through some medium, once troubled and now made suddenly transparent.
+It was because of that queer kinship that Ally had divined her.
+However awful she was, however tragically foredoomed and driven, Ally
+was decent. She knew what Gwenda was doing because it was what, if any
+sustained lucidity were ever given her, she might have done herself.
+
+But in Ally no idea but the one idea was very deeply rooted. Sustained
+lucidity never had been hers. It would be easy to delude her.
+
+"I'm going," Gwenda said, "because I want to. If I stayed I wouldn't
+marry Steven Rowcliffe, and Steven Rowcliffe wouldn't marry me."
+
+"But--I thought--I thought----"
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"That there was something between you. Papa said so."
+
+"If Papa said so you might have known there was nothing in it."
+
+"And isn't there?"
+
+"Of course there isn't. You can put that idea out of your head
+forever."
+
+"All the same I believe that's why you're going."
+
+"I'm going because I can't stand this place any longer. You said I'd
+be sick of it in three months."
+
+"You're not sick of it. You love it. It's me you can't stand."
+
+"No, Ally--no."
+
+She plunged for another argument and found it.
+
+"What I can't stand is living with Papa."
+
+Ally agreed that this was rather more than plausible.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+As Rowcliffe went back to his surgery he recalled two things he had
+forgotten. One was a little gray figure he had seen once or twice
+lately wandering through the fields about Upthorne Farm. The other was
+a certain interview he had had with Alice when she had come to ask him
+to get Greatorex to sing. That was in November, not long before the
+concert. He remembered the suggestion he had then made that Alice
+should turn her attention to reclaiming Greatorex. And, though he had
+no morbid sense of responsibility in the matter, it struck him with
+something like compunction that he had put Greatorex into Alice's head
+chiefly to distract her from throwing herself at his.
+
+And then, he had gone and forgotten all about it.
+
+He told himself now that he had been a fool not to think of it. And if
+he was a fool, what was to be said of the Vicar, under whose nose this
+singular form of choir practice had been going on for goodness knew
+how long?
+
+It did not occur to the doctor that if his surgery day had been a
+Friday, which was choir practice day, he would have been certain to
+have thought of it. Neither was he aware that what he had observed
+this evening was only the unforeseen result of a perfectly innocent
+parochial arrangement. It had begun at Christmas and again at Easter,
+when it was understood that Greatorex, who was nervous about his
+voice, should turn up for practice ten minutes before the rest of the
+choir to try over his part in an anthem or cantata, so that, as Alice
+said, he might do himself justice.
+
+Since Easter the ten minutes had grown to fifteen or even twenty. And
+twice in the last three weeks Greatorex, by collusion with Alice, had
+arrived a whole hour before his time. Still, there was nothing in
+this circumstance itself to alarm the Vicar. Choir practice was choir
+practice, a mysterious thing he never interfered with, knowing himself
+to be unmusical.
+
+Rowcliffe had had good reason for refusing to urge Greatorex to marry
+Essy Gale. But what he had seen in Garth church made him determined to
+say something to Greatorex, after all.
+
+He went on his northerly round the very next Sunday and timed it
+so that he overtook his man on his way home from church. He gave
+Greatorex a lift with the result (which he had calculated) that
+Greatorex gave him dinner, as he had done once or twice before. The
+after-dinner pipe made Jim peculiarly approachable, and Rowcliffe
+approached him suddenly and directly. "I say, Greatorex, why don't you
+marry? Not a bad thing for you, you know."
+
+"Ay. Saw they tall me," said Greatorex amicably.
+
+Rowcliffe went on to advise his marrying Essy, not on the grounds of
+morality or of justice to the girl (he was a tactful person), but on
+Greatorex's account, as the best thing Greatorex could do for himself.
+
+"Yo mane," said Greatorex, "I ought to marry her?"
+
+Rowcliffe said no, he wasn't going into that.
+
+Greatorex was profoundly thoughtful.
+
+Presently he said that he would speak to Essy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He spoke to her that afternoon.
+
+In the cottage down by the beck Essy sat by the hearth, nursing her
+baby. He had recovered from his ailment and lay in her lap, gurgling
+and squinting at the fire. He wore the robe that Mrs. Gale had brought
+to Essy five months ago. Essy had turned it up above his knees, and
+smiling softly she watched his little pink feet curling and uncurling
+as she held them to the fire. Essy's back and the back of the baby's
+head were toward the door, which stood open, the day being still warm.
+
+Greatorex stood there a moment looking at them before he tapped on the
+door.
+
+He felt no tenderness for either of them, only a sullen pity that was
+half resentment.
+
+As if she had heard his footsteps and known them, Essy spoke without
+looking round.
+
+"Yo' can coom in ef yo' want," she said.
+
+"Thank yo'," he said stiffly and came in.
+
+"I caan't get oop wi' t' baaby. But there's a chair soomwhere."
+
+He found it and sat down.
+
+"Are yo' woondering why I've coom, Essy?"
+
+"Naw, Jim. I wasn't woondering about yo' at all."
+
+Her voice was sweet and placable. She followed the direction of his
+eyes.
+
+"'E's better. Ef thot's what yo've coom for."
+
+"It isn' what I've coom for. I've soomthing to saay to yo', Essy."
+
+"There's nat mooch good yo're saayin' anything, Jim. I knaw all yo'
+'ave t' saay."
+
+"Yo'll 'ave t' 'ear it, Essy, whether yo' knaw it or not. They're
+tallin' mae I ought to marry yo'."
+
+Essy's eyes flashed.
+
+"Who's tallin' yo'?"
+
+"T' Vicar, for woon."
+
+"T' Vicar! 'E's a nice woon t' taalk o' marryin', whan 'is awn wife
+caan't live wi' 'im, nor 'is awn daughter, neither. And 'oo alse
+talled yo'? 'Twasn' Moother?"
+
+"Naw. It wasn' yore moother."
+
+"An' 'twasn' mae, Jim, and navver will bae."
+
+"'Twas Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+"'E? 'E's anoother. 'Ooo's 'e married? Miss Gwanda? Nat' e!"
+
+"Yo' let t' doctor bae, Essy. 'E's right enoof. Saw I ought t' marry
+yo'. But I'm nat goain' to."
+
+"'Ave yo' coom t' tall mae thot? 'S ef I didn' knaw it. 'Ave I avver
+aassked yo' t' marry mae?"
+
+"Haw, Essy."
+
+"Yo' _can_ aassk mae; yo'll bae saafe enoof. Fer I wawn't 'ave yo'.
+Woonce I med 'a' been maad enoof. I med 'a' said yes t' yo'. But I'd
+saay naw to-day."
+
+At that he smiled.
+
+"Yo' wouldn' 'ave a good-fer-noothin' falla like mae, would yo, laass?
+Look yo'--it's nat that I couldn' 'ave married yo'. I could 'ave
+married yo' right enoof. An' it's nat thot I dawn' think yo' pretty.
+Yo're pretty enoof fer me. It's--it's--I caan't rightly tall whot it
+is."
+
+"Dawn' tall mae. I dawn' want t' knaw."
+
+He looked hard at her.
+
+"I might marry yo' yat," he said. "But yo' knaw you wouldn' bae happy
+wi' mae. I sud bae crool t' yo'. Nat because I wanted t' bae crool,
+but because I couldn' halp mysel. Theer'd bae soomthin' alse I sud bae
+thinkin' on and wantin' all t' while."
+
+"I knaw. I knaw. I wouldn' lat yo', Jim. I wouldn' lat yo'."
+
+"I knaw there's t' baaby an' all. It's hard on yo', Essy. But--I dawn'
+knaw--I ned bae crool to t' baaby, too."
+
+Then she looked up at him, but with more incredulity than reproach.
+
+"Yo' wudn'," she said. "Yo' cudn' bae crool t' lil Jimmy."
+
+He scowled.
+
+"Yo've called 'im thot, Essy?"
+
+"An' why sudn' I call 'im? 'E's a right to thot naame, annyhow. Yo'
+caann't taake thot awaay from 'im."
+
+"I dawn' want t' taake it away from 'im. But I wish yo' 'adn'. I wish
+you 'adn', Essy."
+
+"Why 'alf t' lads in t' village is called Jimmy. Yo're called Jimmy
+yourself, coom t' thot."
+
+He considered it. "Well--it's nat as ef they didn' knaw--all of 'em."
+
+"Oh--they knaws!"
+
+"D'yo' mind them, Essy? They dawn't maake yo' feel baad about it, do
+they?"
+
+She shook her head and smiled her dreamy smile.
+
+He rose and looked down at her with his grieved, resentful eyes.
+
+"Yo' moosn' suppawse I dawn feel baad, Essy. I've laaid awaake manny a
+night, thinkin' what I've doon t'yo'."
+
+"What _'ave_ yo' doon, Jimmy? Yo' maade mae 'appy fer sex moonths.
+An' there's t' baaby. I didn' want 'im before 'e coom--seemed like I'd
+'ave t' 'ave 'im stead o' yo'. But yo' can goa right awaay, Jimmy, an'
+I sudn' keer ef I navver saw yo' again, so long's I 'ad 'im."
+
+"Is thot truth, Essy?"
+
+"It's Gawd's truth."
+
+He put out his hand and caressed the child's downy head as if it was
+the head of some young animal.
+
+"I wish I could do more fer 'im, Essy. I will, maaybe, soom daay."
+
+"I wouldn' lat yo'. I wouldn' tooch yo're mooney now ef I could goa
+out t' wark an' look affter 'im too. I wouldn' tooch a panny of it, I
+wouldn'."
+
+"Dawn' yo' saay thot, Essy. Yo' dawn' want to spite mae, do yo'?"
+
+"I didn' saay it t' spite yo', Jimmy. I said it saw's yo' sudn' feel
+saw baad."
+
+He smiled mournfully.
+
+"Poor Essy," he said.
+
+She gave him a queer look. "Yo' needn' pity _mae,_" she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went away considerably relieved in his mind, but still suffering
+that sullen uneasiness in his soul.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+It was the last week in June.
+
+Mary Cartaret sat in the door of the cottage by the beck. And in her
+lap she held Essy's baby. Essy had run in to the last cottage in the
+row to look after her great aunt, the Widow Gale, who had fallen out
+of bed in the night.
+
+The Widow Gale, in her solitude, had formed the habit of falling out
+of bed. But this time she had hurt her head, and Essy had gone for the
+doctor and had met Miss Mary in the village and Mary had come with her
+to help.
+
+For by good luck--better luck than the Widow Gale deserved--it was a
+Wednesday. Rowcliffe had sent word that he would come at three.
+
+It was three now.
+
+And as he passed along the narrow path he saw Mary Cartaret in the
+doorway with the baby in her lap.
+
+She smiled at him as he went by.
+
+"I'm making myself useful," she said.
+
+"Oh, more than that!"
+
+His impression was that Mary had made herself beautiful. He looked
+back over his shoulder and laughed as he hurried on.
+
+Up till now it hadn't occurred to him that Mary could be beautiful.
+But it didn't puzzle him. He knew how she had achieved that momentary
+effect.
+
+He knew and he was to remember. For the effect repeated itself.
+
+As he came back Mary was standing in the path, holding the baby in her
+arms. She was looking, she said, for Essy. Would Essy be coming soon?
+
+Rowcliffe did not answer all at once. He stood contemplating the
+picture. It wasn't all Mary. The baby did his part. He had been
+"short-coated" that month, and his thighs, crushed and delicately
+creased, showed rose red against the white rose of Mary's arm. She
+leaned her head, brooding tenderly, to his, and his head (he was a
+dark baby) was dusk to her flame.
+
+Rowcliffe smiled. "Why?" he said. "Do you want to get rid of him?"
+
+As if unconsciously she pressed the child closer to her. As if
+unconsciously she held his head against her breast. And when his
+fingers worked there, in their way, she covered them with her hand.
+
+"No," she said. "He's a nice baby. (Aren't you a nice baby? There!)
+Essy's unhappy because he's going to have blue eyes and dark hair. But
+I think they're the prettiest, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Rowcliffe.
+
+He was grave and curt.
+
+And Mary remembered that that was what Gwenda had--blue eyes and dark
+hair.
+
+It was what Gwenda's children might have had, too. She felt that she
+had made him think of Gwenda.
+
+Then Essy came and took the baby from her.
+
+"'E's too 'eavy fer yo', Miss," she said. She laughed as she took him;
+she gazed at him with pride and affection unabashed. His one fault,
+for Essy, was that, though he had got Greatorex's eyes, he had not got
+Greatorex's hair.
+
+Mary and Rowcliffe went back together.
+
+"You're coming in to tea, aren't you?" she said.
+
+"Rather." He had got into the habit again of looking in at the
+Vicarage for tea every Wednesday. They were having tea in the orchard
+now. And in June the Vicarage orchard was a pleasanter place than the
+surgery.
+
+It was in fact a very pleasant place. Pleasanter than the gray and
+amber drawing-room.
+
+When Rowcliffe came to think of it, he owed the Cartarets many
+pleasant things. So he had formed another habit of asking them back
+to tea in his orchard. He had had no idea what a pleasant place his
+orchard could be too.
+
+Now, though Rowcliffe nearly always had tea alone with Mary at the
+Vicarage, Mary never came to tea at Rowcliffe's house alone. She
+always brought Alice with her. And Rowcliffe found that a nuisance.
+For one thing, Alice had the air of being dragged there against
+her will, so completely had she recovered from him. For another, he
+couldn't talk to Mary quite so well. He didn't know that he wanted to
+talk to Mary. He didn't know that he particularly wanted to be alone
+with her, but somehow Alice's being there made him want it.
+
+He was to be alone with Mary to-day, in the orchard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The window of the Vicar's study raked the orchard. But that didn't
+matter, for the Vicar was not at home this Wednesday.
+
+The orchard waited for them. Two wicker-work armchairs and the little
+round tea-table were set out under the trees. Mary's knitting lay in
+one of the chairs. She had the habit of knitting while she talked, or
+while Rowcliffe talked and she listened. The act of knitting disposed
+her to long silences. It also occupied her, so that Rowcliffe, when he
+liked, could be silent too.
+
+But generally he talked and Mary listened.
+
+They hadn't many subjects. But Mary made the most of what they had.
+And she always knew the precise moment when Rowcliffe had ceased to
+be interested in any one of them. She knew, as if by instinct, all his
+moments.
+
+They were talking now, at tea-time, about the Widow Gale. Mary wanted
+to know how the poor thing was getting on. The Widow Gale had been
+rather badly shaken and she had bruised her poor old head and one
+hip. But she wouldn't fall out of bed again to-night. Rowcliffe had
+barricaded the bed with a chest of drawers. Afterward there must be a
+rail or something.
+
+Mary was interested in the Widow Gale as long as Rowcliffe liked to
+talk about her. But the Widow Gale didn't carry them very far.
+
+What would have carried them far was Rowcliffe himself. But Rowcliffe
+never wanted to talk about himself to Mary. When Mary tried to lead
+gently up to him, Rowcliffe shied. He wouldn't talk about himself any
+more than he would talk about Gwenda.
+
+But Mary didn't want to talk about Gwenda either now. So that her face
+showed the faintest flicker of dismay when Rowcliffe suddenly began to
+talk about her.
+
+"Have you any idea," he said, "when your sister's coming back?"
+
+"She won't be long," said Mary. "She's only gone to Upthorne village."
+
+"I meant your other sister."
+
+"Oh, Gwenda----"
+
+Mary brooded. And the impression her brooding made on Rowcliffe was
+that Mary knew something about Gwenda she did not want to tell.
+
+"I don't think," said Mary gravely, "that Gwenda ever will come back
+again. At least not if she can help it. I thought you knew that."
+
+"I suppose I must have known."
+
+He left it there.
+
+Mary took up her knitting. She was making a little vest for Essy's
+baby. Rowcliffe watched it growing under her hands.
+
+"As I can't knit, do you mind my smoking?"
+
+She didn't.
+
+"If more women knitted," he said, "it would be a good thing. They
+wouldn't be bothered so much with nerves."
+
+"I don't do it for nerves. I haven't any," said Mary.
+
+He laughed. "No, I don't think you have."
+
+She fell into one of her gentle silences. A silence not of her own
+brooding, he judged. It had no dreams behind it and no imagination
+that carried her away. A silence, rather, that brought her nearer to
+him, that waited on his mood.
+
+His eyes watched under half-closed lids the movements of her hands and
+the pretty droop of her head. And he said to himself, "How sweet she
+is. And how innocent. And good."
+
+Their chairs were set near together in the small plot of grass. The
+little trees of the orchard shut them in. He began to notice things
+about her that he had not noticed before, the shape and color of her
+finger nails, the modeling of her supple wrists, the way her ears were
+curved and laid close to her rather broad head. He saw that her
+skin was milk-white at the throat, and honey-white at her ears, and
+green-white, the white of an elder flower, at the roots of her red
+hair.
+
+And as she unwound her ball of wool it rolled out of her lap and fell
+between her feet.
+
+She stooped suddenly, bringing under Rowcliffe's eyes the nape of her
+neck, shining with golden down, and her shoulders, sun-warmed and rosy
+under the thin muslin of her blouse.
+
+They dived at the same moment, and as their heads came up again their
+faces would have touched but that Rowcliffe suddenly drew back his
+own.
+
+"I say, I _do_ beg your pardon!"
+
+It was odd, but in the moment of his recoil from that imminent contact
+Rowcliffe remembered the little red-haired nurse. Not that there was
+much resemblance; for, though the little nurse was sweet, she was
+not altogether innocent, neither was she what good people like Mary
+Cartaret would call good. And Mary, leaning back in her chair with
+the recovered ball in her lap, was smiling at his confusion with an
+innocence and goodness of which he could have no doubt.
+
+When he tried to account to himself for the remembrance he supposed it
+must have been the red hair that did it.
+
+And up to the end and to the end of the end Rowcliffe never knew
+that, though he had been made subject to a sequence of relentless
+inhibitions and of suggestions overpowering in their nature and
+persistently sustained, it was ultimately by aid of that one
+incongruous and irresistible association that Mary Cartaret had cast
+her spell.
+
+He had never really come under it until that moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+July passed. It was the end of August. To the west Karva and Morfe
+High Moor were purple. To the east the bare hillsides with their
+limestone ramparts smouldered in mist and sun, or shimmered, burning
+like any hillside of the south. The light even soaked into the gray
+walls of Garth in its pastures. The little plum-trees in the Vicarage
+orchard might have been olive trees twinkling in the sun.
+
+Mary was in the Vicar's bedroom, looking now at the door, and now
+at her own image in the wardrobe glass. It was seven o'clock in the
+evening and she had chosen a perilous moment for the glass. She wore
+a childlike frock of rough green silk; it had no collar but was cut
+square at the neck showing her white throat. The square was bordered
+with an embroidered design of peacock's eyes. The parted waves of her
+red hair were burnished with hard brushing; its coils lay close, and
+smooth as a thick round cap. It needed neither comb nor any ornament.
+
+Mary had dressed, for Rowcliffe was coming to dinner. Such a thing had
+never been heard of at the Vicarage; but it had come to pass. And as
+Mary thought of how she had accomplished it, she wondered what Alice
+could possibly have meant when she said to her "There are moments when
+I hate you," as she hooked her up the back.
+
+For it never could have happened if she had not persuaded the Vicar
+(and herself as well) that she was asking Rowcliffe on Alice's
+account.
+
+The Vicar had come gradually to see that if Alice must be married she
+had better marry Rowcliffe and have done with it. He had got used to
+Rowcliffe and he rather liked him; so he had only held out against
+the idea for a fortnight or so. He had even found a certain austere
+satisfaction in the thought that he, the doctor, who had tried to
+terrify him about Ally's insanity, having thrown that bomb into
+the peaceful Vicarage, should be blown up, as it were, with his own
+explosion.
+
+The Vicar never doubted that it was Ally that Rowcliffe wanted. For
+the idea of his wanting Gwenda was so unpleasant to him that he had
+dismissed it as preposterous; as for Mary, he had made up his mind
+that Mary would never dream of marrying and leaving him, and that, if
+she did, he would put his foot down.
+
+There had been changes in the Vicarage in the last two months. The
+shabby gray and amber drawing-room was not all shabbiness and not all
+gray and amber now. There were new cretonne covers on the chairs and
+sofa, and pure white muslin curtains at the windows, and the lamp had
+a new frilled petticoat. Every afternoon Mrs. Gale was arrayed in a
+tight black gown and irreproachable cap and apron.
+
+All day long Mary and Mrs. Gale had worked like galley slaves over
+the preparations for dinner, and between them they had achieved
+perfection. What was more they had produced an effect of achieving it
+every day, clear soup, mayonnaise salad and cheese straws and all.
+
+And the black coffee made by Mary and served in the orchard afterward
+was perfection too.
+
+And the impression made on Rowcliffe by the Vicarage was that of
+a house and a household rehabilitated after a long period of
+devastation, by the untiring, selfless labor of a woman who was good
+and sweet.
+
+After they had drunk Mary's coffee the Vicar strolled away to his
+study so as to leave Rowcliffe alone with Mary, and Alice strolled
+away heaven knew where so as to leave Mary alone with Rowcliffe. And
+the Vicar said to himself, "Mary is really doing it very well. Ally
+ought to be grateful to her."
+
+But Ally wasn't a bit grateful. She said to herself, "I've half a
+mind to tell him; only Gwenda would hate me." And she called over her
+shoulder as she strolled away, "You'd better not stay out too long,
+you two. It's going to rain."
+
+Morfe High Moor hangs over Garth and a hot and swollen cloud was
+hanging over Morfe High Moor. Above the gray ramparts the very east
+was sultry. In the orchard under the low plum-trees it was as airless
+as in a tent.
+
+Rowcliffe didn't want to stay out too long in the orchard. He knew
+that the window of the Vicar's study raked it. So he asked Mary if she
+would come with him for a stroll. (His only criticism of Mary was that
+she didn't walk enough.)
+
+Mary thought, "My nice frock will be ruined if the rain comes." But
+she went.
+
+"Shall it be the moor or the fields?" he said.
+
+Mary thought again, and said, "The fields."
+
+He was glad she hadn't said "The moor."
+
+They strolled past the village and turned into the pasture that lay
+between the high road and the beck. The narrow paths led up a slope
+from field to field through the gaps in the stone walls. The fields
+turned with the turning of the dale and with that turning of the road
+that Rowcliffe knew, under Karva. Instinctively, with a hand on her
+arm he steered her, away from the high road and its turning, toward
+the beck, so that they had their backs to the thunder storm as it came
+up over Karva and the High Moor.
+
+It was when they were down in the bottom that it burst.
+
+There was shelter on the further side of the last field. They ran to
+it, climbed, and crouched together under the stone wall.
+
+Rowcliffe took off the light overcoat he wore and tried to put it
+on her. But Mary wouldn't let him. She looked at his clothes, at the
+round dinner jacket with its silk collar and at the beautiful evening
+trousers with their braided seams. He insisted. She refused. He
+insisted still, and compromised by laying the overcoat round both of
+them.
+
+And they crouched together under the wall, sitting closer so that the
+coat might cover them.
+
+It thundered and lightened. The rain pelted them from the high
+batteries of Karva. And Rowcliffe drew Mary closer. She laughed like a
+happy child.
+
+Rowcliffe sighed.
+
+It was after he had sighed that he kissed her under the cover of the
+coat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sat there for half an hour; three-quarters; till the storm ceased
+with the rising of the moon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I'm afraid the pretty frock's spoiled," he said.
+
+"That doesn't matter. Your poor suit's ruined."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Whatever's been ruined," he said, "it was worth it."
+
+Hand in hand they went back together through the drenched fields.
+
+At the first gap he stopped.
+
+"It's settled?" he said. "You won't go back on it? You _do_ care for
+me? And you _will_ marry me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"Yes; soon."
+
+At the last gap he stopped again.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I suppose you knew about Gwenda?"
+
+"I knew there was something. What was it?"
+
+He had said to himself, "I shall have to tell her. I shall have to say
+I cared for her."
+
+What he did say was, "There was nothing in it. It's all over. It was
+all over long ago."
+
+"I knew," she said, "it was all over."
+
+And the solemn white moon came up, the moon that Gwenda loved; it came
+up over Greffington Edge and looked at them.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+It was Sunday afternoon, the last Sunday of August, the first since
+that evening (it was a Thursday) when Steven Rowcliffe had dined at
+the Vicarage. Mary had announced her engagement the next day.
+
+The news had an extraordinary effect on Alice and the Vicar.
+
+Mary had come to her father in his study on Friday evening after
+Prayers. She informed him of the bare fact in the curtest manner,
+without preface or apology or explanation. A terrible scene had
+followed; at least the Vicar's part in it had been terrible. Nothing
+he had ever said to Gwenda could compare with what he then said to
+Mary. Alice's behavior he had been prepared for. He had expected
+anything from Gwenda; but from Mary he had not expected this. It was
+her treachery he resented, the treachery of a creature he had depended
+on and trusted. He absolutely forbade the engagement. He said it was
+unheard of. He spoke of her "conduct" as if it had been disgraceful or
+improper. He declared that "that fellow" Rowcliffe should never come
+inside his house again. He bullied and threatened and bullied again.
+And through it all Mary sat calm and quiet and submissive. The
+expression of the qualities he had relied on, her sweetness and
+goodness, never left her face. She replied to his violence, "Yes,
+Papa. Very well, Papa, I see." But, as Gwenda had warned him, bully as
+he would, Mary beat him in the end.
+
+She looked meekly down at the hearth-rug and said, "I know how you
+feel about it, Papa dear. I understand all you've got to say and I'm
+sorry. But it isn't any good. You know it isn't just as well as I do."
+
+It might have been Gwenda who spoke to him, only that Gwenda could
+never have looked meek.
+
+The Vicar had not recovered from the shock. He was convinced that
+he never would recover from it. But on that Sunday he had found a
+temporary oblivion, dozing in his study between two services.
+
+There had been no scene like that with Alice. But what had passed
+between the sisters had been even worse.
+
+Mary had gone straight from the study to Ally's room. Ally was
+undressing.
+
+Ally received the news in a cruel silence. She looked coldly, sternly
+almost, and steadily at Mary.
+
+"You needn't have told me that," she said at last. "I could see what
+you were doing the other night."
+
+"What _I_ was doing?"
+
+"Yes, you. I don't imagine Steven Rowcliffe did it"
+
+"Really Ally--what do you suppose I did?"
+
+"I don't know what it was. But I know you did something and I know
+that--whatever it was--_I_ wouldn't have done it."
+
+And Mary answered quietly. "If I were you, Ally, I wouldn't show my
+feelings quite so plainly."
+
+And Ally looked at her again.
+
+"It's not _my_ feelings--" she said.
+
+Mary reddened. "I don't know what you mean."
+
+"You'll know, some day," Ally said and turned her back on her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mary went out, closing the door softly, as if she spared her sick
+sister's unreasonably irritated nerves. She felt rather miserable as
+she undressed alone in her bedroom. She was wounded in her sweetness
+and her goodness, and she was also a little afraid of what Ally might
+take it into her head to say or do. She didn't try to think what
+Ally had meant. Her sweetness and goodness, with their instinct of
+self-preservation, told her that it might be better not.
+
+The August night was warm and tender, and, when Mary had got into bed
+and lay stretched out in contentment under the white sheet, she began
+to think of Rowcliffe to the exclusion of all other interests; and
+presently, between a dream and a dream, she fell asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Ally could not sleep.
+
+She lay till dawn thinking and thinking, and turning from side to
+side between her thoughts. They were not concerned with Gwenda or with
+Rowcliffe. After her little spurt of indignation she had ceased to
+think about Gwenda or Rowcliffe either. Mary's news had made her think
+about herself, and her thoughts were miserable. Ally was so far like
+her father the Vicar, that the idea of Mary's marrying was intolerable
+to her and for precisely the same reason, because she saw no prospect
+of marrying herself. Her father had begun by forbidding Mary's
+engagement but he would end by sanctioning it. He would never sanction
+_her_ marriage to Jim Greatorex.
+
+Even if she defied her father and married Jim Greatorex in spite of
+him there would be almost as much shame in it as if, like Essy, she
+had never married him at all.
+
+And she couldn't live without him.
+
+Ally had suffered profoundly from the shock that had struck her down
+under the arcades on the road to Upthorne. It had left her more than
+ever helpless, more than ever subject to infatuation, more than ever
+morally inert. Ally's social self had grown rigid in the traditions
+of her class, and she was still aware of the unsuitability of her
+intimacy with Jim Greatorex; but disaster had numbed her once poignant
+sense of it. She had yielded to his fascination partly through
+weakness, partly in defiance, partly in the sheer, healthy
+self-assertion of her suffering will and her frustrated senses. But
+she had not will enough to defy her father. She credited him with an
+infinite capacity to crush and wound. And for a day and a half the
+sight of Mary's happiness--a spectacle which Mary did not spare
+her---had made Ally restless. Under the incessant sting of it her
+longing for Greatorex became insupportable.
+
+On Sunday the Vicar was still too deeply afflicted by the same
+circumstance to notice Ally's movements, and Ally took advantage of
+his apathy to excuse herself from Sunday school that afternoon. And
+about three o'clock she was at Upthorne Farm. She and Greatorex had
+found a moment after morning service to arrange the hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now they were standing together in the doorway of the Farmhouse.
+
+In the house behind them, in the mistal and the orchard, in the long
+marshes of the uplands and on the brooding hills there was stillness
+and solitude.
+
+Maggie had gone up to her aunt at Bar Hill. The farm servants were
+scattered in their villages.
+
+Alice had just told Greatorex of Mary's engagement and the Vicar's
+opposition.
+
+"Eh, I was lookin' for it," he said. "But I maade sure it was your
+oother sister."
+
+"So did I, Jim. So it was. So it would have been, only--"
+
+She stopped herself. She wasn't going to give Mary away to Jim.
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"Wall, it's nowt t' yo, is it?"
+
+"No. It's nothing to me--now. How did you know I cared for him?"
+
+"I knew because I looved yo. Because I was always thinkin' of yo.
+Because I watched yo with him."
+
+"Oh Jim--would other people know?"
+
+"Naw. Nat they. They didn't look at yo the saame as I did."
+
+He became thoughtful.
+
+"Wall--this here sattles it," he said presently. "Yo caann't be laft
+all aloan in t' Vicarage. Yo'll _'ave_ t' marry mae."
+
+"No," she said. "It won't be like that. It won't, really. If my father
+won't let my sister marry Dr. Rowcliffe, you don't suppose he'll let
+me marry you? It makes it more impossible than ever. That's what I
+came to tell you."
+
+"It's naw use yo're tallin' mae. I won't hear it."
+
+He bent to her.
+
+"Ally--d'yo knaw we're aloan here?"
+
+"Yes, Jim."
+
+"We're saafe till Naddy cooms back for t' milkin'. We've three hours."
+
+She shook her head. "Only an hour and a half, Jim. I must be back for
+tea."
+
+"Yo'll 'ave tae here. Yo've had it before. I'll maake it for yo."
+
+"I daren't, Jim. They'll expect me. They'll wonder."
+
+"Ay, 'tis thot waay always. Yo're no sooner coom than yo've got to be
+back for this, thot and toother. I'm fair sick of it."
+
+"So am I."
+
+She sighed.
+
+"Wall then--yo must end it."
+
+"How can I end it?"
+
+"Yo knaw how."
+
+"Oh Jim--darling--haven't I told you?"
+
+"Yo've toald mae noothin' that makes a hap'orth o' difference to mae.
+Yo've coom to mae. Thot's all I keer for."
+
+He put his hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the house-place.
+
+"Let me shaw yo t' house--now you've coom."
+
+His voice pleaded and persuaded. In spite of its north-country accent
+Ally loved his voice. It sounded musical and mournful, like the voices
+of the mountain sheep coming from far across the moor and purified by
+distance.
+
+He took her through the kitchen and the little parlor at the end of
+the house.
+
+As he looked round it, trying to see it with her eyes, doubt came to
+him. But Ally, standing there, looked toward the kitchen.
+
+"Will Maggie be there?" she said.
+
+"Ay, Maaggie'll be there, ready when yo want her."
+
+"But," she said, "I don't want her."
+
+He followed her look.
+
+"I'll 'ave it all claned oop and paapered and paainted. Look yo--I
+could have a hole knocked through t' back wall o' t' kitchen and a
+winder put there--and roon oop a wooden partition and make a passage
+for yo t' goa to yore awn plaace, soa's Maaggie'll not bae in yore
+road."
+
+"You needn't. I like it best as it is."
+
+"Do yo? D'yo mind thot Soonda yo caame laasst year? Yo've aassked mae
+whan it was I started thinkin' of yo. It was than. Thot daay whan yo
+sot there in thot chair by t' fire, taalkin' t' mae and drinkin' yore
+tae so pretty."
+
+She drew closer to him.
+
+"Did you really love me then?"
+
+"Ay--I looved yo than."
+
+She pondered it.
+
+"Jim--what would you have done if I hadn't loved you?"
+
+He choked back something in his throat before he answered her. "What
+sud I have doon? I sud have goan on looving yo joost the saame.
+
+"We'll goa oopstairs now."
+
+He took her back and out through the kitchen and up the stone stairs
+that turned sharply in their narrow place in the wall. He opened the
+door at the head of the landing.
+
+"This would bae our room. 'Tis t' best."
+
+He took her into the room where John Greatorex had died. It was the
+marriage chamber, the birth-chamber, and the death-chamber of all the
+Greatorexes. The low ceiling still bulged above the big double bed
+John Greatorex had died in.
+
+The room was tidy and spotlessly clean. The walls had been
+whitewashed. Fresh dimity curtains hung at the window. The bed was
+made, a clean white counterpane was spread on it.
+
+The death room had been made ready for the living. The death-bed
+waited for the bride.
+
+Ally stood there, under the eyes of her lover, looking at those
+things. She shivered slightly.
+
+She said to herself, "It's the room his father died in."
+
+And there came on her a horror of the room and of all that had
+happened in it, a horror of death and of the dead.
+
+She turned away to the window and looked out. The long marshland
+stretched below, white under the August sun. Beyond it the green hills
+with their steep gray cliffs rose and receded, like a coast line, head
+after head.
+
+To Ally the scene was desolate beyond all bearing and the house was
+terrible.
+
+Her eyelids pricked. Her mouth trembled. She kept her back turned to
+Greatorex while she stifled a sob with her handkerchief pressed tight
+to her lips.
+
+He saw and came to her and put his arm round her.
+
+"What is it, Ally? What is it, loove?"
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"I don't know, Jim. But--I think--I'm afraid."
+
+"What are you afraid of?"
+
+She thought a moment. "I'm afraid of father."
+
+"Yo med bae ef yo staayed with him. Thot's why I want yo t' coom to
+mae."
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"'Tisn' thot yo're afraid of. 'Tis soomthin' alse thot yo wawn't tall
+mae."
+
+"Well--I think--I'm a little bit afraid of this house. It's--it's so
+horribly lonely."
+
+He couldn't deny it.
+
+"A'y; it's rackoned t' bae loanly. But I sall navver leaave yo.
+I'm goain' t' buy a new trap for yo, soa's yo can coom with mae and
+Daaisy. Would yo like thot, Ally?"
+
+"Yes, Jim, I'd love it. But----"
+
+"It'll not bae soa baad. Whan I'm out in t' mistal and in t' fields
+and thot, yo'll have Maaggie with yo."
+
+She whispered. "Jim--I can't bear Maggie. I'm afraid of her."
+
+"Afraid o' pore Maaggie?"
+
+He took it in. He wondered. He thought he understood.
+
+"Maaggie sall goa. I'll 'ave anoother. An' yo sall 'ave a yooung laass
+t' waait on yo. Ef it's Maaggie, shea sall nat stand in yore road."
+
+"It isn't Maggie--altogether."
+
+"Than--for Gawd's saake, loove, what is it?"
+
+She sobbed. "It's everything. It's something in this house--in this
+room."
+
+He looked at her gravely now.
+
+"Naw," he said slowly, "'tis noon o' thawse things. It's mae. It's mae
+yo're afraid of. Yo think I med bae too roough with yo."
+
+But at that she cried out with a little tender cry and pressed close
+to him.
+
+"No--no--no--it isn't you. It isn't. It couldn't be."
+
+He crushed her in his arms. His mouth clung to her face and passed
+over it and covered it with kisses.
+
+"Am I too roough? Tall mae--tall mae."
+
+"No," she whispered.
+
+He pushed back her hat from her forehead, kissing her hair. She took
+off her hat and flung it on the floor.
+
+His voice came fast and thick.
+
+"Kiss mae back ef yo loove mae."
+
+She kissed him. She stiffened and leaned back in the crook of his arm
+that held her.
+
+His senses swam. He grasped her as if he would have lifted her bodily
+from the floor. She was light in his arms as a child. He had turned
+her from the window.
+
+He looked fiercely round the room that shut them in. His eyes lowered;
+they fixed themselves on the bed with its white counterpane. They
+saw under the white counterpane the dead body of his father stretched
+there, and the stain on the grim beard tilted to the ceiling.
+
+He loosed her and pushed her from him.
+
+"We moost coom out o' this," he muttered.
+
+He pushed her from the room, gently, with a hand on her shoulder, and
+made her go before him down the stairs.
+
+He went back into the room to pick up her hat.
+
+He found her waiting for him, looking back, at the turn of the stair
+where John Greatorex's coffin had stuck in the corner of the wall.
+
+"Jim--I'm so frightened," she said.
+
+"Ay. Yo'll bae all right downstairs."
+
+They stood in the kitchen, each looking at the other, each panting,
+she in her terror and he in his agony.
+
+"Take me away," she said. "Out of the house. That room frightened me.
+There's something there."
+
+"Ay;" he assented. "There med bae soomthing. Sall we goa oop t'
+fealds?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Three Fields looked over the back of Upthorne Farm. Naked and
+gray, the great stone barn looked over the Three Fields. A narrow
+track led to it, through the gaps, slantwise, from the gate of the
+mistal.
+
+Above the fields the barren, ruined hillside ended and the moor began.
+It rolled away southward and westward, in dusk and purple and silver
+green, utterly untamed, uncaught by the network of the stone walls.
+
+The barn stood high and alone on the slope of the last field, a long,
+broad-built nave without its tower. A single thorn-tree crouched
+beside it.
+
+Alice Cartaret and Greatorex went slowly up the Three Fields. There
+was neither thought nor purpose in their going.
+
+The quivering air was like a sheet of glass let down between plain and
+hill.
+
+Slowly, with mournful cries, a flock of mountain sheep came down over
+the shoulder of the moor. Behind them a solitary figure topped the
+rise as Alice and Greatorex came up the field-track.
+
+Alice stopped in the track and turned.
+
+"Somebody's coming over the moor. He'll see us."
+
+Greatorex stood scanning the hill.
+
+"'Tis Nad, wi' t' dawg, drivin' t' sheep."
+
+"Oh, Jim, he'll see us."
+
+"Nat he!"
+
+But he drew her behind the shelter of the barn.
+
+"He'll come down the fields. He'll be sure to see us."
+
+"Ef he doos, caann't I walk in my awn fealds wi' my awn sweetheart?"
+
+"I don't want to be seen," she moaned.
+
+"Wall--?" he pushed open the door of the barn. "Wae'll creep in here
+than, tall he's paassed."
+
+A gray light slid through the half-shut door and through the long,
+narrow slits in the walls. From the open floor of the loft there came
+the sweet, heavy scent of hay.
+
+"He'll see the door open. He'll come in. He'll find us here."
+
+"He wawn't."
+
+But Jim shut the door.
+
+"We're saafe enoof. But 'tis naw plaace for yo. Yo'll mook yore lil
+feet. Staay there--where yo are--tell I tall yo."
+
+He groped his way in the half darkness up the hay loft stair. She
+heard his foot going heavily on the floor over her head.
+
+He drew back the bolt and pushed open the door in the high wall. The
+sunlight flooded the loft; it streamed down the stair. The dust danced
+in it.
+
+Jim stood on the stair. He smiled down at Alice where she waited
+below.
+
+"Coom oop into t' haay loft, Ally."
+
+He stooped. He held out his hand and she climbed to him up the stair.
+
+They sat there on the floor of the loft, silent, in the attitude of
+children who crouch hiding in their play. He had strewn for her a
+carpet of the soft, sweet hay and piled it into cushions.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said at last. "I'm so frightened. I'm so horribly
+frightened."
+
+She stretched out her arm and slid her hand into his.
+
+Jim's hand pressed hers and let it go. He leaned forward, his elbows
+propped on his knees, his hands clutching his forehead. And in his
+thick, mournful voice he spoke.
+
+"Yo wouldn't bae freetened ef yo married mae. There'd bae an and of
+these scares, an' wae sudn't 'ave t' roon these awful risks."
+
+"I can't marry you, darling. I can't."
+
+"Yo caann't, because yo're freetened o' mae. I coom back to thot. Yo
+think I'm joost a roough man thot caann't understand yo. But I do. I
+couldn't bae roough with yo, Ally, anny more than Nad, oop yon, could
+bae roough wi' t' lil laambs."
+
+He was lying flat on his back now, with his arms stretched out above
+his head. He stared up at the rafters as he went on.
+
+"Yo wouldn't bae freetened o' mae ef yo looved mae as I loove yo."
+
+That brought her to his side with her soft cry.
+
+For a moment he lay rigid and still.
+
+Then he turned and put his arm round her. The light streamed on them
+where they lay. Through the open doorway of the loft they heard the
+cry of the sheep coming down into the pasture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greatorex got up and slid the door softly to.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Morfe Fair was over and the farmers were going home.
+
+A broken, straggling traffic was on the roads from dale to dale. There
+were men who went gaily in spring carts and in wagons. There were men
+on horseback and on foot who drove their sheep and their cattle before
+them.
+
+A train of three were going slowly up Garthdale, with much lingering
+to gather together and rally the weary and bewildered flocks.
+
+Into this train there burst, rocking at full gallop, a trap drawn
+by Greatorex's terrified and indignant mare. Daisy was not driven
+by Greatorex, for the reins were slack in his dropped hands, she was
+urged, whipped up, and maddened to her relentless speed. Her open
+nostrils drank the wind of her going.
+
+Greatorex's face flamed and his eyes were brilliant. They declared a
+furious ecstasy. Ever and again he rose and struggled to stand upright
+and recover his grip of the reins. Ever and again he was pitched
+backward on to the seat where he swayed, perilously, with the swaying
+of the trap.
+
+Behind him, in the bottom of the trap, two young calves, netted in,
+pushed up their melancholy eyes and innocent noses through the mesh.
+Hurled against each other, flung rhythmically from side to side, they
+shared the blind trouble of the man and the torment of the mare.
+
+For the first two miles out of Morfe the trap charged, scattering men
+and beasts before it and taking the curves of the road at a tangent.
+With the third mile the pace slackened. The mare had slaked her thirst
+for the wind of her going and Greatorex's fury was appeased. At the
+risk of pitching forward over the step he succeeded in gathering up
+the reins as they neared the dangerous descent to Garthdale.
+
+He had now dropped from the violence of his ecstasy into a dream-like
+state in which he was borne swaying on a vague, interminable road that
+overhung, giddily, the bottomless pit and was flanked by hills that
+loomed and reeled, that oppressed him with their horrible immensity.
+
+He passed the bridge, the church, the Vicarage, the schoolhouse with
+its beckoning tree, and by the mercy of heaven he was unaware of them.
+
+At the turn of the road, On Upthorne hill, the mare, utterly sobered
+by the gradient, bowed her head and went with slow, wise feet, taking
+care of the trap and of her master.
+
+As for Greatorex, he had ceased to struggle. And at the door of his
+house his servant Maggie received him in her arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stayed in bed the whole of the next day, bearing his sickness,
+while Maggie waited on him. And in the evening when he lay under her
+hand, weak, but clear-headed, she delivered herself of what was in her
+mind.
+
+"Wall--yo may thank Gawd yo're laayin' saafe in yore bed, Jim
+Greatorex. It'd sarve yo right ef Daaisy 'd lat yo coom hoam oopside
+down wi yore 'ead draggin' in t' road. Soom daay yo'll bae laayin'
+there with yore nack brawken.
+
+"Ay, yo may well scootle oonder t' sheets, though there's nawbody
+but mae t' look at yo. Yo'd navver tooch anoother drap o' thot felthy
+stoof, Jimmy, ef yo could sea yoreself what a sight yo bae. Naw
+woonder Assy Gaale wouldn't 'ave yo, for all yo've laft her wi' t' lil
+baaby."
+
+"Who toald yo she wouldn't 'ave mae?"
+
+"Naybody toald mae. But I knaw. I knaw. I wouldn't 'ave yo myself ef
+yo aassked mae. I want naw droonkards to marry mae."
+
+Greatorex became pensive.
+
+"Yo'd bae freetened o' mae, Maaggie?" he asked.
+
+And Maggie, seeing her advantage, drove it home.
+
+"There's more than mae and Assy thot's freetened t' marry yo," she
+said.
+
+He darkened. "Yo 'oald yore tongue. Yo dawn't knaw what yo're saayin',
+my laass."
+
+"Dawn't I? There's more than mae thot knaws, Mr. Greatorex. Assy isn't
+t' awnly woon yo've maade talk o' t' plaace."
+
+"What do yo mane? Speaak oop. What d'yo mane----Yo knaw?"
+
+"Yo'd best aassk Naddy. He med tall ye 'oo was with yo laasst Soonda
+oop t' feald in t' girt byre."
+
+"Naddy couldn't sae 'oo 't was. Med a been Assy. Med a been yo."
+
+"'T wasn' mae, Mr. Greatorex, an' 't was n' Assy. Look yo 'ere. I tall
+yo Assy's freetened o' yo."
+
+"'Oo says she's freetened?"
+
+"I saays it. She's thot freetened thot she'd wash yore sweet'eart's
+dirty cleathes sooner 'n marry yo."
+
+"She doesn't wash them?"
+
+"Shea does. T' kape yore baaby, Jim Greatorex."
+
+With that she left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the next three months Greatorex was more than ever uneasy in his
+soul. The Sunday after Maggie's outburst he had sat all morning and
+afternoon in his parlor with his father's Bible. He had not even tried
+to see Alice Cartaret.
+
+For three months, off and on, in the intervals of seeing Alice, he
+longed, with an intense and painful longing, for his God. He longed
+for him just because he felt that he was utterly separated from him by
+his sin. He wanted the thing he couldn't have and wasn't fit to have.
+He wanted it, just as he wanted Alice Cartaret.
+
+And by his sin he did not mean his getting drunk. Greatorex did not
+think of God as likely to take his getting drunk very seriously,
+any more than he had seemed to take Maggie and Essy seriously. For
+Greatorex measured God's reprobation by his own repentance.
+
+His real offense against God was his offense against Alice Cartaret.
+He had got drunk in order to forget it.
+
+But that resource would henceforth be denied him. He was not going
+to get drunk any more, because he knew that if he did Alice Cartaret
+wouldn't marry him.
+
+Meanwhile he nourished his soul on its own longing, on the Psalms of
+David and on the Book of Job.
+
+Greatorex would have made a happy saint. But he was a most lugubrious
+sinner.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+The train from Durlingham rolled slowly into Reyburn station.
+
+Gwenda Cartaret leaned from the window of a third class carriage and
+looked up and down the platform. She got out, handing her suit-case
+to a friendly porter. Nobody had come to meet her. They were much too
+busy up at the Vicarage.
+
+From the next compartment there alighted a group of six persons, a
+lady in widow's weeds, an elderly lady and gentleman who addressed her
+affectionately as "Fanny, dear," and (obviously belonging to the pair)
+a very young man and a still younger woman.
+
+There was also a much older man, closely attached to them, but not
+quite so obviously related.
+
+These six people also looked up and down the platform, expecting to
+be met. They were interested in Gwenda Cartaret. They gazed at her as
+they had already glanced, surreptitiously and kindly, on the platform
+at Durlingham. Now they seemed to be saying to themselves that they
+were sure it must be she.
+
+Gwenda walked quickly away from them and disappeared through the
+booking-office into the station yard.
+
+And then Rowcliffe, who had apparently been hiding in the general
+waiting-room, came out on to the platform.
+
+The six fell upon him with cries of joy and affection.
+
+They were his mother, his paternal uncle and aunt, his two youngest
+cousins, and Dr. Harker, his best friend and colleague who had taken
+his place in January when he had been ill.
+
+They had all come down from Leeds for Rowcliffe's wedding.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe's trap and Peacock's from Garthdale stood side by side in
+the station-yard.
+
+Gwenda in Peacock's trap had left the town before she heard behind her
+the clanking hoofs of Rowcliffe's little brown horse.
+
+She thought, "He will pass in another minute. I shall see him."
+
+But she did not see him. All the way up Rathdale to Morfe the sound of
+the wheels and of the clanking hoofs pursued her, and Rowcliffe still
+hung back. He did not want to pass her.
+
+"Well," said Peacock, "thot beats mae. I sud navver a thought thot t'
+owd maare could a got away from t' doctor's horse. Nat ef e'd a mind
+t' paass 'er."
+
+"No," said Gwenda. She was thinking, "It's Mary. It's Mary. How could
+she, when she _knew_, when she was on her honor not to think of him?"
+
+And she remembered a conversation she had had with her stepmother two
+months ago, when the news came. (Robina had seized the situation at a
+glance and she had probed it to its core.)
+
+"You wanted him to marry Ally, did you? It wasn't much good you're
+going away if you left him with Mary."
+
+"But," she had said, "Mary knew."
+
+And Robina had answered, marvelously. "You should never have let her.
+It was her knowing that did it. You were three women to one man, and
+Mary was the one without a scruple. Do you suppose she'd think of Ally
+or of you, either?"
+
+And she had tried to be loyal to Mary and to Rowcliffe. She had said,
+"If we _were_ three, we all had our innings, and he made his choice."
+
+And Robina, "It was Mary did the choosing."
+
+She had added that Gwenda was a little fool, and that she ought to
+have known that though Mary was as meek as Moses she was that sort.
+
+She went on, thinking, to the steady clanking of the hoofs.
+
+"I suppose," she said to herself, "she couldn't help it."
+
+The lights of Morfe shone through the November darkness. The little
+slow mare crawled up the winding hill to the top of the Green;
+Rowcliffe's horse was slower. But no sooner had Peacock's trap passed
+the doctor's house on its way out of the village square, than the
+clanking hoofs went fast.
+
+Rowcliffe was free to go his own pace now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Which of you two is going to hook me up?" said Mary.
+
+She was in the Vicar's room, putting on her wedding-gown before the
+wardrobe glass. Her two sisters were dressing her.
+
+"I will," said Gwenda.
+
+"You'd better let me," said Alice. "I know where the eyes are."
+
+Gwenda lifted up the wedding-veil and held it ready. And while Alice
+pulled and fumbled Mary gazed at her own reflection and at Alice's.
+
+"You should have done as Mummy said and had your frock made in London,
+like Gwenda. They'd have given you a decent cut. You look as if you
+couldn't breathe."
+
+"My frock's all right," said Alice.
+
+Her fingers trembled as she strained at the hooks and eyes.
+
+And in the end it was Gwenda who hooked Mary up while Alice held the
+veil. She held it in front of her. The long streaming net shivered
+with the trembling of her hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wedding was at two o'clock. The church was crowded, so were the
+churchyard and the road beside the Vicarage and the bridge over the
+beck. Morfe and Greffington had emptied themselves into Garthdale.
+(Greffington had lent its organist.)
+
+It was only when it was all over that somebody noticed that Jim
+Greatorex was not there with the village choir. "Celebrating a bit too
+early," somebody said.
+
+And it was only when it was all over that Rowcliffe found Gwenda.
+
+He found her in the long, flat pause, the half-hour of profoundest
+realisation that comes when the bride disappears to put off her
+wedding-gown for the gown she will go away in. She had come out to the
+wedding-party gathered at the door, to tell them that the bride would
+soon be ready. Rowcliffe and Harker were standing apart, at the end of
+the path, by the door that led from the garden to the orchard.
+
+He came toward her. Harker drew back into the orchard. They followed
+him and found themselves alone.
+
+For ten minutes they paced the narrow flagged path under the orchard
+wall. And they talked, quickly, like two who have but a short time.
+
+"Well--so you've come back at last?"
+
+"At last? I haven't been gone six months."
+
+"You see, time feels longer to us down here."
+
+"That's odd. It goes faster."
+
+"Anyhow, you're not tired of London?"
+
+She stared at him for a second and then looked away.
+
+"Oh no, I'm not tired of it yet."
+
+They turned.
+
+"Shall you stop long here?"
+
+"I'm going back to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow? You're so glad to get back then?"
+
+"So glad to get back. I only came down for Mary's wedding."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"You won't come for anything but a wedding?"
+
+"A funeral might fetch me."
+
+"Well, Gwenda, I can't say you look as if London agreed with you
+particularly."
+
+"I can't say you look as if Garthdale agreed very well with you."
+
+"I'm only tired--tired to death."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"I want a holiday. And I'm going to get one--for a month. _You_ look
+as if you'd been burning the candle at both ends, if you'll forgive my
+saying so."
+
+"Oh--for all the candles I burn! It isn't such awfully hard work, you
+know."
+
+"What isn't?"
+
+"What I'm doing."
+
+He stopped straight in the narrow path and looked at her.
+
+"I say, what _are_ you doing?"
+
+She told him.
+
+His face expressed surprise and resentment and a curious wonder and
+bewilderment.
+
+"But I thought--I thought----They told me you were having no end of a
+time."
+
+"Tunbridge Wells isn't very amusing. No more is Lady Frances."
+
+Again he stopped dead and stared at her.
+
+"But they told me--I mean I thought you were in London with Mrs.
+Cartaret, all the time."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Did Papa tell you that?"
+
+"No. I don't know who told me. I--I got the impression." He almost
+stammered. "I must have misunderstood."
+
+She meditated.
+
+"It sounds awfully like Papa. He simply can't believe, poor thing,
+that I'd stick to anything so respectable."
+
+"Hah!" He laughed out his contempt for the Vicar. He had forgotten
+that he too had wondered.
+
+"Chuck it, Gwenda," he said, "chuck it."
+
+"I can't," she said. "Not yet. It's too lucrative."
+
+"But if it makes you seedy?"
+
+"It doesn't. It won't. It isn't hard work. Only----" She broke off.
+"It's time for you to go."
+
+"Steve! Steve!"
+
+Rowcliffe's youngest cousin was calling from the study window.
+
+"Come along. Mary's ready."
+
+"All right," he shouted. "I'm coming."
+
+But he stood still there at the end of the orchard under the gray
+wall.
+
+"Good-bye, Steven."
+
+Gwenda put out her hand.
+
+He held her with his troubled eyes. He did not see her hand. He saw
+her eyes only that troubled his.
+
+"I say, is it very beastly?"
+
+"No. Not a bit. You must go, Steven, you must go."
+
+"If I'd only known," he persisted.
+
+They were going down the path now toward the house.
+
+"I wouldn't have let you----"
+
+"You couldn't have stopped me."
+
+(It was what she had always said to all of them.)
+
+She smiled. "You didn't stop me going, you know."
+
+"If you'd only told me--"
+
+She smiled again, a smile as of infinite wisdom. "Dear Steven, there
+was nothing to tell."
+
+They had come to the door in the wall. It led into the garden. He
+opened to let her pass through.
+
+The wedding-party was gathered together on the flagged path before the
+house. It greeted them with laughter and cries, cheerfully ironic.
+
+The bride in her traveling dress stood on the threshold. Outside the
+carriage waited at the open gate.
+
+Rowcliffe took Mary's hand in his and they ran down the path.
+
+"He can sprint fast enough now," said Rowcliffe's uncle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But his youngest cousin and Harker, his best friend, had gone faster.
+They were waiting together on the bridge, and the girl had a slipper
+in her hand.
+
+"Were you ever," she said, "at such an awful wedding?"
+
+Harker saw nothing wrong about the wedding but he admitted that his
+experience was small.
+
+The youngest cousin was not appeased by his confession. She went on.
+
+"Why on earth didn't Steven _try_ to marry Gwenda?"
+
+"Not much good trying," said the doctor, "if she wouldn't have him."
+
+"You believe that silly story? I don't. Did you see her face?"
+
+Harker admitted that he had seen her face.
+
+And then, as the carriage passed, Rowcliffe's youngest cousin did an
+odd thing. She tossed the slipper over the bridge into the beck.
+
+Harker had not time to comment on her action. They were coming for him
+from the house.
+
+Rowcliffe's youngest sister-in-law had fainted away on the top
+landing.
+
+Everybody remembered then that it was she who had been in love with
+him.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+Alice had sent for Gwenda.
+
+Three months had gone by since her sister's wedding, and all her fears
+were gathered together in the fear of her father and of what was about
+to happen to her.
+
+And before Gwenda could come to her, Rowcliffe and Mary had come to
+the Vicar in his study. They had been a long time with him, and then
+Rowcliffe had gone out. They had sent him to Upthorne. And the two had
+gone into the dining-room and they had her before them there.
+
+It was early in a dull evening in February. The lamps were lit and in
+their yellow light Ally's face showed a pale and quivering exaltation.
+It was the face of a hunted and terrified thing that has gathered
+courage in desperation to turn and stand. She defended herself with
+sullen defiance and denial.
+
+It had come to that. For Ned, the shepherd at Upthorne, had told what
+he had seen. He had told it to Maggie, who told it to Mrs. Gale. He
+had told it to the head-gamekeeper at Garthdale Manor, who had a tale
+of his own that he too had told. And Dr. Harker had a tale. Harker had
+taken his friend's practice when Rowcliffe was away on his honeymoon.
+He had seen Alice and Greatorex on the moors at night as he had driven
+home from Upthorne. And he had told Rowcliffe what he had seen. And
+Rowcliffe had told Mary and the Vicar.
+
+And at the cottage down by the beck Essy Gale and her mother had
+spoken together, but what they had spoken and what they had heard they
+had kept secret.
+
+"I haven't been with him," said Alice for the third time. "I don't
+know what you're talking about."
+
+"Ally--there's no use your saying that when you've been seen with
+him."
+
+It was Mary who spoke.
+
+"I ha--haven't."
+
+"Don't lie," said the Vicar.
+
+"I'm not. They're l-l-lying," said Ally, shaken into stammering now.
+
+"Who do you suppose would lie about it?" Mary said.
+
+"Essy would."
+
+"Well--I may tell you, Ally, that you're wrong. Essy's kept your
+secret. So has Mrs. Gale. You ought to go down on your knees and thank
+the poor girl--after what you did to her."
+
+"It _was_ Essy. I know. She's mad to marry him herself, so she goes
+lying about _me_."
+
+"Nobody's lying about her," said the Vicar, "but herself. And she's
+condemning herself with every word she says. You'd better have left
+Essy out of it, my girl."
+
+"I tell you that she's lying if she says she's seen me with him. She's
+never seen me."
+
+"It wasn't Essy who saw you," Mary said.
+
+"Somebody else is lying then. Who was it?"
+
+"If you _must_ know who saw you," the Vicar said, "it was Dr. Harker.
+You were seen a month ago hanging about Upthorne alone with that
+fellow."
+
+"Only once," Ally murmured.
+
+"You own to 'once'? You--you----" he stifled with his fury. "Once is
+enough with a low blackguard like Greatorex. And you were seen more
+than once. You've been seen with him after dark." He boomed. "There
+isn't a poor drunken slut in the village who's disgraced herself like
+you."
+
+Mary intervened. "Sh--sh--Papa. They'll hear you in the kitchen."
+
+"They'll hear _her_." (Ally was moaning.) "Stop that whimpering and
+whining."
+
+"She can't help it."
+
+"She can help it if she likes. Come, Ally, we're all here----Poor
+Mary's come up and Steven. There are things we've got to know and
+I insist on knowing them. You've brought the most awful trouble and
+shame on me and your sister and brother-in-law, and the least you can
+do is to answer truthfully. I can't stand any more of this distressing
+altercation. I'm not going to extort any painful confession. You've
+only got to answer a simple Yes or No. Were you anywhere with Jim
+Greatorex before Dr. Harker saw you in December? Think before you
+speak. Yes or No."
+
+She thought.
+
+"N-no."
+
+"Remember, Ally," said Mary, "he saw you in November."
+
+"He didn't. Where?"
+
+The Vicar answered her. "At your sister's wedding."
+
+She recovered. "Of course he did. Jim Greatorex wasn't there, anyhow."
+
+"He was _not_."
+
+The stress had no significance for Ally. Her brain was utterly
+bewildered.
+
+"Well. You say you were never anywhere with Greatorex before December.
+You were not with him in--when was it, Mary?"
+
+"August," said Mary. "The end of August."
+
+Ally simply stared at him in her white bewilderment. Dates had no
+meaning as yet for her cowed brain.
+
+He helped her.
+
+"In the Three Fields. On a Sunday afternoon. Did you or did you not go
+into the barn?"
+
+At that she cried out with a voice of anguish. "No--No--No!"
+
+But Mary had her knife ready and she drove it home.
+
+"Ally--Ned Langstaff _saw_ you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Rowcliffe came back from Upthorne he found Alice cowering in a
+corner of the couch and crying out to her tormentors.
+
+"You brutes--you brutes--if Gwenda was here she wouldn't let you bully
+me!"
+
+Mary turned to her husband.
+
+"Steven--will you speak to her? She won't tell us anything. We've been
+at it more than half an hour."
+
+Rowcliffe stared at her and the Vicar with strong displeasure.
+
+"I should think you had by the look of her. Why can't you leave the
+poor child alone?"
+
+At the sound of his voice, the first voice of compassion that had yet
+spoken to her, Alice cried to him.
+
+"Steven! Steven! They've been saying awful things to me. Tell them it
+isn't true. Tell them you don't believe it."
+
+"There--there----" His voice stuck in his throat.
+
+He put his hand on her shoulder, standing between her and her father.
+
+"Tell them----" She looked up at him with her piteous eyes.
+
+"She's worried to death," said Rowcliffe. "You might have left it for
+to-night at any rate."
+
+"We couldn't, Steven, when you've sent for Greatorex. We _must_ get at
+the truth before he comes."
+
+Rowcliffe shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Have you brought him?" said the Vicar.
+
+"No, I haven't. He's in Morfe. I've sent word for him to come on
+here."
+
+Alice looked sharply at him.
+
+"What have you sent for _him_ for? Do you suppose _he'd_ give me
+away?"
+
+She began to weep softly.
+
+"All this," said Rowcliffe, "is awfully bad for her."
+
+"You don't seem to consider what it is for us."
+
+Rowcliffe took no notice of the Vicar.
+
+"Look here, Mary--you'd better take her upstairs before he comes. Put
+her to bed. Try and get her to sleep."
+
+"Very well. Come, Ally." Mary was gentler now.
+
+Then Ally became wonderful.
+
+She stood up and faced them all.
+
+"I won't go," she said. "I'll stay till he comes if I sit up all
+night. How do I know what you're going to do to him? Do you suppose
+I'm going to leave him with you? If anybody touches him I'll _kill_
+them."
+
+"Ally, dear----"
+
+Mary put her hand gently on her sister's arm to lead her from the
+room.
+
+Ally shook off the hand and turned on her in hysteric fury.
+
+"Stop pawing me--you! How dare you touch me after what you've said.
+Steven--she says I took Essy's lover from her."
+
+"I didn't, Ally. She doesn't know what she's saying."
+
+"You _did_ say it. She did, Steven. She said I ought to thank Essy for
+not splitting on me when I took her lover from her. As if _she_ could
+talk when _she_ took Steven from Gwenda."
+
+"Oh--Steven!"
+
+Rowcliffe shook his head at Mary, frowning, as a sign to her not to
+mind what Alice said.
+
+"You treat me as if I was dirt, but I'd have died rather than have
+done what she did."
+
+"Come, Alice, come. You know you don't mean it," said Rowcliffe,
+utterly gentle.
+
+"I do mean it! She sneaked you from behind Gwenda's back and lied to
+you to make you think she didn't care for you----"
+
+"Be quiet, you shameful girl!"
+
+"Be quiet yourself, Papa. I'm not as shameful as Molly is. I'm not as
+shameful as you are yourself. You killed Mother."
+
+"Oh--my--God----" The words were almost inaudible in the Vicar's
+shuddering groan.
+
+He advanced on her to turn her from the room. Ally sank on her sofa as
+she saw him come.
+
+Rowcliffe stepped between them.
+
+"For God's sake, sir----"
+
+Ally was struggling in hysterics now, choking between her piteous and
+savage cries.
+
+Rowcliffe laid her on the sofa and put a cushion under her head. When
+he tried to loosen her gown at her throat she screamed.
+
+"It's all right, Ally, it's all right."
+
+"_Is_ it? _Is_ it?" The Vicar hissed at him.
+
+"It won't be unless you leave her to me. If you go on bullying her
+much longer I won't answer for the consequences. You surely don't
+want----"
+
+"It's all right, Ally. Lie quiet, there--like that. That's a good
+girl. Nobody's going to worry you any more."
+
+He was kneeling by the sofa, pressing his hand to her forehead. Ally
+still sobbed convulsively, but she lay quiet. She closed her eyes
+under Rowcliffe's soothing hand.
+
+"You might go and see if you can find some salvolatile, Mary," he
+said.
+
+Mary went.
+
+The Vicar, who had turned his back on this scene, went, also, into his
+study.
+
+Ally still kept her eyes shut.
+
+"Has Mary gone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Papa?"
+
+"Yes. Lie still."
+
+She lay still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was the sound of wheels on the road. It brought Mary and the
+Vicar back into the room. The wheels stopped. The gate clanged.
+
+Rowcliffe rose.
+
+"That's Greatorex. I'll go to him."
+
+Ally lay very still now, still as a corpse, with closed eyes.
+
+The house door opened.
+
+Rowcliffe drew back into the room.
+
+"It isn't Greatorex," he said. "It's Gwenda."
+
+"Who sent for her?" said the Vicar.
+
+"I did," said Ally.
+
+She had opened her eyes.
+
+"Thank God for that, anyhow," said Rowcliffe.
+
+Mary and her father looked at each other. Neither of them seemed
+to want to go out to Gwenda. It struck Rowcliffe that the Vicar was
+afraid.
+
+They waited while Gwenda paid her driver and dismissed him. They could
+hear her speaking out there in the passage.
+
+The house door shut and she came to them. She paused in the doorway,
+looking at the three who stood facing her, embarrassed and expectant.
+She seemed to be thinking that it was odd that they should stand
+there. The door, thrown back, hid Alice, who lay behind it on her
+sofa.
+
+"Come in, Gwenda," said the Vicar with exaggerated suavity.
+
+She came in and closed the door. Then she saw Alice.
+
+She took the hand that Rowcliffe held out to her without looking at
+him. She was looking at Alice.
+
+Alice gave a low cry and struggled to her feet.
+
+"I thought you were never coming," she said.
+
+Gwenda held her in her arms. She faced them.
+
+"What have you been doing to her--all of you?"
+
+Rowcliffe answered. Though he was the innocent one of the three he
+looked the guiltiest. He looked utterly ashamed.
+
+"We've had rather a scene, and it's been a bit too much for her," he
+said.
+
+"So I see," said Gwenda. She had not greeted Mary or her father.
+
+"If you could persuade her to go upstairs to bed----"
+
+"I've told you I won't go till he comes," said Ally.
+
+She sat down on the sofa as a sign that she was going to wait.
+
+"Till who comes?" Gwenda asked.
+
+She stared at the three with a fierce amazement. And they were
+abashed.
+
+"She doesn't know, Steve," said Mary.
+
+"I certainly don't," said Gwenda.
+
+She sat down beside Ally.
+
+"Has anybody been bullying you, Ally?"
+
+"They've all been bullying me except Steven. Steven's been an angel.
+He doesn't believe what they say. Papa says I'm a shameful girl, and
+Mary says I took Jim Greatorex from Essy. And they think----"
+
+"Never mind what they think, darling."
+
+"I must protest----"
+
+The Vicar would have burst out again but that his son-in-law
+restrained him.
+
+"Better leave her to Gwenda," he said.
+
+He opened the door of the study. "Really, sir, I think you'd better.
+And you, too, Mary."
+
+And with her husband's compelling hand on her shoulder Mary went into
+the study.
+
+The Vicar followed them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the door closed on them Alice looked furtively around.
+
+"What is it, Ally?" Gwenda said.
+
+"Don't you know?" she whispered.
+
+"No. You haven't told me anything."
+
+"You don't know why I sent for you? Can't you think?"
+
+Gwenda was silent.
+
+"Gwenda--I'm in the most awful trouble----" She looked around again.
+Then she spoke rapidly and low with a fearful hoarse intensity.
+
+"I won't tell them, but I'll tell you. They've been trying to get it
+out of me by bullying, but I wasn't going to let them. Gwenda--they
+wanted to make me tell straight out, there--before Steven. And I
+wouldn't--I wouldn't. They haven't got a word out of me. But it's
+true, what they say."
+
+She paused.
+
+"About me."
+
+"My lamb, I don't know what they say about you."
+
+"They say that I'm going to----"
+
+Crouching where she sat, bent forward, staring with her stare, she
+whispered.
+
+"Oh--Ally--darling----"
+
+"I'm not ashamed, not the least little bit ashamed. And I don't care
+what they think of me. But I'm not going to tell them. I've told _you_
+because I know you won't hate me, you won't think me awful. But I
+won't tell Mary, and I won't tell Papa. Or Steven. If I do they'll
+make me marry him."
+
+"Was it--was it----"
+
+Ally's instinct heard the name that her sister spared her.
+
+"Yes--Yes--Yes. It is."
+
+She added, "I don't care."
+
+"Ally--what made you do it?"
+
+"I don't--know."
+
+"Was it because of Steven?"
+
+Ally raised her head.
+
+"No. It was _not_. Steven isn't fit to black his boots. I know
+that----"
+
+"But--you don't care for him?"
+
+"I did--I did. I do. I care awfully----"
+
+"Well----"
+
+"Oh, Gwenda, can they _make_ me marry him?"
+
+"You don't want to marry him?"
+
+Ally shook her head, slowly, forlornly.
+
+"I see. You're ashamed of him."
+
+"I'm _not_ ashamed. I told you I wasn't. It isn't that----"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I'm afraid."
+
+"Afraid----"
+
+"It isn't his fault. He wants to marry me. He wanted to all the time.
+He never meant that it should be like this. He asked me to marry him.
+Before it happened. Over and over again he asked me and I wouldn't
+have him."
+
+"Why wouldn't you?"
+
+"I've told you. Because I'm afraid."
+
+"Why are you afraid?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm not really afraid of _him_. I think I'm afraid of
+what he might do to me if I married him."
+
+"_Do_ to you?"
+
+"Yes. He might beat me. They always do, you know, those sort of men,
+when you marry them. I couldn't bear to be beaten."
+
+"Oh----" Gwenda drew in her breath.
+
+"He wouldn't do it, Gwenda, if he knew what he was about. But he might
+if he didn't. You see, they say he drinks. That's what frightens me.
+That's why I daren't tell Papa. Papa wouldn't care if he did beat me.
+He'd say it was my punishment."
+
+"If you feel like that about it you mustn't marry him."
+
+"They'll make me."
+
+"They shan't make you. I won't let them. It'll be all right, darling.
+I'll take you away with me to-morrow, and look after you, and keep you
+safe."
+
+"But--they'll have to know."
+
+"Yes. They'll have to know. I'll tell them."
+
+She rose.
+
+"Stay here," she said. "And keep quiet. I'm going to tell them now."
+
+"Not now--please, not now."
+
+"Yes. Now. It'll be all over. And you'll sleep."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went in to where they waited for her.
+
+Her father and her sister lifted their eyes to her as she came in.
+Rowcliffe had turned away.
+
+"Has she said anything?"
+
+(Mary spoke.)
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Vicar looked sternly at his second daughter.
+
+"She denies it?"
+
+"No, Papa. She doesn't deny it."
+
+He drove it home. "Has--she--confessed?"
+
+"She's told me it's true--what you think."
+
+In the silence that fell on the four Rowcliffe stayed where he stood,
+downcast and averted. It was as if he felt that Gwenda could have
+charged him with betrayal of a trust.
+
+The Vicar looked at his watch. He turned to Rowcliffe.
+
+"Is that fellow coming, or is he not?"
+
+"He won't funk it," said Rowcliffe.
+
+He turned. His eyes met Gwenda's. "I think I can answer for his
+coming."
+
+"Do you mean Jim Greatorex?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is it that he won't funk?"
+
+She looked from one to the other. Nobody answered her. It was as if
+they were, all three, afraid of her.
+
+"I see," she said. "If you ask me I think he'd much better not come."
+
+"My dear Gwenda----" The Vicar was deferent to the power that had
+dragged Ally's confession from her.
+
+"We _must_ get through with this. The sooner the better. It's what
+we're all here for."
+
+"I know. Still--I think you'll have to leave it."
+
+"Leave it?"
+
+"Yes, Papa."
+
+"We can't leave it," said Rowcliffe. "Something's got to be done."
+
+The Vicar groaned and Rowcliffe had pity on him.
+
+"If you'd like me to do it--I can interview him."
+
+"I wish you would."
+
+"Very well." He moved uneasily. "I'd better see him here, hadn't I?"
+
+"You'd better not see him anywhere," said Gwenda. "He can't marry
+her."
+
+She held them all three by the sheer shock of it.
+
+The Vicar spoke first. "What do you mean, 'he can't'? He _must_."
+
+"He must not. Ally doesn't want to marry him. He asked her long ago
+and she wouldn't have him."
+
+"Do you mean," said Rowcliffe, surprised out of his reticence, "before
+this happened?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And she wouldn't have him?"
+
+"No. She was afraid of him."
+
+"She was afraid of him--and yet----" It was Mary who spoke now.
+
+"Yes, Mary. And yet--she cared for him."
+
+The Vicar turned on her.
+
+"You're as bad as she is. How can you bring yourself to speak of
+it, if you're a modest girl? You've just told us that your sister's
+shameless. Are we to suppose that you're defending her?"
+
+"I am defending her. There's nobody else to do it. You've all set on
+her and tortured her----"
+
+"Not all, Gwenda," said Rowcliffe. But she did not heed him.
+
+"She'd have told you everything if you hadn't frightened her. You
+haven't had an atom of pity for her. You've never thought of _her_ for
+a minute. You've been thinking of yourselves. You might have killed
+her. And you didn't care."
+
+The Vicar looked at her.
+
+"It's you, Gwenda, who don't care."
+
+"About what she's done, you mean? I don't. You ought to be gentle with
+her, Papa. You drove her to it."
+
+Rowcliffe answered.
+
+"We'll not say what drove her, Gwenda."
+
+"She was driven," she said.
+
+"'Let no man say he is tempted of God when he is driven by his own
+lusts and enticed,'" said the Vicar.
+
+He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda.
+And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the
+first time the profound unspirituality of her father's face. She knew
+from what source his eyes drew their darkness. She understood the
+meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce
+lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache. And she conceived a horror of
+his fatherhood.
+
+"No man ought to say that of his own daughter. How does he know what's
+her own and what's his?" she said.
+
+Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration. She was
+terrible; she was fierce; she was mad. But it was the fierceness and
+the madness of pity and of compassion.
+
+She went on.
+
+"You've no business to be hard on her. You must have known."
+
+"I knew nothing," said the Vicar.
+
+He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.
+
+"You did know. You were warned. You were told not to shut her up. And
+you did shut her up. You can't blame her if she got away. You flung
+her to Jim Greatorex. There wasn't anybody who cared for her but him."
+
+"Cared for her!" He snarled his disgust.
+
+"Yes. Cared for her. You think that's horrible of her--that she should
+have gone to him--and yet you want to tie her to him when she's afraid
+of him. And I think it's horrible of you."
+
+"She must marry him." Mary spoke again. "She's brought it on herself,
+Gwenda."
+
+"She hasn't brought it on herself. And she shan't marry him."
+
+"I'm afraid she'll have to," Rowcliffe said.
+
+"She won't have to if I take her away somewhere and look after her. I
+mean to do it. I'll work for her. I'll take care of the child."
+
+"Oh, you--_you----!_" The Vicar waved her away with a frantic flapping
+of his hands.
+
+He turned to his son-in-law.
+
+"Rowcliffe--I beg you--will you use your influence?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+That drew her. "Steven--help me--can't you see how terrible it is if
+she's afraid of him?"
+
+"But _is_ she?"
+
+He looked at her with his miserable eyes, then turned them from her,
+considering gravely what she had said. It was then, while Rowcliffe
+was considering it, that the garden gate opened violently and fell to.
+
+They waited for the sound of the front door bell.
+
+Instead of it they heard two doors open and Ally's voice calling to
+Greatorex in the hall.
+
+As the Vicar flung himself from his study into the other room he saw
+Alice standing close to Greatorex by the shut door. Her lover's arms
+were round her.
+
+He laid his hands on them as if to tear them apart.
+
+"You shall not touch my daughter--until you've married her."
+
+The young man's right arm threw him off; his left arm remained round
+Alice.
+
+"It's yo' s'all nat tooch her, Mr. Cartaret," he said. "Ef yo' coom
+between her an' mae I s'all 'ave t' kill yo'. I'd think nowt of it.
+Dawn't yo' bae freetened, my laass," he murmured tenderly.
+
+The next instant he was fierce again.
+
+"An' look yo' 'ere, Mr. Cartaret. It was yo' who aassked mae t' marry
+Assy. Do yo' aassk mae t' marry Assy now? Naw! Assy may rot for all
+yo' care. (It's all right, my sweet'eart. It's all right.) I'd a
+married Assy right enoof ef I'd 'a' looved her. But do yo' suppawss
+I'd 'a' doon it fer yore meddlin'? Naw! An' yo' need n' aassk mae t'
+marry yore daughter--(There--there--my awn laass)--"
+
+"You are not going to be asked," said Gwenda. "You are not going to
+marry her."
+
+"Gwenda," said the Vicar, "you will be good enough to leave this to
+me."
+
+"It can't be left to anybody but Ally."
+
+"It s'all be laft to her," said Greatorex.
+
+He had loosened his hold of Alice, but he still stood between her and
+her father.
+
+"It's for her t' saay ef she'll 'aave mae."
+
+"She has said she won't, Mr. Greatorex."
+
+"Ay, she's said it to mae, woonce. But I rackon she'll 'ave mae now."
+
+"Not even now."
+
+"She's toald yo'?"
+
+He did not meet her eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She's toald yo' she's afraid o' mae?"
+
+"Yes. And you know why."
+
+"Ay. I knaw. Yo're afraid o' mae, Ally, because yo've 'eard I haven't
+always been as sober as I might bae; but yo're nat 'aalf as afraid o'
+mae, droonk or sober, as yo' are of yore awn faather. Yo' dawn't think
+I s'all bae 'aalf as 'ard an' crooil to yo' as yore faather is. She
+doosn't, Mr. Cartaret, an' thot's Gawd's truth."
+
+"I protest," said the Vicar.
+
+"Yo' stond baack, sir. It's for 'er t' saay."
+
+He turned to her, infinitely reverent, infinitely tender.
+
+"Will yo' staay with 'im? Or will yo' coom with mae?"
+
+"I'll come with you."
+
+With one shoulder turned to her father, she cowered to her lover's
+breast.
+
+"Ay, an' yo' need n' be afraaid I'll not bae sober. I'll bae sober
+enoof now. D'ye 'ear, Mr. Cartaret? Yo' need n' bae afraaid, either.
+I'll kape sober. I'd kape sober all my life ef it was awnly t' spite
+yo'. An' I'll maake 'er 'appy. For I rackon theer's noothin' I could
+think on would spite yo' moor. Yo' want mae t' marry 'er t' poonish
+'er. _I_ knaw."
+
+"That'll do, Greatorex," said Rowcliffe.
+
+"Ay. It'll do," said Greatorex with a grin of satisfaction.
+
+He turned to Alice, the triumph still flaming in his face. "Yo're
+_nat_ afraaid of mae?"
+
+"No," she said gently. "Not now."
+
+"Yo navver were," said Greatorex; and he laughed.
+
+
+That laugh was more than Mr. Cartaret could bear. He thrust out his
+face toward Greatorex.
+
+Rowcliffe, watching them, saw that he trembled and that the
+thrust-out, furious face was flushed deeply on the left side.
+
+The Vicar boomed.
+
+"You will leave my house this instant, Mr. Greatorex. And you will
+never come into it again."
+
+But Greatorex was already looking for his cap.
+
+"I'll navver coom into et again," he assented placably.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were no prayers at the Vicarage that night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. Greatorex was gone. Gwenda was upstairs
+helping Alice to undress. Mary sat alone in the dining-room, crying
+steadily. The Vicar and Rowcliffe were in the study.
+
+In all this terrible business of Alice, the Vicar felt that his
+son-in-law had been a comfort to him.
+
+"Rowcliffe," he said suddenly, "I feel very queer."
+
+"I don't wonder, sir. I should go to bed if I were you."
+
+"I shall. Presently."
+
+The one-sided flush deepened and darkened as he brooded. It fascinated
+Rowcliffe.
+
+"I think it would be better," said the Vicar slowly, "if I left the
+parish. It's the only solution I can see."
+
+He meant to the problem of his respectability.
+
+Rowcliffe said yes, perhaps it would be better.
+
+He was thinking that it would solve his problem too.
+
+For he knew that there would be a problem if Gwenda came back to her
+father.
+
+The Vicar rose heavily and went to his roll-top desk. He opened it and
+began fumbling about in it, looking for things.
+
+He was doing this, it seemed to his son-in-law, for quite a long time.
+
+But it was only eleven o'clock when Mary heard sounds in the study
+that terrified her, of a chair overturned and of a heavy body falling
+to the floor. And then Steven called to her.
+
+She found him kneeling on the floor beside her father, loosening his
+clothes. The Vicar's face, which she discerned half hidden between
+the bending head of Rowcliffe and his arms, was purple and horribly
+distorted.
+
+Rowcliffe did not look at her.
+
+"He's in a fit," he said. "Go upstairs and fetch Gwenda. And for God's
+sake don't let Ally see him."
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+The village knew all about Jim Greatorex and Alice Cartaret now. Where
+their names had been whispered by two or three in the bar of the Red
+Lion, over the post office counter, in the schoolhouse, in the smithy,
+and on the open road, the loud scandal of them burst with horror.
+
+For the first time in his life Jim Greatorex was made aware that
+public opinion was against him. Wherever he showed himself the men
+slunk from him and the women stared. He set his teeth and held his
+chin up and passed them as if he had not seen them. He was determined
+to defy public opinion.
+
+Standing in the door of his kinsman's smithy, he defied it.
+
+It was the day before his wedding. He had been riding home from Morfe
+Market and his mare Daisy had cast a shoe coming down the hill. He
+rode her up to the smithy and called for Blenkiron, shouting his need.
+
+Blenkiron came out and looked at him sulkily.
+
+"I'll shoe t' maare," he said, "but yo'll stand outside t' smithy, Jim
+Greatorex."
+
+For answer Jim rode the mare into the smithy and dismounted there.
+
+Then Blenkiron spoke.
+
+"You'd best 'ave staayed where yo' were. But yo've coom in an' yo'
+s'all 'ave a bit o' my toongue. To-morra's yore weddin' day, I 'ear?"
+
+Jim intimated that if it was his wedding day it was no business of
+Blenkiron's.
+
+"Wall," said the blacksmith, "ef they dawn't gie yo' soom roough music
+to-morra night, it'll bae better loock than yo' desarve--t' two o'
+yo'."
+
+Greatorex scowled at his kinsman.
+
+"Look yo' 'ere, John Blenkiron, I warn yo'. Any man in t' Daale thot
+speaaks woon word agen my wife 'e s'all 'ave 'is nack wroong."
+
+"An' 'ow 'bout t' women, Jimmy? There'll bae a sight o' nacks fer yo'
+t' wring, I rackon. They'll 'ave soomat t' saay to 'er, yore laady."
+
+"T' women? T' women? Domned sight she'll keer for what they saay.
+There is n' woon o' they bitches as is fit t' kneel in t' mood to 'er
+t' tooch t' sawle of 'er boots."
+
+Blenkiron peered up at him from the crook of the mare's hind leg.
+
+"Nat Assy Gaale?" he said.
+
+"Assy Gaale? 'Oo's she to mook _'er_ naame with 'er dirty toongue?"
+
+"Yo'll not goa far thot road, Jimmy. 'Tis wi' t' womenfawlk yo'll
+'aave t' racken."
+
+He knew it.
+
+The first he had to reckon with was Maggie.
+
+Maggie, being given notice, had refused to take it.
+
+"Yo' can please yoresel, Mr. Greatorex. I can goa. I can goa. But ef I
+goa yo'll nat find anoother woman as'll coom to yo'. There's nat woon
+as'll keer mooch t' work for _yore_ laady."
+
+"Wull yo' wark for 'er, Maaggie?" he had said.
+
+And Maggie, with a sullen look and hitching her coarse apron, had
+replied remarkably:
+
+"Ef Assy Gaale can wash fer er I rackon _I_ can shift to baake an'
+clane."
+
+"Wull yo' waait on 'er?" he had persisted.
+
+Maggie had turned away her face from him.
+
+
+"Ay, I'll waait on 'er," she said.
+
+And Maggie had stayed to bake and clean. Rough and sullen, without a
+smile, she had waited on young Mrs. Greatorex.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Alice was not afraid of Maggie. She was not going to admit for a
+moment that she was afraid of her. She was not going to admit that she
+was afraid of anything but one thing--that her father would die.
+
+If he died she would have killed him.
+
+Or, rather, she and Greatorex would have killed him between them.
+
+This statement Ally held to and reiterated and refused to qualify.
+
+For Alice at Upthorne had become a creature matchless in cunning and
+of subtle and marvelous resource. She had been terrified and tortured,
+shamed and cowed. She had been hounded to her marriage and conveyed
+with an appalling suddenness to Upthorne, that place of sinister and
+terrible suggestion, and the bed in which John Greatorex had died had
+been her marriage bed. Her mind, like a thing pursued and in deadly
+peril, took instantaneously a line. It doubled and dodged; it hid
+itself; its instinct was expert in disguises, in subterfuges and
+shifts.
+
+In her soul she knew that she was done for if she once admitted and
+gave in to her fear of Upthorne and of her husband's house, or if
+she were ever to feel again her fear of Greatorex, which was the most
+intolerable of all her fears. It was as if Nature itself were aware
+that, if Ally were not dispossessed of that terror before Greatorex's
+child was born her own purpose would be insecure; as if the unborn
+child, the flesh and blood of the Greatorexes that had entered into
+her, protested against her disastrous cowardice.
+
+So, without Ally being in the least aware of it, Ally's mind,
+struggling toward sanity, fabricated one enormous fear, the fear of
+her father's death, a fear that she could own and face, and set it up
+in place of that secret and dangerous thing which was the fear of life
+itself.
+
+Ally, insisting a dozen times a day that she had killed poor Papa,
+was completely taken in by this play of her surreptitiously
+self-preserving soul. Even Rowcliffe was taken in by it. He called
+it a morbid obsession. And he began to wonder whether he had not been
+mistaken about Ally after all, whether her nature was not more subtle
+and sensitive than he had guessed, more intricately and dangerously
+mixed.
+
+For the sadness of the desolate land, of the naked hillsides, of the
+moor marshes with their ghostly mists; the brooding of the watchful,
+solitary house, the horror of haunted twilights, of nightfall and of
+midnights now and then when Greatorex was abroad looking after his
+cattle and she lay alone under the white ceiling that sagged above her
+bed and heard the weak wind picking at the pane; her fear of Maggie
+and of what Maggie had been to Greatorex and might be again; her fear
+of the savage, violent and repulsive elements in the man who was
+her god; her fear of her own repulsion; the tremor of her recoiling
+nerves; premonitions of her alien blood, the vague melancholy of her
+secret motherhood; they were all mingled together and hidden from her
+in the vast gloom of her one fear.
+
+And once the dominant terror was set up, her instinct found a thousand
+ways of strengthening it. Through her adoration of her lover her mind
+had become saturated with his mournful consciousness of sin. In their
+moments of contrition they were both convinced that they would be
+punished. But Ally had borne her sin superbly; she had declared that
+it was hers and hers only, and that she and not Greatorex would be
+punished. And now the punishment had come. She persuaded herself that
+her father's death was the retribution Heaven required.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And all the time, through the perilous months, Nature, mindful of her
+own, tightened her hold on Ally through Ally's fear. Ally was afraid
+to be left alone with it. Therefore she never let Greatorex out of her
+sight if she could help it. She followed him from room to room of the
+sad house where he was painting and papering and whitewashing to make
+it fine for her. Where he was she had to be. Stowed away in some swept
+corner, she would sit with her sweet and sorrowful eyes fixed on him
+as he labored. She trotted after him through the house and out into
+the mistal and up the Three Fields. She would crouch on a heap of
+corn-sacks, wrapped in a fur coat, and watch him at his work in the
+stable and the cow-byre. In her need to immortalise this passion she
+could not have done better. Her utter dependence on him flattered and
+softened the distrustful, violent and headstrong man. Her one chance,
+and Ally knew it, was to cling. If she had once shamed him by her
+fastidious shrinking she would have lost him; for, as Mrs. Gale had
+told her long ago, you could do nothing with Jimmy when he was shamed.
+Maggie, for all her coarseness, had contrived to shame him; so had
+Essy in her freedom and her pride. Ally's clinging, so far from
+irritating or obstructing him, drew out the infinite pity and
+tenderness he had for all sick and helpless things. He could no more
+have pushed little Ally from him than he could have kicked a mothering
+ewe, or stamped on a new dropped lamb. He would call to her if she
+failed to come. He would hold out his big hand to her as he would
+have held it to a child. Her smallness, her fineness and fragility
+enchanted him. The palms of her hands had the smoothness and softness
+of silk, and they made a sound like silk as they withdrew themselves
+with a lingering, stroking touch from his. He still felt, with a
+fearful and admiring wonder, the difference of her flesh from his.
+
+To be sure Jim's tenderness was partly penitential. Only it was Ally
+alone who had moved him to a perfect and unbearable contrition. For
+the two women whom he had loved and left Greatorex had felt nothing
+but a passing pang. For the woman he had made his wife he would go
+always with a wound in his soul.
+
+And with Ally, too, the supernatural came to Nature's aid. Her fear
+had a profound strain of the uncanny in it, and Jim's bodily presence
+was her shelter from her fear. And as it bound them flesh to flesh,
+closer and closer, it wedded them in one memory, one consolation and
+one soul.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day she had followed him into the stable, and on the window-sill,
+among all the cobwebs where it had been put away and forgotten, she
+found the little bottle of chlorodyne.
+
+She took it up, and Jim scolded her gently as if she had been a child.
+
+"Yore lil haands is always maddlin'. Yo' put thot down."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's poison, is thot. There's enoof there t' kill a maan. Yo' put it
+down whan I tall yo'."
+
+She put it down obediently in its place on the window-sill among the
+cobwebs.
+
+He made a nest for her of clean hay, where she sat and watched him
+as he gave Daisy her feed of corn. She watched every movement of him,
+every gesture, thoughtful and intent.
+
+"I can't think, Jim, why I ever was afraid of you. _Was_ I afraid of
+you?"
+
+Greatorex grinned.
+
+"Yo' used t' saay yo' were."
+
+"How silly of me. And I used to be afraid of Maggie."
+
+"_I_'ve been afraaid of Maaggie afore now. She's got a roough side t'
+'er toongue and she can use it. But she'll nat use it on yo'. Yo've
+naw call to be afraaid ef annybody. There isn't woon would hoort a lil
+thing like yo'."
+
+"They say things about me. I know they do."
+
+"And yo' dawn't keer what they saay, do yo'?"
+
+"I don't care a rap. But I think it's cruel of them, all the same."
+
+"But yo're happy enoof, aren't yo'--all the same?"
+
+"I'm very happy. At least I would be if it wasn't for poor Papa. It
+wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for what we did."
+
+Wherever they started, whatever round they fetched, it was to this
+that they returned.
+
+And always Jim met it with the same answer:
+
+"'Tisn' what we doon; 'tis what 'e doon. An' annyhow it had to bae."
+
+Every week Rowcliffe came to see her and every week Jim said to him:
+"She's at it still and I caan't move 'er."
+
+And every week Rowcliffe said: "Wait. She'll be better before long."
+
+And Jim waited.
+
+He waited till one afternoon in February, when they were again in the
+stable together. He had turned his back on her for a moment.
+
+When he looked round she was gone from her seat on the cornsacks. She
+was standing by the window-sill with the bottle of chlorodyne in her
+hand and at her lips. He thought she was smelling it.
+
+She tilted her head back. Her eyes slewed sidelong toward him. They
+quivered as he leaped to her.
+
+She had not drunk a drop and he knew it, but she clutched her bottle
+with a febrile obstinacy. He had to loosen her little fingers one by
+one.
+
+He poured the liquid into the stable gutter and flung the bottle on to
+the dung heap in the mistal.
+
+"What were you doing wi' thot stoof?" he said.
+
+"I don't know. I was thinking of Papa."
+
+After that he never left her until Rowcliffe came.
+
+Rowcliffe said: "She's got it into her head he's going to die, and she
+thinks she's killed him. You'd better let me take her to see him."
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+The Vicar had solved his problem by his stroke, but not quite as he
+had anticipated.
+
+Nothing had ever turned out as he had planned or thought or willed. He
+had planned to leave the parish. He had thought that in his wisdom he
+had saved Alice by shutting her up in Garthdale. He had thought that
+she was safe at choir-practice with Jim Greatorex. He had thought
+that Mary was devoted to him and that Gwenda was capable of all
+disobedience and all iniquity. She had gone away and he had forbidden
+her to come back again. He had also forbidden Greatorex to enter his
+house.
+
+And Greatorex was entering it every day, for news of him to take to
+Alice at Upthorne. Gwenda had come back and would never go again, and
+it was she and not Mary who had proved herself devoted. And it was not
+his wisdom but Greatorex's scandalous passion for her that had saved
+Alice. As for leaving the parish because of the scandal, the Vicar
+would never leave it now. He was tied there in his Vicarage by his
+stroke.
+
+It left him with a paralysis of the right side and an utter confusion
+and enfeeblement of intellect.
+
+In three months he recovered partially from the paralysis. But the
+flooding of his brain had submerged or carried away whole tracts
+of recent memory, and the last vivid, violent impression--Alice's
+affair--was wiped out.
+
+There was no reason why he should not stay on. What was left of his
+memory told him that Alice was at the Vicarage, and he was worried
+because he never saw her about.
+
+He did not know that the small gray house above the churchyard had
+become a place of sinister and scandalous tragedy; that his name and
+his youngest daughter's name were bywords in three parishes; and that
+Alice had been married in conspicuous haste by the horrified Vicar
+of Greffington to a man whom only charitable people regarded as her
+seducer.
+
+And the order of time had ceased for him with this breach in the
+sequence of events. He had a dim but enduring impression that it
+was always prayer time. No hours marked the long stretches of blank
+darkness and of confused and crowded twilight. Only, now and then, a
+little light pulsed feebly in his brain, a flash that renewed itself
+day by day; and day by day, in a fresh experience, he was aware that
+he was ill.
+
+It was as if the world stood still and his mind moved. It "wandered,"
+as they said. And in its wanderings it came upon strange gaps and
+hollows and fantastic dislocations, landslips where a whole foreground
+had given way. It looked at these things with a serene and dreamlike
+wonder and passed on.
+
+And in the background, on some half-lit, isolated tract of memory,
+raised above ruin, and infinitely remote, he saw the figure of his
+youngest daughter. It was a girlish, innocent figure, and though,
+because of the whiteness of its face, he confused it now and then with
+the figure of Alice's dead mother, his first wife, he was aware that
+it was really Alice.
+
+This figure of Alice moved him with a vague and tender yearning.
+
+What puzzled and worried him was that in his flashes of luminous
+experience he didn't see her there. And it was then that the Vicar
+would make himself wonderful and piteous by asking, a dozen times a
+day, "Where's Ally?"
+
+For by the stroke that made him wonderful and piteous the Vicar's
+character and his temperament were changed. Nothing was left of Ally's
+tyrant and Robina's victim, the middle-aged celibate, filled with the
+fury of frustration and profoundly sorry for himself. His place was
+taken by a gentle old man, an old man of an appealing and childlike
+innocence, pure from all lust, from all self-pity, enjoying, actually
+enjoying, the consideration that his stroke had brought him.
+
+He was changed no less remarkably in his affections. He was utterly
+indifferent to Mary, whom he had been fond of. He yearned for Alice,
+whom he had hated. And he clung incessantly to Gwenda, whom he had
+feared.
+
+When he looked round in his strange and awful gentleness and said,
+"Where's Ally?" his voice was the voice of a mother calling for her
+child. And when he said, "Where's Gwenda?" it was the voice of a child
+calling for its mother.
+
+And as he continually thought that Alice was at the Vicarage when she
+was at Upthorne, so he was convinced that Gwenda had left him when she
+was there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe judged that this confusion of the Vicar's would be favorable
+to his experiment.
+
+And it was.
+
+When Mr. Cartaret saw his youngest daughter for the first time since
+their violent rupture he gazed at her tranquilly and said, "And where
+have _you_ been all this time?"
+
+"Not very far, Papa."
+
+He smiled sweetly.
+
+"I thought you'd run away from your poor old father. Let me see--was
+it Ally? My memory's going. No. It was Gwenda who ran away. Wasn't it
+Gwenda?"
+
+"Yes, Papa."
+
+"Well--she must come back again. I can't do without Gwenda."
+
+"She has come back, Papa."
+
+"She's always coming hack. But she'll go away again. Where is she?"
+
+"I'm here, Papa dear."
+
+"Here one minute," said the Vicar, "and gone the next."
+
+"No--no. I'm not going. I shall never go away and leave you."
+
+"So you say," said the Vicar. "So you say."
+
+He looked round uneasily.
+
+"It's time for Ally to go to bed. Has Essy brought her milk?"
+
+His head bowed to his breast. He fell into a doze. Ally watched.
+
+And in the outer room Gwenda and Steven Rowcliffe talked together.
+
+"Steven--he's always going on like that. It breaks my heart."
+
+"I know, dear, I know."
+
+"Do you think he'll ever remember?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't think so."
+
+Then they sat together without speaking. She was thinking: "How good
+he is. Surely I may love him for his goodness?" And he that the old
+man in there had solved _his_ problem, but that his own had been taken
+out of his hands.
+
+And he saw no solution.
+
+If the Vicar had gone away and taken Gwenda with him, that would have
+solved it. God knew he had been willing enough to solve it that way.
+
+But here they were, flung together, thrust toward each other when they
+should have torn themselves apart; tied, both of them, to a place they
+could not leave. Week in, week out, he would be obliged to see her
+whether he would or no. And when her tired face rebuked his senses,
+she drew him by her tenderness; she held him by her goodness. There
+was only one thing for him to do--to clear out. It was his plain and
+simple duty. If it hadn't been for Alice and for that old man he
+would have done it. But, because of them, it was his still plainer
+and simpler duty to stay where he was, to stick to her and see her
+through.
+
+He couldn't help it if his problem was taken out of his hands.
+
+They started. They looked at each other and smiled their strained and
+tragic smile.
+
+In the inner room the Vicar was calling for Gwenda.
+
+It was prayer time, he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe had to drive Alice back that night to Upthorne.
+
+"Well," he said, as they left the Vicarage behind them, "you see he
+isn't going to die."
+
+"No," said Alice. "But he's out of his mind. I haven't killed him.
+I've done worse. I've driven him mad."
+
+And she stuck to it. She couldn't afford to part with her fear--yet.
+
+Rowcliffe was distressed at the failure of his experiment. He told
+Greatorex that there was nothing to be done but to wait patiently till
+June. Then--perhaps--they would see.
+
+In his own mind he had very little hope. He said to himself that he
+didn't like the turn Ally's obsession had taken. It was _too_ morbid.
+
+But when May came Alice lay in the big bed under the sagging ceiling
+with a lamentably small baby in her arms, and Greatorex sat beside her
+by the hour together, with his eyes fixed on her white face. Rowcliffe
+had told him to be on the lookout for some new thing or for some more
+violent sign of the old obsession. But nine days had passed and he had
+seen no sign. Her eyes looked at him and at her child with the same
+lucid, drowsy ecstasy.
+
+And in nine days she had only asked him once if he knew how poor Papa
+was?
+
+Her fear had left her. It had served its purpose.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+There was no prayer time at the Vicarage any more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no more time at all there as the world counts time.
+
+The hours no longer passed in a procession marked by distinguishable
+days. They rolled round and round in an interminable circle,
+monotonously renewed, monotonously returning upon itself. The Vicar
+was the center of the circle. The hours were sounded and measured by
+his monotonously recurring needs. But the days were neither measured
+nor marked. They were all of one shade. There was no difference
+between Sunday and Monday in the Vicarage now. They talked of the
+Vicar's good days and his bad days, that was all.
+
+For in this house where time had ceased they talked incessantly of
+time. But it was always _his_ time; the time for his early morning
+cup of tea; the time for his medicine; the time for his breakfast;
+the time for reading his chapter to him while he dozed; the time for
+washing him, for dressing him, for taking him out (he went out now,
+in a wheel-chair drawn by Peacock's pony); the time for his medicine
+again; his dinner time; the time for his afternoon sleep; his
+tea-time; the time for his last dose of medicine; his supper time and
+his time for being undressed and put to bed. And there were several
+times during the night which were his times also.
+
+The Vicar had desired supremacy in his Vicarage and he was at last
+supreme. He was supreme over his daughter Gwenda. The stubborn,
+intractable creature was at his feet. She was his to bend or break
+or utterly destroy. She who was capable of anything was capable of an
+indestructible devotion. His times, the relentless, the monotonously
+recurring, were her times too.
+
+If it had not been for Steven Rowcliffe she would have had none to
+call her own (except night time, when the Vicar slept). But Rowcliffe
+had kept to his days for visiting the Vicarage. He came twice or
+thrice a week; not counting Wednesdays. Only, though Mary did not know
+it, he came as often as not in the evenings at dusk, just after the
+Vicar had been put to bed. When it was wet he sat in the dining-room
+with Gwenda. When it was fine he took her out on to the moor under
+Karva.
+
+They always went the same way, up the green sheep-track that they
+knew; they always turned back at the same place, where the stream he
+had seen her jumping ran from the hill; and they always took the same
+time to go and turn. They never stopped and never lingered; but went
+always at the same sharp pace, and kept the same distance from each
+other. It was as if by saying to themselves, "Never any further than
+the stream; never any longer than thirty-five minutes; never any
+nearer than we are now," they defined the limits of their whole
+relation. Sometimes they hardly spoke as they walked. They parted with
+casual words and with no touching of their hands and with the same
+thought unspoken--"Till the next time."
+
+But these times which were theirs only did not count as time. They
+belonged to another scale of feeling and another order of reality.
+Their moments had another pulse, another rhythm and vibration. They
+burned as they beat. While they lasted Gwenda's life was lived with an
+intensity that left time outside its measure. Through this intensity
+she drew the strength to go on, to endure the unendurable with joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Rowcliffe could not endure the unendurable at all. He was savage
+when he thought of it. That was her life and she would never get away
+from it. She, who was born for the wild open air and for youth and
+strength and freedom, would be shut up in that house and tied to that
+half-paralyzed, half-imbecile old man forever. It was damnable. And
+he, Rowcliffe, could have prevented it if he had only known. And if
+Mary had not lied to him.
+
+And when his common sense warned him of their danger, and his
+conscience reproached him with leading her into it, he said to
+himself, "I can't help it if it is dangerous. It's been taken out of
+my hands. If somebody doesn't drag her out of doors, she'll get ill.
+If somebody doesn't talk to her she'll grow morbid. And there's nobody
+but me."
+
+He sheltered himself in the immensity of her tragedy. Its darkness
+covered them. Her sadness and her isolation sanctified them. Alice had
+her husband and her child. Mary had--all she wanted. Gwenda had nobody
+but him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had never had anybody but him. For in the beginning the Vicar and
+his daughters had failed to make friends among their own sort. Up in
+the Dale there had been few to make, and those few Mr. Cartaret had
+contrived to alienate one after another by his deplorable legend and
+by the austere unpleasantness of his personality. People had not been
+prepared for intimacy with a Vicar separated so outrageously from his
+third wife. Nobody knew whether it was he or his third wife who had
+been outrageous, but the Vicar's manner was not such as to procure for
+him the benefit of any doubt. The fact remained that the poor man
+was handicapped by an outrageous daughter, and Alice's behavior was
+obviously as much the Vicar's fault as his misfortune. And it had been
+felt that Gwenda had not done anything to redeem her father's and her
+sister's eccentricities, and that Mary, though she was a nice girl,
+had hardly done enough. For the last eighteen months visits at the
+Vicarage had been perfunctory and very brief, month by month they had
+diminished, and before Mary's marriage they had almost ceased.
+
+Still, Mary's marriage had appeased the parish. Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe
+had atoned for the third Mrs. Cartaret's suspicious absence and for
+Gwenda Cartaret's flight. Lady Frances Gilbey's large wing had further
+protected Gwenda.
+
+Then, suddenly, the tale of Alice Cartaret and Greatorex went round,
+and it was as if the Vicarage had opened and given up its secret.
+
+At first, the sheer extremity of his disaster had sheltered the Vicar
+from his own scandal. Through all Garthdale and Rathdale, in the
+Manors and the Lodges and the Granges, in the farmhouses and the
+cottages, in the inns and little shops, there was a stir of pity and
+compassion. The people who had left off calling at the Vicarage called
+again with sympathy and kind inquiries. They were inclined to forget
+how impossible the Cartarets had been. They were sorry for Gwenda. But
+they had been checked in their advances by Gwenda's palpable recoil.
+She had no time to give to callers. Her father had taken all her time.
+The callers considered themselves absolved from calling.
+
+Slowly, month by month, the Vicarage was drawn back into its
+silence and its loneliness. It assumed, more and more, its aspect of
+half-sinister, half-sordid tragedy. The Vicar's calamity no longer
+sheltered him. It took its place in the order of accepted and
+irremediable events.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only the village preserved its sympathy alive. The village, that
+obscure congregated soul, long-suffering to calamity, welded together
+by saner instincts and profound in memory, the soul that inhabited
+the small huddled, humble houses, divided from the Vicarage by no more
+than the graveyard of its dead, the village remembered and it knew.
+
+It remembered how the Vicar had come and gone over its thresholds,
+how no rain nor snow nor storm had stayed him in his obstinate and
+punctual visiting. And whereas it had once looked grimly on its Vicar,
+it looked kindly on him now. It endured him for his daughter Gwenda's
+sake, in spite of what it knew.
+
+For it knew why the Vicar's third wife had left him. It knew why Alice
+Cartaret had gone wrong with Greatorex. It knew what Gwenda Cartaret
+had gone for when she went away. It knew why and how Dr. Rowcliffe had
+married Mary Cartaret. And it knew why, night after night, he was to
+be seen coming and going on the Garthdale road.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The village knew more about Rowcliffe and Gwenda Cartaret than
+Rowcliffe's wife knew.
+
+For Rowcliffe's wife's mind was closed to this knowledge by a certain
+sensual assurance. When all was said and done, it was she and not
+Gwenda who was Rowcliffe's wife. And she had other grounds for
+complacency. Her sister, a solitary Miss Cartaret, stowed away in
+Garth Vicarage, was of no account. She didn't matter. And as Mary
+Cartaret Mary would have mattered even less. But Steven Rowcliffe's
+professional reputation served him well. He counted. People who had
+begun by trusting him had ended by liking him, and in two years' time
+his social value had become apparent. And as Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe
+Mary had a social value too.
+
+But while Steven, who had always had it, took it for granted and never
+thought about it, Mary could think of nothing else. Her social value,
+obscured by the terrible two years in Garthdale, had come to her as a
+discovery and an acquisition. For all her complacency, she could not
+regard it as a secure thing. She was sensitive to every breath that
+threatened it; she was unable to forget that, if she was Steven
+Rowcliffe's wife, she was Alice Greatorex's sister.
+
+Even as Mary Cartaret she had been sensitive to Alice. But in those
+days of obscurity and isolation it was not in her to cast Alice off.
+She had felt bound to Alice, not as Gwenda was bound, but pitiably,
+irrevocably, for better, for worse. The solidarity of the family had
+held.
+
+She had not had anything to lose by sticking to her sister. Now it
+seemed to her that she had everything to lose. The thought of Alice
+was a perpetual annoyance to her.
+
+For the neighborhood that had received Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe had
+barred her sister.
+
+As long as Alice Greatorex lived at Upthorne Mary went in fear.
+
+This fear was so intolerable to her that at last she spoke of it to
+Rowcliffe.
+
+They were sitting together in his study after dinner. The two
+armchairs were always facing now, one on each side of the hearth.
+
+"I wish I knew what to do about Alice," she said.
+
+"What to _do_ about her?"
+
+"Yes. Am I to have her at the house or not?"
+
+He stared.
+
+"Of course you're to have her at the house."
+
+"I mean when we've got people here. I can't ask her to meet them."
+
+"You must ask her. It's the very least you can do for her."
+
+"People aren't going to like it, Steven."
+
+"People have got to stick a great many things they aren't going to
+like. I'm continually meeting people I'd rather not meet. Aren't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid poor Alice is--"
+
+"Is what?"
+
+"Well, dear, a little impossible, to say the least of it. Isn't she?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't see anything impossible about 'poor Alice.' I never did."
+
+"It's nice of you to say so."
+
+He maintained himself in silence under her long gaze.
+
+"Steven," she said, "you are awfully good to my people."
+
+She saw that she could hardly have said anything that would have
+annoyed him more.
+
+He positively writhed with irritation.
+
+"I'm not in the least good to your people."
+
+The words stung her like a blow. She flushed, and he softened.
+
+"Can't you see, Molly, that I hate the infernal humbug and the cruelty
+of it all? That poor child had a dog's life before she married. She
+did the only sane thing that was open to her. You've only got to look
+at her now to see that she couldn't have done much better for herself
+even if she hadn't been driven to it. What's more, she's done the best
+thing for Greatorex. There isn't another woman in the world who could
+have made that chap chuck drinking. You mayn't like the connection. I
+don't suppose any of us like it."
+
+"My dear Steven, it isn't only the connection. I could get over that.
+It's--the other thing."
+
+His blank stare compelled her to precision.
+
+"I mean what happened."
+
+"Well--if Gwenda can get over 'the other thing', I should think _you_
+might. She has to see more of her."
+
+"It's different for Gwenda."
+
+"How is it different for Gwenda?"
+
+She hesitated. She had meant that Gwenda hadn't anything to lose.
+What she said was, "Gwenda hasn't anybody but herself to think of. She
+hasn't let you in for Alice."
+
+"No more have you."
+
+He smiled. Mary did not understand either his answer or his smile.
+
+He was saying to himself, "Oh, hasn't she? It was Gwenda all the time
+who let me in."
+
+Mary had a little rush of affection.
+
+"My dear--I think I've let you in for everything. I wouldn't mind--I
+wouldn't really--if it wasn't for you."
+
+"You needn't bother about me," he said. "I'd rather you bothered about
+your sister."
+
+"Which sister?"
+
+For the life of her she could not tell what had made her say that. The
+words seemed to leap out suddenly from her mind to her tongue.
+
+"Alice," he said.
+
+"Was it Alice we were talking about?"
+
+"It was Alice I was thinking about."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+Again her mind took its insane possession of her tongue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening dragged on. The two chairs still faced each other, pushed
+forward in their attitude of polite attention and expectancy.
+
+But the persons in the chairs leaned back as if each withdrew as far
+as possible from the other. They made themselves stiff and upright as
+if they braced themselves, each against the other in the unconscious
+tension of hostility. And they were silent, each thinking an
+intolerable thought.
+
+Rowcliffe had taken up a book and was pretending to read it. Mary's
+hands were busy with her knitting. Her needles went with a rapid jerk,
+driven by the vibration of her irritated nerves. From time to time she
+glanced at Rowcliffe under her bent brows. She saw the same blocks of
+print, a deep block at the top, a short line under it, then a narrower
+block. She saw them as vague, meaningless blurs of gray stippled on
+white. She saw that Rowcliffe's eyes never moved from the deep top
+paragraph on the left-hand page. She noted the light pressure of his
+thumbs on the margins.
+
+He wasn't reading at all; he was only pretending to read. He had set
+up his book as a barrier between them, and he was holding on to it for
+dear life.
+
+Rowcliffe moved irritably under Mary's eyes. She lowered them and
+waited for the silken sound that should have told her that he had
+turned a page.
+
+And all the time she kept on saying to herself, "He _was_ thinking
+about Gwenda. He's sorry for Alice because of Gwenda, not because of
+me. It isn't _my_ people that he's good to."
+
+The thought went round and round in Mary's mind, troubling its
+tranquillity.
+
+She knew that something followed from it, but she refused to see it.
+Her mind thrust from it the conclusion. "Then it's Gwenda that he
+cares for." She said to herself, "After all I'm married to him." And
+as she said it she thrust up her chin in a gesture of assurance and
+defiance.
+
+In the chair that faced her Rowcliffe shifted his position. He crossed
+his legs and the tilted foot kicked out, urged by a hidden savagery.
+The clicking of Mary's needles maddened him.
+
+He glanced at her. She was knitting a silk tie for his birthday.
+
+She saw the glance. The fierceness of the small fingers slackened;
+they knitted off a row or two, then ceased. Her hands lay quiet in her
+lap.
+
+She leaned her head against the back of the chair. Her grieved eyes
+let down their lids before the smouldering hostility in his.
+
+Her stillness and her shut eyes moved him to compunction. They
+appeased him with reminiscence, with suggestion of her smooth and
+innocent sleep.
+
+He had been thinking of what she had done to him; of how she had lied
+to him about Gwenda; of the abominable thing that Alice had cried out
+to him in her agony. The thought of Mary's turpitude had consoled him
+mysteriously. Instead of putting it from him he had dwelt on it, he
+had wallowed in it; he had let it soak into him till he was poisoned
+with it.
+
+For the sting of it and the violence of his own resentment were more
+tolerable to Rowcliffe than the stale, dull realisation of the fact
+that Mary bored him. It had come to that. He had nothing to say to
+Mary now that he had married her. His romantic youth still moved
+uneasily within him; it found no peace in an armchair, facing Mary.
+He dreaded these evenings that he was compelled to spend with her. He
+dreaded her speech. He dreaded her silences ten times more. They no
+longer soothed him. They were pervading, menacing, significant.
+
+He thought that Mary's turpitude accounted for and justified the
+exasperation of his nerves.
+
+Now as he looked at her, lying back in the limp pose reminiscent of
+her sleep, he thought, "Poor thing. Poor Molly." He put down his book.
+He stood over her a moment, sighed a long sigh like a yawn, turned
+from her and went to bed.
+
+Mary opened her eyes, sighed, stretched herself, put out the light,
+and followed him.
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+Not long after that night it struck Mary that Steven was run down. He
+worked too hard. That was how she accounted to herself for his fits of
+exhaustion, of irritability and depression.
+
+But secretly, for all her complacence, she had divined the cause.
+
+She watched him now; she inquired into his goings out and comings in.
+Sometimes she knew that he had been to Garthdale, and, though he went
+there many more times than she knew, she had noticed that these moods
+of his followed invariably on his going. It was as if Gwenda left her
+mark on him. So much was certain, and by that certainty she went on to
+infer his going from his mood.
+
+One day she taxed him with it.
+
+Rowcliffe had tried to excuse his early morning temper on the plea
+that he was "beastly tired."
+
+"Tired?" she had said. "Of course you're tired if you went up to
+Garthdale last night."
+
+She added, "It isn't necessary."
+
+He was silent and she knew that she was on his trail.
+
+Two evenings later she caught him as he was leaving the house.
+
+"Where are you going?" she said.
+
+"I'm going up to Garthdale to see your father."
+
+Her eyes flinched.
+
+"You saw him yesterday."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Is he worse?"
+
+He hesitated. Lying had not as yet come lightly to him.
+
+"I'm not easy about him," he said.
+
+She was not satisfied. She had caught the hesitation.
+
+"Can't you tell me," she persisted, "if he's worse?"
+
+He looked at her calmly.
+
+"I can't tell you till I've seen him."
+
+That roused her. She bit her lip. She knew that whatever she did she
+must not show temper.
+
+"Did Gwenda send for you?"
+
+Her voice was quiet.
+
+"She did not."
+
+He strode out of the house.
+
+After that he never told her when he was going up to Garthdale toward
+nightfall. He was sometimes driven to lie. It was up Rathdale he was
+going, or to Greffington, or to smoke a pipe with Ned Alderson, or to
+turn in for a game of billiards at the village club.
+
+And whenever he lied to her she saw through him. She was prepared for
+the lie. She said to herself, "He is going to see Gwenda. He can't
+keep away from her."
+
+And then she remembered what Alice had said to her. "You'll know some
+day."
+
+She knew.
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+
+And with her knowledge there came a curious calm.
+
+She no longer watched and worried Rowcliffe. She knew that no wife
+ever kept her husband by watching and worrying him.
+
+She was aware of danger and she faced it with restored complacency.
+
+For Mary was a fount of sensual wisdom. Rowcliffe was ill. And
+from his illness she inferred his misery, and from his misery his
+innocence.
+
+She told herself that nothing had happened, that she knew nothing that
+she had not known before. She saw that her mistake had been in showing
+that she knew it. That was to admit it, and to admit it was to give it
+a substance, a shape and color it had never had and was not likely to
+have.
+
+And Mary, having perceived her blunder, set herself to repair it.
+
+She knew how. Under all his energy she had discerned in her husband a
+love of bodily ease, and a capacity for laziness, undeveloped because
+perpetually frustrated. Insidiously she had set herself to undermine
+his energy while she devised continual opportunities for ease.
+
+Rowcliffe remained incurably energetic. His profession demanded
+energy.
+
+Still, there were ways by which he could be captured. He was not
+so deeply absorbed in his profession as to be indifferent to the
+arrangements of his home. He liked and he showed very plainly that he
+liked, good food and silent service, the shining of glass and silver,
+white table linen and fragrant sheets for his bed.
+
+With all these things Mary had provided him.
+
+And she had her own magic and her way.
+
+Her way, the way she had caught him, was the way she would keep him.
+She had always known her power, even unpracticed. She had always known
+by instinct how she could enthrall him when her moment came. Gwenda
+had put back the hour; but she had done (and Mary argued that
+therefore she could do) no more.
+
+Here Mary's complacency betrayed her. She had fallen into the error of
+all innocent and tranquil sensualists. She trusted to the present. She
+had reckoned without Rowcliffe's future or his past.
+
+And she had done even worse. By habituating Rowcliffe's senses to her
+way, she had produced in him, through sheer satisfaction, that sense
+of security which is the most dangerous sense of all.
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+One week in June Rowcliffe went up to Garthdale two nights running. He
+had never done this before and he had had to lie badly about it both
+to himself and Mary.
+
+He had told himself that the first evening didn't count.
+
+For he had quarreled with Gwenda the first evening. Neither of them
+knew how it had happened or what it was about. But he had hardly come
+before he had left her in his anger.
+
+The actual outburst moved her only to laughter, but the memory of it
+was violent in her nerves, it shook and shattered her. She had not
+slept all night and in the morning she woke tired and ill. And, as
+if he had known what he had done to her, he came to see her the next
+evening, to make up.
+
+That night they stayed out later than they had meant.
+
+As they touched the moor the lambs stirred at their mothers' sides and
+the pewits rose and followed the white road to lure them from their
+secret places; they wheeled and wheeled round them, sending out their
+bored and weary cry. In June the young broods kept the moor and the
+two were forced to the white road.
+
+And at the turn they came in sight of Greffington Edge.
+
+She stood still. "Oh--Steven--look," she said.
+
+He stood with her and looked.
+
+The moon was hidden in the haze where the gray day and the white night
+were mixed. Across the bottom on the dim, watery green of the eastern
+slope, the thorn trees were in flower. The hot air held them like
+still water. It quivered invisibly, loosening their scent and
+scattering it. And of a sudden she saw them as if thrown back to a
+distance where they stood enchanted in a great stillness and clearness
+and a piercing beauty.
+
+There went through her a sudden deep excitement, a subtle and
+mysterious joy. This passion was as distant and as pure as ecstasy.
+It swept her, while the white glamour lasted, into the stillness where
+the flowering thorn trees stood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She wondered whether Steven had seen the vision of the flowering thorn
+trees. She longed for him to see it. They stood a little apart and her
+hand moved toward him without touching him, as if she would draw him
+to the magic.
+
+"Steven--" she said.
+
+He came to her. Her hand hung limply by her side again. She felt his
+hand close on it and press it.
+
+She knew that he had seen the vision and felt the subtle and
+mysterious joy.
+
+She wanted nothing more.
+
+"Say good-night now," she said.
+
+"Not yet. I'm going to walk back with you."
+
+They walked back in a silence that guarded the memory of the mystic
+thing.
+
+They lingered a moment by the half-open door; she on the threshold, he
+on the garden path; the width of a flagstone separated them.
+
+"In another minute," she thought, "he will be gone."
+
+It seemed to her that he wanted to be gone and that it was she who
+held him there against his will and her own.
+
+She drew the door to.
+
+"Don't shut it, Gwenda."
+
+It was as if he said, "Don't let's stand together out here like this
+any longer."
+
+She opened the door again, leaning a little toward it across the
+threshold with her hand on the latch.
+
+She smiled, raising her chin in the distant gesture that was their
+signal of withdrawal.
+
+But Steven did not go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"May I come in?" he said.
+
+Something in her said, "Don't let him come in." But she did not heed
+it. The voice was thin and small and utterly insignificant, as if
+one little brain cell had waked up and started speaking on its own
+account. And something seized on her tongue and made it say "Yes," and
+the full tide of her blood surged into her throat and choked it, and
+neither the one voice nor the other seemed to be her own.
+
+He followed her into the little dining-room where the lamp was. The
+Vicar was in bed. The whole house was still.
+
+Rowcliffe looked at her in the lamplight.
+
+"We've walked a bit too far," he said.
+
+He made her lean back on the couch. He put a pillow at her head and a
+footstool at her feet.
+
+"Just rest," he said, and she rested.
+
+But Rowcliffe did not rest. He moved uneasily about the room.
+
+A sudden tiredness came over her.
+
+She thought, "Yes. We walked too far." She leaned her head back on
+the cushion. Her thin arms lay stretched out on either side of her,
+supported by the couch.
+
+Rowcliffe ceased to wander. He drew up with his back against the
+chimney-piece, where he faced her.
+
+"Close your eyes," he said.
+
+She did not close them. But the tired lids drooped. The lifted bow of
+her mouth drooped. The small, sharp-pointed breasts drooped.
+
+And as he watched her he remembered how he had quarreled with her in
+that room last night. And the thought of his brutality was intolerable
+to him.
+
+His heart ached with tenderness, and his tenderness was intolerable
+too.
+
+The small white face with its suffering eyes and drooping eyelids, the
+drooping breasts, the thin white arms slackened along the couch, the
+childlike helplessness of the tired body moved him with a vehement
+desire. And his strength that had withstood her in her swift, defiant
+beauty melted away.
+
+"Steven--"
+
+"Don't speak," he said.
+
+She was quiet for a moment.
+
+"But I want to, Steven. I want to say something."
+
+He sighed.
+
+"Well--say it."
+
+"It's something I want to ask you."
+
+"Don't ask impossibilities."
+
+"I don't think it's impossible. At least it wouldn't be if you really
+knew. I want you to be more careful with me."
+
+She paused.
+
+He turned from her abruptly.
+
+His turning made it easier for her. She went on.
+
+"It's only a little thing--a silly little thing. I want you, when
+you're angry with me, not to show it quite so much."
+
+He had turned again to her suddenly. The look on his face stopped her.
+
+"I'm never angry with you," he said.
+
+"I know you aren't--really. I know. I know. But you make me think you
+are; and it hurts so terribly."
+
+"I didn't know you minded."
+
+"I don't always mind. But sometimes, when I'm stupid, I simply can't
+bear it. It makes me feel as if I'd done something. Last night I got
+it into my head--"
+
+"What did you get into your head? Tell me--"
+
+"I thought I'd made you hate me. I thought you thought I was
+awful--like poor Ally."
+
+"_You?_"
+
+He drew a long breath and sent it out again.
+
+"You know what I think of you."
+
+He looked at her, threw up his head suddenly and went to her.
+
+His words came fast now and thick.
+
+"You know I love you. That's why I've been such a brute to
+you--because I couldn't have you in my arms and it made me mad. And
+you know it. That's what you mean when you say it hurts you. You
+shan't be hurt any more. I'm going to end it."
+
+He stooped over her suddenly, steadying himself by his two hands laid
+on the back of her chair. She put out her arms and pushed with her
+hands against his shoulders, as if she would have beaten him off. He
+sank to her knees and there caught her hands in his and kissed them.
+He held them together helpless with his left arm and his right arm
+gathered her to him violently and close.
+
+His mouth came crushing upon her parted lips and her shut eyes.
+
+Her small thin hands struggled piteously in his and for pity he
+released them. He felt them pushing with their silk-soft palms against
+his face. Their struggle and their resistance were pain to him and
+exquisite pleasure.
+
+"Not that, Steven! Not that! Oh, I didn't think--I didn't think you
+would."
+
+"Don't send me away, Gwenda. It's all right. We've suffered enough.
+We've got to end it this way."
+
+"No. Not this way."
+
+"Yes--yes. It's all right, darling. We've struggled till we can't
+struggle any more. You must. Why not? When you love me."
+
+He pressed her closer in his arms. She lay quiet there. When she was
+quiet he let her speak.
+
+"I can't," she said. "It's Molly. Poor little Molly."
+
+"Don't talk to me of Molly. She lied about you."
+
+"Whatever she did she couldn't help it."
+
+"Whatever we do now we can't help it."
+
+"We can. We're different. Oh--don't! Don't hold me like that. I can't
+bear it."
+
+His arms tightened. His mouth found hers again as if he had not heard
+her.
+
+She gave a faint cry that pierced him.
+
+He looked at her. The lips he had kissed were a purplish white in her
+thin bloodless face. "I say, are you ill?"
+
+She saw her advantage and took it.
+
+"No. But I can't stand things very well. They make me ill. That's what
+I meant when I asked you to be careful."
+
+Her helplessness stilled his passion as it had roused it. He released
+her suddenly.
+
+He took the thin arm surrendered to his gentleness, turned back her
+sleeve and felt the tense jerking pulse.
+
+He saw what she had meant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Do you mind my sitting beside you if I keep quiet?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Can you stand my talking about it?"
+
+"Yes. If you don't touch me."
+
+"I won't touch you. We've got to face the thing. It's making you ill."
+
+"It isn't."
+
+"What is, then?"
+
+"Living with Papa."
+
+He smiled through his agony. "That's only another name for it.
+
+"It can't go on. Why shouldn't we be happy?
+
+"Why shouldn't we?" he insisted. "It's not as if we hadn't tried."
+
+"I--can't."
+
+"You're afraid?"
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not afraid. It's simply that I can't."
+
+"You think it's a sin? It isn't. It's we who are sinned against.
+
+"If you're afraid of deceiving Mary--I don't care if I do. She
+deceived me first. Besides we can't. She knows and she doesn't mind.
+She can't suffer as you suffer. She can't feel as you feel. She can't
+care."
+
+"She does care. She must have cared horribly or she wouldn't have done
+it."
+
+"She didn't. Anybody would have done for her as well as me. I tell you
+I don't want to talk about Mary or to think about her."
+
+"Then I must."
+
+"No. You must think of me. You don't owe anything to Mary. It's me
+you're sinning against. You think a lot about sinning against Mary,
+but you think nothing about sinning against me."
+
+"When did I ever sin against you?"
+
+"Last year. When you went away. That was the beginning of it all. Why
+_did_ you go, Gwenda? You knew. We should have been all right if you
+hadn't."
+
+"I went because of Ally. She had to be married. I thought--perhaps--if
+I wasn't there----"
+
+"That I'd marry her? Good God! Ally! What on earth made you think
+I'd do that? I wouldn't have married her if there hadn't been another
+woman in the world."
+
+"I couldn't be sure. But after what you said about her I had to give
+her a chance."
+
+"What _did_ I say?"
+
+"That she'd die or go mad if somebody didn't marry her."
+
+"I never said that. I wouldn't be likely to."
+
+"But you did, dear. You frightened me. So I went away to see if that
+would make it any better."
+
+"Any better for whom?"
+
+"For Ally."
+
+"Oh--Ally. I see."
+
+"I thought if it didn't--if you didn't marry her--I could come back
+again. And when I did come back you'd married Mary."
+
+"And Mary knew that?"
+
+"There's no good bothering about Mary now."
+
+Utterly weary of their strife, she lay back and closed her eyes.
+
+"Poor Gwenda."
+
+Again he had compassion on her. He waited.
+
+"You see how it was," she said.
+
+"It doesn't help us much, dear. What are we going to do?"
+
+"Not what you want, Steven, I'm afraid."
+
+"Not now. But some day. You'll see it differently when you've thought
+of it."
+
+"Never. Never any day. I've had all these months to think of it and I
+can't see it differently yet."
+
+"You _have_ thought of it?"
+
+"Not like that."
+
+"But you did think. You knew it would come to this."
+
+"I tried not to make it come. Do you know why I tried? I don't think
+it was for Molly. It was for myself. It was because I wanted to keep
+you. That's why I shall never do what you want."
+
+"But that's how you _would_ keep me. There's no other way."
+
+She rose with a sudden gesture of her shoulders as if she shook off
+the obsession of him.
+
+She stood leaning against the chimney-piece in the attitude he knew,
+an attitude of long-limbed, insolent, adolescent grace that gave her
+the advantage. Her eyes disdained their pathos. They looked at him
+with laughter under their dropped lids.
+
+"How funny we are," she said, "when we know all the time we couldn't
+really do a caddish thing like that."
+
+He smiled queerly.
+
+"I suppose we couldn't."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He too rose and faced her.
+
+"Do you know what this means?" he said. "It means that I've got to
+clear out of this."
+
+"Oh, Steven----" The brave light in her face went out.
+
+"You wouldn't go away and leave me?"
+
+"God knows I don't want to leave you, Gwenda. But we can't go on like
+this. How can we?"
+
+"I could."
+
+"Well, I can't. That's what it means to me. That's what it means to a
+man. If we're going to be straight we simply mustn't see each other."
+
+"Do you mean for always? That we're never to see each other again?"
+
+"Yes, if it's to be any good."
+
+"Steven, I can bear anything but that. It _can't_ mean that."
+
+"I tell you it's what it means for me. There's no good talking about
+it. You've seen what I've been like tonight."
+
+"This? This is nothing. You'll get over this. But think what it would
+mean to me."
+
+"It would be hard, I know."
+
+"Hard?"
+
+"Not half so hard as this."
+
+"But I can bear this. We've been so happy. We can be happy still."
+
+"This isn't happiness."
+
+"It's _my_ happiness. It's all I've got. It's all I've ever had."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"Seeing you. Or not even seeing you. Knowing you're there."
+
+"Poor child. Does that make you happy?"
+
+"Utterly happy. Always."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+He stooped forward, hiding his face in his hands.
+
+"You don't realise it. You've no idea what it'll mean to be boxed up
+in this place together, all our lives, with this between us."
+
+"It's always been between us. We shall be no worse off. It may have
+been bad now and then, but conceive what it'll be like when you go."
+
+"I suppose it would be pretty beastly for you if I did go."
+
+"Would it be too awful for you if you stayed?"
+
+He was a long time before he answered.
+
+"Not if it really made you happier."
+
+"Happier?"
+
+She smiled her pitiful, strained smile. It said, "Don't you see that
+it would kill me if you went?"
+
+And again it was by her difference, her helplessness, that she had
+him.
+
+He too smiled drearily.
+
+"You don't suppose I really could have left you?"
+
+He saw that it was impossible, unthinkable, that he should leave her.
+
+He rose. She went with him to the door. She thought of something
+there.
+
+"Steven," she said, "don't worry about to-night. It was all my fault."
+
+"You--you," he murmured. "You're adorable."
+
+"It was really," she said. "I made you come in."
+
+She gave him her cold hand. He raised it and brushed it with his lips
+and put it from him.
+
+"Your little conscience was always too tender."
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+Two years passed.
+
+Life stirred again in the Vicarage, feebly and slowly, with the slow
+and feeble stirring of the Vicar's brain.
+
+Ten o'clock was prayer time again.
+
+Twice every Sunday the Vicar appeared in his seat in the chancel.
+Twice he pronounced the Absolution. Twice he tottered to the altar
+rails, turned, shifted his stick from his left hand to his right, and,
+with his one good arm raised, he gave the Benediction. These were the
+supreme moments of his life.
+
+Once a month, kneeling at the same altar rails, he received the bread
+and wine from the hands of his ritualistic curate, Mr. Grierson.
+
+It was his uttermost abasement.
+
+But, whether he was abased or exalted, the parish was proud of
+its Vicar. He had shown grit. His parishioners respected the
+indestructible instinct that had made him hold on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For Mr. Cartaret was better, incredibly better. He could creep about
+the house and the village without any help but his stick. He could
+wash and feed and dress himself. He had no longer any use for his
+wheel-chair. Once a week, on a Wednesday, he was driven over his
+parish in an ancient pony carriage of Peacock's. It was low enough for
+him to haul himself in and out.
+
+And he had recovered large tracts of memory, all, apparently, but
+the one spot submerged in the catastrophe that had brought about his
+stroke. He was aware of events and of their couplings and of their
+sequences in time, though the origin of some things was not clear
+to him. Thus he knew that Alice was married and living at Upthorne,
+though he had forgotten why. That she should have married Greatorex
+was a strange thing, and he couldn't think how it had happened. He
+supposed it must have happened when he was laid aside, for he would
+never have permitted it if he had known. Mary's marriage also puzzled
+him, for he had a most distinct idea that it was Gwenda who was to
+have married Rowcliffe, and he said so. But he would own humbly that
+he might be mistaken, his memory not being what it was.
+
+He had settled more or less into his state of gentleness and
+submission, broken from time to time by fits of violent irritation and
+relieved by pride, pride in his feats of independence, his comings and
+goings, his washing, his dressing and undressing of himself. Sometimes
+this pride was stubborn and insistent; sometimes it was sweet and
+joyous as a child's. His mouth, relaxed forever by his stroke, had
+acquired a smile of piteous and appealing innocence. It smiled upon
+the just and upon the unjust. It smiled even on Greatorex, whom
+socially he disapproved of (he took care to let it be known that he
+disapproved of Greatorex socially), though he tolerated him.
+
+He tolerated all persons except one. And that one was the ritualistic
+curate, Mr. Grierson.
+
+He had every reason for not tolerating him. Not only was Mr.
+Grierson a ritualist, which was only less abominable than being a
+non-conformist, but he had been foisted on him without his knowledge
+or will. The Vicar had simply waked up one day out of his confused
+twilight to a state of fearful lucidity and found the young man there.
+Worse than all it was through the third Mrs. Cartaret that he had got
+there.
+
+For the Vicar of Greffington had applied to the Additional Curates Aid
+Society for a grant on behalf of his afflicted brother, the Vicar of
+Garthdale, and he had applied in vain. There was a prejudice against
+the Vicar of Garthdale. But the Vicar of Greffington did not relax his
+efforts. He applied to young Mrs. Rowcliffe, and young Mrs. Rowcliffe
+applied to her step-mother, and not in vain. Robina, answering by
+return of post, offered to pay half the curate's salary. Rowcliffe
+made himself responsible for the other half.
+
+Robina, in her compact little house in St. John's Wood, had become the
+prey of remorse. Her conscience had begun to bother her by suggesting
+that she ought to go back to her husband now that he was helpless
+and utterly inoffensive. She ought not to leave him on poor Gwenda's
+hands. She ought, at any rate, to take her turn.
+
+But Robina couldn't face it. She couldn't leave her compact little
+house and go back to her husband. She couldn't even take her turn.
+Flesh and blood shrank from the awful sacrifice. It would be a living
+death. Your conscience has no business to send you to a living death.
+
+Robina's heart ached for poor Gwenda. She wrote and said so. She said
+she knew she was a brute for not going back to Gwenda's father. She
+would do it if she could, but she simply couldn't. She hadn't got the
+nerve.
+
+And Robina did more. She pulled wires and found the curate. That
+he was a ritualist was no drawback in Robina's eyes. In fact, she
+declared it was a positive advantage. Mr. Grierson's practices would
+wake them up in Garthdale. They needed waking. She had added that Mr.
+Grierson was well connected, well behaved and extremely good-looking.
+
+Even charity couldn't subdue the merry devil in Robina.
+
+"I can't see," said Mary reading Robina's letter, "what Mr. Grierson's
+good looks have got to do with it."
+
+Rowcliffe's face darkened. He thought he could see.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Mr. Grierson did not wake Garthdale up. It opened one astonished
+eye on his practices and turned over in its sleep again. Mr. Grierson
+was young, and the village regarded all he did as the folly of his
+youth. It saw no harm in Mr. Grierson; not even when he conceived a
+Platonic passion for Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe, and spent all his spare
+time in her drawing-room and on his way to and from it.
+
+The curate lodged in the village at the Blenkirons' over Rowcliffe's
+surgery, and from that vantage ground he lay in wait for Rowcliffe.
+He watched his movements. He was ready at any moment to fling open his
+door and spring upon Rowcliffe with ardor and enthusiasm. It was as if
+he wanted to prove to him how heartily he forgave him for being Mrs.
+Rowcliffe's husband. There was a robust innocence about him that
+ignored the doctor's irony.
+
+Mary had her own use for Mr. Grierson. His handsome figure, assiduous
+but restrained, the perfect image of integrity in adoration, was the
+very thing she wanted for her drawing-room. She knew that its presence
+there had the effect of heightening her own sensual attraction. It
+served as a reminder to Rowcliffe that his wife was a woman of charm,
+a fact which for some time he appeared to have forgotten. She could
+play off her adorer against her husband, while the candid purity
+of young Grierson's homage renewed her exquisite sense of her own
+goodness.
+
+And then the Curate really was a cousin of Lord Northfleet's and Mrs.
+Rowcliffe had calculated that to have him in her pocket would increase
+prodigiously her social value. And it did. And Mrs. Rowcliffe's social
+value, when observed by Grierson, increased his adoration.
+
+And when Rowcliffe told her that young Grierson's Platonic friendship
+wasn't good for him, she made wide eyes at him and said, "Poor boy! He
+must have _some_ amusement."
+
+She didn't suppose the curate could be much amused by calling at the
+Vicarage. Young Grierson had confided to her that he couldn't "make
+her sister out."
+
+"I never knew anybody who could," she said, and gave him a subtle look
+that disturbed him horribly.
+
+"I only meant--" He stammered and stopped, for he wasn't quite sure
+what he did mean. His fair, fresh face was strained with the effort to
+express himself.
+
+He meditated.
+
+"You know, she's really rather fascinating. You can't help looking at
+her. Only--she doesn't seem to see that you're there. I suppose that's
+what puts you off."
+
+"I know. It does, dreadfully," said Mary.
+
+She summoned a flash and let him have it. "But she's magnificent."
+
+"Magnificent!" he echoed with his robust enthusiasm.
+
+But what he thought was that it was magnificent of Mrs. Rowcliffe to
+praise her sister.
+
+And Rowcliffe smiled grimly at young Grierson and his Platonic
+passion. He said to himself, "If I'd only known. If I'd only had the
+sense to wait six months. Grierson would have done just as well for
+Molly."
+
+Still, though Grierson had come too late, he welcomed him and his
+Platonic passion. It wasn't good for Grierson but it was good for
+Molly. At least, he supposed it was better for her than nothing. And
+for him it was infinitely better. It kept Grierson off Gwenda.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Young Grierson was right when he said that Gwenda didn't see that he
+was there. He had been two years in Garthdale and she was as far
+from seeing it as ever. He didn't mind; he was even amused by her
+indifference, only he couldn't help thinking that it was rather odd of
+her, considering that he _was_ there.
+
+The village, as simple in its thinking as young Grierson, shared his
+view. It thought that it was something more than odd. And it had a
+suspicion that Mrs. Rowcliffe was at the bottom of it. She wouldn't
+be happy if she didn't get that young man away from her sister. The
+village hinted that it wouldn't be for the first time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But in two years, with the gradual lifting of the pressure that had
+numbed her, Gwenda had become aware. Not of young Grierson, but of
+her own tragedy, of the slow life that dragged her, of its
+relentless motion and its mass. Now that her father's need of her was
+intermittent she was alive to the tightness of the tie. It had been
+less intolerable when it had bound her tighter; when she hadn't had
+a moment; when it had dragged her all the time. Its slackening was
+torture. She pulled then, and was jerked on her chain.
+
+It was not only that Rowcliffe's outburst had waked her and made
+her cruelly aware. He had timed it badly, in her moment of revived
+lucidity, the moment when she had become vulnerable again. She was the
+more sensitive because of her previous apathy, as if she had died and
+was new-born to suffering and virgin to pain.
+
+What hurt her most was her father's gentleness. She could stand his
+fits of irritation and obstinacy; they braced her, they called forth
+her will. But she was defenseless against his pathos, and he knew it.
+He had phrases that wrung her heart. "You're a good girl, Gwenda."
+"I'm only an irritable old man, my dear. You mustn't mind what I say."
+She suffered from the incessant drain on her pity; for she wanted all
+her will if she was to stand against Rowcliffe. Pity was a dangerous
+solvent in which her will sank and was melted away.
+
+There were moments when she saw herself as two women. One had still
+the passion and the memory of freedom. The other was a cowed and
+captive creature who had forgotten; whose cramped motions guided her;
+whose instinct of submission she abhorred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her isolation was now extreme. She had had nothing to give to any
+friends she might have made. Rowcliffe had taken all that was left
+of her. And now, when intercourse was possible, it was they who had
+withdrawn. They shared Mr. Grierson's inability to make her out. They
+had heard rumors; they imagined things; they remembered also. She was
+the girl who had raced all over the country with Dr. Rowcliffe, the
+girl whom Dr. Rowcliffe, for all their racing, had not cared to marry.
+She was the girl who had run away from home to live with a dubious
+step-mother; and she was the sister of that awful Mrs. Greatorex,
+who--well, everybody knew what Mrs. Greatorex was.
+
+Gwenda Cartaret, like her younger sister, had been talked about. Not
+so much in the big houses of the Dale. The queer facts had been tossed
+up and down a smokeroom for one season and then dropped. In the big
+houses they didn't remember Gwenda Cartaret. They only remembered to
+forget her.
+
+But in the little shops and in the little houses in Morfe there had
+been continual whispering. They said that even after Dr. Rowcliffe's
+marriage to that nice wife of his, who was her own sister, the two
+had been carrying on. If there wasn't any actual harm done, and maybe
+there wasn't, the doctor had been running into danger. He was up at
+Garthdale more than he need be now that the old Vicar was about again.
+And they had been seen together. The head gamekeeper at Garthdale had
+caught them more than once out on the moor, and after dark too. It was
+said in the little houses that it wasn't the doctor's fault. (In the
+big houses judgment had been more impartial, but Morfe was loyal
+to its doctor.) It was hers, every bit, you might depend on it. Of
+Rowcliffe it was said that maybe he'd been tempted, but he was a good
+man, was Dr. Rowcliffe, and he'd stopped in time. Because they didn't
+know what Gwenda Cartaret was capable of, they believed, like the
+Vicar, that she was capable of anything.
+
+It was only in her own village that they knew. The head gamekeeper had
+never told his tale in Garth. It would have made him too unpopular.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gwenda Cartaret remained unaware of what was said. Rumor protected her
+by cutting her off from its own sources.
+
+And she had other consolations besides her ignorance. So long as she
+knew that Rowcliffe cared for her and always had cared, it did not
+seem to matter to her so much that he had married Mary. She actually
+considered that, of the two, Mary was the one to be pitied; it was so
+infinitely worse to be married to a man who didn't care for you than
+not to be married to a man who did.
+
+Of course, there was the tie. Her sister had outward and visible
+possession of him. But she said to herself "I wouldn't give what I
+have for _that,_ if I can't have both."
+
+And of course there was Steven, and Steven's misery which was more
+unbearable to her than her own. At least she thought it was more
+unbearable. She didn't ask herself how bearable it would have been if
+Steven's marriage had brought him a satisfaction that denied her and
+cast her out.
+
+For she was persuaded that Steven also had his consolation. He knew
+that she cared for him. She conceived this knowledge of theirs as
+constituting an immaterial and immutable possession of each other.
+And it did not strike her that this knowledge might be less richly
+compensating to Steven than to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her woman's passion, forced inward, sustained her with an inward
+peace, an inward exaltation. And in this peace, this exaltation, it
+became one with her passion for the place.
+
+She was unaware of what was happening in her. She did not know that
+her soul had joined the two beyond its own power to put asunder. She
+still looked on her joy in the earth as a solitary emotion untouched
+by any other. She still said to herself "Nothing can take this away
+from me."
+
+For she had hours, now and again, when she shook off the slave-woman
+who held her down. In those hours her inner life moved with the large
+rhythm of the seasons and was soaked in the dyes of the visible
+world; and the visible world, passing into her inner life, took on its
+radiance and intensity. Everything that happened and that was great
+and significant in its happening, happened there.
+
+Outside nothing happened; nothing stood out; nothing moved. No
+procession of events trod down or blurred her perfect impressions of
+the earth and sky. They eternalised themselves in memory. They became
+her memory.
+
+The days were carved for her in the lines of the hills and painted
+for her in their colors; days that were dim green and gray, when
+the dreaming land was withdrawn under a veil so fine that it had the
+transparency of water, or when the stone walls, the humble houses and
+the high ramparts, drenched with mist and with secret sunlight, became
+insubstantial; days when all the hills were hewn out of one opal; days
+that had the form of Karva under snow, and the thin blues and violets
+of the snow. She remembered purely, without thinking, "It was in April
+that I went away from Steven," or, "It was in November that he married
+Mary," or "It was in February that we knew about Ally, and Father had
+his stroke."
+
+Her nature was sound and sane; it refused to brood over suffering. She
+was not like Alice and in her unlikeness she lacked some of Alice's
+resources. She couldn't fling herself on to a Polonaise of a Sonata
+any more than she could lie on a couch all day and look at her own
+white hands and dream. Her passion found no outlet in creating violent
+and voluptuous sounds. It was passive, rather, and attentive. Cut
+off from all contacts of the flesh, it turned to the distant and the
+undreamed. Its very senses became infinitely subtle; they discerned
+the hidden soul of the land that had entranced her.
+
+There were no words for this experience. She had no sense of self
+in it and needed none. It seemed to her that she _was_ what she
+contemplated, as if all her senses were fused together in the sense of
+seeing and what her eyes saw they heard and touched and felt.
+
+But when she came to and saw herself seeing, she said, "At least this
+is mine. Nobody, not even Steven, can take it away from me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She also reminded herself that she had Alice.
+
+She meant Alice Greatorex. Alice Cartaret, oppressed by her own
+"awfulness," had loved her with a sullen selfish love, the love of
+a frustrated and unhappy child. But there was no awfulness in Alice
+Greatorex. In the fine sanity of happiness she showed herself as good
+as gold.
+
+Marriage, that had made Mary hard, made Alice tender. Mary was wrapped
+up in her husband and her house, and in her social relations and young
+Grierson's Platonic passion, so tightly wrapped that these things
+formed round her an impenetrable shell. They hid a secret and
+inaccessible Mary.
+
+Alice was wrapped up in her husband and children, in the boy of
+three who was so like Gwenda, and in the baby girl who was so like
+Greatorex. But through them she had become approachable. She had the
+ways of some happy household animal, its quick rushes of affection,
+and its gaze, the long, spiritual gaze of its maternity, mysterious
+and appealing. She loved Gwenda with a sad-eyed, remorseful love. She
+said to herself, "If I hadn't been so awful, Gwenda might have married
+Steven." She saw the appalling extent of Gwenda's sacrifice. She saw
+it as it was, monstrous, absurd, altogether futile.
+
+It was the futility of it that troubled Alice most. Even if Gwenda
+had been capable of sacrificing herself for Mary, which had been by
+no means her intention, that would have been futile too. Alice was of
+Rowcliffe's opinion that young Grierson would have done every bit as
+well for Mary.
+
+Better, for Mary had no children.
+
+"And how," said Alice, "could she expect to have them?"
+
+She saw in Mary's childlessness not only God's but Nature's justice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were moments when Mary saw it too. But she left God out of it
+and called it Nature's cruelty.
+
+If it was not really Gwenda. For in flashes of extreme lucidity Mary
+put it down to Rowcliffe's coldness.
+
+And she had come to know that Gwenda was responsible for that.
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+But one day in April, in the fourth year of her marriage, Mary sent
+for Gwenda.
+
+Rowcliffe was out on his rounds. She had thought of that. She was fond
+of having Gwenda with her in Rowcliffe's absence, when she could talk
+to her about him in a way that assumed his complete indifference to
+Gwenda and utter devotion to herself. Gwenda was used to this habit of
+Mary's and thought nothing of it.
+
+She found her in Rowcliffe's study, the room that she knew better than
+any other in his house. The window was closed. The panes cut up the
+colors of the orchard and framed them in small squares.
+
+Mary received her with a gentle voice and a show of tenderness. She
+said very little. They had tea together, and when Gwenda would have
+gone Mary kept her.
+
+She still said very little. She seemed to brood over some happy
+secret.
+
+Presently she spoke. She told her secret.
+
+And when she had told it she turned her eyes to Gwenda with a look of
+subtle penetration and of triumph.
+
+"At last," she said,--"After three years."
+
+And she added, "I knew you would be glad."
+
+"I _am_ glad," said Gwenda.
+
+She _was_ glad. She was determined to be glad. She looked glad. And
+she kissed Mary and said again that she was very glad.
+
+But as she walked back the four miles up Garthdale under Karva, she
+felt an aching at her heart which was odd considering how glad she
+was.
+
+She said to herself, "I _will_ be glad. I want Mary to be happy. Why
+shouldn't I be glad? It's not as if it could make any difference."
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+In September Mary sent for her again.
+
+Mary was very ill. She lay on her bed, and Rowcliffe and her sister
+stood on either side of her. She gazed from one to the other with eyes
+of terror and entreaty. It was as if she cried out to them--the two
+who were so strong--to help her. She stretched out her arms on
+the counterpane, one arm toward each of them; her little hands,
+palm-upward, implored them.
+
+Each of them laid a hand in Mary's hand that closed on it with a
+clutch of agony.
+
+Rowcliffe had sat up all night with her. His face was white and
+haggard and there was fear and misery in his eyes. They never looked
+at Gwenda's lest they should see the same fear and the same misery
+there. It was as if they had no love for each other, only a profound
+and secret pity that sprang in both of them from their fear.
+
+Only once they found each other, outside on the landing, when they
+had left Mary alone with Hyslop, the old doctor from Reyburn, and the
+nurse. Each spoke once.
+
+"Steven, is there really any danger?"
+
+"Yes. I wish to God I'd had Harker. Do you mind sending him a wire? I
+must go and see what that fool Hyslop's doing."
+
+He turned back again into the room.
+
+Gwenda went out and sent the wire.
+
+But at noon, before Harker could come to them, it was over. Mary lay
+as Alice had lain, weak and happy, with her child tucked in the crook
+of her arm. And she smiled at it dreamily.
+
+The old doctor and the nurse smiled at Rowcliffe.
+
+It couldn't, they said, have gone off more easily. There hadn't been
+any danger, nor any earthly reason to have sent for Harker. Though, of
+course, if it had made Rowcliffe happier--!
+
+The old doctor added that if it had been anybody else's wife Rowcliffe
+would have known that it was going all right.
+
+And in the evening, when her sister stood again at her bedside, as
+Mary lifted the edge of the flannel that hid her baby's face, she
+looked at Gwenda and smiled, not dreamily but subtly in a triumph that
+was almost malign.
+
+That night Gwenda dreamed that she saw Mary lying dead and with a dead
+child in the crook of her arm.
+
+She woke in anguish and terror.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+Three years passed and six months. The Cartarets had been in Garthdale
+nine years.
+
+Gwenda Cartaret sat in the dining-room at the Vicarage alone with her
+father.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock of the March evening. They waited for the
+striking of the clock. It would be prayer time then, and after prayers
+the Vicar would drag himself upstairs to bed, and in the peace
+that slid into the room when he left it Gwenda would go on with her
+reading.
+
+She had her sewing in her lap and her book, Bergson's _Évolution
+créatrice_ propped open before her on the table. She sewed as she
+read. For the Vicar considered that sewing was an occupation and that
+reading was not. He was silent as long as his daughter sewed and
+when she read he talked. Toward ten his silence would be broken by a
+continual sighing and yearning. The Vicar longed for prayer time to
+come and end his day. But he had decreed that prayer time was ten
+o'clock and he would not have permitted it to come a minute sooner.
+
+He nursed a book on his knees, but he made no pretence of reading
+it. He had taken off his glasses and sat with his hands folded, in an
+attitude of utter resignation to his own will.
+
+In the kitchen Essy Gale sat by the dying fire and waited for the
+stroke of ten. And as she waited she stitched at the torn breeches of
+her little son.
+
+Essy had come back to the house where she had been turned away. For
+her mother was wanted by Mrs. Greatorex at Upthorne and what Mrs.
+Greatorex wanted she got. There were two more children now at the Farm
+and work enough for three women in the house. And Essy, with all her
+pride, had not been too proud to come back. She had no feeling but
+pity for the old man, her master, who had bullied her and put her to
+shame. If it pleased God to afflict him that was God's affair, and,
+even as a devout Wesleyan, Essy considered that God had about done
+enough.
+
+As Essy sat and stitched, she smiled, thinking of Greatorex's son who
+lay in her bed in the little room over the kitchen. Miss Gwenda let
+her have him with her on the nights when Mrs. Gale slept up at the
+Farm.
+
+It was quiet in the Vicarage kitchen. The door into the back yard was
+shut, the door that Essy used to keep open when she listened for a
+footstep and a whisper. That door had betrayed her many a time when
+the wind slammed it to.
+
+Essy's heart was quiet as the heart of her sleeping child. She had
+forgotten how madly it had leaped to her lover's footsteps, how it
+had staggered at the slamming of the door. She had forgotten the tears
+that she had shed when Alice's wild music had rocked the house, and
+what the Vicar had said to her that night when she spilled the glass
+of water in the study.
+
+But she remembered that Gwenda had given her son his first little
+Sunday suit; and that, before Jimmy came, when Essy was in bed, crying
+with the face-ache, she had knocked at her door and said, "What is it,
+Essy? Can I do anything for you?" She could hear her saying it now.
+
+Essy's memory was like that.
+
+She had thought of Gwenda just then because she heard the sound of Dr.
+Rowcliffe's motor car tearing up the Dale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The woman in the other room heard it too. She had heard its horn
+hooting on the moor road nearly a mile away.
+
+She raised her hand and listened. It hooted again, once, twice,
+placably, at the turning of the road, under Karva. She shivered at the
+sound.
+
+It hooted irritably, furiously, as the car tore through the village.
+Its lamps swung a shaft of light over the low garden wall.
+
+At the garden gate the car made a shuddering pause.
+
+Gwenda's face and all her body listened. A little unborn, undying hope
+quivered in her heart always at that pausing of the car at her gate.
+
+It hardly gave her time for one heart-beat before she heard the
+grinding of the gear as the car took the steep hill to Upthorne.
+
+But she was always taken in by it. She had always that insane hope
+that the course of things had changed and that Steven had really
+stopped at the gate and was coming to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It _was_ insanity, for she knew that Rowcliffe would never come to see
+her in the evening now. After his outburst, more than five years ago,
+there was no use pretending to each other that they were safe. He had
+told her plainly that, if she wanted him to hold out, he must never be
+long alone with her at any time, and he must give up coming to see her
+late at night. It was much too risky.
+
+"When I can come and see you _that_ way," he had said, "it'll mean
+that I've left off caring. But I'll look in every Wednesday if I can.
+Every Wednesday as long as I live."
+
+He _had_ come now and then, not on a Wednesday, but "that way." He had
+not been able to help it. But he had left longer and longer intervals
+between. And he had never come ("that way") since last year, when his
+second child was born.
+
+Nothing but life or death would bring Rowcliffe out in his car after
+nightfall. Yet the thing had her every time. And it was as if her
+heart was ground with the grinding and torn with the tearing of the
+car.
+
+Then she said to herself, "I must end it somehow. It's horrible to go
+on caring like this. He was right. It would be better not to see him
+at all."
+
+And she began counting the days and the hours till Wednesday when she
+would see him.
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+Wednesday was still the Vicar's day for visiting his parish. It was
+also Rowcliffe's day for visiting his daughter. But the Vicar was not
+going to change it on that account. On Wednesday, if it was a fine
+afternoon, she was always sure of having Rowcliffe to herself.
+
+Rowcliffe himself had become the creature of unalterable habit.
+
+She was conscious now of the normal pulse of time, a steady pulse that
+beat with a large rhythm, a measure of seven days, from Wednesday to
+Wednesday.
+
+She filled the days between with reading and walking and parish work.
+
+There had been changes in Garthdale. Mr. Grierson had got married in
+one of his bursts of enthusiasm and had gone away. His place had been
+taken by Mr. Macey, the strenuous son of a Durlingham grocer. Mr.
+Macey had got into the Church by sheer strenuousness and had married,
+strenuously, a sharp and sallow wife. Between them they left very
+little parish work for Gwenda.
+
+She had become a furious reader. She liked hard stuff that her brain
+could bite on. It fell on a book and gutted it, throwing away the
+trash. She read all the modern poets and novelists she cared about,
+English and foreign. They left her stimulated but unsatisfied. There
+were not enough good ones to keep her going. She worked through the
+Elizabethan dramatists and all the Vicar's Tudor Classics, and came
+on Jowett's Translations of the Platonic Dialogues by the way, and
+was lured on the quest of Ultimate Reality, and found that there
+was nothing like Thought to keep you from thinking. She took to
+metaphysics as you take to dram-drinking. She must have strong, heavy
+stuff that drugged her brain. And when she found that she could trust
+her intellect she set it deliberately to fight her passion.
+
+At first it was an even match, for Gwenda's intellect, like her body,
+was robust. It generally held its ground from Thursday morning till
+Tuesday night. But the night that followed Wednesday afternoon would
+see its overthrow.
+
+This Wednesday it fought gallantly till the very moment of Steven's
+arrival. She was still reading Bergson, and her brain struggled to
+make out the sense and rhythm of the sentences across the beating of
+her heart.
+
+After seven years her heart still beat at Steven's coming.
+
+It remained an excitement and adventure, for she never knew how
+he would be. Sometimes he hadn't a word to say to her and left her
+miserable. Sometimes, after a hard day's work, he would be tired
+and heavy; she saw him middle-aged and her heart would ache for him.
+Sometimes he would be young almost as he used to be. She knew that
+he was only young for her. He was young because he loved her. She had
+never seen him so with Mary. Sometimes he would be formal and frigid.
+He talked to her as a man talks to a woman he is determined to keep
+at a distance. She hated Steven then, as passion hates. He had come
+before now in a downright bad temper and was the old, irritable Steven
+who found fault with everything she said and did. And she had loved
+him for it as she had loved the old Steven. It was his queer way of
+showing that he loved her.
+
+But he had not been like that for a very long time. He had grown
+gentler as he had grown older.
+
+To-day he showed her more than one of his familiar moods. She took
+them gladly as so many signs of his unchanging nature.
+
+He still kept up his way of coming in, the careful closing of the
+door, the slight pause there by the threshold, the look that sought
+her and that held her for an instant before their hands met.
+
+She saw it still as the look that pleaded with her while it caressed
+her, that said, "I know we oughtn't to be so pleased to see each
+other, but we can't help it, can we?"
+
+It was the look of his romantic youth.
+
+As long as she saw it there it was nothing to her that Rowcliffe had
+changed physically, that he moved more heavily, that his keenness and
+his slenderness were going, that she saw also a slight thickening of
+his fine nose, a perceptible slackening of the taut muscles of his
+mouth, and a decided fulness about his jaw and chin. She saw all these
+things; but she did not see that his romantic youth lay dying in the
+pathos of his eyes and that if it pleaded still it pleaded forgiveness
+for the sin of dying.
+
+His hand fell slackly from hers as she took it.
+
+It was as if they were still on their guard, still afraid of each
+other's touch.
+
+As he sat in the chair that faced hers he held his hands clasped
+loosely in front of him, and looked at them with a curious attention,
+as if he wondered what kind of hands they were that could resist
+holding her.
+
+When he saw that she was looking at him they fell apart with a nervous
+gesture.
+
+They picked up the book she had laid down and turned it. His eyes
+examined the title page. Their pathos lightened and softened; it
+became compassion; they smiled at her with a little pitiful smile,
+half tender, half ironic, as if they said, "Poor Gwenda, is that what
+you're driven to?"
+
+He opened the book and turned the pages, reading a little here and
+there.
+
+He scowled. His look changed. It darkened. It was angry, resentful,
+inimical. The dying youth in it came a little nearer to death.
+
+Rowcliffe had found that he could not understand what he had read.
+
+"Huh! What do you addle your brains with that stuff for?" he said.
+
+"It amuses me."
+
+"Oh--so long as you're amused."
+
+He pushed away the book that had offended him.
+
+They talked--about the Vicar, about Alice, about Rowcliffe's children,
+about the changes in the Dale, the coming of the Maceys and the going
+of young Grierson.
+
+"He wasn't a bad chap, Grierson."
+
+He softened, remembering Grierson.
+
+"I can't think why you didn't care about him."
+
+And at the thought of how Gwenda might have cared for Grierson and
+hadn't cared his youth revived; it came back into his eyes and lit
+them; it passed into his scowling face and caressed and smoothed it to
+the perfect look of reminiscent satisfaction. Rowcliffe did not know,
+neither did she, how his egoism hung upon her passion, how it drew
+from it food and fire.
+
+He raised his head and squared his shoulders with the unconscious
+gesture of his male pride.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was then that she saw for the first time that he wore the black tie
+and had the black band of mourning on his sleeve.
+
+"Oh Steven--what do you wear that for?"
+
+"This? My poor old uncle died last week."
+
+"Not the one I saw?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"At Mary's wedding."
+
+"No. Another one. My father's brother."
+
+He paused.
+
+"It's made a great difference to me and Mary."
+
+He said it gravely, mournfully almost. She looked at him with tender
+eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry, Steven."
+
+He smiled faintly.
+
+"Sorry, are you?"
+
+"Yes. If you cared for him."
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't very much. It's not as if I'd seen a lot of him."
+
+"You said it's made a difference."
+
+"So it has. He's left me a good four hundred a year."
+
+"Oh--_that_ sort of difference."
+
+"My dear girl, four hundred a year makes all the difference; it's no
+use pretending that it doesn't."
+
+"I'm not pretending. You sounded sorry and I was sorry for you. That
+was all."
+
+At that his egoism winced. It was as if she had accused him of
+pretending to be sorry.
+
+He looked at her sharply. His romantic youth died in that look.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silence fell between them. But she was used to that. She even welcomed
+it. Steven's silences brought him nearer to her than his speech.
+
+Essy came in with the tea-tray.
+
+He lingered uneasily after the meal, glancing now and then at the
+clock. She was used to that, too. She also had her eyes on the clock,
+measuring the priceless moments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is anything worrying you, Steven?" she said presently.
+
+"Why? Do I look worried?"
+
+"Not exactly, but you don't look well."
+
+"I'm getting a bit rusty. That's what's the matter with me. I want
+some hard work to rub me up and put a polish on me and I can't get
+it here. I've never had enough to do since I left Leeds. Harker was a
+wise chap to stick to it. It would do me all the good in the world if
+I went back."
+
+"Then," she said, "you'll _have_ to go, Steven."
+
+She did not know, in her isolation, that Rowcliffe had been going
+about saying that sort of thing for the last seven years. She thought
+it was the formidable discovery of time.
+
+"You ought to go if you feel like that about it. Why don't you?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You _do_ know."
+
+She did not look at him as she spoke, so she missed his bewilderment.
+
+"You know why you stayed, Steven."
+
+He understood. He remembered. The dull red of his face flushed with
+the shock of the memory.
+
+"Do I?" he said.
+
+"I made you."
+
+His flush darkened. But he gave no other sign of having heard her.
+
+"I don't know why I'm staying now."
+
+He rose and looked at his watch.
+
+"I must be going home," he said.
+
+He turned at the threshold.
+
+"I forgot to give you Mary's message. She sent her love and she wants
+to know when you're coming again to see the babies."
+
+"Oh--some day soon."
+
+"You must make it very soon or they won't be babies any more. She's
+dying to show them to you."
+
+"She showed them to me the other day."
+
+"She says it's ages since you've been. And if she says it is she
+thinks it is."
+
+Gwenda was silent.
+
+"I'm coming all right, tell her."
+
+"Well, but what day? We'd better fix it. Don't come on a Tuesday or a
+Friday, I'll be out."
+
+"I must come when I can."
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+She went on a Tuesday.
+
+She had had tea with her father first. Meal-time had become sacred to
+the Vicar and he hated her to be away for any one of them.
+
+She walked the four miles, going across the moor under Karva and
+loitering by the way, and it was past six before she reached Morfe.
+
+She was shown into the room that was once Rowcliffe's study. It had
+been Mary's drawing-room ever since last year when the second child
+was born and they turned the big room over the dining-room into a
+day nursery. Mary had made it snug and gay with cushions and shining,
+florid chintzes. There were a great many things in rosewood and brass;
+a piano took the place of Rowcliffe's writing table; a bureau and a
+cabinet stood against the wall where his bookcases had been; and a
+tall palm-tree in a pot filled the little window that looked on to the
+orchard.
+
+She had only to close her eyes and shut out these objects and she
+saw the room as it used to be. She closed them now and instantly she
+opened them again, for the vision hurt her.
+
+She went restlessly about the room, picking up things and looking at
+them without seeing them.
+
+In the room upstairs she heard the cries of Rowcliffe's children,
+bumping and the scampering of feet. She stood still then and clenched
+her hands. The pain at her heart was like no other pain. It was as if
+she hated Rowcliffe's children.
+
+Presently she would have to go up and see them.
+
+She waited. Mary was taking her own time.
+
+Upstairs the doors opened and shut on the sharp grief of little
+children carried unwillingly to bed.
+
+Gwenda's heart melted and grew tender at the sound. But its tenderness
+was more unbearable to her than its pain.
+
+The maid-servant came to the door.
+
+"Mrs. Rowcliffe says will you please go upstairs to the night nursery,
+Miss Gwenda. She can't leave the children."
+
+That was the message Mary invariably sent. She left the children for
+hours together when other visitors were there. She could never leave
+them for a minute when her sister came. Unless Steven happened to be
+in. Then Mary would abandon whatever she was doing and hurry to the
+two. In the last year Gwenda had never found herself alone with Steven
+for ten minutes in his house. If Mary couldn't come at once she sent
+the nurse in with the children.
+
+Upstairs in the night nursery Mary sat in the nurse's low chair.
+Her year-old baby sprawled naked in her lap. The elder infant stood
+whining under the nurse's hands.
+
+Mary had changed a little in three and a half years. She was broader
+and stouter; the tender rose had hardened over her high cheek bones.
+Her face still kept its tranquil brooding, but her slow gray eyes had
+a secret tremor, they were almost alert, as if she were on the watch.
+
+And Mary's mouth, with its wide, turned back lips, had lost its
+subtlety, it had coarsened slightly and loosened, under her senses'
+continual content.
+
+Gwenda brushed Mary's mouth lightly with the winged arch of her upper
+lip. Mary laughed.
+
+"You don't know how to kiss," she said. "If you're going to treat Baby
+that way, and Molly too--"
+
+Gwenda stooped over the soft red down of the baby's head. To Gwenda it
+was as if her heart kept her hands off Rowcliffe's children, as if
+her flesh shrank from their flesh while her lips brushed theirs in
+tenderness and repulsion.
+
+But seeing them was always worse in anticipation than reality.
+
+For there was no trace of Rowcliffe in his children. The little
+red-haired, white-faced things were all Cartaret. Molly, the elder,
+had a look of Ally, sullen and sickly, as if some innermost reluctance
+had held back the impulse that had given it being. Even the younger
+child showed fragile as if implacable memory had come between it and
+perfect life.
+
+Gwenda did not know why her fierceness was appeased by this
+unlikeness, nor why she wanted to see Mary and nothing but Mary in
+Rowcliffe's children, nor why she refused to think of them as his;
+she only knew that to see Rowcliffe in Mary's children would have been
+more than her flesh and blood could bear.
+
+"You've come just in time to see Baby in her bath," said Mary.
+
+"I seem to be always in time for that."
+
+"Well, you're not in time to see Steven. He won't be home till nine at
+least."
+
+"I didn't expect to see him. He told me he'd be out."
+
+She saw the hidden watcher in Mary's eyes looking out at her.
+
+"When did he tell you that?"
+
+"Last Wednesday."
+
+The watcher hid again, suddenly appeased.
+
+Mary busied herself with the washing of her babies. She did it
+thoroughly and efficiently, with no sentimental tendernesses, but with
+soft, sensual pattings and strokings of the white, satin-smooth skins.
+
+And when they were tucked into their cots and disposed of for the
+night Mary turned to Gwenda.
+
+"Come into my room a minute," she said.
+
+Mary's joy was to take her sister into her room and watch her to see
+if she would flinch before the signs of Steven's occupation. She drew
+her attention to these if Gwenda seemed likely to miss any of them.
+
+"We've had the beds turned," she said. "The light hurt Steven's eyes.
+I can't say I like sleeping with my head out in the middle of the
+room."
+
+"Why don't you lie the other way then?"
+
+"My dear, Steven wouldn't like that. Oh, what a mess my hair's in!"
+
+She turned to the glass and smoothed her disordered waves and coils,
+while she kept her eyes fixed on Gwenda's image there, appraising her
+clothes, her slenderness and straightness, the set of her head on her
+shoulders, the air that she kept up of almost insolent adolescence.
+She noted the delicate lines on her forehead and at the corners of her
+eyes; she saw that her small defiant face was still white and firm,
+and that her eyes looked violet blue with the dark shadows under them.
+
+Time was the only power that had been good to Gwenda.
+
+"She ought to look more battered," Mary thought. "She _does_ carry it
+off well. And she's only two years younger than I am.
+
+"It's her figure, really, not her face. She's got more lines than I
+have. But if I wore that long straight coat I should look awful in
+it."
+
+"It's all very well for you," she said. "You haven't had two
+children."
+
+"No. I haven't. But what's all very well?"
+
+"The good looks you contrive to keep, my dear. Nobody would know you
+were thirty-three."
+
+"_I_ shouldn't, Molly, if you didn't remind me every time."
+
+Mary flushed.
+
+"You'll say next that's why you don't come."
+
+"Why--I--don't come?"
+
+"Yes. It's ages since you've been here."
+
+That was always Mary's cry.
+
+"I haven't much time, Molly, for coming on the off-chance."
+
+"The off chance! As if I'd never asked you! You can go to Alice."
+
+"Poor Ally wouldn't have anybody to show the baby to if I didn't. You
+haven't seen one of Ally's babies."
+
+"I can't, Gwenda. I must think of the children. I can't let them grow
+up with little Greatorexes. There are three of them, aren't there?"
+
+"Didn't you know there's been another?"
+
+"Steven _did_ tell me. She had rather a bad time, hadn't she?"
+
+"She had. Molly--it wouldn't do you any harm now to go and see her.
+I think it's horrid of you not to. It's such rotten humbug. Why, you
+used to say _I_ was ten times more awful than poor little Ally."
+
+"There are moments, Gwenda, when I think you are."
+
+"Moments? You always did think it. You think it still. And yet
+you'll have me here but you won't have her. Just because she's gone a
+technical howler and I haven't."
+
+"You haven't. But you'd have gone a worse one if you'd had the
+chance."
+
+Gwenda raised her head.
+
+"You know, Molly, that that isn't true."
+
+"I said if. I suppose you think you had your chance, then?"
+
+"I don't think anything. Except that I've got to go."
+
+"You haven't. You're going to stay for dinner now you're here."
+
+"I can't, really, Mary."
+
+But Mary was obstinate. Whether her sister stayed or went she made it
+hard for her. She kept it up on the stairs and at the door and at the
+garden gate.
+
+"Perhaps you'll come some night when Steven's here. You know he's
+always glad to see you."
+
+The sting of it was in Mary's watching eyes. For, when you came to
+think of it, there was nothing else she could very well have said.
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+That year, when spring warmed into summer, Gwenda's strength went from
+her.
+
+She was always tired. She fought with her fatigue and got the better
+of it, but in a week or two it returned. Rowcliffe told her to
+rest and she rested, for a day or two, lying on the couch in the
+dining-room where Ally used to lie, and when she felt better she
+crawled out on to the moor and lay there.
+
+One day she said to herself, "There's Ally. I'll go and see how she's
+getting on."
+
+She dragged herself up the hill to Upthorne.
+
+It was a day of heat and hidden sunlight. The moor and the marshes
+were drenched in the gray June mist. The hillside wore soft vapor like
+a cloak hiding its nakedness.
+
+At the top of the Three Fields the nave of the old barn showed as
+if lifted up and withdrawn into the distance. But it was no longer
+solitary. The thorn-tree beside it had burst into white flower; it
+shimmered far-off under the mist in the dim green field, like a magic
+thing, half-hidden and about to disappear, remaining only for the hour
+of its enchantment.
+
+It gave her the same subtle and mysterious joy that she had had on
+the night she and Rowcliffe walked together and saw the thorn-trees on
+Greffington Edge white under the hidden moon.
+
+The gray Farm-house was changed, for Jim Greatorex had got on. He
+had built himself another granary on the north side of the mistal. He
+built it long and low, of hewn stone, with a corrugated iron roof. And
+he had made himself two fine new rooms, a dining-room and a nursery,
+one above the other, within the blind walls of the house where the old
+granary had been. The walls were blind no longer, for he had knocked
+four large windows out of them. And it was as if one-half of the house
+were awake and staring while the other half, in its old and alien
+beauty, dozed and dreamed under its scowling mullions.
+
+As Gwenda came to it she wondered how the Farm could ever have seemed
+sinister and ghost-haunted; it had become so entirely the place of
+happy life.
+
+Loud noises came from the open windows of the dining-room where the
+family were at tea; the barking of dogs, the competitive laughter of
+small children, a gurgling and crowing and spluttering; with now and
+then the sudden delicate laughter of Ally and the bellowing of Jim.
+
+"Oh--there's Gwenda!" said Ally.
+
+Jim stopped between a bellowing and a choking, for his mouth was full.
+
+"Ay--it's 'er."
+
+He washed down his mouthful. "Coom, Ally, and open door t' 'er."
+
+But Ally did not come. She had her year-old baby on her knees and was
+feeding him.
+
+At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the
+hand.
+
+"Thot's right," he said. "Yo've joost coom in time for a cup o' tae.
+T' misses is in there wi' t' lil uns."
+
+He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.
+
+Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been. He had lost his
+savage grace. But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he
+still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.
+
+Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed. "I
+can't get up," she said, "I'm feeding Baby. He'd howl if I left off."
+
+"I'd let 'im howl. I'd spank him ef 'twas me," said Jim.
+
+"He wouldn't, Gwenda."
+
+"Ay, thot I would. An' 'e knows it, doos Johnny, t' yoong rascal."
+
+Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and
+little Steven and the baby John. They lifted little sticky faces and
+wiped them on Gwenda's face, and the happy din went on.
+
+Ally didn't seem to mind it. She had grown plump and pink and rather
+like Mary without her subtlety. She sat smiling, tranquil among the
+cries of her offspring.
+
+Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline. He and
+Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained. Now
+and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that
+the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come
+up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz
+cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.
+
+"And Baby's got another tooth," said Ally.
+
+"I'm breaakin' in t' yoong chestnut," said Jim. "Poor Daasy's gettin'
+paasst 'er work."
+
+All these happenings were exciting and wonderful to Ally.
+
+"But you're not interested, Gwenda."
+
+"I am, darling, I am."
+
+She was. Ally knew it but she wanted perpetual reassurance.
+
+"But you never tell us anything."
+
+"There's nothing to tell. Nothing happens."
+
+"Oh, come," said Ally, "how's Papa?"
+
+"Much the same except that he drove into Morfe yesterday to see
+Molly."
+
+"Yes, darling, of course you may."
+
+Ally was abstracted, for Gwenny had slipped from her chair and was
+whispering in her ear.
+
+It never occurred to Ally to ask what Gwenda had been doing, or what
+she had been thinking of, or what she felt, or to listen to anything
+she had to say.
+
+Her sister might just as well not have existed for all the interest
+Ally showed in her. She hadn't really forgotten what Gwenda had done
+for her, but she couldn't go on thinking about it forever. It was the
+sort of thing that wasn't easy or agreeable to think about and Ally's
+instinct of self-preservation urged her to turn from it. She tended
+to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as
+her own terrors and her father's illness and the noises Greatorex made
+when he was eating.
+
+Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally's and it had never hurt her
+till to-day. To-day she wanted something from Ally. She didn't know
+what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn't got.
+
+She only said, "Have you seen the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge?"
+
+And Ally never answered. She was heading off a stream of jam that was
+creeping down Stevey's chin to plunge into his neck.
+
+"Gwenda's aasskin' yo 'ave yo seen t' thorn-trees on Greffington
+Edge," said Greatorex. He spoke to Ally as if she were deaf.
+
+She made a desperate effort to detach herself from Stevey.
+
+"The thorn-trees? Has anybody set fire to them?"
+
+"Tha silly laass!----"
+
+"What about the thorn-trees, Gwenda?"
+
+"Only that they're all in flower," Gwenda said.
+
+She didn't know where it had come from, the sudden impulse to tell
+Ally about the beauty of the thorn-trees.
+
+But the impulse had gone. She thought sadly, "They want me. But they
+don't want me for myself. They don't want to talk to me. They don't
+know what to say. They don't know anything about me. They don't
+care--really. Jim likes me because I've stuck to Ally. Ally loves me
+because I would have given Steven to her. They love what I was, not
+what I am now, nor what I shall be.
+
+"They have nothing for me."
+
+It was Jim who answered her. "I knaw," he said, "I knaw."
+
+"Oh! You little, little--lamb!"
+
+Baby John had his fingers in his mother's hair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greatorex rose. "You'll not get mooch out o' Ally as long as t' kids
+are about. Yo'd best coom wi' mae into t' garden and see t' loopins."
+
+She went with him.
+
+He was silent as they threaded the garden path together. She thought,
+"I know why I like him."
+
+They came to a standstill at the south wall where the tall blue lupins
+rose between them, vivid in the tender air and very still.
+
+Greatorex also was still. His eyes looked away over the blue spires
+of the lupins to the naked hillside. They saw neither the hillside nor
+anything between.
+
+When he spoke his voice was thick, almost as though he were in love or
+intoxicated.
+
+"I knaw what yo mane about those thorn-trees. 'Tisn' no earthly beauty
+what yo see in 'em."
+
+"Jim," she said, "shall I always see it?"
+
+"I dawn--knaw. It cooms and it goas, doos sech-like."
+
+"What makes it come?"
+
+"What maakes it coom? Yo knaw better than I can tall yo."
+
+"If I only did know. I'm afraid it's going."
+
+"I can tell yo this for your coomfort. Ef yo soofer enoof mebbe it'll
+coom t' yo again. Ef yo're snoog and 'appy sure's death it'll goa."
+
+He paused.
+
+"It 'assn't coom t' mae sence I married Ally."
+
+She was wrong about Jim. He had not forgotten her. He was not saying
+these things for himself; he was saying them for her, getting them out
+of himself with pain and difficulty. It was odd to think that nobody
+but she understood Jim, and that nobody but Jim had ever really
+understood her. Steven didn't understand her, any more than Ally
+understood her husband. And it made no difference to her, and it made
+no difference to Jim.
+
+"I'll tell yo anoother quare thing. 'T' assn't got mooch t' do wi'
+good and baad. T' drink 'll nat drive it from yo, an' sin'll nat drive
+it from yo. Saw I raakon 't is mooch t' saame thing as t' graace o'
+Gawd."
+
+"Did the grace of God go away from you when you married, Jim?"
+
+"Mebbe t' would 'aave ef I'd roon aaffter it. 'Tis a tricky thing is
+Gawd's graace."
+
+"But _it's_ gone," she said. "You gave your _soul_ for Ally when you
+married her."
+
+He smiled. "I toald 'er I'd give my sawl t' marry 'er," he said.
+
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+As she went home she tried to recapture the magic of the flowering
+thorn-trees. But it had gone and she could not be persuaded that it
+would come again. She was still too young to draw joy from the memory
+of joy, and what Greatorex had told her seemed incredible.
+
+She said to herself, "Is it going to be taken from me like everything
+else?"
+
+And a dreadful duologue went on in her.
+
+"It looks like it."
+
+"But it _was_ mine. It was mine like nothing else."
+
+"It never had anything for you but what you gave it."
+
+"Am I to go on giving the whole blessed time? Am I never to have
+anything for myself?"
+
+"There never is anything for anybody but what they give. Or what they
+take from somebody else. You should have taken. You had your chance."
+
+"I'd have died, rather."
+
+"Do you call this living?"
+
+"I _have_ lived."
+
+"He hasn't. Why did you sacrifice him?"
+
+"For Mary."
+
+"It wasn't for Mary. It was for yourself. For your own wretched soul."
+
+"For _his_ soul."
+
+"How much do you suppose Mary cares about his soul? It would have had
+a chance with you. Its one chance."
+
+The unconsoling voice had the last word. For it was not in answer to
+it that a certain phrase came into her brooding mind.
+
+"I couldn't do a caddish thing like that."
+
+It puzzled her. She had said it to Steven that night. But it came
+to her now attached to an older memory. Somebody had said it to her
+before then. Years before.
+
+She remembered. It was Ally.
+
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+A year passed. It was June again.
+
+For more than a year there had been rumors of changes in Morfe. The
+doctor talked of going. He was always talking of going and nobody had
+yet believed that he would go. This time, they said, he was serious,
+it had been a toss-up whether he stayed or went. But in the end he
+stayed. Things had happened in Rowcliffe's family. His mother had died
+and his wife had had a son.
+
+Rowcliffe's son was the image of Rowcliffe.
+
+The doctor had no brothers or sisters, and by his mother's death he
+came into possession both of his father's income and of hers. He had
+now more than a thousand a year over and above what he earned.
+
+On an unearned thousand a year you can live like a rich man in
+Rathdale.
+
+Not that Rowcliffe had any idea of giving up. He was well under forty
+and as soon as old Hyslop at Reyburn died or retired he would step
+into his practice. He hadn't half enough to do in Morfe and he wanted
+more.
+
+Meanwhile he had bought the house that joined on to his own and thrown
+the two and their gardens into one. They had been one twenty years
+ago, when the wide-fronted building, with its long rows of windows,
+was the dominating house in Morfe village. Rowcliffe was now the
+dominating man in it. He had given the old place back its own.
+
+And he had spent any amount of money on it. He had had all the
+woodwork painted white, and the whole house repapered and redecorated.
+He had laid down parquet flooring in the big square hall that he had
+made and in the new drawing-room upstairs; and he had bought a great
+deal of beautiful and expensive furniture.
+
+And now he was building a garage and laying out a croquet ground and
+tennis lawns at the back.
+
+He and Mary had been superintending these works all afternoon till a
+shower sent them indoors. And now they were sitting together in the
+drawing-room, in the breathing-space that came between the children's
+hour and dinner.
+
+Mary had sent the children back to the nursery a little earlier than
+usual. Rowcliffe had complained of headache.
+
+He was always complaining of headaches. They dated from his marriage,
+and more particularly from one night in June eight years ago.
+
+But Rowcliffe ignored the evidence of dates. He ignored everything
+that made him feel uncomfortable. He had put Gwenda from him. He had
+said plainly to Mary (in one poignant moment not long before the birth
+of their third child), "If you're worrying about me and Gwenda, you
+needn't. She was never anything to me."
+
+That was not saying there had never been anything between them, but
+Mary knew what he had meant.
+
+He said to himself, and Mary said that he had got over it. But he
+hadn't got over it. He might say to himself and Mary, "She was never
+anything to me"; he might put her and the thought of her away from
+him, but she had left her mark on him. He hadn't put her away. She was
+there, in his heavy eyes and in the irritable gestures of his hands,
+in his nerves and in his wounded memory. She had knitted herself into
+his secret being.
+
+Mary was unaware of the cause of his malady. If it had been suggested
+to her that he had got into this state because of Gwenda she would
+have dismissed the idea with contempt. She didn't worry about
+Rowcliffe's state. On the contrary, Rowcliffe's state was a
+consolation and a satisfaction to her for all that she had endured
+through Gwenda. She would have thought you mad if you had told her so,
+for she was sorry for Steven and tender to him when he was nervous or
+depressed. But to Mary her sorrow and her tenderness were a voluptuous
+joy. She even encouraged Rowcliffe in his state. She liked to make it
+out worse than it really was, so that he might be more dependent on
+her.
+
+And she had found that it could be induced in him by suggestion. She
+had only to say to him, "Steven, you're thoroughly worn out," and he
+_was_ thoroughly worn out. She had more pleasure, because she had more
+confidence, in this lethargic, middle-aged Rowcliffe than in Rowcliffe
+young and energetic. His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and
+his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself,
+secretly, insidiously, to destroy them.
+
+It had taken her seven years.
+
+For the first five years it had been hard work for Mary. It had meant,
+for her body, an ignominious waiting and watching for the moment when
+its appeal would be irresistible, for her soul a complete subservience
+to her husband's moods, and for her mind perpetual attention to his
+comfort, a thousand cares that had seemed to go unnoticed. But in the
+sixth year they had begun to tell. Once Rowcliffe had made up his
+mind that Gwenda couldn't be anything to him he had let go and through
+sheer exhaustion had fallen more and more into his wife's hands, and
+for the last two years her labor had been easy and its end sure.
+
+She had him, bound to her bed and to her fireside.
+
+He said and thought that he was happy. He meant that he was extremely
+comfortable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is your head very bad, Steven?"
+
+He shook his head. It wasn't very bad, but he was worried. He was
+worried about himself.
+
+From time to time his old self rose against this new self that was
+the slave of comfort. It made desperate efforts to shake off the
+strangling lethargy. When he went about saying that he was getting
+rusty, that he ought never to have left Leeds, and that it would do
+him all the good in the world to go back there, he was saying what he
+knew to be the truth. The life he was leading was playing the devil
+with his nerves and brain. His brain had nothing to do. Hard work
+might not be the cure for every kind of nervous trouble, but it was
+the one cure for the kind that he had got.
+
+He ought to have gone away seven years ago. It was Gwenda's fault that
+he hadn't gone. He felt a dull anger against her as against a woman
+who had wrecked his chance.
+
+He had a chance of going now if he cared to take it.
+
+He had had a letter that morning from Dr. Harker asking if he had
+meant what he had said a year ago, and if he'd care to exchange his
+Rathdale practice for his old practice in Leeds. Harker's wife was
+threatened with lung trouble, and they would have to live in the
+country somewhere, and Harker himself wouldn't be sorry for the
+exchange. His present practice was worth twice what it had been ten
+years ago and it was growing. There were all sorts of interesting
+things to be done in Leeds by a man of Rowcliffe's keenness and
+energy.
+
+"Do you know, Steven, you're getting quite stout?"
+
+"I do know," he said almost with bitterness.
+
+"I don't mean horridly stout, dear, just nicely and comfortably
+stout."
+
+"I'm _too_ comfortable," he said. "I don't do enough work to keep me
+fit."
+
+"Is that what's bothering you?"
+
+He frowned. It was Harker's letter that was bothering him. He said so.
+
+For one instant Mary looked impatient.
+
+"I thought we'd settled that," she said.
+
+Rowcliffe sighed.
+
+"What on earth makes you want to go and leave this place when you've
+spent hundreds on it?"
+
+"I should make pots of money in Leeds."
+
+"But we couldn't live there."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It would be too awful. My dear, if it were a big London practice I
+shouldn't say no. That might be worth while. But whatever should we
+have in Leeds?"
+
+"We haven't much here."
+
+"We've got the county. You might think of the children."
+
+"I do," he said mournfully. "I do. I think of nothing else but the
+children--and you. If you wouldn't like it there's an end of it."
+
+"You might think of yourself, dear. You really are not strong enough
+for it."
+
+He felt that he really was not.
+
+He changed the subject.
+
+"I saw Gwenda the other day."
+
+"Looking as young as ever, I suppose?"
+
+"No. Not quite so young. I thought she was looking rather ill."
+
+He meditated.
+
+"I wonder why she never comes."
+
+He really did wonder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's a quarter past seven, Steven."
+
+He rose and stretched himself. They went together to the night nursery
+where the three children lay in their cots, the little red-haired
+girls awake and restless, and the dark-haired baby in his first sleep.
+They bent over them together. Mary's lips touched the red hair and the
+dark where Steven's lips had been.
+
+They spent the evening sitting by the fire in Rowcliffe's study. The
+doctor dozed. Mary, silent over her sewing, was the perfect image of
+tranquillity. From time to time she looked at her husband and smiled
+as his chin dropped to his breast and recovered itself with a start.
+
+At the stroke of ten she murmured, "Steven, are you ready for bed?"
+
+He rose, stumbling for drowsiness.
+
+As they passed into the square hall he paused and looked round him
+before putting out the lights.
+
+"Yes" (he yawned). "Ye-hes. I think we shall do very comfortably here
+for the next seven years."
+
+He was thinking of old Hyslop. He had given him seven years.
+
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+The next day (it was a Friday), when Mary came home to tea after a
+round of ineffectual calling she was told that Miss Gwenda was in the
+drawing-room.
+
+Mary inquired whether the doctor was in.
+
+Dr. Rowcliffe was in but he was engaged in the surgery.
+
+Mary thought she knew why Gwenda had come to-day.
+
+For the last two or three Wednesdays Rowcliffe had left Garthdale
+without calling at the Vicarage.
+
+He had not meant to break his habit, but it happened so. For, this
+year, Mary had decided to have a day, from May to October. And her day
+was Wednesday.
+
+Her sister had ignored her day, and Mary was offended.
+
+She had every reason. Mary believed in keeping up appearances, and
+the appearance she most desired to keep up was that of behaving
+beautifully to her sister. This required her sister's co-operation. It
+couldn't appear if Gwenda didn't. And Gwenda hadn't given it a chance.
+She meant to have it out with her.
+
+She greeted her therefore with a certain challenge.
+
+"What are you keeping away for? Do you suppose we aren't glad to see
+you?"
+
+"I'm not keeping away," said Gwenda.
+
+"It looks uncommonly like it. Do you know it's two months since you've
+been here?"
+
+"Is it? I've lost count."
+
+"I should think you did lose count!"
+
+"I'm sorry, Molly. I couldn't come."
+
+"You talk as if you had engagements every day in Garthdale."
+
+"If it comes to that, it's months since you've been to us."
+
+"It's different for me. I _have_ engagements. And I've my husband and
+children too. Steven hates it if I'm out when he comes home."
+
+"And Papa hates it if _I'm_ out."
+
+"It's no use minding what Papa hates. What's making you so sensitive?"
+
+"Living with him."
+
+"Then for goodness sake get away from him when you can. One afternoon
+here can't matter to him."
+
+Gwenda said nothing, neither did she look at her. But she answered her
+in her heart. "It matters to _me_. It matters to _me_. How stupid
+you are if you don't see how it matters. Yet I'd die rather than you
+should see."
+
+Mary went on, exasperated by her sister's silence.
+
+"We may as well have it out while we're about it. Why can't you look
+me straight in the face and say plump out what I've done?"
+
+"You've done nothing."
+
+"Well, is it Steven, then? Has he done anything?"
+
+"Of course he hasn't. What _could_ he do?"
+
+"Poor Steven, goodness knows! I'm sure I don't. No more does he.
+Unless----"
+
+She stopped. Her sister was looking her straight in the face now.
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"My dear Gwenda, don't glare at me like that. I'm not saying things
+and I'm not thinking them. I don't know what _you're_ thinking. If you
+weren't so nervy you'd own that I've always been decent to you. I'm
+sure I _have_ been. I've always stood up for you. I've always wanted
+to have you here----"
+
+"And why shouldn't you?"
+
+Mary blinked. She had seen her blunder.
+
+"I never said you weren't decent to me, Molly."
+
+"You behave as if I weren't."
+
+"How am I to behave?"
+
+"I know it's difficult," said Mary. The memory of her blunder rankled.
+
+"Are you offended because Steven hasn't been to see you?"
+
+"My _dear_ Molly----"
+
+Mary ignored her look of weary tolerance.
+
+"Because you can't expect him to keep on running up to Garthdale when
+Papa's all right."
+
+"I don't expect him."
+
+"Well then----!" said Mary with the air of having exhausted all
+plausible interpretations.
+
+"If I were offended," said Gwenda, "should I be here?"
+
+The appearance of the tea-tray and the parlormaid absolved Mary from
+the embarrassing compulsion to reply. She addressed herself to the
+parlormaid.
+
+"Tell Dr. Rowcliffe that tea is ready and that Miss Gwendolen is
+here."
+
+She really wanted Steven to come and deliver her from the situation
+she had created. But Rowcliffe delayed his coming.
+
+"Is it true that Steven's going to give up his practice?" Gwenda said
+presently.
+
+"Well no--whatever he does he won't do that," said Mary.
+
+She thought, "So that's what she came for. Steven hasn't told her
+anything."
+
+"What put that idea into your head?" she asked.
+
+"Somebody told me so."
+
+"He _has_ had an offer of Dr. Harker's practice in Leeds, and he'd
+some idea of taking it. He seemed to think it might be a good thing."
+
+There was a flicker in the whiteness of Gwenda's face. It arrested
+Mary.
+
+It was not excitement nor dismay nor eagerness, nor even interest.
+It was a sort of illumination, the movement of some inner light, the
+shining passage of some idea. And in Gwenda's attitude, as it now
+presented itself to Mary, there was a curious still withdrawal and
+detachment. She seemed hardly to listen but to be preoccupied with her
+idea.
+
+"He thought it would be a good thing," she said.
+
+"I think I've convinced him," said Mary, "that it wouldn't."
+
+Gwenda was stiller and more withdrawn than ever, guarding her idea.
+
+"Can I see Steven before I go?" she said presently.
+
+"Of course. He'll be up in a second----"
+
+"I can't--here."
+
+Mary stared. She understood.
+
+"You're ill. Poor dear, you shall see him this minute."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the
+same author, and new fiction.
+
+
+
+By THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+The Return of the Prodigal
+
+Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+"These are stories to be read leisurely with a feeling for the stylish
+and the careful workmanship which is always a part of May Sinclair's
+work. They need no recommendation to those who know the author's work
+and one of the things on which we may congratulate ourselves is the
+fact that so many Americans are her reading friends."--_Kansas City
+Gazette-Globe._
+
+"They are the product of a master workman who has both skill and art,
+and who scorns to produce less than the best."--_Buffalo Express._
+
+"Always a clever writer, Miss Sinclair at her best is an exceptionally
+interesting one, and in several of the tales bound together in this
+new volume we have her at her best."--_N.Y. Times._
+
+"... All of which show the same sensitive apprehension of unusual
+cases and delicate relations, and reveal a truth which would be hidden
+from the hasty or blunt observer."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+"One of the best of the many collections of stories published this
+season."--_N.Y. Sun._
+
+"... All these stories are of deep interest because all of them are
+out of the rut."--_Kentucky Post._
+
+"Let no one who cares for good and sincere work neglect this
+book."--_London Post._
+
+"The stories are touched with a peculiar delicacy and
+whimsicality."--_Los Angeles Times._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
+
+By H.G. WELLS.
+
+Cloth, 12mo. $1.50 net.
+
+The name of H.G. Wells upon a title page is an assurance of merit.
+It is a guarantee that on the pages which follow will be found an
+absorbing story told with master skill. In the present book Mr. Wells
+surpasses even his previous efforts. He is writing of modern society
+life, particularly of one very charming young woman, Lady Harman, who
+finds herself so bound in by conventions, so hampered by restrictions,
+largely those of a well intentioned but short sighted husband, that
+she is ultimately moved to revolt. The real meaning of this revolt,
+its effect upon her life and those of her associates are narrated by
+one who goes beneath the surface in his analysis of human motives.
+In the group of characters, writers, suffragists, labor organizers,
+social workers and society lights surrounding Lady Harman, and in the
+dramatic incidents which compose the years of her existence which are
+described by Mr. Wells, there is a novel which is significant in
+its interpretation of the trend of affairs today, and fascinatingly
+interesting as fiction. It is Mr. Wells at his best.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thracian Sea
+
+A Novel by JOHN HELSTON, Author of "Aphrodite," etc.
+
+With frontispiece in colors. Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+Probably no author to-day has written more powerfully or frankly on
+the conventions of modern society than John Helston, who, however, has
+hitherto confined himself to the medium of verse. In this novel, the
+theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems--problems
+involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in
+one's own way--he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose
+form than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds,
+the skill with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve
+everywhere exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the
+most exacting. The title, it should be explained, refers to a spirited
+race horse with the fortunes of which the lives of two of the leading
+characters are bound up.
+
+
+
+Faces in the Dawn
+
+A Story by HERMANN HAGEDORN
+
+With frontispiece in colors. Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+A great many people already know Mr. Hagedorn through his verse.
+_Faces in the Dawn_ will, however, be their introduction to him as
+a novelist. The same qualities that have served to raise his poetry
+above the common level help to distinguish this story of a German
+village. The theme of the book is the transformation that was wrought
+in the lives of an irritable, domineering German pastor and his wife
+through the influence of a young German girl and her American lover.
+Sentiment, humor and a human feeling, all present in just the right
+measure, warm the heart and contribute to the enjoyment which
+the reader derives in following the experiences of the well drawn
+characters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
+
+
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Mutiny of the Elsinore
+
+By JACK LONDON, Author of "The Sea Wolf," "The Call of the Wild," etc.
+
+With frontispiece in colors by Anton Fischer.
+
+_Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._
+
+Everyone who remembers _The Sea Wolf_ with pleasure will enjoy this
+vigorous narrative of a voyage from New York around Cape Horn in a
+large sailing vessel. _The Mutiny of the Elsinore_ is the same kind of
+tale as its famous predecessor, and by those who have read it, it is
+pronounced even more stirring. Mr. London is here writing of scenes
+and types of people with which he is very familiar, the sea and ships
+and those who live in ships. In addition to the adventure element,
+of which there is an abundance of the usual London kind, a most
+satisfying kind it is, too, there is a thread of romance involving a
+wealthy, tired young man who takes the trip on the _Elsinore_, and the
+captain's daughter. The play of incident, on the one hand the ship's
+amazing crew and on the other the lovers, gives a story in which the
+interest never lags and which demonstrates anew what a master of his
+art Mr. London is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Saturday's Child
+
+By KATHLEEN NORRIS, Author of "Mother," "The Treasure," etc.
+
+With frontispiece in colors, by F. Graham Cootes.
+
+Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.50 net.
+
+  _"Friday's child is loving and giving,
+  Saturday's child must work for her living."_
+
+The title of Mrs. Norris's new novel at once indicates its theme. It
+is the life story of a girl who has her own way to make in the
+world. The various experiences through which she passes, the various
+viewpoints which she holds until she comes finally to realize that
+service for others is the only thing that counts, are told with that
+same intimate knowledge of character, that healthy optimism and the
+belief in the ultimate goodness of mankind that have distinguished
+all of this author's writing. The book is intensely alive with human
+emotions. The reader is bound to sympathize with Mrs. Norris's people
+because they seem like real people and because they are actuated by
+motives which one is able to understand. _Saturday's Child_ is Mrs.
+Norris's longest work. Into it has gone the very best of her creative
+talent. It is a volume which the many admirers of _Mother_ will gladly
+accept.
+
+
+Neighborhood Stories
+
+By ZONA GALE, Author of "Friendship Village," "The Love of Pelleas and
+Etarre," etc.
+
+With frontispiece. Decorated cloth, 12mo. boxed. $1.50 net.
+
+In _Neighborhood Stories_ Miss Gale has a book after her own heart,
+a book which, with its intimate stories of real folks, is not unlike
+_Friendship Village_. Miss Gale has humor; she has lightness of
+touch; she has, above all, a keen appreciation of human nature. These
+qualities are reflected in the new volume. Miss Gale's audience,
+moreover, is a constantly increasing one. To it her beautiful little
+holiday novel, _Christmas_, added many admirers. _Neighborhood
+Stories_ will not only keep these, but is certain to attract many more
+as well.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE SISTERS***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Three Sisters, by May Sinclair
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Three Sisters
+
+Author: May Sinclair
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2004  [eBook #11876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE SISTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Leah Moser, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE THREE SISTERS
+
+BY
+
+MAY SINCLAIR
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE SISTERS
+
+I
+
+
+North of east, in the bottom, where the road drops from the High Moor,
+is the village of Garth in Garthdale.
+
+It crouches there with a crook of the dale behind and before it,
+between half-shut doors of the west and south. Under the mystery and
+terror of its solitude it crouches, like a beaten thing, cowering from
+its topmost roof to the bowed back of its stone bridge.
+
+It is the last village up Garthdale; a handful of gray houses, old
+and small and humble. The high road casts them off and they turn their
+backs to it in their fear and huddle together, humbly, down by the
+beck. Their stone roofs and walls are naked and blackened by wind and
+rain as if fire had passed over them.
+
+They have the silence, the darkness and the secrecy of all ultimate
+habitations.
+
+North, where the high road begins to rise again, the Vicarage stands
+all alone. It turns its face toward the village, old and gray and
+humble as any house there, and looks on the road sideways, through the
+small shy window of its gable end. It has a strip of garden in front
+and on its farther side and a strip of orchard at the back. The garden
+slopes down to the churchyard, and a lane, leading to the pastures,
+runs between.
+
+And all these things of stone, the village, the Vicarage, the church,
+the churchyard and the gravestones of the dead are alike naked
+and black, blackened as if fire had passed over them. And in their
+grayness and their desolation they are one with each other and with
+the network of low walls that links them to the last solitary farm on
+the High Moor. And on the breast of the earth they show, one moment,
+solid as if hewn out of her heart, and another, slender and wind-blown
+as a tangle of gray thread on her green gown.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Through four of its five front windows the house gave back darkness
+to the dark. One, on the ground floor, showed a golden oblong, skirted
+with watery gray where the lamp-light thinned the solid blackness of
+the wall.
+
+The three sisters, Mary, Gwendolen and Alice, daughters of James
+Cartaret, the Vicar of Garth, were sitting there in the dining-room
+behind the yellow blind, doing nothing. In their supine, motionless
+attitudes they seemed to be waiting for something to happen, to happen
+so soon that, if there had been anything to do, it was not worth their
+while doing it.
+
+All three were alike in the small, broad faces that brooded, half
+sullen and half sad; in the wide eyes that watched vaguely; in the
+little tender noses, and in the mouths, tender and sullen, too; in the
+arch and sweep of the upper lips, the delicate fulness of the lower;
+in the way of the thick hair, parted and turned back over the brows in
+two wide and shallow waves.
+
+Mary, the eldest, sat in a low chair by the fireside. Her hands were
+clasped loosely on the black woolen socks she had ceased to darn.
+
+She was staring into the fire with her gray eyes, the thick gray eyes
+that never let you know what she was thinking. The firelight woke the
+flame in her reddish-tawny hair. The red of her lips was turned back
+and crushed against the white. Mary was shorter than her sisters, but
+she was the one that had the color. And with it she had a stillness
+that was not theirs. Mary's face brooded more deeply than their faces,
+but it was untroubled in its brooding.
+
+She had learned to darn socks for her own amusement on her eleventh
+birthday, and she was twenty-seven now.
+
+Alice, the youngest girl (she was twenty-three) lay stretched out on
+the sofa.
+
+She departed in no way from her sister's type but that her body was
+slender and small boned, that her face was lightly finished, that her
+gray eyes were clear and her lips pale against the honey-white of her
+face, and that her hair was colorless as dust except where the edge of
+the wave showed a dull gold.
+
+Alice had spent the whole evening lying on the sofa. And now she
+raised her arms and bent them, pressing the backs of her hands against
+her eyes. And now she lowered them and lifted one sleeve of her thin
+blouse, and turned up the milk-white under surface of her arm and lay
+staring at it and feeling its smooth texture with her fingers.
+
+Gwendolen, the second sister, sat leaning over the table with her
+arms flung out on it as they had tossed from her the book she had been
+reading.
+
+She was the tallest and the darkest of the three. Her face followed
+the type obscurely; and vividly and emphatically it left it. There was
+dusk in her honey-whiteness, and dark blue in the gray of her eyes.
+The bridge of her nose and the arch of her upper lip were higher,
+lifted as it were in a decided and defiant manner of their own. About
+Gwenda there was something alert and impatient. Her very supineness
+was alive. It had distinction, the savage grace of a creature utterly
+abandoned to a sane fatigue.
+
+Gwenda had gone fifteen miles over the moors that evening. She had run
+and walked and run again in the riotous energy of her youth.
+
+Now she was too tired to read.
+
+Gwenda was the first to speak.
+
+"Is it ten yet?"
+
+"No." Mary smiled, but the word shuddered in her throat like a weary
+moan.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Forty-three minutes."
+
+"Oh, Lord----" Gwenda laughed the laugh of brave nerves tortured.
+
+From her sofa beyond the table Alice sighed.
+
+At ten o'clock Essy Gale, the maid-servant, would come in from the
+kitchen and the Vicar from the inner room. And Essy would put the
+Bible and Prayer-book on the table, and the Vicar would read Prayers.
+
+That was all they were waiting for. It was all that could happen. It
+happened every night at ten o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Alice spoke next.
+
+"What day of the month is it?"
+
+"The thirtieth." Mary answered.
+
+"Then we've been here exactly five months to-day."
+
+"That's nothing," said Mary, "to the months and years we shall be
+here."
+
+"I can't think what possessed Papa to come and bury us all in this
+rotten place."
+
+"Can't you?" Mary's eyes turned from their brooding. Her voice was
+very quiet, barely perceptible the significant stress.
+
+"Oh, if you mean it's _me_ he wants to bury----. You needn't rub that
+in."
+
+"I'm not rubbing it in."
+
+"You are. You're rubbing it in every time you look like that. That's
+the beastly part of it. Supposing he does want to get back on me, why
+should he go and punish you two?"
+
+"If he thinks he's punishing me he's sold," said Gwenda.
+
+"He couldn't have stuck you in a rottener hole."
+
+Gwenda raised her head.
+
+"A hole? Why, there's no end to it. You can go for miles and miles
+without meeting anybody, unless some darling mountain sheep gets up
+and looks at you. It's--it's a divine place, Ally."
+
+"Wait till you've been another five months in it. You'll be as sick as
+I am."
+
+"I don't think so. You haven't seen the moon get up over Greffington
+Edge. If you had--if you knew what this place was like, you wouldn't
+lie there grizzling. You wouldn't talk about punishing. You'd wonder
+what you'd done to be allowed to look at it--to live in it a day. Of
+course I'm not going to let on to Papa that I'm in love with it."
+
+Mary smiled again.
+
+"It's all very well for you," she said. "As long as you've got a moor
+to walk on _you're_ all right."
+
+"Yes. I'm all right," Gwenda said.
+
+Her head had sunk again and rested in the hollow of her arms. Her
+voice, muffled in her sleeve, came soft and thick. It died for
+drowsiness.
+
+In the extreme immobility and stillness of the three the still house
+stirred and became audible to them, as if it breathed. They heard the
+delicate fall of the ashes on the hearth, and the flame of the lamp
+jerking as the oil sputtered in the burnt wick. Their nerves shook to
+the creeping, crackling sounds that came from the wainscot, infinitely
+minute. A tongue of fire shot hissing from the coal. It seemed to them
+a violent and terrifying thing. The breath of the house passed over
+them in thick smells of earth and must, as the fire's heat sucked at
+its damp.
+
+The church clock struck the half hour. Once, twice; two dolorous notes
+that beat on the still house and died.
+
+Somewhere out at the back a door opened and shut, and it was as if the
+house drew in its breath at the shock of the sound.
+
+Presently a tremor crept through Gwenda's young body as her heart
+shook it.
+
+She rose and went to the window.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+She was slow and rapt in her going like one walking in her sleep,
+moved by some impulse profounder than her sleep.
+
+She pulled up the blind. The darkness was up against the house,
+thick and close to the pane. She threw open the window, and the night
+entered palpably like slow water, black and sweet and cool.
+
+From the unseen road came the noise of wheels and of a horse that in
+trotting clanked forever one shoe against another.
+
+It was young Rowcliffe, the new doctor, driving over from Morthe to
+Upthorne on the Moor, where John Greatorex lay dying.
+
+The pale light of his lamps swept over the low garden wall.
+
+Suddenly the four hoofs screamed, grinding together in the slide of
+their halt. The doctor had jerked his horse up by the Vicarage gate.
+
+The door at the back opened and shut again, suddenly, sharply, as if
+in fear.
+
+A voice swung out like a mournful bell into the night. A dalesman's
+voice; such a voice as the lonely land fashions sometimes for its own
+delight, drawling and tender, hushed by the hills and charged with the
+infinite, mysterious sadness of their beauty.
+
+It belonged to young Greatorex and it came from the doorway of the
+Vicarage yard.
+
+"That yo, Dr. Rawcliffe? I wuss joost gawn oop t'road t' see ef yo
+wuss coomin'."
+
+"Of course I was coming."
+
+The new doctor was short and stern with young Greatorex.
+
+The two voices, the soft and the stern, spoke together for a moment,
+low, inaudible. Then young Greatorex's voice was heard again, and in
+its softness there was the furtive note of shame.
+
+"I joost looked in to Vicarage to leave woord with Paason."
+
+The noise of the wheels and hoofs began again, the iron shoes clanked
+together and struck out the rhythm that the sisters knew.
+
+And with the first beat of it, and with the sound of the two voices in
+the road, life, secret and silent, stirred in their blood and nerves.
+It quivered like a hunting thing held on the leash.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Their stillness, their immobility were now intense. And not one spoke
+a word to the other.
+
+All three of them were thinking.
+
+Mary thought, "Wednesday is his day. On Wednesday I will go into the
+village and see all my sick people. Then I shall see him. And he
+will see me. He will see that I am kind and sweet and womanly." She
+thought, "That is the sort of woman that a man wants." But she did not
+know what she was thinking.
+
+Gwenda thought, "I will go out on to the moor again. I don't care if I
+_am_ late for Prayers. He will see me when he drives back and he will
+wonder who is that wild, strong girl who walks by herself on the moor
+at night and isn't afraid. He has seen me three times, and every time
+he has looked at me as if he wondered. In five minutes I shall go."
+She thought (for she knew what she was thinking), "I shall do nothing
+of the sort. I don't care whether he sees me or not. I don't care if I
+never see him again. I don't care."
+
+Alice thought, "I will make myself ill. So ill that they'll _have_ to
+send for him. I shall see him that way."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Alice sat up. She was thinking another thought.
+
+"If Mr. Greatorex is dead, Dr. Rowcliffe won't stay long at Upthorne.
+He will come back soon. And he will have to call and leave word. He
+will come in and I shall see him."
+
+But if Mr. Greatorex wasn't dead? If Mr. Greatorex were a long time
+over his dying? Then he might be kept at Upthorne, perhaps till
+midnight, perhaps till morning. Then, even if he called to leave
+word, she would not see him. When she looked deep she found herself
+wondering how long Mr. Greatorex would be over his dying. If she had
+looked a little deeper she would have found herself hoping that Mr.
+Greatorex was already dead.
+
+If Mr. Greatorex was dead before he got to Upthorne he would come very
+soon, perhaps before prayer-time.
+
+And he would be shown into the drawing-room.
+
+Would he? Would Essy have the sense? No. Not unless the lamp was lit
+there. Essy wouldn't show him into a dark room. And Essy was stupid.
+She might have _no_ sense. She might take him straight into the study
+and Papa would keep him there. Trust Papa.
+
+Alice got up from her sofa and left the room; moving with her weary
+grace and a little air of boredom and of unconcern. She was always
+most unconcerned when she was most intent.
+
+Outside in the passage she stood a moment, listening. All the ways
+of the house gave upon the passage in a space so narrow that by
+stretching out one arm she could have touched both walls.
+
+With a door open anywhere the passage became a gully for the north
+wind. Now, with all doors shut, it was as if the breath of the house
+was being squeezed out there, between closing walls. The passage,
+instead of dividing the house, drew it together tight. And this
+tightness was intolerable to Alice.
+
+She hated it. She hated the whole house. It was so built that there
+wasn't a corner in it where you could get away from Papa. His study
+had one door opening into the passage and one into the dining-room.
+The window where he sat raked the garden on the far side. The window
+of his bedroom raked the front; its door commanded the stairhead. He
+was aware of everything you did, of everything you didn't do. He could
+hear you in the dining-room; he could hear you overhead; he could hear
+you going up and downstairs. He could positively hear you breathe, and
+he always knew whether you were in bed or not. She drew in her breath
+lest he should hear it now.
+
+At the far end of the passage, on the wall-space between the staircase
+and the kitchen door, raised on a small bracket, a small tin lamp
+showed a thrifty flame. Under it, on a mahogany table-flap, was a row
+of bedroom candlesticks with their match-boxes.
+
+Her progress to the table-flap was stealthy. She exalted this business
+of lighting the drawing-room lamp to a desperate, perilous adventure.
+The stone floor deadened her footsteps as she went.
+
+Her pale eyes, half sullen, half afraid, slewed round to the door of
+the study on her right. With a noiseless hand she secured her matches
+and her candle. With noiseless feet she slid into the darkness of the
+drawing-room. She dared not light her candle out there in the passage.
+For the Vicar was full of gloom and of suspicion in the half hour
+before prayer-time, and at the spurt of the match he might come out
+blustering and insist on knowing what she was doing and where she was
+going, whereas presently he would know, and he might be quiet as long
+as he was satisfied that she wasn't shirking Prayers.
+
+Stealthily, with her air of desperate adventure, she lit the
+drawing-room lamp. She shook out the puffs and frills of its yellow
+paper shade. Under its gaudy skirts the light was cruel to the cramped
+and shabby room, to the huddled furniture, to the tarnished gilt, the
+perishing tones of gray and amber.
+
+Alice set the lamp on the top of the cottage piano that stood
+slantwise in a side window beyond the fireplace. She had pulled back
+the muslin curtains and opened both windows wide so that the room was
+now bared to the south and west. Then, with the abrupt and passionate
+gesture of desire deferred, she sat down at the little worn-out Erard
+and began to play.
+
+Sitting there, with the open window behind her, she could be seen, and
+she knew that she could be seen from over the wall by anybody driving
+past in a high dog-cart.
+
+And she played. She played the Chopin Grande Polonaise, or as much of
+it as her fingers, tempestuous and inexpert, could clutch and reach.
+She played, neither with her hands nor with her brain, but with her
+temperament, febrile and frustrate, seeking its outlet in exultant
+and violent sound. She fell upon the Erard like some fierce and hungry
+thing, tearing from the forlorn, humble instrument a strange and
+savage food. She played--with incredible omissions, discords and
+distortions, but she played. She flung out her music through the
+windows into the night as a signal and an appeal. She played (on the
+little worn-out Erard) in ecstasy and expectation, as if something
+momentous hung upon her playing. There was joy and triumph and
+splendor in the Grande Polonaise; she felt them in her heart and
+nerves as a delicate, dangerous tremor, the almost intolerable on
+coming of splendor, of triumph and of joy.
+
+And as she played the excitement gathered; it swung in more and more
+vehement vibrations; it went warm and flooding through her brain
+like wine. All the life of her bloodless body swam there, poised and
+thinned, but urgent, aspiring to some great climax of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The whole house was full of the Chopin Grande Polonaise.
+
+It raged there like a demon. Tortured out of all knowledge, the Grande
+Polonaise screamed and writhed in its agony. It writhed through the
+windows, seeking its natural attenuation in the open air. It writhed
+through the shut house and was beaten back, pitilessly, by the roof
+and walls. To let it loose thus was Alice's defiance of the house and
+her revenge.
+
+Mary and Gwenda heard it in the dining-room, and set their mouths
+and braced themselves to bear it. The Vicar in his study behind the
+dining-room heard it and scowled. Essy, the maid-servant, heard it,
+she heard it worse than anybody, in her kitchen on the other side of
+the wall. Now and then, when the Polonaise screamed louder, Mary drew
+a hissing breath of pain through her locked teeth, and Gwenda grinned.
+Not that to Gwenda there was anything funny in the writhing and
+screaming of the Grande Polonaise. It was that she alone appreciated
+its vindictive quality; she admired the completeness, the audacity of
+Alice's revenge.
+
+But Essy in her kitchen made no effort to stand up to the Grande
+Polonaise. When it began she sat down and laid her arms on the kitchen
+table, and her head, muffled in her apron, on her arms, and cried. She
+couldn't have told you what the Polonaise was like or what it did to
+her; all that she could have said was that it went through and
+through her. She didn't know, Essy didn't, what had come over her; for
+whatever noise Miss Alice made, she hadn't taken any notice, not at
+first. It was in the last three weeks that the Polonaise had found her
+out and had begun to go through and through her, till it was more than
+she could bear. But Essy, crying into her apron, wouldn't have lifted
+a finger to stop Miss Alice.
+
+"Poor laass," Essy said to herself, "she looves to plaay. And Vicar,
+he'll not hold out mooch longer. He'll put foot down fore she gets
+trow."
+
+Through the screaming of the Polonaise Essy listened for the opening
+of the study door.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The study door did not open all at once.
+
+"Wisdom and patience, wisdom and patience----" The Vicar kept on
+muttering as he scowled. Those were his watchwords in his dealings
+with his womenkind.
+
+The Vicar was making a prodigious effort to maintain what seemed
+to him his god-like serenity. He was unaware that he was trying to
+control at one and the same time his temper and his temperament.
+
+He was a man of middle height and squarish build, dark, pale-skinned
+and blue-eyed like his daughter Gwendolen. The Vicar's body stretched
+tight the seams of his black coat and kept up, at fifty-seven, a false
+show of muscular energy. The Vicar's face had a subtle quality of
+deception. The austere nose, the lean cheek-bones, the square-cut
+moustache and close-clipped, pointed beard (black, slightly grizzled)
+made it appear, at a little distance, the face of an ascetic. It
+approached, and the blue of the eyes, and the black of their dilated
+pupils, the stare of the nostrils and the half hidden lines of the red
+mouth revealed its profound and secret sensuality.
+
+The interior that contained him was no less deceptive. Its book-lined
+walls advertised him as the scholarly recluse that he was not. He had
+had an eye to this effect. He had placed in prominent positions
+the books that he had inherited from his father, who had been a
+schoolmaster. You were caught at the very door by the thick red line
+of The Tudor Classics; by the eleven volumes of The Bekker's Plato,
+with Notes, bound in Russia leather, side by side with Jowett's
+Translations in cloth; by Sophocles and Dean Plumptre, the Odyssey
+and Butcher and Lang; by AEschylus and Robert Browning. The Vicar had
+carried the illusion of scholarship so far as to hide his Aristophanes
+behind a little curtain, as if it contained for him an iniquitous
+temptation. Of his own accord and with a deliberate intention to
+deceive, he had added the Early Fathers, Tillotsen's _Sermons_ and
+Farrar's _Life of Christ_.
+
+On another shelf, rather less conspicuous, were some bound volumes
+of _The Record_, with the novels of Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Marie
+Corelli. On the ledge of his bureau _Blackwood's Magazine_, uncut, lay
+ready to his hand. The _Spectator_, in process of skimming, was on his
+knees. The _Standard_, fairly gutted, was on the floor. There was no
+room for it anywhere else.
+
+For the Vicar's study was much too small for him. Sitting there, in
+an arm-chair and with his legs in the fender, he looked as if he had
+taken flight before the awful invasion of his furniture. His bookcases
+hemmed him in on three sides. His roll-top desk, advancing on him
+from the window, had driven and squeezed him into the arm-chair. His
+bureau, armed to the teeth, leaning from its ambush in the recess of
+the fireplace, threatened both the retreat and the left flank movement
+of the chair. The Vicar was neither tall nor powerful, but his study
+made him look like a giant imprisoned in a cell.
+
+The room was full of the smell of tobacco, of a smoldering coal fire,
+of old warm leather and damp walls, and of the heavy, virile odor of
+the Vicar.
+
+A brown felt carpet and thick serge curtains shut out the draft of the
+northeast window.
+
+On a September evening the Vicar was snug enough in his cell; and
+before the Grande Polonaise had burst in upon him he had been at peace
+with God and man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when he heard those first exultant, challenging bars he scowled
+inimically.
+
+Not that he acknowledged them as a challenge. He was inclined rather
+to the manly course of ignoring the Grande Polonaise altogether. And
+not for a moment would he have admitted that there had been anything
+in his behavior that could be challenged or defied, least of all by
+his daughter Alice. To himself in his study Mr. Cartaret appeared
+as the image of righteousness established in an impregnable place.
+Whereas his daughter Alice was not at all in a position to challenge
+and defy.
+
+She had made a fool of herself.
+
+She knew it; he knew it; everybody knew it in the parish they had left
+five months ago. It had been the talk of the little southern seaside
+town. He thanked God that nobody knew it, or was ever likely to know
+it, here.
+
+For Alice's folly was not any ordinary folly. It was the kind that
+made the parish which was so aware of it uninhabitable to a sensitive
+vicar.
+
+He reflected that she would be clever if she made a fool of herself
+here. By his decisive action in removing her from that southern
+seaside town he had saved her from continuing her work. In order to do
+it he had ruined his prospects. He had thrown up a good living for a
+poor one; a living that might (but for Alice it certainly would) have
+led to preferment for a living that could lead to nothing at all; a
+living where he could make himself felt for a living where there was
+nobody to feel him.
+
+And, having done it, he was profoundly sorry for himself.
+
+So far as Mr. Cartaret could see there had been nothing else to do. If
+it had all to be done over again, he told himself that he would do it.
+
+But there Mr. Cartaret was wrong. He couldn't have done it or anything
+like it twice. It was one of those deeds, supremeful sacrificial,
+that strain a man's moral energies to breaking point and render him
+incapable of further sacrifice; if, indeed, it did not render further
+sacrifice superfluous. Mr. Cartaret honestly felt that even an
+exacting deity could require no more of him.
+
+And it wasn't the first time either, nor his daughter Alice the first
+woman who had come between the Vicar and his prospects. Looking back
+he saw himself driven from pillar to post, from parish to parish, by
+the folly or incompetence of his womankind.
+
+Strictly speaking, it was his first wife, Mary Gwendolen, the one
+the children called Mother, who had begun it. She had made his first
+parish unendurable to him by dying in it. This she had done when Alice
+was born, thereby making Alice unendurable to him, too. Poor Mamie! He
+always thought of her as having, inscrutably, failed him.
+
+All three of them had failed him.
+
+His second wife, Frances, the one the children called Mamma (the
+Vicar had made himself believe that he had married her solely on their
+account), had turned into a nervous invalid on his hands before she
+died of that obscure internal trouble which he had so wisely and
+patiently ignored.
+
+His third wife, Robina (the one they called Mummy), had run away from
+him in the fifth year of their marriage. When she implored him to
+divorce her he said that, whatever her conduct had been, that course
+was impossible to him as a churchman, as she well knew; but that he
+forgave her. He had made himself believe it.
+
+And all the time he was aware, without admitting it, that, if the
+thing came into court, Robina's evidence might be a little damaging
+to the appearances of wisdom and patience, of austerity and dignity,
+which he had preserved so well. He had had an unacknowledged vision of
+Robina standing in the witness box, very small and shy, with her eyes
+fluttering while she explained to the gentlemen of the jury that she
+ran away from her husband because she was afraid of him. He could hear
+the question, "Why were you afraid?" and Robina's answer--but at that
+point he always reminded himself that it was as a churchman that he
+objected to divorce.
+
+For his profession had committed him to a pose. He had posed for more
+than thirty years to his parish, to his three wives, to his three
+children, and to himself, till he had become unconscious of his real
+thoughts, his real motives, his real likings and dislikings. So that
+when he told himself that it would have been better if his third wife
+had died, he thought he meant that it would have been better for her
+and for his opinion of her, whereas what he really did mean was that
+it would have been better for himself.
+
+For if Robina had died he could have married again. As it was, her
+infidelity condemned him to a celibacy for which, as she knew, he was
+utterly unsuited.
+
+Therefore he thought of her as a cruel and unscrupulous woman. And
+when he thought of her he became more sorry for himself than ever.
+
+Now, oddly enough, the Grande Polonaise had set Mr. Cartaret thinking
+of Robina. It was not that Robina had ever played it. Robina did not
+play. It was not the discords introduced into it by Alice, though
+Robina had been a thing of discords. It was that something in him,
+obscurely but intimately associated with Robina, responded to that
+sensual and infernal tremor that Alice was wringing out of the
+Polonaise. So that, without clearly knowing why it was abominable,
+Mr. Cartaret said to himself that the tune Alice was playing was an
+abominable tune and must be stopped at once.
+
+He went into the drawing-room to stop it.
+
+And Essy, in the kitchen, raised her head and dried her eyes on her
+apron.
+
+"If you must make a noise," said Mr. Cartaret, "be good enough to make
+one that is less--disturbing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood in the doorway staring at his daughter Alice.
+
+Her excitement had missed by a hairsbreadth the spiritual climax. It
+had held itself in for one unspeakable moment, then surged, crowding
+the courses of her nerves. Beaten back by the frenzy of the Polonaise,
+it made a violent return; it rose, quivering, at her eyelids and her
+mouth; it broke, and, with a shudder of all her body, split itself and
+fell.
+
+The Vicar stared. He opened his mouth to say something, and said
+nothing; finally he went out, muttering.
+
+"Wisdom and patience. Wisdom and patience."
+
+It was a prayer.
+
+Alice trailed to the window and leaned out, listening for the sound of
+hoofs and wheels. Nothing there but the darkness and stillness of the
+moors. She trailed back to the Erard and began to play again.
+
+This time it was Beethoven, the Pathetic Sonata.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Mr. Cartaret sat in his study, manfully enduring the Pathetic Sonata.
+
+He was no musician and he did not certainly know when Alice went
+wrong; therefore, except that it had some nasty loud moments, he could
+not honestly say that the First Movement was disturbing. Besides, he
+had scored. He had made Alice change her tune.
+
+Wisdom and patience required that he should be satisfied, so far. And,
+being satisfied, in the sense that he no longer had a grievance, meant
+that he was very badly bored.
+
+He began to fidget. He took his legs out of the fender and put them
+back again. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, but
+without relief. He turned over his _Spectator_ to see what it had to
+say about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, and found that he was not
+interested in what it had to say. He looked at his watch and
+compared it with the clock in the faint hope that the clock might be
+behindhand.
+
+The watch and clock both agreed that it was not a minute later than
+fifteen minutes to ten. A whole quarter of an hour before Prayer-time.
+
+There was nothing but Prayer-time to look forward to.
+
+He began to fidget again. He filled his pipe and thought better about
+smoking it. Then he rang the bell for his glass of water.
+
+After more delay than was at all necessary Essy appeared, bringing the
+glass of water on a plate.
+
+She came in, soft-footed, almost furtive, she who used to enter so
+suddenly and unabashed. She put the plate down on the roll-top desk
+and turned softly, furtively, away.
+
+The Vicar looked up. His eyes were large and blue as suspicion drew in
+the black of their pupils.
+
+"Put it down here," he said, and he indicated the ledge of the bureau.
+
+Essy stood still and stared like a half-wild creature in doubt as to
+its way. She decided to make for the bureau by rounding the roll-top
+desk on the far side, thus approaching her master from behind.
+
+"What are you doing?" said the Vicar. "I said, Put it down here."
+
+Essy turned again and came forward, tilting the plate a little in her
+nervousness. The large blue eyes, the stern voice, fascinated her,
+frightened her.
+
+The Vicar looked at her steadily, remorselessly, as she came.
+
+Essy's lowered eyelids had kept the stain of her tears. Her thick
+brown hair was loose and rumpled under her white cap. But she had put
+on a clean, starched apron. It stood out stiffly, billowing, from
+her waist. Essy had not always been so careless about her hair or so
+fastidious as to her aprons. There was a little strained droop at the
+corners of her tender mouth, as if they had been tied with string. Her
+dark eyes still kept their young largeness and their light, but they
+looked as if they had been drawn tight with string at their corners
+too.
+
+All these signs the Vicar noted as he stared. And he hated Essy. He
+hated her for what he saw in her, and for her buxom comeliness, and
+for the softness of her youth.
+
+"Did I hear young Greatorex round at the back door this evening?" he
+said.
+
+Essy started, slanting her plate a little more.
+
+"I doan knaw ef I knaw, sir."
+
+"Either you know or you don't know," said the Vicar.
+
+"I doan know, I'm sure, sir," said Essy.
+
+The Vicar was holding out his hand for his glass of water, and Essy
+pushed the plate toward him, so blindly and at such a perilous slant
+that the glass slid and toppled over and broke itself against the
+Vicar's chair.
+
+Essy gave a little frightened cry.
+
+"Clever girl. She did that on purpose," said the Vicar to himself.
+
+Essy was on her knees beside him, picking up the bits of glass and
+gathering them in her apron. She was murmuring, "I'll mop it oop. I'll
+mop it oop."
+
+"That'll do," he said roughly. "That'll do, I tell you. You can go."
+
+Essy tried to go. But it was as if her knees had weights on them
+that fixed her to the floor. Holding up her apron with one hand, she
+clutched the arm of her master's chair with the other and dragged
+herself to her feet.
+
+"I'll mop it oop," she repeated, shamefast.
+
+"I told you to go," said the Vicar.
+
+"I'll fetch yo anoother glass?" she whispered. Her voice was hoarse
+with the spasm in her throat.
+
+"No," said the Vicar.
+
+Essy slunk back into her kitchen with terror in her heart.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+_"Attacca subito l'Allegro."_
+
+Alice had fallen on it suddenly.
+
+"I suppose," said Mary, "it's a relief to her to make that row."
+
+"It isn't," said Gwenda. "It's torture. That's how she works herself
+up. She's playing on her own nerves all the time. If she really
+_could_ play----If she cared about the music----If she cared about
+anything on earth except----"
+
+She paused.
+
+"Molly, it must be awful to be made like that."
+
+"Nothing could be worse for her than being shut up here."
+
+"I know. Papa's been a frightful fool about her. After all, Molly,
+what did she do?"
+
+"She did what you and I wouldn't have done."
+
+"How do you know what you wouldn't have done? How do I know? If we'd
+been in her place----"
+
+"If _I'd_ been in her place I'd have died rather."
+
+"How do you know Ally wouldn't have rather died if she could have
+chosen? She didn't want to fall in love with that young ass, Rickards.
+And I don't see what she did that was so very awful."
+
+"She managed to let everybody else see, anyhow."
+
+"What if she did? At least she was honest. She went straight for what
+she wanted. She didn't sneak and scheme to get him from any other
+girl. And she hadn't a mother to sneak and scheme _for_ her. That's
+fifty times worse, yet it's done every day and nobody thinks anything
+of it."
+
+She went on. "Nobody would have thought anything as it was, if Papa
+hadn't been such a frantic fool about it. It he'd had the pluck to
+stand by her, if he'd kept his head and laughed in their silly faces,
+instead of grizzling and growling and stampeding out of the parish as
+if poor Ally had disgraced him."
+
+"Well--it isn't a very pleasant thing for the Vicar of the parish----"
+
+"It wasn't a very pleasant thing for any of us. But it was beastly of
+him to go back on her like that. And the silliness of it! Caring so
+frightfully about what people think, and then going on so as to make
+them think it."
+
+"Think what?"
+
+"That she really _had_ done something."
+
+"Do you suppose they did?"
+
+"Yes. You can't blame them. He couldn't have piled it on more if she
+_had_. It's enough to make her."
+
+"Oh Gwenda!"
+
+"It would be his own fault. Just as it's his own fault that he hates
+her."
+
+"He doesn't hate her. He's fond of all of us, in his way."
+
+"Wot of Ally. Don't you know why? He can't look at her without
+thinking of how awful _he_ is."
+
+"And if he _is_--a little----You forget what he's had to go through."
+
+"You mean Mummy running away from him?"
+
+"Yes. And Mamma's dying. And before that--there was Mother."
+
+Gwenda raised her head.
+
+"He killed Mother."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He did. He was told that Mother would die or go mad if she had
+another baby. And he let her have Ally. No wonder Mummy ran away from
+him."
+
+"Who told you that story?"
+
+"Mummy."
+
+"It was horrid of her."
+
+"Everything poor Mummy did was horrid. It was horrid of her to run
+away from him, I suppose."
+
+"Why did you tell me that? I didn't know it. I'd rather not have
+known."
+
+"Well, now you do know, perhaps you'll be sorrier for Ally."
+
+"I am sorry for Ally. But I'm sorry for Papa, too. You're not."
+
+"I'd be sorry for him right enough if he wasn't so sorry for himself."
+
+"Gwenda, _you're_ awful."
+
+"Because I won't waste my pity? Ally's got nothing--He's got
+everything."
+
+"Not what he cares most for."
+
+"He cares most for what people think of him. Everybody thought him a
+good kind husband. Everybody thinks him a good kind father."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The music suddenly ceased. A sound of voices came instead of it.
+
+"There," said Gwenda. "He's gone in and stopped her."
+
+He had, that time.
+
+And in the sudden ceasing of the Pathetic Sonata the three sisters
+heard the sound of wheels and the clank of horseshoes striking
+together.
+
+Mr. Greatorex was not yet dead of his pneumonia. The doctor had passed
+the Vicarage gate.
+
+And as he passed he had said to himself. "How execrably she plays."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three sisters waited without a word for the striking of the church
+clock.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The church clock struck ten.
+
+At the sound of the study bell Essy came into the dining-room. Essy
+was the acolyte of Family Prayers. Though a Wesleyan she could not
+shirk the appointed ceremonial. It was Essy who took the Bible and
+Prayerbook from their place on the sideboard under the tea-urn and put
+them on the table, opening them where the Vicar had left a marker the
+night before. It was Essy who drew back the Vicar's chair from the
+table and set it ready for him. It was Essy whom he relied on for
+responses that _were_ responses and not mere mumblings and mutterings.
+She was Wesleyan, the one faithful, the one devout person in his
+household.
+
+To-night there was nothing but a mumbling and a muttering. And that
+was Mary. She was the only one who was joining in the Lord's Prayer.
+
+Essy had failed him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Prayers over, there was nothing to sit up for. All the same, it was
+Mr. Cartaret's rule to go back into the study and to bore himself
+again for a whole hour till it was bed-time. He liked to be sure that
+the doors were all bolted and that everybody else was in bed before he
+went himself.
+
+But to-night he had bored himself so badly that the thought of his
+study was distasteful to him. So he stayed where he was with his
+family. He believed that he was doing this solely on his family's
+account. He told himself that it was not right that he should leave
+the three girls too much to themselves. It did not occur to him that
+as long as he had had a wife to sit with, he hadn't cared how much
+he had left them. He knew that he had rather liked Mary and Gwendolen
+when they were little, and though he had found himself liking them
+less and less as they grew into their teens he had never troubled to
+enquire whose fault that was, so certain was he that it couldn't be
+his. Still less was it his fault if they were savage and inaccessible
+in their twenties. Of course he didn't mean that Mary was savage and
+inaccessible. It was Gwendolen that he meant.
+
+So, since he couldn't sit there much longer without saying something,
+he presently addressed himself to Mary.
+
+"Any news of Greatorex today?"
+
+"I haven't heard. Shall I ask Essy?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Cartaret, so abruptly that Mary looked at him.
+
+"He was worse yesterday," said Gwenda.
+
+They all looked at Gwenda.
+
+"Who told you that?" said Mr. Cartaret by way of saying something.
+
+"Mrs. Gale."
+
+"When did she tell you?"
+
+"Yesterday, when I was up at the farm."
+
+"What were you doing at the farm?"
+
+"Nothing. I went to see if I could do anything." She said to herself,
+"Why does he go on at us like this?" Aloud she said, "It was time some
+of us went."
+
+She had him there. She was always having him.
+
+"I shall have to go myself tomorrow," he said.
+
+"I would if I were you," said Gwenda.
+
+"I wonder what Jim Greatorex will do if his father dies."
+
+It was Mary who wondered.
+
+"He'll get married, like a shot," said Alice.
+
+"Who to?" said Gwenda. "He can't marry _all_ the girls----"
+
+She stopped herself. Essy Gale was in the room. Three months ago
+Essy had been a servant at the Farm where her mother worked once a
+fortnight.
+
+She had come in so quietly that none of them had noticed her. She
+brought a tray with a fresh glass of water for the Vicar and a glass
+of milk for Alice. She put it down quietly and slipped out of the room
+without her customary "Anything more, Miss?" and "Good-night."
+
+"What's the matter with Essy?" Gwenda said.
+
+Nobody spoke but Alice who was saying that she didn't want her milk.
+
+More than a year ago Alice had been ordered milk for her anaemia. She
+had milk at eleven, milk at her midday dinner, milk for supper, and
+milk last thing at night. She did not like milk, but she liked being
+ordered it. Generally she would sit and drink it, in the face of
+her family, pathetically, with little struggling gulps. She took a
+half-voluptuous, half-vindictive pleasure in her anaemia. She knew that
+it made her sisters sorry for her, and that it annoyed her father.
+
+Now she declared that she wasn't feeling well, and that she didn't
+want her milk.
+
+"In that case," said Mr. Cartaret, "you had better go to bed."
+
+Alice went, raising her white arms and rubbing her eyes along the
+backs of her hands, like a child dropping with sleep.
+
+One after another, they rose and followed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the half-landing five steep steps in a recess of the wall led aside
+to the door of Essy's bedroom. There Gwenda stopped and listened.
+
+A sound of stifled crying came from the room. Gwenda went up to the
+door and knocked.
+
+"Essy, are you in bed?"
+
+A pause. "Yes, miss."
+
+"What is it? Are you ill?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Is there anything wrong?"
+
+A longer pause. "I've got th' faace-ache."
+
+"Oh, poor thing! Can I do anything for you?"
+
+"Naw, Miss Gwenda, thank yo."
+
+"Well, call me if I can."
+
+But somehow she knew that Essy wouldn't call.
+
+She went on, passing her father's door at the stair head. It was shut.
+She could hear him moving heavily within the room. On the other side
+of the landing was the room over the study that she shared with Alice.
+
+The door stood wide. Alice in her thin nightgown could be seen sitting
+by the open window.
+
+The nightgown, the small, slender body showing through, the hair,
+platted for the night, in two pig-tails that hung forward, one over
+each small breast, the tired face between the parted hair made Alice
+look childlike and pathetic.
+
+Gwendolen had a pang of compassion.
+
+"Dear lamb," she said. "_That_ isn't any good. Fresh air won't do it.
+You'd much better wait till Papa gets a cold. Then you can catch it."
+
+"It'll be his fault anyway," said Alice. "Serve him jolly well right
+if I get pneumonia."
+
+"Pneumonia doesn't come to those who want it. I wonder what's wrong
+with Essy."
+
+Alice was tired and sullen. "You'd better ask Jim Greatorex," she
+said.
+
+"What do you mean, Ally?"
+
+But Ally had set her small face hard.
+
+"Can't you he sorry for her?" said Gwenda.
+
+"Why should I be sorry for her? _She's_ all right."
+
+She had sorrow enough, but none to waste on Essy. Essy's way was easy.
+Essy had only to slink out to the back door and she could have her
+will. _She_ didn't have to get pneumonia.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+John Greatorex did not die that night. He had no mind to die: he was a
+man of stubborn pugnacity and he fought his pneumonia.
+
+The long gray house at Upthorne looks over the marshes of the high
+land above Garth. It stands alone, cut off by the marshes from the
+network of gray walls that links the village to the hill farms.
+
+The light in its upper window burned till dawn, a sign to the brooding
+and solitary land. Up there, in the low room with its sunken ceiling,
+John Greatorex lay in the big bed and rallied a little as the clean
+air from the moors lapped him like water. For the doctor had thrown
+open all the windows of the house before he left. Presently Mrs. Gale,
+the untrained village nurse, would come and shut them in terror, and
+John Greatorex's pneumonia would get the upper hand. That was how the
+fight went on, with Steven Rowcliffe on John Greatorex's side and Mrs.
+Gale for the pneumonia. It was ten to one against John Greatorex and
+the doctor, for John Greatorex was most of the time unconscious and
+the doctor called but once or twice a day, while Mrs. Gale was always
+there to shut the windows as fast as he opened them. In the length and
+breadth of the Dale there wasn't another woman who would not have done
+the same. She was secure from criticism. If she didn't know how to
+nurse pneumonia, who did? Seeing that her own husband had died of it.
+
+Young Rowcliffe was a dalesman and he knew his people. In six months
+his face had grown stiff in the struggle with them. It was making his
+voice stern and his eyes hard, so that they could see nothing round
+him but stupidity and distrust and an obstinacy even greater than his
+own.
+
+Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for it. In his
+big provincial hospital he had had it practically his own way. He had
+faced a thousand horrible and intractable diseases with a thousand
+appliances and with an army of assistants and trained nurses under
+him. And if in his five years' private practice in Leeds he had come
+to grips with human nature, it had been at any rate a fair fight. If
+his work was harder his responsibility was less. He still had trained
+nurses under him; and if a case was beyond him there were specialists
+with whom he could consult.
+
+Here he was single-handed. He was physician and surgeon and specialist
+and nurse in one. He had few appliances and no assistant beside naked
+and primeval nature, the vast high spaces, the clean waters and clean
+air of the moors.
+
+Yet it was precisely these things that his romantic youth had cried
+for--that solitary combat and communion, that holy and solitary aid.
+
+At thirty Rowcliffe was still in his romantic youth.
+
+He had all its appearances about him. A life of continual labor
+and discomfort had kept his body slender; and all the edges of
+his face--clean-shaven except for its little dark moustache--were
+incomparably firm and clear. His skin was bronzed and reddened by sun
+and wind. The fine hard mouth under the little dark moustache was not
+so hard that it could not, sometimes, be tender. His irreproachable
+nose escaped the too high curve that would have made it arrogant. And
+his eyes, keen and hard in movement, by simply keeping quiet under
+lowered brows, became charged with a curious and engaging pathos.
+
+Their pathos had appealed to the little red-haired, pink-skinned,
+green-eyed nurse who had worked under him in Leeds. She was clever and
+kind--much too kind, it was supposed--to Rowcliffe. There had been one
+or two others before the little red-haired nurse, so that, though he
+was growing hard, he had not grown bitter.
+
+He was not in the least afraid of growing bitter; for he knew that his
+eyes, as long as he could keep them quiet, would preserve him from all
+necessity for bitterness.
+
+Rowcliffe had always trusted a great deal to his eyes. Because of them
+he had left several young ladies, his patients, quite heart-broken in
+Leeds. The young ladies knew nothing about the little red-haired nurse
+and had never ceased to wonder why Dr. Rowcliffe did not want to marry
+them.
+
+And Steven Rowcliffe's eyes, so disastrous to the young ladies in
+Leeds, saw nobody in Morfe whom he could possibly want to marry. The
+village of Morfe is built in a square round its green. The doctor's
+house stands on a plot of rising ground on the north side of the
+square, and from its front windows young Rowcliffe could see the
+inhabitants of Morfe coming and going before him as on a stage, and he
+kept count of them all. There were the three middle-aged maiden ladies
+in the long house on the west side of whom all he knew was that they
+ate far too many pikelets and griddle cakes for tea. There were the
+two old ladies in the white house next door who were always worrying
+him to sound their chests, one for her lungs and the other for her
+arteries. In spite of lungs and arteries they were very gay old
+ladies. The tubes of Rowcliffe's queer, new-fangled stethescope,
+appearing out of his coat pocket, sent them into ecstacies of mirth.
+They always made the same little joke about it; they called the
+stethescope his telephone. But of course he didn't want to marry them.
+There was the very old lady on the east side, who had had one stroke
+and was expecting another every day. There were the two unmarried
+daughters of a retired manufacturer on the far side of the Green. They
+were plump and had red cheeks, if he had cared for plumpness and
+red cheeks; but they had no conversation. The only pretty girl whose
+prettiness appealed to Rowcliffe had an "adenoid" mouth which he held
+to be a drawback. There was the daughter of his predecessor, but she
+again was well over forty, rigid and melancholy and dry.
+
+All these people became visibly excited when they saw young Rowcliffe
+starting off in his trap and returning; but young Rowcliffe was never
+excited, never even interested when he saw them. There was nothing
+about them that appealed to his romantic youth.
+
+As for Morfe Manor, and Garth Manor and Greffington Hall, they were
+nearly always empty, so that he had not very much chance of improving
+his acquaintance there.
+
+And he had nothing to hope for from the summer visitors, girls with
+queer clothes and queer manners and queer accents; bouncing, convivial
+girls who spread themselves four abreast on the high roads; fat, lazy
+girls who sat about on the Green; blowsed, slouching girls who tramped
+the dales with knapsacks and no hats. The hard eyes of young Rowcliffe
+never softened as he looked at the summer visitors. Their behavior
+irritated him. It reminded him that there were women in the world and
+that he missed, quite unbearably at moments, the little red-haired
+nurse who had been so clever and so kind. Moreover it offended his
+romantic youth. The little publicans and shop-keepers of Morfe did not
+offend it; neither did the peasants and the farmers; they were part
+of the place; generations of them had been born in those gray houses,
+built from the gaunt ribs of the hills; whereas the presence of the
+summer visitors was an outrage to the silent and solitary country that
+his instincts inscrutably adored. No wonder that he didn't care to
+look at them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But one night in September, when the moon was high in the south, as
+he was driving toward Garth on his way to Upthorne, the eyes of
+young Rowcliffe were startled out of their aversion by the sudden and
+incredible appearance of a girl.
+
+It was at the bend of the road where Karva lowers its head and sinks
+back on the moor; and she came swinging up the hill as Rowcliffe's
+horse scraped his way slowly down it. She was in white (he couldn't
+have missed her) and she carried herself like a huntress; slender
+and quick, with high, sharp-pointed breasts. She looked at him as she
+passed and her face was wide-eyed and luminous under the moon. Her
+lips were parted with her speed, so that, instinctively, his hands
+tightened on the reins as if he had thought that she was going to
+speak to him. But of course she did not speak.
+
+He looked back and saw her swing off the high road and go up Karva. A
+flock of mountain sheep started from their couches on the heather and
+looked at her, and she went driving them before her. They trailed up
+Karva slowly, in a long line, gray in the moonlight. Their mournful,
+musical voices came to him from the hill.
+
+He saw her again late--incredibly late--that night as the moon swept
+from the south toward Karva. She was a long way off, coming down from
+her hill, a white speck on the gray moor. He pulled up his horse and
+waited below the point where the track she followed struck the high
+road; he even got out of his trap and examined, deliberately, his
+horse's hoofs in turn, spinning out the time. When he heard her he
+drew himself upright and looked straight at her as she passed him. She
+flashed by like a huntress, like Artemis carrying the young moon on
+her forehead. From the turn of her head and the even falling of her
+feet he felt her unconscious of his existence. And her unconsciousness
+was hateful to him. It wiped him clean out of the universe of
+noticeable things.
+
+The apparition fairly cried to his romantic youth. And he said to
+himself. "Who is the strange girl who walks on the moor by herself at
+night and isn't afraid?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He saw her three times after that; once in the broad daylight, on the
+high road near Morfe, when she passed him with a still more perfect
+and inimical unconsciousness; once in the distance on the moor, when
+he caught her, short-skirted and wild, jumping the wide water courses
+as they came, evidently under the impression that she was unobserved.
+And he smiled and said to himself, "She's doing it for fun, pure fun."
+
+The third time he came upon her at dawn with the dew on her skirts
+and on her hair. She darted away at the clank of his horse's hoofs,
+half-savage, divinely shy. And he said to himself that time, "I'm
+getting on. She's aware of me all right."
+
+She had come down from Karva, and he was on his way to Morfe from
+Upthorne. He had sat up all night with John Greatorex who had died at
+dawn.
+
+The smell of the sick man, and of the bed and of the low close room
+was still in his nostrils, and in his ears the sounds of dying and of
+mourning, and at his heart the oppression (he was still young enough
+to feel it) of the secret and abominable things he knew. And in his
+eyes the unknown girl and her behavior became suddenly adorable.
+She was the darting joy and the poignant sweetness, and the sheer
+extravagant ardor and energy of life. His tempestuously romantic youth
+rose up and was troubled at the sight of her. And his eyes, that
+had stared at her in wonder and amusement and inquisitive interest,
+followed her now with that queer pathos that they had. It was the look
+that he relied on to move desire in women's eyes; and now it traveled,
+forlorn and ineffectual, abject almost in its futility, over the gray
+moorgrass where she went.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was on Wednesday the fourteenth. On Friday the sixteenth he saw
+her again at nightfall, in the doorway of John Greatorex's house.
+
+He had overtaken the cart that was carrying John Greatorex's coffin to
+Upthorne. Low lighted, the long gray house brooded over the marshes,
+waiting to be disencumbered of its dead.
+
+In the east the broken shoulders of the hills receded, winding with
+the dale like a coast line of gray cliffs above the mist that was
+their sea. Tortured, mutilated by the jagged cloud that held her, the
+moon struggled and tore her way, she lifted and freed herself high and
+struck the marshes white. Defaced and sinister, above her battlements,
+she looked at the house and made it terrible, moon-haunted. Its door,
+low lighted, stood open to the night.
+
+Rowcliffe drew back from the threshold to let a woman pass out.
+Looking up, he was aware that he had seen her again. He supposed it
+was the light of that detestable moon that gave her face its queer
+morbid whiteness.
+
+She went by without seeing him, clenching her hands and carrying her
+young head high; and he saw that her eyes still held the tears that
+she was afraid to spill.
+
+Mrs. Gale stood behind her with a lamp, lighting her passage.
+
+"Who is that young lady?" he asked.
+
+"T' Vicar's laass, Gwanda."
+
+The woman leaned to him and whispered, "She's seen t' body."
+
+And in the girl's fear and blindness and defiance he saw the pride of
+her youth beaten and offended by that which it had seen.
+
+Out there, in the bridle path leading from the high road to the farm,
+the cart had stopped. The men were lifting the coffin out, shouldering
+it, carrying it along. He saw Gwenda Cartaret swerve out of their way.
+Presently he heard her running down the road.
+
+Then he remembered what he had been sent for.
+
+He turned his attention to Mrs. Gale. She was a square-set,
+blunt-featured woman of forty-five or so, who had once been comely
+like her daughter Essy. Now her soft chin had sagged; in her cheeks
+the stagnant blood crawled through a network of little veins, and
+the gloss had gone from her dark hair. Her brown eyes showed a dull
+defiance and deprecation of the human destiny.
+
+"Where is he?" he said.
+
+"Oop there, in t' room wi' 's feyther."
+
+"Been drinking again, or what?"
+
+"Naw, Dr. Rawcliffe, 'e 'assn't. I suddn' a sent for yo all this road
+for nowt."
+
+She drew him into the house place, and whispered.
+
+"I'm feared 'e'll goa queer in 'is 'head, like. 'E's sot there by t'
+body sence yesterda noon. 'E's not takken off 'is breeches for tree
+daas. 'E caaun't sleap; 'e wunna eat and 'e wunna drink. There's work
+to be doon and 'e wunna lay haand to it. Wull yo goa oop t' 'im, Dr.
+Rawcliffe?"
+
+Rowcliffe went up.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In the low lighted room the thing that Gwenda Cartaret had seen lay
+stretched in the middle of the great bed, covered with a sheet. The
+bed, with its white mound, was so much too big for the four walls that
+held it, the white plaster of the ceiling bulging above it stooped so
+low, that the body of John Greatorex lay as if already closed up in
+its tomb.
+
+Jim Greatorex, his son, sat on a wooden chair at the head of the
+bed. His young, handsome face was loose and flushed as if he had been
+drinking. His eyes--the queer, blue, wide-open eyes that had hitherto
+looked out at you from their lodging in that ruddy, sensuous face,
+incongruously spiritual, high and above your head, like the eyes of a
+dreamer and a mystic--Jim's eyes were sunken now and darkened in their
+red and swollen lids. They stared at the rug laid down beside the bed,
+while Jim's mind set itself to count, stupidly and obstinately, the
+snippets of gray and scarlet cloth that made the pattern on the black.
+Every now and then he would recognise a snippet as belonging to some
+suit his father had worn years ago, and then Jim's brain would receive
+a shock and would stagger and have to begin its counting all over
+again.
+
+The door opened to let Rowcliffe in. And at the sound of the door,
+as if a spring had been suddenly released in his spine, Jim Greatorex
+shot up and started to his feet.
+
+"Well, Greatorex----"
+
+"Good evening, Dr. Rawcliffe." He came forward awkwardly, hanging his
+head as if detected in an act of shame.
+
+There was a silence while the two men turned their backs upon the
+bed, determined to ignore what was on it. They stood together by the
+window, pretending to stare at things out there in the night; and so
+they became aware of the men carrying the coffin.
+
+They could no longer ignore it.
+
+"Wull yo look at 'Im, doctor?"
+
+"Better not----." Rowcliffe would have laid his hand on the young
+man's arm, muttering a refusal, but Greatorex had moved to the bed and
+drawn back the sheet.
+
+What Gwenda Cartaret had seen was revealed.
+
+The dead man's face, upturned with a slight tilt to the ceiling that
+bulged so brutally above it, the stiff dark beard accentuating the
+tilt, the eyes, also upturned, white under their unclosing lids, the
+nostrils, the half-open mouth preserved their wonder and their terror
+before a thing so incredible--that the walls and roof of a man's room
+should close round him and suffocate him. On this horrified face there
+were the marks of dissolution, and, at the corners of the grim beard
+and moustache, a stain.
+
+It left nothing to be said. It was the face of the man who had drunk
+hard and had told his son that he had never been the worse for drink.
+
+Jim Greatorex stood and looked at it as if he knew what Rowcliffe was
+thinking of it and defied him to think.
+
+Rowcliffe drew up the sheet and covered it. "You'd better come out of
+this. It isn't good for you," he said.
+
+"I knaw what's good for me, Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+Jim stuck his hands in his breeches and gazed stubbornly at the
+sheeted mound.
+
+"Come," Rowcliffe said, "don't give way like this. Buck up and be a
+man."
+
+"A ma-an? You wait till yor turn cooms, doctor."
+
+"My turn came ten years ago, and it may come again."
+
+"And yo'll knaw then what good it doos ta-alkin'." He paused,
+listening. "They've coom," he said.
+
+There was a sound of scuffling on the stone floor below and on the
+stairs. Mrs. Gale's voice was heard out on the landing, calling to the
+men.
+
+"Easy with un--easy. Mind t' lamp. Eh--yo'll never get un oop that
+road. Yo mun coax un round corner."
+
+A swinging thud on the stone wall. Then more and more desperate
+scuffling with muttering. Then silence.
+
+Mrs. Gale put her head in at the door.
+
+"Jimmy, yo mun coom and gie a haand wi' t' coffin. They've got un
+faasst in t' turn o' t' stair."
+
+Through the open doorway Rowcliffe could see the broad shoulders of
+the coffin jammed in the stairway.
+
+Jim, flushed with resentment, strode out; and the struggling and
+scuffling began again, subdued, this time, and respectful. Rowcliffe
+went out to help.
+
+Mrs. Gale on the landing went on talking to herself. "They sud 'ave
+browt trestles oop first. There's naw place to stond un in. Eh dear!
+It's job enoof gettin' un oop. What'll it be gettin' un down again
+wit' 'E layin' in un? 'Ere--yo get oonder un, Jimmy, and 'eave un
+oop."
+
+Jim crouched and went backward down the stair under the coffin. His
+flushed face, with its mournful, mystic eyes, looked out at Rowcliffe
+for a moment under the coffin head. Then, with a heave of his great
+back and pushing with his powerful arms against the wall and stair
+rail, he loosened the shoulders of the coffin and bore it, steadied by
+Rowcliffe and the men, up the stair and into the room.
+
+They set it on its feet beside the bed, propped against the wall. And
+Jim Greatorex stood and stared at it.
+
+Rowcliffe went down into the kitchen, followed by Mrs. Gale.
+
+"What d'yo think o' Jimmy, Dr. Rawcliffe?"
+
+"He oughtn't to be left alone. Isn't there any sister or anybody who
+could come to him?"
+
+"Naw; 'e's got naw sisters, Jimmy 'assn't."
+
+"Well, you must get him to lie down and eat."
+
+"Get 'im? Yo can do nowt wi' Jimmy. 'E'll goa 'is own road. 'Is
+feyther an' 'e they wuss always quar'ling, yo med say. Yet when t' owd
+gentleman was taaken bad, Jimmy, 'e couldn' do too mooch for 'im. 'E
+was set on pullin' 's feyther round. And when 'e found 'e couldn't
+keep t' owd gentleman, 'e gets it on 'is mind like--broodin'. And 'e's
+got nowt to coomfort 'im."
+
+She sat down to it now.
+
+"Yo see, Dr. Rawcliffe, Jim's feyther and 'is granfeyther before 'im,
+they wuss good Wesleyans. It's in t' blood. But Jim's moother that
+died, she wuss Choorch. And that slip of a laass, when John Greatorex
+coom courtin', she turned 'im. 'E was that soft wi' laasses. 'Er
+feyther 'e was steward to lord o' t' Manor and 'e was Choorch and all
+t' family saame as t' folk oop at Manor. Yo med say, Jim Greatorex,
+'e's got naw religion. Neither Choorch nor Chapel 'e is. Nowt to
+coomfort 'im."
+
+Upstairs the scuffling and the struggling became frightful. Jim's feet
+and Jim's voice were heard above the muttering of the undertaker's
+men.
+
+Mrs. Gale whispered. "They're gettin' 'im in. 'E's gien a haand wi' t'
+body. Thot's soomthin'."
+
+She brooded ponderously. A sound of stamping and scraping at the back
+door roused her.
+
+"Eh--oo's there now?" she asked irritably.
+
+Willie, the farm lad, appeared on the threshold. His face was flushed
+and scared.
+
+"Where's Jim?" he said in a thick voice.
+
+"Ooosh-sh! Doan't yo' knaw t' coffin's coom? 'E's oopstairs w' t' owd
+maaster."
+
+"Well--'e mun coom down. T' mare's taaken baad again in 'er insi-ide."
+
+"T' mare, Daasy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Eh dear, there's naw end to trooble. Yo go oop and fatch Jimmy."
+
+Willie hesitated. His flush deepened.
+
+"I daarss'nt," he whispered hoarsely.
+
+"Poor laad, 'e 's freetened o' t' body," she explained. "Yo stay
+there, Wullie. I'll goa. T' body's nowt to me. I've seen too many o'
+they," she muttered as she went.
+
+They heard her crying excitedly overhead. "Jimmy! Yo coom to t'
+ma-are! Yo coom to t' ma-are!"
+
+The sounds in the room ceased instantly. Jim Greatorex, alert and in
+violent possession of all his faculties, dashed down the stairs and
+out into the yard.
+
+Rowcliffe followed into the darkness where his horse and trap stood
+waiting for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was lighting his lamps when Jim Greatorex appeared beside him with
+a lantern.
+
+"Dr. Rawcliffe, will yo joost coom an' taak a look at lil maare?"
+
+Jim's sullenness was gone. His voice revealed him humble and
+profoundly agitated.
+
+Rowcliffe sighed, smiled, pulled himself together and turned with
+Greatorex into the stable.
+
+In the sodden straw of her stall, Daisy, the mare, lay, heaving and
+snorting after her agony. From time to time she turned her head
+toward her tense and swollen flank, seeking with eyes of anguish the
+mysterious source of pain. The feed of oats with which Willie had
+tried to tempt her lay untouched in the skip beside her head.
+
+"I give 'er they oats an hour ago," said Willie. "An' she 'assn't so
+mooch as nosed 'em."
+
+"Nawbody but a donmed gawpie would have doon thot with 'er stoomach
+raw. Yo med 'ave killed t' mare."
+
+Willie, appalled by his own deed and depressed, stooped down and
+fondled the mare's face, to show that it was not affection that he
+lacked.
+
+"Heer--clear out o' thot and let doctor have a look in."
+
+Willie slunk aside as Rowcliffe knelt with Greatorex in the straw and
+examined the sick mare.
+
+"Can yo tell at all what's amiss, doctor?"
+
+"Colic, I should say. Has the vet seen her?"
+
+"Ye-es. He sent oop soomthing--"
+
+"Well, have you given it her?"
+
+Jim's voice thickened. "I sud have given it her yesterda."
+
+"And why on earth didn't you?"
+
+"The domned thing went clane out o' my head."
+
+He turned to the window ledge by the stable door where, among a
+confusion of cobwebs and dusty bottles and tin cans, the drench of
+turpentine and linseed oil, the little phial of chlorodyne, and the
+clean tin pannikin with its wide protruding mouth, stood ready, all
+gleaming in the lantern light, forgotten since the day before.
+
+"Thot's the stoof. Will yo halp me give it 'er, doctor?"
+
+"All right. Can you hold her?"
+
+"That I can. Coom oop, Daasy. Coom oop. There, my beauty. Gently,
+gently, owd laass."
+
+Rowcliffe took off his coat and shook up the drench and poured it into
+the pannikin, while Greatorex got the struggling mare on to her feet.
+
+Together, with gentleness and dexterity they cajoled her. Then Jim
+laid his hands upon her mouth and opened it, drawing up her head
+against his breast. Willie, suddenly competent, held the lantern while
+Rowcliffe poured the drench down her throat.
+
+Daisy, coughing and dribbling, stood and gazed at them with sad and
+terrified eyes. And while the undertaker's men screwed down the lid
+upon John Greatorex in his coffin, Jim Greatorex, his son, watched
+with Daisy in her stall.
+
+And Steven Rowcliffe watched with him, nursing the sick mare, making
+up a fresh, clean bed for her, rubbing and fomenting her swollen and
+tortured belly. When Daisy rolled in another agony, Rowcliffe gave her
+chlorodyne and waited till suddenly she lay still.
+
+In Jim's face, as he looked down at her, there was an infinite
+tenderness and pity and compunction.
+
+Rowcliffe, wriggling into his coat, regarded him with curiosity and
+wonder, till Jim drew himself up and fixed him with his queer, unhappy
+eyes.
+
+"Shall I save her, doctor?"
+
+"I can't tell you yet. I'd better send the vet up tomorrow hadn't I?"
+
+"Ay----" Jim's voice was strangled in the spasm of his throat. But he
+took Rowcliffe's hand and wrung it, discharging many emotions in that
+one excruciating grip.
+
+Rowcliffe pointed to the little phial of chlorodyne lying in the
+straw. "If I were you," he said, "I shouldn't leave that lying about."
+
+Through his long last night in the gray house haunted by the moon,
+John Greatorex lay alone, screwed down under a coffin lid, and his
+son, Jim, wrapped in a horse-blanket and with his head on a hay sack,
+lay in the straw of the stable, beside Daisy his mare. From time to
+time, as his mood took him, he turned and laid his hand on her in a
+poignant caress. As if she had been his first-born, or his bride, he
+spoke to her in the thick, soft voice of passion, with pitiful, broken
+words and mutterings.
+
+"What is it, Daasy----what is it? There, did they, then, did they? My
+beauty--my lil laass. I--I wuss a domned brute to forget tha, a domned
+brute."
+
+All that night and the next night he lay beside her. The funeral
+passed like a fantastic interlude between the long acts of his
+passion. His great sorrow made him humble to Mrs. Gale so that he
+allowed her to sustain him with food and drink. And on the third day
+it was known throughout Garthdale that young Greatorex, who had lost
+his father, had saved his mare.
+
+Only Steven Rowcliffe knew that the mare had saved young Greatorex.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And the little phial of chlorodyne was put back among the cobwebs and
+forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Down at the Vicarage the Vicar was wrangling with his youngest
+daughter. For the third time Alice declared that she was not well and
+that she didn't want her milk.
+
+"Whether you want it or not you've got to drink it," said the Vicar.
+
+Alice took the glass in her lap and looked at it.
+
+"Am I to stand over you till you drink it?"
+
+Alice put the rim of the glass to her mouth and shuddered.
+
+"I can't," she said. "It'll make me sick."
+
+"Leave the poor child alone, Papa," said Gwenda.
+
+But the Vicar ignored Gwenda.
+
+"You'll drink it, if I stand here all night," he said.
+
+Alice struggled with a spasm in her throat. He held the glass for her
+while she groped piteously.
+
+"Oh, where's my hanky?"
+
+With superhuman clemency he produced his own.
+
+"It'll serve you right if I'm ill," said Alice.
+
+"Come," said the Vicar in his wisdom and his patience. "Come."
+
+He proffered the disgusting cup again.
+
+"I'd drink it and have done with it, if I were you," said Mary in her
+soft voice.
+
+Mary's soft voice was too much for Alice.
+
+"Why c-can't you leave me alone? You--you--beast, Mary," she sobbed.
+
+And Mr. Cartaret began again, "Am I to stand here----"
+
+Alice got up, she broke loose from them and left the room.
+
+"You might have known she wasn't going to drink it," Gwenda said.
+
+But the Vicar never knew when he was beaten.
+
+"She would have drunk it," he said, "if Mary hadn't interfered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alice had not got the pneumonia that had killed John Greatorex. Such
+happiness, she reflected, was not for her. She had desired it too
+much.
+
+But she was doing very well with her anaemia.
+
+Bloodless and slender and inert, she dragged herself about the
+village. She could not get away from it because of the steep hills
+she would have had to climb. A small, unhappy ghost, she haunted the
+fields in the bottom and the path along the beck that led past Mrs.
+Gale's cottage.
+
+The sight of Alice was more than ever annoying to the Vicar. Only
+you wouldn't have known it. As she grew whiter and weaker he braced
+himself, and became more hearty and robust. When he caught her lying
+on the sofa he spoke to her in a robust and hearty tone.
+
+"Don't lie there all day, my girl. Get up and go out. What you want is
+a good blow on the moor."
+
+"Yes. If I didn't die before I got there," Alice would say, while she
+thought, "Serve him right, too, if I did."
+
+And the Vicar would turn from her in disgust. He knew what was the
+matter with his daughter Alice.
+
+At dinner time he would pull himself together again, for, after all,
+he was her father. He was robust and hearty over the sirloin and the
+leg of mutton. He would call for a glass and press into it the red
+juice of the meat.
+
+"Don't peak and pine, girl. Drink that. It'll put some blood into
+you."
+
+And Alice would refuse to drink it.
+
+Next she refused to drink her milk at eleven. She carried it out to
+Essy in the scullery.
+
+"I wish you'd drink my milk for me, Essy. It makes me sick," she said.
+
+"I don't want your milk," said Essy.
+
+"Please--" she implored her.
+
+But Essy was angry. Her face flamed and she banged down the dishes she
+was drying. "I sail not drink it. What should I want your milk for?
+You can pour it in t' pig's bucket."
+
+And the milk would be left by the scullery window till it turned sour
+and Essy poured it into the pig's bucket that stood under the sink.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks passed, and with every week Alice grew more bloodless,
+more slender, and more inert, and more and more like an unhappy
+ghost. Her small face was smaller; there was a tinge of green in its
+honey-whiteness, and of mauve in the dull rose of her mouth. And under
+her shallow breast her heart seemed to rise up and grow large, while
+the rest of Alice shrank and grew small. It was as if her fragile
+little body carried an enormous engine, an engine of infernal and
+terrifying power. When she lay down and when she got up and with every
+sudden movement its throbbing shook her savagely.
+
+Night and morning she called to her sister: "Oh Gwenda, come and feel
+my heart. I do believe it's growing. It's getting too big for my body.
+It frightens me when it jumps about like that."
+
+It frightened Gwenda.
+
+But it did not really frighten Alice. She rejoiced in it, rather,
+and exulted. After all, it was a good thing that she had not
+got pneumonia, which might have killed her as it had killed John
+Greatorex. She had got what served her purpose better. It served all
+her purposes. If she had tried she could not have hit on anything that
+would have annoyed her father more or put him more conspicuously in
+the wrong. To begin with, it was his doing. He had worried her into
+it. And he had brought her to a place which was the worst place
+conceivable for anybody with a diseased heart, since you couldn't stir
+out of doors without going up hill.
+
+Night and morning Alice stood before the looking-glass and turned out
+the lining of her lips and eyelids and saw with pleasure the pale rose
+growing paler. Every other hour she laid her hand on her heart and
+took again the full thrill of its dangerous throbbing, or felt her
+pulse to assure herself of the halt, the jerk, the hurrying of the
+beat. Night and morning and every other hour she thought of Rowcliffe.
+
+"If it goes on like this, they'll _have_ to send for him," she said.
+
+But it had gone on, the three weeks had passed, and yet they had not
+sent. The Vicar had put his foot down. He wouldn't have the doctor. He
+knew better than a dozen doctors what was the matter with his daughter
+Alice.
+
+Alice said nothing. She simply waited. As if some profound and
+dead-sure instinct had sustained her, she waited, sickening.
+
+And on the last night of the third week she fainted. She had dragged
+herself upstairs to bed, staggered across the little landing and
+fallen on the threshold of her room.
+
+They kept her in bed next day. At one o'clock she refused her
+chicken-broth. She would neither eat nor drink. And a little before
+three Gwenda went for the doctor.
+
+She had not told Alice she was going. She had not told anybody.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+She had to walk, for Mary had taken her bicycle. Nobody knew where
+Mary had gone or when she had started or when she would be back.
+
+But the four miles between Garth and Morfe were nothing to Gwenda, who
+would walk twenty for her own amusement. She would have stretched the
+way out indefinitely if she could; she would have piled Garthdale Moor
+on Greffington Edge and Karva on the top of them and put them between
+Garth and Morfe, so violent was her fear of Steven Rowcliffe.
+
+She had no longer any desire to see him or to be seen by him. He had
+seen her twice too often, and too early and too late. After being
+caught on the moor at dawn, it was preposterous that she should show
+herself in the doorway of Upthorne at night.
+
+How was he to know that she hadn't done it on purpose? Girls did these
+things. Poor little Ally had done them. And it was because Ally had
+done them that she had been taken and hidden away here where she
+couldn't do them any more.
+
+But--couldn't she? Gwenda stood still, staring in her horror as the
+frightful thought struck her that Ally could, and that she would, the
+very minute she realised young Rowcliffe. And he would think--not that
+it mattered in the least what he thought--he would think that there
+were two of them.
+
+If only, she said to herself, if only young Rowcliffe were a married
+man. Then even Ally couldn't--
+
+Not that she blamed poor little Ally. She looked on little Ally as
+the victim of a malign and tragic tendency, the fragile vehicle of an
+alien and overpowering impulse. Little Ally was doomed. It wasn't her
+fault if she was made like that.
+
+And this time it wouldn't be her fault at all. Their father would have
+driven her. Gwenda hated him for his persecution and exposure of the
+helpless creature.
+
+She walked on thinking.
+
+It wouldn't end with Ally. They were all three exposed and persecuted.
+For supposing--it wasn't likely, but supposing--that this Rowcliffe
+man was the sort of man she liked, supposing--what was still more
+unlikely--that he was the sort of man who would like her, where
+would be the good of it? Her father would spoil it all. He spoiled
+everything.
+
+Well, no, to be perfectly accurate, not everything. There was
+one thing he had not spoiled, because he had never suspected its
+existence--her singular passion for the place. Of course, if he had
+suspected it, he would have stamped on it. It was his business
+to stamp on other people's passions. Luckily, it wasn't in him to
+conceive a passion for a place.
+
+It had come upon her at first sight as they drove between twilight and
+night from Reyburn through Rathdale into Garthdale. It was when they
+had left the wooded land behind them and the moors lifted up their
+naked shoulders, one after another, darker than dark, into a sky
+already whitening above the hidden moon. And she saw Morfe, gray as
+iron, on its hill, bearing the square crown and the triple pendants of
+its lights; she saw the long straight line of Greffington Edge, hiding
+the secret moon, and Karva with the ashen west behind it. There was
+something in their form and in their gesture that called to her as
+if they knew her, as if they waited for her; they struck her with the
+shock of recognition, as if she had known them and had waited too.
+
+And close beside her own wonder and excitement she had felt the deep
+and sullen repulsion of her companions. The Vicar sat huddled in his
+overcoat. His nostrils, pinched with repugnance, sniffed as they drank
+in the cold, clean air. From time to time he shuddered, and a hoarse
+muttering came from under the gray woolen scarf he had wound round
+his mouth and beard. He was the righteous man, sent into uttermost
+abominable exile for his daughter's sin. Behind him, on the back seat
+of the trap, Alice and Mary cowed under their capes and rugs. They had
+turned their shoulders to each other, hostile in their misery. Gwenda
+was sorry for them.
+
+The gray road dipped and turned and plunged them to the bottom of
+Garthdale. The small, scattering lights of the village waited for her
+in the hollow, with something humble and sad and familiar in their
+setting. They too stung her with that poignant and secret sense of
+recognition.
+
+"This is the place," the Vicar had said. He had addressed himself
+to Alice; and it had been as if he had said, This the place, the
+infernal, the damnable place, you've brought us to with your behavior.
+
+Their hatred of it had made Gwenda love it. "You can have your old
+Garthdale all to yourself," Alice had said. "Nobody else wants it."
+
+That, to Gwenda, was the charm of it. The adorable place was her own.
+Nobody else wanted it. She loved it for itself. It had nothing but
+itself to offer her. And that was enough. It was almost, as she
+had said, too much. Her questing youth conceived no more rapturous
+adventure than to follow the sheep over Karva, to set out at twilight
+and see the immense night come down on the high moors above Upthorne;
+to get up when Alice was asleep and slip out and watch the dawn
+turning from gray to rose, and from rose to gold above Greffington
+Edge.
+
+As it happened you saw sunrise and moonrise best from the platform of
+Morfe Green. There Greffington Edge breaks and falls away, and lets
+slip the dawn like a rosy scarf from its shoulder, and sets the moon
+free of her earth and gives her to the open sky.
+
+But, just as the Vicar had spoiled Rowcliffe, so Rowcliffe had
+spoiled Morfe for Gwenda. Therefore her fear of him was mingled with
+resentment. It was as if he had had no business to be living there, in
+that house of his looking over the Green.
+
+Incredible that she should have wanted to see and to know this person.
+But now, that she didn't want to, of course she was going to see him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the bend of the road, within a mile of Morfe, Mary came riding on
+Gwenda's bicycle. Large parcels were slung from her handle bars. She
+had been shopping in the village.
+
+Mary, bowed forward as she struggled with an upward slope, was not
+aware of Gwenda. But Gwenda was aware of Mary, and, not being in the
+mood for her, she struck off the road on to the moor and descended
+upon Morfe by the steep lane that leads from Karva into Rathdale.
+
+It never occurred to her to wonder what Mary had been doing in Morfe,
+so evident was it that she had been shopping.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The doctor was at home, but he was engaged, at the moment, in the
+surgery.
+
+The maid-servant asked if she would wait.
+
+She waited in the little cold and formal dining-room that looked
+through two windows on to the Green. So formal and so cold, so utterly
+impersonal was the air of the doctor's mahogany furniture that her
+fear left her. It was as if the furniture assured her that she would
+not really _see_ Rowcliffe; as for knowing him, she needn't worry.
+
+She had sent in her card, printed for convenience with the names of
+the three sisters:
+
+  Miss Cartaret.
+  Miss Gwendolen Cartaret.
+  Miss Alice Cartaret.
+
+She felt somehow that it protected her. She said to herself, "He won't
+know which of us it is."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe was washing his hands in the surgery when the card was
+brought to him. He frowned at the card.
+
+"But--You've brought this before," he said. "I've seen the lady."
+
+"No, sir. It's another lady."
+
+"Another? Are you certain?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Quite certain."
+
+"Did she come on a bicycle?"
+
+"No, sir, that was the lady you've seen. I think this'll be her
+sister."
+
+Rowcliffe was still frowning as he dried his hands with fastidious
+care.
+
+"She's different, sir. Taller like."
+
+"Taller?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Rowcliffe turned to the table and picked up a probe and a lancet and
+dropped them into a sterilising solution.
+
+The maid waited. Rowcliffe's absorption was complete.
+
+"Shall I ask her to call again, sir?"
+
+"No. I'll see her. Where is she?"
+
+"In the dining-room, sir."
+
+"Show her into the study."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing could have been more distant and reserved than Rowcliffe's
+dining-room. But, to a young woman who had made up her mind that she
+didn't want to know anything about him, Rowcliffe's study said too
+much. It told her that he was a ferocious and solitary reader; for in
+the long rows of book shelves the books leaned slantwise across the
+gaps where his hands had rummaged and ransacked. It told her that his
+gods were masculine and many--Darwin and Spencer and Haeckel, Pasteur,
+Curie and Lord Lister, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman and Bernard
+Shaw. Their photogravure portraits hung above the bookcase. He was
+indifferent to mere visible luxury, or how could he have endured
+the shabby drugget, the cheap, country wall-paper with its design of
+dreadful roses on a white watered ground? But the fire in the grate
+and the deep arm-chair drawn close to it showed that he loved warmth
+and comfort. That his tastes made him solitary she gathered from the
+chair's comparatively unused and unworn companion, lurking and sulking
+in the corner where it had been thrust aside.
+
+The one window of this room looked to the west upon a little orchard,
+gray trunks of apple trees and plum trees against green grass, green
+branches against gray stone, gray that was softened in the liquid
+autumn air, green that was subtle, exquisite, charmingly austere.
+
+He could see his little orchard as he sat by his fire. She thought she
+rather liked him for keeping his window so wide open.
+
+She was standing by it looking at the orchard as he came in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was so quiet in his coming that she did not see or hear him till he
+stood before her.
+
+And in his eyes, intensely quiet, there was a look of wonder and of
+incredulity, almost of concern.
+
+Greetings and introductions over, the unused arm-chair was brought out
+from its lair in the corner. Rowcliffe, in his own arm-chair, sat in
+shadow, facing her. What light there was fell full on her.
+
+"I'm sorry you should have had to come to me," he said, "your sister
+was here a minute or two ago."
+
+"My sister?"
+
+"I think it _must_ have been your sister. She said it was _her_ sister
+I was to go and see."
+
+"I didn't know she was coming. She never told me."
+
+"Pity. I was coming out to see you first thing tomorrow morning."
+
+"Then you know? She told you?"
+
+"She told me something." He smiled. "She must have been a little
+overanxious. You don't look as if there was very much the matter with
+you."
+
+"But there isn't. It isn't me."
+
+"Who is it then?"
+
+"My other sister."
+
+"Oh. I seem to have got a little mixed."
+
+"You see, there are three of us."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Three! Let me get it right. I've seen Miss Cartaret. You are Miss
+Gwendolen Cartaret. And the lady I am to see is--?
+
+"My youngest sister, Alice."
+
+"Now I understand. I wondered how you managed those four miles. Tell
+me about her."
+
+She began. She was vivid and terse. He saw that she made short cuts
+to the root of the matter. He showed himself keen and shrewd. Once or
+twice he said "I know, I know," and she checked herself.
+
+"My sister has told you all that."
+
+"No, she hasn't. Nothing like it. Please go on."
+
+She went on till he interrupted her. "How old is she?"
+
+"Just twenty-three."
+
+"I see. Yes." He looked so keen now that she was frightened.
+
+"Does that make it more dangerous?" she said.
+
+He laughed. "No. It makes it less so. I don't suppose it's dangerous
+at all. But I can't tell till I've seen her. I say, you must be tired
+after that long walk."
+
+"I'm never tired."
+
+"That's good."
+
+He rang the bell. The maid appeared.
+
+"Tell Acroyd I want the trap. And bring tea--at once."
+
+"For two, sir?"
+
+"For two."
+
+Gwenda rose. "Thanks very much, I must be going."
+
+"Please stay. It won't take five minutes. Then I can drive you back."
+
+"I can walk."
+
+"I know you can. But--you see--" His keenness and shrewdness went
+from him. He was almost embarrassed. "I _was_ going round to see
+your sister in the morning. But--I think I'd rather see her to-night.
+And--" He was improvising freely now--"I ought, perhaps, to see you
+after, as you understand the case. So, if you don't _mind_ coming back
+with me--"
+
+She didn't mind. Why should she?
+
+She stayed. She sat in Rowcliffe's chair before his fire and drank his
+tea and ate his hot griddle-cakes (she had a healthy appetite, being
+young and strong). She talked to him as if she had known him a long
+time. All these things he made her do, and when he talked to her he
+made her forget what had brought her there; he made her forget Alice
+and Mary and her father.
+
+When he left her for a moment she got up, restless and eager to be
+gone. And when he came back to her she was standing by the open window
+again, looking at the orchard.
+
+Rowcliffe looked at _her_, taking in her tallness, her slenderness,
+the lithe and beautiful line of her body, curved slightly backward as
+she leaned against the window wall.
+
+Never before and never again, afterwards, never, that was to say, for
+any other woman, did Rowcliffe feel what he felt then. Looking back on
+it (afterward) he could only describe it as a sense of certainty. It
+lacked, surprisingly, the element of surprise.
+
+"You like my north-country orchard?" (He was certain that she did.)
+
+She turned, smiling. "I like it very much."
+
+They had been a long time over tea. It was half-past five before they
+started. He brought an overcoat and put it on her. He wrapped a rug
+round her knees and feet and tucked it well in.
+
+"You don't like rugs," he said (he knew she didn't), "but you've got
+to have it."
+
+She did like it. She liked his rug and his overcoat, and his little
+brown horse with the clanking hoofs. And she liked him, most decidedly
+she liked him, too. He was the sort of man you could like.
+
+They were soon out on the moor.
+
+Rowcliffe's youth rose in him and put words into his mouth.
+
+"Ripping country, this."
+
+She said it was ripping.
+
+For the life of them they couldn't have said more about it. There were
+no words for the inscrutable ecstasy it gave them.
+
+As they passed Karva Rowcliffe smiled.
+
+"It's all right," he said, "my driving you. Of course you don't
+remember, but we've met--several times before."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I'll show you where. Anyhow, that's your hill, isn't it?"
+
+"How did you know it was?"
+
+"Because I've seen you there. The first time I ever saw you--No,
+_that_ was a bit farther on. At the bend of the road. We're coming to
+it."
+
+They came.
+
+"Just here," he said.
+
+And now they were in sight of Garthdale.
+
+"Funny I should have thought it was you who were ill."
+
+"I'm never ill."
+
+"You won't be as long as you can walk like that. And run. And jump--"
+
+A horrid pause.
+
+"You did it very nicely."
+
+Another pause, not quite so horrid.
+
+And then--"Do you _always_ walk after dark and before sunrise?"
+
+And it was as if he had said, "Why am I always meeting you? What do
+you do it for? It's queer, isn't it?"
+
+But he had given her her chance. She rose to it.
+
+"I've done it ever since we came here." (It was as if she had said
+"Long before _you_ came.") "I do it because I like it. That's the best
+of this place. You can do what you like in it. There's nobody to see
+you."
+
+("Counting me," he thought, "as nobody.")
+
+"I should like to do it, too," he said--"to go out before sunrise--if
+I hadn't got to. If I did it for fun--like you."
+
+He knew he would not really have liked it. But his romantic youth
+persuaded him in that moment that he would.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Mary was up in the attic, the west attic that looked on to the road
+through its shy gable window.
+
+She moved quietly there, her whole being suffused exquisitely with a
+sense of peace, of profound, indwelling goodness. Every act of hers
+for the last three days had been incomparably good, had been, indeed,
+perfect. She had waited on Alice hand and foot. She had made the
+chicken broth refused by Alice. There was nothing that she would not
+do for poor little Ally. When little Ally was petulant and sullen,
+Mary was gentle and serene. She felt toward little Ally, lying there
+so little and so white, a poignant, yearning tenderness. Today she
+had visited all the sick people in the village, though it was not
+Wednesday, Dr. Rowcliffe's day. (Only by visiting them on other days
+could Mary justify and make blameless her habit of visiting them on
+Wednesdays.) She had put the house in order. She had done her shopping
+in Morfe to such good purpose that she had concealed even from herself
+the fact that she had gone into Morfe, surreptitiously, to fetch the
+doctor.
+
+Of course Mary was aware that she had fetched him. She had been driven
+to that step by sheer terror. All the way home she kept on saying to
+herself, "I've saved Ally." "I've saved Ally." That thought, splendid
+and exciting, rushed to the lighted front of Mary's mind; if the
+thought of Rowcliffe followed its shining trail, it thrust him back,
+it spread its luminous wings to hide him, it substituted its heavenly
+form for his.
+
+So effectually did it cover him that Mary herself never dreamed that
+he was there.
+
+Neither did the Vicar, when he saw her arrive, laden with parcels,
+wholesomely cheerful and reddened by her ride. He had said to her
+"You're a good girl, Mary," and the sadness of his tone implied that
+he wished her sister Gwendolen and her sister Alice were more like
+her. And he had smiled at her under his austere moustache, and carried
+in the biggest parcels for her.
+
+The Vicar was pleased with his daughter Mary. Mary had never given him
+an hour's anxiety. Mary had never put him in the wrong, never made him
+feel uncomfortable. He honestly believed that he was fond of her. She
+was like her poor mother. Goodness, he said to himself, was in her
+face.
+
+There had been goodness in Mary's face when she went into Alice's room
+to see what she could do for her. There was goodness in it now, up in
+the attic, where there was nobody but God to see it; goodness at peace
+with itself, and utterly content.
+
+She had been back more than an hour. And ever since teatime she had
+been up in the attic, putting away her summer gowns. She shook them
+and held them out and looked at them, the poor pretty things that she
+had hardly ever worn. They hung all limp, all abashed and broken in
+her hands, as if aware of their futility. She said to herself,
+"They were no good, no good at all. And next year they'll all be
+old-fashioned. I shall be ashamed to be seen in them." And she folded
+them and laid them by for their winter's rest in the black trunk. And
+when she saw them lying there she had a moment of remorse. After
+all, they had been part of herself, part of her throbbing, sensuous
+womanhood, warmed once by her body. It wasn't their fault, poor
+things, any more than hers, if they had been futile and unfit. She
+shut the lid down on them gently, and it was as if she buried them
+gently out of her sight. She could afford to forgive them, for she
+knew that there was no futility nor unfitness in her. Deep down in her
+heart she knew it.
+
+She sat on the trunk in the attitude of one waiting, waiting in the
+utter stillness of assurance. She could afford to wait. All her being
+was still, all its secret impulses appeased by the slow and orderly
+movements of her hands.
+
+Suddenly she started up and listened. She heard out on the road the
+sound of wheels, and of hoofs that struck together. And she frowned.
+She thought, He might as well have called today, if he's passing.
+
+The clanking ceased, the wheels slowed down, and Mary's peaceful heart
+moved violently in her breast. The trap drew up at the Vicarage gate.
+
+She went over to the window, the small, shy gable window that looked
+on to the road. She saw her sister standing in the trap and Rowcliffe
+beneath her, standing in the road and holding out his hand. She saw
+the two faces, the man's face looking up, the woman's face looking
+down, both smiling.
+
+And Mary's heart drew itself together in her breast. Through her shut
+lips her sister's name forced itself almost audibly.
+
+"_Gwen_-da!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly she shivered. A cold wind blew through the open window. Yet
+she did not move to shut it out. To have interfered with the attic
+window would have been a breach of compact, an unholy invasion of her
+sister's rights. For the attic, the smallest, the coldest, the
+darkest and most thoroughly uncomfortable room in the whole house,
+was Gwenda's, made over to her in the Vicar's magnanimity, by way of
+compensation for the necessity that forced her to share her room with
+Alice. As the attic was used for storing trunks and lumber, only two
+square yards of floor could be spared for Gwenda. But the two square
+yards, cleared, and covered with a strip of old carpet, and furnished
+with a little table and one chair; the wall-space by the window with
+its hanging bookcase; the window itself and the corner fireplace near
+it were hers beyond division and dispute. Nobody wanted them.
+
+And as Mary from among the boxes looked toward her sister's territory,
+her small, brooding face took on such sadness as good women feel in
+contemplating a character inscrutable and unlike their own. Mary was
+sorry for Gwenda because of her inscrutability and unlikeness.
+
+Then, thinking of Gwenda, Mary smiled. The smile began in pity for her
+sister and ended in a nameless, secret satisfaction. Not for a moment
+did Mary suspect its source. It seemed to her one with her sense of
+her own goodness.
+
+When she smiled it was as if the spirit of her small brooding face
+took wings and fluttered, lifting delicately the rather heavy corners
+of her mouth and eyes.
+
+Then, quietly, and with no indecorous haste, she went down into the
+drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe. She was the eldest and it was her
+duty.
+
+By the mercy of Heaven the Vicar had gone out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gwenda left Rowcliffe with Mary and went upstairs to prepare Alice for
+his visit. She had brushed out her sister's long pale hair and platted
+it, and had arranged the plats, tied with knots of white ribbon, one
+over each low breast, and she had helped her to put on a little white
+flannel jacket with a broad lace collar. Thus arrayed and decorated,
+Alice sat up in her bed, her small slender body supported by huge
+pillows, white against white, with no color about her but the dull
+gold of her hair.
+
+Gwenda was still in the room, tidying it, when Mary brought Rowcliffe
+there.
+
+It was a Rowcliffe whom she had not yet seen. She had her back to him
+as he paused in the doorway to let Mary pass through. Ally's bed faced
+the door, and the look in Ally's eyes made her aware of the change in
+him. All of a sudden he had become taller (much taller than he really
+was) and rigid and austere. His youth and its charm dropped clean away
+from him. He looked ten years older than he had been ten minutes ago.
+Compared with him, as he stood beside her bed, Ally looked more than
+ever like a small child, a child vibrating with shyness and fear, a
+child that implacable adult authority has found out in foolishness and
+naughtiness; so evident was it to Ally that to Rowcliffe nothing was
+hidden, nothing veiled.
+
+It was as a child that he treated her, a child who can conceal
+nothing, from whom most things--all the serious and important
+things--must be concealed. And Ally knew the terrible advantage that
+he took of her.
+
+It was bad enough when he asked her questions and took no more notice
+of her answers than if she had been a born fool. That might have been
+his north-country manners and probably he couldn't help them. But
+there was no necessity that Ally could see for his brutal abruptness,
+and the callous and repellent look he had when she bared her breast to
+the stethescope that sent all her poor secrets flying through the long
+tubes that attached her heart to his abominable ears. Neither (when
+he had disentangled himself from the stethescope) could she understand
+why he should scowl appallingly as he took hold of her poor wrist to
+feel her pulse.
+
+She said to herself, "He knows everything about me and he thinks I'm
+awful."
+
+It was anguish to Ally that he should think her awful.
+
+And (to make it worse, if anything could make it) there was Mary
+standing at the foot of the bed and staring at her. Mary knew
+perfectly well that he was thinking how awful she was. It was what
+Mary thought herself.
+
+If only Gwenda had stayed with her! But Gwenda had left the room when
+she saw Rowcliffe take out his stethescope.
+
+And as it flashed on Ally what Rowcliffe was thinking of her, her
+heart stopped as if it was never going on again, then staggered, then
+gave a terrifying jump.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe had done with Ally's little wrist. He laid it down on the
+counterpane, not brutally at all, but gently, almost tenderly, as if
+it had been a thing exquisitely fragile and precious.
+
+He rose to his feet and looked at her, and then, all of a sudden,
+as he looked, Rowcliffe became young again; charmingly young, almost
+boyish. And, as if faintly amused at her youth, faintly touched by
+her fragility, he smiled. With a mouth and with eyes from which all
+austerity had departed he smiled at Alice.
+
+(It was all over. He had done with her. He could afford to be kind to
+her as he would have been kind to a little, frightened child.)
+
+And Alice smiled back at him with her white face between the pale
+gold, serious bands of platted hair.
+
+She was no longer frightened. She forgot his austerity as if it had
+never been. She saw that he hadn't thought her awful in the least. He
+couldn't have looked at her like that if he had.
+
+A sense of warmth, of stillness, of soft happiness flooded her body
+and her brain, as if the stream of life had ceased troubling and
+ran with an even rhythm. As she lay back, her tormented heart seemed
+suddenly to sink into it and rest, to be part of it, poised on the
+stream.
+
+Then, still looking down at her, he spoke.
+
+"It's pretty evident," he said, "what's the matter with you."
+
+"_Is_ it?"
+
+Her eyes were all wide. He had frightened her again.
+
+"It is," he said. "You've been starved."
+
+"Oh," said little Ally, "is _that_ all?"
+
+And Rowcliffe smiled again, a little differently.
+
+Mary said nothing. She had found out long ago that silence was her
+strength. Her small face brooded. Impossible to tell what she was
+thinking.
+
+"What has become of the other one, I wonder?" he said to himself.
+
+He wanted to see her. She was the intelligent one of the three
+sisters, and she was honest. He had said to her quite plainly that he
+would want her. Why, on earth, he wondered, had she gone away and left
+him with this sweet and good, this quite exasperatingly sweet and good
+woman who had told him nothing but lies?
+
+He was aware that Mary Cartaret was sweet and good. But he had found
+that sweet and good women were not invariably intelligent. As for
+honesty, if they were always honest they would not always be sweet and
+good.
+
+Through the door he opened for the eldest sister to pass out the other
+slipped in. She had been waiting on the landing.
+
+He stopped her. He made a sign to her to come out with him. He closed
+the door behind them.
+
+"Can I see you for two minutes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They whispered rapidly.
+
+At the head of the stairs Mary waited. He turned. His smile
+acknowledged and paid deference to her sweetness and goodness, for
+Rowcliffe was sufficiently accomplished.
+
+But not more so than Mary Cartaret. Her face, wide and candid,
+quivered with subdued interrogation. Her lips parted as if they said,
+"I am only waiting to know what I am to do. I will do what you like,
+only tell me."
+
+Rowcliffe stood by the bedroom door, which he had opened for her
+to pass through again. His eyes, summoning their powerful pathos,
+implored forgiveness.
+
+Mary, utterly submissive, passed through.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He followed Gwendolen Cartaret downstairs to the dining-room.
+
+He knew what he was going to say, but what he did say was unexpected.
+
+For, as she stood there in the small and old and shabby room, what
+struck him was her youth.
+
+"Is your father in?" he said.
+
+He surprised her as he had surprised himself.
+
+"No," she said. "Why? Do you want to see him?"
+
+He hesitated. "I almost think I'd better."
+
+"He won't be a bit of good, you know. He never is. He doesn't even
+know we sent for you."
+
+"Well, then--"
+
+"You'd better tell me straight out. You'll have to, in the end. Is it
+serious?"
+
+"No. But it will be if we don't stop it. How long has it been going
+on?"
+
+"Ever since we came to this place."
+
+"Six months, you said. And she's been worse than this last month?"
+
+"Much worse."
+
+"If it was only the anaemia--"
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+"Yes--among other things."
+
+"Not--her heart?"
+
+"No--her heart's all right." He corrected himself. "I mean there's
+no disease in it. You see, she ought to have got well up here in this
+air. It's the sort of place you send anaemic people to to cure them."
+
+"The dreadful thing is that she doesn't like the place."
+
+"Ah--that's what I want to get at. She isn't happy in it?"
+
+"No. She isn't happy."
+
+He meditated. "Your sister didn't tell me that.'
+
+"She couldn't."
+
+"I mean your other sister--Miss Cartaret."
+
+"_She_ wouldn't. She'd think it rather awful."
+
+He laughed. "Heaps of people think it awful to tell the truth. Do you
+happen to know _why_ she doesn't like the place?"
+
+She was silent. Evidently there was some "awfulness" she shrank from.
+
+"Too lonely for her, I suppose?"
+
+"Much too lonely."
+
+"Where were you before you came here?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"Why did you leave it?"
+
+She hesitated again. "We couldn't help it."
+
+"Well--it seems a pity. But I suppose clergymen can't choose where
+they'll live."
+
+She looked away from him. Then, as if she were trying to divert her
+from the trail he followed, "You forget--she's been starving herself.
+Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Not in her case. You see, she isn't ill because she's been starving
+herself. She's been starving herself because she's ill. It's a
+symptom. The trouble is not that she starves herself--but that she's
+been starved."
+
+"I know. I know."
+
+"If you could get her back to that place where she was happy--"
+
+"I can't. She can never go back there. Besides, it wouldn't be any
+good if she did."
+
+He smiled. "Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Certain."
+
+"Does she know it?"
+
+"No. She never knew it. But she _would_ know it if she went back."
+
+"That's why you took her away?"
+
+She hesitated again. "Yes."
+
+Rowcliffe looked grave.
+
+"I see. That's rather unfortunate."
+
+He said to himself: "She doesn't take it in _yet_. I don't see how I'm
+to tell her."
+
+To her he said: "Well, I'll send the medicine along to-night."
+
+As the door closed behind Rowcliffe, Mary appeared on the stairs.
+
+"Gwenda," she said, "Ally wants you. She wants to know what he said."
+
+"He said nothing."
+
+"You look as if he'd said a great deal."
+
+"He said nothing that she doesn't know."
+
+"He told her there was nothing the matter with her except that she'd
+been starving herself."
+
+"He told me she'd been starved."
+
+"I don't see the difference."
+
+"Well," said Gwenda. "_He_ did."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night the Vicar scowled over his supper. And before it was ended
+he broke loose.
+
+"Which of you two sent for Dr. Rowcliffe?"
+
+"I did," said Gwenda.
+
+Mary said nothing.
+
+"And what--do you--mean by doing such a thing without consulting me?"
+
+"I mean," said Gwenda quietly, "that he should see Alice."
+
+"And _I_ meant--most particularly--that he shouldn't see her. If I'd
+wanted him to see her I'd have gone for him myself."
+
+"When it was a bit too late," said Gwenda.
+
+His blue eyes dilated as he looked at her.
+
+"Do you suppose I don't know what's the matter with her as well as he
+does?"
+
+As he spoke the stiff, straight moustache that guarded his mouth
+lifted, showing the sensual redness and fulness of the lips.
+
+And of this expression on her father's face Gwenda understood nothing,
+divined nothing, knew nothing but that she loathed it.
+
+"You may know what's the matter with her," she said, "but can you cure
+it?"
+
+"Can he?" said the Vicar.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+The next day, which was a Tuesday, Alice was up and about again.
+Rowcliffe saw her on Wednesday and on Saturday, when he declared
+himself satisfied with her progress and a little surprised.
+
+So surprised was he that he said he would not come again unless he was
+sent for.
+
+And then in three days Alice slid back.
+
+But they were not to worry about her, she said. There was nothing the
+matter with her except that she was tired. She was so tired that she
+lay all Tuesday on the drawing-room sofa and on Wednesday morning she
+was too tired to get up and dress.
+
+And on Wednesday afternoon Dr. Rowcliffe found a note waiting at the
+blacksmith's cottage in Garth village, where he had a room with a
+brown gauze blind in the window and the legend in gilt letters:
+
+  SURGERY
+
+  Dr. S. Rowcliffe, M.D., F.R.C.S.
+
+  Hours of Attendance
+  Wednesday, 2.30-4.30.
+
+The note ran:
+
+"DEAR DR. ROWCLIFFE: Can you come and see me this afternoon? I think
+I'm rather worse. But I don't want to frighten my people--so perhaps,
+if you just looked in about teatime, as if you'd called?
+
+  "Yours truly,
+
+  "ALICE CARTARET."
+
+Essy Gale had left the note that morning.
+
+Rowcliffe looked at it dubiously. He was honest and he had the
+large views of a man used to a large practice. His patients couldn't
+complain that he lengthened his bills by paying unnecessary visits. If
+he wanted to add to his income in that way, he wasn't going to begin
+with a poor parson's hysterical daughter. But as the Vicar of Garth
+had called on him and left his card on Monday, there was no reason why
+he shouldn't look in on Wednesday about teatime. Especially as he knew
+that the Vicar was in the habit of visiting Upthorne and the outlying
+portions of his parish on Wednesday afternoons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All day Alice lay in her little bed like a happy child and waited.
+Propped on her pillows, with her slender arms stretched out before her
+on the counterpane, she waited.
+
+Her sullenness was gone. She had nothing but sweetness for Mary and
+for Essy. Even to her father she was sweet. She could afford it. Her
+instinct was now sure. From time to time a smile flickered on her
+small face like a light almost of triumph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the
+Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her.
+
+He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the
+Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him.
+
+He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in
+the village that she was not so well.
+
+"I'm afraid she isn't."
+
+"May I see her? I don't mean professionally--just for a talk."
+
+The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the
+houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom
+bills were nightmares.
+
+She took him upstairs.
+
+On the landing she turned to him.
+
+"She doesn't _look_ worse. She looks better."
+
+"All right. She won't deceive me."
+
+She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a
+faint opaline dawn of color in her face.
+
+Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a
+quarter of an hour he kept it up.
+
+And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better.
+You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste
+all this glorious air?"
+
+"If I could live on air!" said Alice.
+
+"You can--you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live
+without it."
+
+Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered
+him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him.
+
+"But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may."
+
+"At teatime?"
+
+"Very well--at teatime."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.
+
+"She's better."
+
+"Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?"
+
+"He called--on you, I think."
+
+(Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving
+plainly that his visit was not professional.)
+
+"And you made him see her?" he insisted.
+
+"He saw her."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the
+open air."
+
+"It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She
+doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."
+
+He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He
+had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.
+
+"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's
+nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as
+long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."
+
+But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it
+meant--that air of wisdom and of patience.
+
+Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.
+
+"I won't have him sent for--do you hear?"
+
+And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give
+young Rowcliffe a hint. It was to give him a hint that he had called
+on Monday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe. For before he could brace
+himself to the effort Alice was well again.
+
+Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime
+the next Wednesday and the next after that.
+
+Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+  "'Oh Gawd, our halp in a-ages paasst,
+  Our 'awp in yeears ter coom,
+  Our shal-ter from ther storm-ee blaasst,
+  And our ee-tarnal 'oam!'"
+
+"'Ark at 'im! That's Jimmy arl over. T' think that 'is poor feyther's
+not in 'is graave aboove a moonth, an' 'e singin' fit t' eave
+barn roof off! They should tak' an' shoot 'im oop in t' owd powder
+magazine," said Mrs. Gale.
+
+"Well--but it's a wonderful voice," said Gwenda Cartaret.
+
+"I've never heard another like it, and I know something about voices,"
+Alice said.
+
+They had gone up to Upthorne to ask Mrs. Gale to look in at the
+Vicarage on her way home, for Essy wasn't very well.
+
+But Mrs. Gale had shied off from the subject of Essy. She had done it
+with the laughter of deep wisdom and a shake of her head. You couldn't
+teach Mrs. Gale anything about illness, nor about Essy.
+
+"I knaw Assy," she had said. "There's nowt amiss with her. Doan't you
+woorry."
+
+And then Jim Greatorex, though unseen, had burst out at them with his
+big voice. It came booming from the mistal at the back.
+
+Alice told the truth when she said she had never heard anything like
+it; and even in the dale, so critical of strangers, it was admitted
+that she knew. The village had a new schoolmaster who was no musician,
+and hopeless with the choir. Alice, as the musical one of the family,
+had been trained to play the organ, and she played it, not with
+passion, for it was her duty, but with mechanical and perfunctory
+correctness, as she had been taught. She was also fairly successful
+with the village choir.
+
+"Mebbe yo 'aven't 'eard anoother," said Mrs. Gale. "It's rackoned
+there isn't anoother woon like it in t' daale."
+
+"But it's just what we want for our choir--a big barytone voice. Do
+you think he'd sing for us, Mrs. Gale?"
+
+Alice said it light-heartedly, for she did not know what she was
+asking. She knew nothing of the story of Jim Greatorex and his big
+voice. It had been carefully kept from her.
+
+"I doan knaw," said Mrs. Gale. "Jim, look yo, 'e useter sing in t'
+Choorch choir."
+
+"Why ever did he leave it?"
+
+Mrs. Gale looked dark and tightened up her face. She knew perfectly
+well why Jim Greatorex had left. It was because he wasn't going to
+have that little milk-faced lass learning _him_ to sing. His pride
+wouldn't stomach it. But not for worlds would Mrs. Gale have been the
+one to let Miss Alice know that.
+
+Her eyes sought for inspiration in a crack on the stone floor.
+
+"I can't rightly tall yo', Miss Olice. 'E sang fer t' owd
+schoolmaaster, look yo, an' wann schoolmaaster gaave it oop, Jimmy, 'e
+said 'e'd give it oop too."
+
+"But don't you think he'd sing for _me_, if I were to ask him?"
+
+"Yo' may aask 'im, Miss Olice, but I doan' knaw. Wann Jim Greatorex is
+sat, 'e's sat."
+
+"There's no harm in asking him."
+
+"Naw. Naw 'aarm there isn't," said Mrs. Gale doubtfully.
+
+"I think I'll ask him now," said Alice.
+
+"I wouldn', look yo, nat ef I wuss yo, Miss Olice. I wouldn' gaw to
+'im in t' mistal all amoong t' doong. Yo'll sha-ame 'im, and yo'll do
+nowt wi' Jimmy ef 'e's sha-amed."
+
+"Leave it, Ally. We can come another day," said Gwenda.
+
+"Thot's it," said Mrs. Gale. "Coom another daay."
+
+And as they turned away Jim's voice thundered after them from his
+stronghold in the mistal.
+
+  "From av-ver-lasstin'--THOU ART GAWD!
+  To andless ye-ears ther sa-ame!"
+
+The sisters stood listening. They looked at each other.
+
+"I say!" said Gwenda.
+
+"Isn't he gorgeous? We'll _have_ to come again. It would be a sin to
+waste him."
+
+"It would."
+
+"When shall we come?"
+
+"There's heaps of time. That voice won't run away."
+
+"No. But he might get pneumonia. He might die."
+
+"Not he."
+
+But Alice couldn't leave it alone.
+
+"How about Sunday? Just after dinner? He'll be clean then."
+
+"All right. Sunday."
+
+But it was not till they had passed the schoolhouse outside Garth
+village that Alice's great idea came to her.
+
+"Gwenda! The Concert! Wouldn't he be ripping for the Concert!"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+But the concert was not till the first week in December; and it was
+in November that Rowcliffe began to form the habit that made him
+remarkable in Garth, of looking in at the Vicarage toward teatime
+every Wednesday afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Gale, informed by Essy, was the first to condole with Mrs.
+Blenkiron, the blacksmith's wife, who had arranged to provide tea for
+Rowcliffe every Wednesday in the Surgery.
+
+"Wall, Mrs. Blenkiron," she said, "yo' 'aven't got to mak' tae for
+yore doctor now?"
+
+"Naw. I 'aven't," said Mrs. Blenkiron. "And it's sexpence clane gone
+out o' me packet av'ry week."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron was a distant cousin of the Greatorexes. She had
+what was called a superior manner and was handsome, in the slender,
+high-nosed, florid fashion of the Dale.
+
+"But there," she went on. "I doan't groodge it. 'E's yoong and you
+caann't blaame him. They's coompany for him oop at Vicarage."
+
+"'E's coompany fer they, I rackon. And well yo' med saay yo' doan't
+groodge it ef yo knawed arl we knaw, Mrs. Blenkiron. It's no life fer
+yoong things oop there, long o' t' Vicar. Mind yo"--Mrs. Gale
+lowered her voice and looked up and down the street for possible
+eavesdroppers--"ef 'e was to 'ear on it, thot yoong Rawcliffe wouldn't
+be 'lowed t' putt 's nawse in at door agen. But theer--there's
+nawbody'd be thot crool an' spittiful fer to goa an' tall 'im. Our
+Assy wouldn't. She'd coot 'er toong out foorst, Assy would."
+
+"Nawbody'll get it out of _mae_, Mrs. Gale, though it's wae as 'as to
+sooffer for 't."
+
+"Eh, but Dr. Rawcliffe's a good maan, and 'e'll mak' it oop to yo',
+naw feear, Mrs. Blenkiron."
+
+"And which of 'em will it bae, Mrs. Gaale, think you?"
+
+"I caann't saay. But it woonna bae t' eldest. Nor t'
+yoongest--joodgin'."
+
+"Well--the lil' laass isn' breaaking 'er 'eart fer him, t' joodge by
+the looks of 'er. I naver saw sech a chaange in anybody in a moonth."
+
+"'T assn' takken mooch to maake 'er 'appy," said Mrs. Gale. For Essy,
+who had informed her, was not subtle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of Ally's happiness there could be no doubt. It lapped her, soaked
+into her like water and air. Her small head flowered under it and put
+out its secret colors; the dull gold of her hair began to shine again,
+her face showed a shallow flush under its pallor; her gray eyes were
+clear as if they had been dipped in water. Two slender golden arches
+shone above them. They hadn't been seen there for five years.
+
+"Who would have believed," said Mary, "that Ally could have looked so
+pretty?"
+
+Ally's prettiness (when she gazed at it in the glass) was delicious,
+intoxicating joy to Ally. She was never tired of looking at it, of
+turning round and round to get new views of it, of dressing her hair
+in new ways to set it off.
+
+"Whatever have you done your hair like that for?" said Mary on a
+Wednesday when Ally came down in the afternoon with her gold spread
+out above her ears and twisted in a shining coil on the top of her
+head.
+
+"To make it grow better," said Ally.
+
+"Don't let Papa catch you at it," said Gwenda, "if you want it to grow
+any more."
+
+Gwenda was going out. She had her hat on, and was taking her
+walking-stick from the stand. Ally stared.
+
+"You're _not_ going out?"
+
+"I am," said Gwenda.
+
+And she laughed as she went. She wasn't going to stay at home for
+Rowcliffe every Wednesday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for Ally, the Vicar did catch her at it. He caught her the very
+next Wednesday afternoon. She thought he had started for Upthorne when
+he hadn't. He was bound to catch her.
+
+For the best looking-glass in the house was in the Vicar's bedroom. It
+went the whole length and width of the wardrobe door, and Ally could
+see herself in it from head to foot. And on the Vicar's dressing-table
+there lay a large and perfect hand-glass that had belonged to Ally's
+mother. Only by opening the wardrobe door and with the aid of the
+hand-glass could Ally obtain a satisfactory three-quarters view of her
+face and figure.
+
+Now, by the Vicar's magnanimity, his daughters were allowed to use his
+bedroom twice in every two years, in the spring and in the autumn,
+for the purpose of trying on their new gowns; but this year they
+were wearing out last winter's gowns, and Ally had no business in the
+Vicar's bedroom at four o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+She was turning slowly round and round, with her head tilted back over
+her left shoulder; she had just caught sight of her little white nose
+as it appeared in a vanishing profile and was adjusting her head at
+another and still more interesting angle when the Vicar caught her.
+
+He was well in the middle of the room, and staring at her, before she
+was aware of him. The wardrobe door, flung wide open, had concealed
+his entrance, but if Ally had not been blinded and intoxicated with
+her own beauty she would have seen him before she began smiling,
+full-face first, then three-quarters, then sideways, a little tilted.
+
+Then she shut to the door of the wardrobe (for the back view that was
+to reassure her as to the utter prettiness of her shoulders and
+the nape of her neck), and it was at that moment that she saw him,
+reflected behind her in the long looking-glass.
+
+She screamed and dropped the hand-glass. She heard it break itself at
+her feet.
+
+"Papa," she cried, "how you frightened me!"
+
+It was not so much that he had caught her smiling at her own face, it
+was that _his_ face, seen in the looking-glass, was awful. And besides
+being awful it was evil. Even to Ally's innocence it was evil. If it
+had been any other man Ally's instinct would have said that he looked
+horrid without Ally knowing or caring to know what her instinct meant.
+But the look on her father's face was awful because it was mysterious.
+Neither she nor her instinct had a word for it. There was cruelty in
+it, and, besides cruelty, some quality nameless and unrecognisable,
+subtle and secret, and yet crude somehow and vivid. The horror of it
+made her forget that he had caught her in one of the most
+deplorably humiliating situations in which a young girl can be
+caught--deliberately manufacturing smiles for her own amusement.
+
+"You've no business to be here," said the Vicar.
+
+He picked up the broken hand-glass, and as he looked at it the cruelty
+and the nameless quality passed out of his face as if a hand had
+smoothed it, and it became suddenly weak and pathetic, the face of
+a child whose precious magic thing another child has played with and
+broken.
+
+Then Alice remembered that the hand-glass had been her mother's.
+
+"I'm sorry I've broken it, Papa, if you liked it."
+
+Her voice recalled him to himself.
+
+"Ally," he said, "what am I to think of you? Are you a fool--or what?"
+
+The sting of it lashed Ally's brain to a retort. (All that she had
+needed hitherto to be effective was a little red blood in her veins,
+and she had got it now.)
+
+"I'd be a fool," she said, "if I cared two straws what you think of
+me, since you can't see what I am. I'm sorry if I've broken your old
+hand-glass, though I didn't break it. You broke it yourself."
+
+Carrying her golden top-knot like a crown, she left the room.
+
+The Vicar took the broken hand-glass and hid it in a drawer. He was
+sorry for himself. The only impression left on his mind was that his
+daughter Ally had been cruel to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Ally didn't care a rap what he thought of her, or what impression
+she had left on his mind. She was much too happy. Besides, if you once
+began caring what Papa thought there would be no peace for anybody.
+He was so impossible that he didn't count. He wasn't even an effective
+serpent in her Paradise. He might crawl all over it (as indeed he did
+crawl), but he left no trail. The thought of how he had caught her at
+the looking-glass might be disagreeable, but it couldn't slime those
+holy lawns. Neither could it break the ecstasy of Wednesday, that
+heavenly day. Nothing could break it as long as Dr. Rowcliffe
+continued to look in at tea-time and her father to explore the
+furthest borders of his parish.
+
+The peace of Paradise came down on the Vicarage every Wednesday
+the very minute the garden gate had swung back behind the Vicar. He
+started so early and he was back so late that there was never any
+chance of his encountering young Rowcliffe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To be sure, young Rowcliffe hardly ever said a word to her. He always
+talked to Mary or to Gwenda. But there was nothing in his reticence to
+disturb Ally's ecstasy. It was bliss to sit and look at Rowcliffe and
+to hear him talk. When she tried to talk to him herself her brain
+swam and she became unhappy and confused. Intellectual effort was
+destructive to the blessed state, which was pure passivity, untroubled
+contemplation in its early stages, before the oncoming of rapture.
+
+The fact that Mary and Gwenda could talk to him and talk intelligently
+showed how little they cared for him or were likely to care, and
+how immeasurably far they were from the supreme act of adoration.
+Similarly, the fact that Rowcliffe could talk to Mary and to Gwenda
+showed how little _he_ cared. If he had cared, if he were ever going
+to care as Ally understood caring, his brain would have swum like hers
+and his intellect would have abandoned him.
+
+Whereas, it was when he turned to Ally that he hadn't a word to say,
+any more than she had, and that he became entangled in his talk, and
+that the intellect he tried to summon to him tottered and vanished at
+his call.
+
+Another thing--when he caught her looking at him (and though Ally was
+careful he did catch her now and then) he always either lowered his
+eyelids or looked away. He was afraid to look at her; and _that_, as
+everybody knew, was an infallible sign. Why, Ally was afraid to look
+at _him_, only she couldn't help it. Her eyes were dragged to the
+terror and the danger.
+
+So Ally reasoned in her Paradise.
+
+For when Rowcliffe was once gone her brain was frantically busy. It
+never gave her any rest. From the one stuff of its dreams it span an
+endless shining thread; from the one thread it wove an endless web of
+visions. From nothing at all it built up drama after drama. It was all
+beautiful what Ally's brain did, all noble, all marvelously pure. (The
+Vicar would have been astonished if he had known how pure.) There
+was no sullen and selfish Ally in Ally's dreams. They were all of
+sacrifice, of self-immolation, of beautiful and noble things done for
+Rowcliffe, of suffering for Rowcliffe, of dying for him. All without
+Rowcliffe being very palpably and positively there.
+
+It was only at night, when Ally's brain slept among its dreams, that
+Rowcliffe's face leaned near to hers without ever touching it, and his
+arms made as if they clasped her and never met. Even then, always
+at the first intangible approach of him, she woke, terrified because
+dreams go by contraries.
+
+"Is your sister always so silent?" Rowcliffe asked that Wednesday (the
+Wednesday when Ally had been caught).
+
+He was alone with Mary.
+
+"Who? Ally? No. She isn't silent at all. What do you think of her?"
+
+"I think," said Rowcliffe, "she looks extraordinarily well."
+
+"That's owing to you," said Mary. "I never saw her pull round so fast
+before."
+
+"No? I assure you," said Rowcliffe, "I haven't anything to do with
+it." He was very stiff and cold and stern.
+
+Rowcliffe was annoyed because it was two Wednesdays running that
+he had found himself alone with the eldest and the youngest Miss
+Cartaret. The second one had gone off heaven knew where.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+The Vicar of Garth considered himself unhappy (to say the least of it)
+in his three children, but he had never asked himself what, after all,
+would he have done without them? After all (as they had frequently
+reminded themselves), without them he could never have lived
+comfortably on his income. They did the work and saved him the
+expenses of a second servant, a housekeeper, an under-gardener, an
+organist and two curates.
+
+The three divided the work of the Vicarage and parish, according to
+the tastes and abilities of each. At home Mary kept the house and
+did the sewing. Gwenda looked after the gray and barren garden, she
+trimmed the narrow paths and the one flower-bed and mowed the small
+square of grass between. Alice trailed through the lower rooms,
+dusting furniture feebly; she gathered and arranged the flowers when
+there were any in the bed. Outside, Mary, being sweet and good, taught
+in the boys' Sunday-school; Alice, because she was fond of children,
+had the infants. For the rest, Mary, who was lazy, had taken over
+that small portion of the village that was not Baptist or Wesleyan or
+Congregational. Gwenda, for her own amusement, and regardless of sect
+and creed, the hopelessly distant hamlets and the farms scattered
+on the long, raking hillsides and the moors. Alice declared herself
+satisfied with her dominion over the organ and the village choir.
+
+Alice was behaving like an angel in her Paradise. No longer listless
+and sullen, she swept through the house with an angel's energy. A
+benign, untiring angel sat at the organ and controlled the violent
+voices of the choir.
+
+The choir looked upon Ally's innocent art with pride and admiration
+and amusement. It tickled them to see those little milk-white hands
+grappling with organ pieces that had beaten the old schoolmaster.
+
+Ally enjoyed the pride and admiration of the choir and was unaware of
+its amusement. She enjoyed the importance of her office. She enjoyed
+the massive, voluptuous vibrations that made her body a vehicle for
+the organ's surging and tremendous soul. Ally's body had become a
+more and more tremulous, a more sensitive and perfect medium for
+vibrations. She would not have missed one choir practice or one
+service.
+
+And she said to herself, "I may be a fool, but Papa or the parish
+would have to pay an organist at least forty pounds a year. It costs
+less to keep me. So he needn't talk."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then in November came the preparations for the village concert.
+
+They were stupendous.
+
+All morning the little Erad piano shook with the Grande Valse and the
+Grande Polonaise of Chopin. The diabolic thing raged through the shut
+house, knowing that it went unchallenged, that its utmost violence was
+licensed until the day after the concert.
+
+Rowcliffe heard it whenever he drove past the Vicarage on his way over
+the moors.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Rowcliffe was now beginning to form that other habit (which was to
+make him even more remarkable than he was already), the hunting down
+of Gwendolen Cartaret in the open.
+
+He was annoyed with Gwendolen Cartaret. When she had all the rest of
+the week to walk in she would set out on Wednesdays before teatime and
+continue until long after dark. He had missed her twice now. And on
+the third Wednesday he saw her swinging up the hill toward Upthorne as
+he, leaving his surgery, came round the corner of the village by the
+bridge.
+
+"I believe," he thought, "she's doing it on purpose. To avoid me."
+
+He was determined not to be avoided.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The doctor's very late this afternoon," said Mary. "I suppose he's
+been sent for somewhere."
+
+Alice said nothing. She couldn't trust herself to speak. She lived in
+sickening fear that on some Wednesday afternoon he would be sent for.
+It had never happened yet, but that made it all the more likely that
+it had happened now.
+
+They waited till five; till a quarter-past.
+
+"I really can't wait any longer," said Mary, "for a man who doesn't
+come."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By that time Rowcliffe and Gwenda were far on the road to Upthorne.
+
+He had overtaken her about a hundred yards above the schoolhouse,
+before the road turned to Upthorne Moor.
+
+"I say, how you do sprint up these hills!"
+
+She turned.
+
+"Is that you, Dr. Rowcliffe?"
+
+"Of course it's me. Where are you off to?"
+
+"Upthorne. Anywhere."
+
+"May I come too?"
+
+"If you want to."
+
+"Of course I want to."
+
+"Have you had any tea?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Weren't they in?"
+
+"I didn't stop to ask."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I saw you stampeding on in front of me, and I swore I'd
+overtake you before you got round that corner. And I have overtaken
+you."
+
+"Shall we go back? We've time."
+
+He frowned. "No. I never turn back. Let's get on. Get on."
+
+They went on at a terrific pace. And as she persisted in walking about
+half a foot in front of him he saw the movement of her fine long limbs
+and the little ripple of her shoulders under the gray tweed.
+
+Presently he spoke.
+
+"It wasn't you I heard playing the other night?"
+
+"No. It must have been my youngest sister."
+
+"I knew it wasn't you."
+
+"It might have been for all you knew."
+
+"It couldn't possibly. If you played you wouldn't play that way."
+
+"What way?"
+
+"Your sister's way. Whatever you wanted to do you'd do it beautifully
+or not at all."
+
+She made no response. She did not even seem to have heard him.
+
+"I don't mean to say," he said, "that your sister doesn't play
+beautifully."
+
+She turned malignly. He liked her when she turned.
+
+"You mean that she plays abominably."
+
+"I didn't mean to _say_ it."
+
+"Why shouldn't you say it?"
+
+"Because you don't say those things. It isn't polite."
+
+"But I know Alice doesn't play well--not those big things. The wonder
+is she can play them at all."
+
+"Why does she attempt--the big things?"
+
+"Why does anybody? Because she loves them. She's never heard them
+properly played. So she doesn't know. She just trusts to her feeling."
+
+"Is there anything else, after all, you _can_ trust?"
+
+"I don't know. You see, Alice's feeling tells her it's all right to
+play like that, and _my_ feeling tells me it's all wrong."
+
+"You can trust _your_ feelings."
+
+"Why mine more than hers?"
+
+"Because _your_ feelings are the feelings of a beautifully sane and
+perfectly balanced person."
+
+"How can you possibly tell? You don't know me."
+
+"I know your type."
+
+"My type isn't me. You can't tell by that."
+
+"You can if you're a physiologist."
+
+"Being a physiologist won't tell you anything about _me_."
+
+"Oh, won't it?"
+
+"It can't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"How can it?"
+
+"You think it can't tell me anything about your soul?"
+
+"Oh--my soul----" Her shoulders expressed disdain for it.
+
+"Do you dislike my mentioning it? Would you rather we didn't talk
+about it? Perhaps you're tired of having it talked about?"
+
+"No; my poor soul has never done anything to get itself talked about."
+
+"I only thought that as your father, perhaps, specialises in souls--"
+
+"He doesn't specialise in mine. He knows nothing about it."
+
+"The specialist never does. To know anything--the least little
+thing--about the soul, you must know everything--everything you _can_
+know--about the body. So that you're wrong even about your soul. Being
+a physiologist tells me that your sort of body--a transparently clean
+and strong and utterly unconscious body--goes with a transparently
+clean and strong and utterly unconscious soul."
+
+"Utterly unconscious?"
+
+He was silent a moment and then answered:
+
+"Utterly unconscious."
+
+They walked on in silence till they came in sight of the marshes and
+the long gray line of Upthorne Farm.
+
+"That's where I met you once," he said. "Do you remember? You were
+coming out of the door as I went in."
+
+"You seem to have been always meeting me."
+
+"Always meeting you. And then---always missing you. Just when I
+expected most to find you."
+
+"If we go much farther in this direction," said Gwenda, "we shall meet
+Papa."
+
+"Well--I suppose some day I shall have to meet him. Do you realise
+that I've never met him yet?"
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"No. Always I've been on the point of meeting him, and always some
+malignant fate has interfered."
+
+She smiled. He loved her smile.
+
+"Why are you smiling?"
+
+"I was only wondering whether the fate was really so malignant."
+
+"You mean that if he met me he'd dislike me?"
+
+"He always _has_ disliked anybody we like. You see, he's a very funny
+father."
+
+"All fathers," said Rowcliffe, "are more or less funny."
+
+She laughed. Her laughter enchanted him.
+
+"Yes. But _my_ father doesn't mean to be as funny as he is."
+
+"I see. He wouldn't really mean to dislike me. Then, perhaps, if I
+regularly laid myself out for it, by years of tender and untiring
+devotion I might win him over?"
+
+She laughed again; she laughed as youth laughs, for the pure joy of
+laughter. She looked on her father as a persistent, delightful jest.
+He adored her laughter.
+
+It proved how strong and sane she was--if she could take him like
+that. Rowcliffe had seen women made bitter, made morbid, driven into
+lunatic asylums by fathers who were as funny as Mr. Cartaret.
+
+"You wouldn't, you wouldn't," she said. "He's funnier than you've any
+idea of."
+
+"Is he ever ill?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"That of course makes it difficult."
+
+"Except colds in his head. But he wouldn't have you for a cold in his
+head. He wouldn't have you for anything if he could help it."
+
+"Well--perhaps--if he's as funny as all that, we'd better turn."
+
+They turned.
+
+They were walking so fast now that they couldn't talk.
+
+Presently they slackened and he spoke.
+
+"I say, shall you ever get away from this place?"
+
+"Never, I think."
+
+"Do you never want to get away?"
+
+"No. Never. You see, I love it."
+
+"I know you do." He said it savagely, as if he were jealous of the
+place.
+
+"So do you," she answered.
+
+"If I didn't I suppose I should have to."
+
+"Yes, it's better, if you've got to live in it."
+
+"That wasn't what I meant."
+
+After that they were silent for a long time. She was wondering what he
+did mean.
+
+When they reached the Vicarage gate he sheered off the path and held
+out his hand.
+
+"Oh--aren't you coming in for tea?" she said.
+
+"Thanks. No. It's a little late. I don't think I want any."
+
+He paused. "I've got what I wanted."
+
+He stepped backward, facing her, raising his cap, then he turned and
+hurried down the hill.
+
+Gwenda walked slowly up the flagged path to the house door. She stood
+there, thinking.
+
+"He's got what he wanted. He only wanted to see what I was like."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Rowcliffe had ten minutes on his hands while they were bringing his
+trap round from the Red Lion.
+
+He was warming his hands at the surgery fire when he heard voices in
+the parlor on the other side of the narrow passage. One voice pleaded,
+the other reserved judgment.
+
+"Do you think he'd do it if I were to go up and ask him?" It was Alice
+Cartaret's voice.
+
+"I caann't say, Miss Cartaret, I'm sure."
+
+"Could you persuade him yourself, Mrs. Blenkiron?"
+
+"It wouldn't be a bit of good me persuadin' him. Jim Greatorex wouldn'
+boodge _that_ mooch for me."
+
+A pause. Alice was wavering, aware, no doubt, of the folly of her
+errand. Rowcliffe had only to lie low and she would go.
+
+"Could Mr. Blenkiron?"
+
+No. Rowcliffe in the surgery smiled all to himself as he warmed his
+hands. Alice was holding her ground. She was spinning out the time.
+
+"Not he. Mr. Blenkiron's got soomat alse to do without trapseing after
+Jim Greatorex."
+
+"Oh."
+
+Alice's voice was distant and defensive. He was sorry for Alice. She
+was not yet broken in to the north country manner, and her softness
+winced under these blows. There was nobody to tell her that Mrs.
+Blenkiron's manner was a criticism of her young kinsman, Jim
+Greatorex.
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron presently made this apparent.
+
+"Jim's sat oop enoof as it is. You'd think there was nawbody in this
+village good enoof to kape coompany wi' Jimmy, the road he goas. Ef I
+was you, Miss Olice, I should let him be."
+
+"I would, but it's his voice we want. I'm thinking of the concert,
+Mrs. Blenkiron. It's the only voice we've got that'll fill the room."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron laughed.
+
+"Eh--he'll fill it fer you, right enoof. You'll have all the yoong
+laads and laasses in the Daale toomblin' in to hear Jimmy."
+
+"We want them. We want everybody. You Wesleyans and all."
+
+Another pause. Rowcliffe was interested. Alice was really displaying
+considerable intelligence. Almost she persuaded him that her errand
+was genuine.
+
+"Do you think Essy Gale could get him to come?"
+
+In the surgery Rowcliffe whistled inaudibly. _That_ was indeed a
+desperate shift.
+
+Rowcliffe had turned and was now standing with his back to the fire.
+He was intensely interested.
+
+"Assy Gaale? He would n' coom for Assy's asskin', a man like
+Greatorex."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron's blood, the blood of the Greatorexes, was up.
+
+"Naw," said Jim Greatorex's kinswoman, "if you want Greatorex to sing
+for you as bad as all that, Miss Cartaret, you'd better speak to the
+doctor."
+
+Rowcliffe became suddenly grave. He watched the door.
+
+"He'd mebbe do it for him. He sats soom store by Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+"But"--Ally's voice sounded nearer--"he's gone, hasn't he?"
+
+(The minx, the little, little minx!)
+
+"Naw. But he's joost goin'. Shall I catch him?"
+
+"You might."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron caught him on the threshold of the surgery.
+
+"Will you speak to Miss Cartaret a minute, Dr. Rawcliffe?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Mrs. Blenkiron withdrew. The kitchen door closed on her flight. For
+the first time in their acquaintance Rowcliffe was alone with Alice
+Cartaret, and though he was interested he didn't like it.
+
+"I thought I heard your voice," said he with reckless geniality.
+
+They stood on their thresholds looking at each other across the narrow
+passage. It was as if Alice Cartaret's feet were fixed there by an
+invisible force that held her fascinated and yet frightened.
+
+Rowcliffe had paused too, as at a post of vantage, the better to
+observe her.
+
+A moment ago, warming his hands in the surgery, he could have sworn
+that she, the little maneuvering minx, had laid a trap for him. She
+had come on her fool's errand, knowing that it was a fool's errand,
+for nothing on earth but that she might catch him, alone and
+defenseless, in the surgery. It was the sort of thing she did, the
+sort of thing she always would do. She didn't want to know (not she!)
+whether Jim Greatorex would sing or not, she wanted to know, and
+she meant to know, why he, Steven Rowcliffe, hadn't turned up that
+afternoon, and where he had gone, and what he had been doing, and the
+rest of it. There were windows at the back of the Vicarage. Possibly
+she had seen him charging up the hill in pursuit of her sister, and
+she was desperate. All this he had believed and did still believe.
+
+But, as he looked across at the little hesitating figure and the
+scared face framed in the doorway, he had compassion on her. Poor
+little trapper, so pitifully trapped; so ignorant of the first rules
+and principles of trapping that she had run hot-foot after her prey
+when she should have lain low and lured it silently into her snare.
+She was no more than a poor little frightened minx, caught in his
+trap, peering at him from it in terror. God knew he hadn't meant to
+set it for her, and God only knew how he was going to get her out of
+it.
+
+"Poor things," he thought, "if they only knew how horribly they
+embarrass me!"
+
+For of course she wasn't the first. The situation had repeated itself,
+monotonously, scores of times in his experience. It would have been
+a nuisance even if Alice Cartaret had not been Gwendolen Cartaret's
+sister. That made it intolerable.
+
+All this complex pity and repugnance was latent in his one sense of
+horrible embarrassment.
+
+Then their hands met.
+
+"You want to see me?"
+
+"I _did_--" She was writhing piteously in the trap.
+
+"You'd better come into the surgery. There's a fire there."
+
+He wasn't going to keep her out there in the cold; and he wasn't going
+to walk back with her to the Vicarage. He didn't want to meet the
+Vicar and have the door shut in his face. Rowcliffe, informed by Mrs.
+Blenkiron, was aware, long before Gwenda had warned him, that he ran
+this risk. The Vicar's funniness was a byword in the parish.
+
+But he left the door ajar.
+
+"Well," he said gently, "what is it?"
+
+"Shall you be seeing Jim Greatorex soon?"
+
+"I might. Why?"
+
+She told her tale again; she told it in little bursts of excitement
+punctuated with shy hesitations. She told it with all sorts of twists
+and turns, winding and entangling herself in it and coming out again
+breathless and frightened, like a lost creature that has been dragged
+through the brake. And there were long pauses when Alice put her head
+on one side, considering, as if she held her tale in her hands and
+were looking at it and wondering whether she really could go on.
+
+"And what is it you want me to do?" said Rowcliffe finally.
+
+"To ask him."
+
+"Hadn't you better ask him yourself?"
+
+"Would he do it for me?"
+
+"Of course he would."
+
+"I wonder. Perhaps--if I asked him prettily--"
+
+"Oh, then--he couldn't help himself."
+
+There was a pause. Rowcliffe, a little ashamed of himself, looked at
+the floor, and Alice looked at Rowcliffe and tried to fathom the full
+depth of his meaning from his face. That there was a depth and that
+there was a meaning she never doubted. This time Rowcliffe missed the
+pathos of her gray eyes.
+
+An idea had come to him.
+
+"Look here--Miss Cartaret--if you can get Jim Greatorex to sing for
+you, if you can get him to take an interest in the concert or in any
+mortal thing besides beer and whisky, you'll be doing the best day's
+work you ever did in your life."
+
+"Do you think I _could_?" she said.
+
+"I think you could probably do anything with him if you gave your mind
+to it."
+
+He meant it. He meant it. That was really his opinion of her. Her
+lifted face was radiant as she drank bliss at one draught from the cup
+he held to her. But she was not yet satisfied.
+
+"You'd _like_ me to do it?"
+
+"I should very much."
+
+His voice was firm, but his eyes looked uneasy and ashamed.
+
+"Would you like me to get him back in the choir?"
+
+"I'd like you to get him back into anything that'll keep him out of
+mischief."
+
+She raised her chin. There was a more determined look on her small,
+her rather insignificant face than he would have thought to see there.
+
+She rose.
+
+"Very well," she said superbly. "I'll do it."
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"I don't say, Miss Cartaret, that you'll reclaim him."
+
+"Nor I. But--if you want me to, I'll try."
+
+They parted on it.
+
+Rowcliffe smiled as he closed the surgery door behind him.
+
+"That'll give her something else to think about," he said to himself.
+"And it'll take her all her time."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+The next Sunday, early in the afternoon, Alice went, all by herself,
+to Upthorne.
+
+Hitherto she had disliked going to Upthorne by herself. She had no
+very subtle feeling for the aspects of things; but there was something
+about the road to Upthorne that repelled her. A hundred yards or so
+above the schoolhouse it turned, leaving behind it the wide green
+bottom and winding up toward the naked moor. To the north, on her
+right, it narrowed and twisted; the bed of the beck lay hidden. A
+thin scrub of low thorn trees covered the lower slopes of the further
+hillside. Here and there was a clearing and a cottage or a farm. On
+her left she had to pass the dead mining station, the roofless walls,
+the black window gaps, the melancholy haunted colonnades, the three
+chimneys of the dead furnaces, square cornered, shooting straight and
+high as the bell-towers of some hill city of the South, beautiful and
+sinister, guarding that place of ashes and of ruin. Then the sallow
+winter marshes. South of the marshes were the high moors. Their flanks
+showed black where they have been flayed by the cuttings of old mines.
+At intervals, along the line of the hillside, masses of rubble rose in
+hummocks or hung like avalanches, black as if they had been discharged
+by blasting. Beyond, in the turn of the Dale, the village of Upthorne
+lay unseen.
+
+And hitherto, in all that immense and inhuman desolation nothing (to
+Alice) had been more melancholy, more sinister, more haunted than the
+house where John Greatorex had died. With its gray, unsleeping face,
+its lidless eyes, staring out over the marshes, it had lost (for
+Alice) all likeness to a human habitation. It repudiated the living;
+it remembered; it kept a grim watch with its dead.
+
+But Alice's mind, acutely sensitive in one direction, had become
+callous in every other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greatorex was in the kitchen, smoking his Sunday afternoon pipe in
+the chimney corner, screened from the open doorway by the three-foot
+thickness of the house wall.
+
+Maggie, his servant, planted firmly on the threshold, jerked her head
+over her shoulder to call to him.
+
+"There's a yoong laady wants to see yo, Mr. Greatorex!"
+
+There was no response but a sharp tapping on the hob, as Greatorex
+knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
+
+Maggie stood looking at Alice a little mournfully with her deep-set,
+blue, pathetic eyes. Maggie had once been pretty in spite of her
+drab hair and flat features, but where her high color remained it had
+hardened with her thirty-five years.
+
+"Well yo' coom?"
+
+Maggie called again and waited. Courageous in her bright blue Sunday
+gown, she waited while her master rose, then, shame-faced as if driven
+by some sharp sign from him, she slunk into the scullery.
+
+Jim Greatorex appeared on his threshold.
+
+On his threshold, utterly sober, carrying himself with the assurance
+of the master in his own house, he would not have suffered by
+comparison with any man. Instead of the black broadcloth that Alice
+had expected, he wore a loose brown shooting jacket, drab corduroy
+breeches, a drab cloth waistcoat and brown leather leggings, and he
+wore them with a distinction that Rowcliffe might have envied. His
+face, his whole body, alert and upright, had the charm of some shy,
+half-savage animal. When he stood at ease his whole face, with all
+its features, sensed you and took you in; the quivering eyebrows were
+aware of you; the nose, with its short, high bridge, its fine, wide
+nostrils, repeated the sensitive stare of the wide eyes; his mouth,
+under its golden brown moustache, was somber with a sort of sullen
+apprehension, till in a sudden, childlike confidence it smiled. His
+whole face and all its features smiled.
+
+He was smiling at Alice now, as if struck all of a sudden by her
+smallness.
+
+"I've come to ask a favor, Mr. Greatorex," said Alice.
+
+"Ay," said Greatorex. He said it as if ladies called every day to ask
+him favors. "Will you coom in, Miss Cartaret?" It was the mournful
+and musical voice that she had heard sometimes last summer on the road
+outside the back door of the Vicarage.
+
+She came in, pausing on the threshold and looking about her, as if
+she stood poised on the edge of an adventure. Her smallness, and the
+delicious, exploring air of her melted Jim's heart and made him smile
+at her.
+
+"It's a roough plaace fer a laady," he said.
+
+"It's a beautiful place, Mr. Greatorex," said Alice.
+
+And she did actually think it was beautiful with its stone floor, its
+white-washed walls, its black oak dresser and chest and settle;
+not because of these things but because it was on the border of her
+Paradise. Rowcliffe had sent her there. Jim Greatorex had glamour
+for her, less on his own account than as a man in whom Rowcliffe was
+interested.
+
+"You'd think it a bit loansoom, wouldn' yo', ef yo' staayed in it
+yeear in and yeear out?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alice doubtfully. "Perhaps--a little," she
+ventured, encouraged by Greatorex's indulgent smile.
+
+"An' loansoom it is," said Greatorex dismally.
+
+Alice explored, penetrating into the interior.
+
+"Oh--but aren't you glad you've got such a lovely fireplace?"
+
+"I doan' knaw as I've thought mooch about it. We get used to our own."
+
+"What are those hooks for in the chimney?"
+
+"They? They're fer 'angin' the haams on--to smoak 'em."
+
+"I see."
+
+She would have sat there on the oak settle but that Greatorex was
+holding open the door of an inner room.
+
+"Yo'd better coom into t' parlor, Miss Cartaret. It'll be more
+coomfortable for you."
+
+She rose and followed him. She had been long enough in Garth to know
+that if you are asked to go into the parlor you must go. Otherwise you
+risk offending the kind gods of the hearth and threshold.
+
+The parlor was a long low room that continued the line of the house
+to its southern end. One wide mullioned window looked east over the
+marsh, the other south to the hillside across a little orchard of
+dwarfed and twisted trees.
+
+To Alice they were the trees of her Paradise and the hillside was its
+boundary.
+
+Greatorex drew close to the hearth the horsehair and mahogany armchair
+with the white antimacassar.
+
+"Sit yo' down and I'll putt a light to the fire."
+
+"Not for me," she protested.
+
+But Greatorex was on his knees before her, lighting the fire.
+
+"You'll 'ave wet feet coomin' over t' moor. Cauld, too, yo'll be."
+
+She sat and watched him. He was deft with his great hands, like a
+woman, over his fire-lighting.
+
+"There--she's burning fine." He rose, turning triumphantly on his
+hearth as the flame leaped in the grate.
+
+"Yo'll let me mak' yo' a coop of tae, Miss Cartaret."
+
+There was an interrogative lilt at the end of all his sentences, even
+when, as now, he was making statements that admitted of no denial. But
+his guest missed the incontrovertible and final quality of what was
+said.
+
+"Please don't trouble."
+
+"It's naw trooble--naw trooble at all. Maaggie'll 'ave got kettle on."
+
+He strode out of his parlor into his kitchen. "Maaggie! Maaggie!" he
+called. "Are yo' there? Putt kettle on and bring tae into t' parlor."
+
+Alice looked about her while she waited.
+
+Though she didn't know it, Jim Greatorex's parlor was a more tolerable
+place than the Vicarage drawing-room. Brown cocoanut matting covered
+its stone floor. In front of the wide hearth on the inner wall was a
+rug of dyed sheepskin bordered with a strip of scarlet snippets. The
+wooden chimney-piece, the hearth-place, the black hobs, the straight
+barred grate with its frame of fine fluted iron, belonged to a period
+of simplicity. The oblong mahogany table in the center of the room,
+the sofa and chairs, upholstered in horsehair, were of a style austere
+enough to be almost beautiful. Down the white ground of the wall-paper
+an endless succession of pink nosegays ascended and descended between
+parallel stripes of blue.
+
+There were no ornaments to speak of in Greatorex's parlor but the
+grocer's tea-caddies on the mantelshelf and the little china figures,
+the spotted cows, the curly dogs, the boy in blue, the girl in pink;
+and the lustre ware and the tea-sets, the white and gold, the blue
+and white, crowded behind the diamond panes of the two black oak
+cupboards. Of these one was set in the most conspicuous corner, the
+other in the middle of the long wall facing the east window, bare
+save for the framed photographs of Greatorex's family, the groups,
+the portraits of father and mother and of grandparents, enlarged from
+vignettes taken in the seventies and eighties--faces defiant, stolid
+and pathetic; yearning, mournful, tender faces, slightly blurred.
+
+All these objects impressed themselves on Ally's brain, adhering
+to its obsession and receiving from it an immense significance and
+importance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She heard Maggie's running feet, and the great leisurely steps of
+Greatorex, and his voice, soft and kind, encouraging Maggie.
+
+"Theer--that's t' road. Gently, laass--moor' 'aaste, less spead. Now
+t' tray--an' a clane cloth--t' woon wi' laace on 't. Thot's t' road."
+
+Maggie whispered, awestruck by these preparations:
+
+"Which coops will yo' 'ave, Mr. Greatorex?"
+
+"T' best coops, Maaggie."
+
+Maggie had to fetch them from the corner cupboard (they were the white
+and gold). At Greatorex's command she brought the little round oak
+table from its place in the front window and set it by the hearth
+before the visitor. Humbly, under her master's eye, yet with a sort of
+happy pride about her, she set out the tea-things and the glass dishes
+of jam and honey and tea-cakes.
+
+Greatorex waited, silent and awkward, till his servant had left the
+room. Then he came forward.
+
+"Theer's caake," he said. "Maaggie baaked un yesterda'. An' theer's
+hooney."
+
+He made no servile apologies for what he set before her. He was giving
+her nothing that was not good, and he knew it.
+
+And he sat down facing her and watched her pour out her tea and help
+herself with her little delicate hands. If he had been a common man, a
+peasant, his idea of courtesy would have been to leave her to herself,
+to turn away his eyes from her in that intimate and sacred act of
+eating and drinking. But Greatorex was a farmer, the descendant of
+yeomen, and by courtesy a yeoman still, and courtesy bade him watch
+and see that his guest wanted for nothing.
+
+That he did not sit down at the little table and drink tea with her
+himself showed that his courtesy knew where to draw the dividing line.
+
+"But why aren't you having anything yourself?" said Alice. She really
+wondered.
+
+He smiled. "It's a bit too early for me, thank yo'. Maaggie'll mak' me
+a coop by and bye."
+
+And she said to herself, "How beautifully he did it."
+
+He was indeed doing it beautifully all through. He watched her little
+fingers, and the very instant they had disposed of a morsel he offered
+her another. It was a deep and exquisite pleasure to him to observe
+her in that act of eating and drinking. He had never seen anything
+like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it. He
+had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray
+tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so
+distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and
+collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of
+blue peacock's breast laid on one side of it like a folded wing.
+
+As he watched her he thought, "If I was to touch her I should break
+her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the conversation began.
+
+"I was sorry," he said, "to hear yo was so poorly, Miss Cartaret."
+
+"I'm all right now. You can see I'm all right."
+
+He shook his head. "I saw yo' a moonth ago, and I didn't think then I
+sud aver see yo' at Oopthorne again."
+
+He paused.
+
+"'E's a woonderful maan, Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+"He is," said Alice.
+
+Her voice was very soft, inaudible as a breath. All the blood in
+her body seemed to rush into her face and flood it and spread up her
+forehead to the roots of the gold hair that the east wind had crisped
+round the edges of her hat. She thought, "It'll be awful if he
+guesses, and if he talks." But when she looked at Greatorex his face
+reassured her, it was so utterly innocent of divination. And the next
+moment he went straight to the matter in hand.
+
+"An' what's this thing you've coom to aassk me, Miss Cartaret?"
+
+"Well"--she looked at him and her gray eyes were soft and charmingly
+candid--"it _was_ if you'd be kind enough to sing at our concert.
+You've heard about it?"
+
+"Ay, I've heard about it, right enoof."
+
+"Well--_won't_ you? You _have_ sung, you know."
+
+"Yes. I've soong. But thot was in t' owd schoolmaaster's time. Yo'
+wouldn't care to hear my singin' now. I've got out of the way of it,
+like."
+
+"You haven't, Mr. Greatorex. I've heard you. You've got a magnificent
+voice. There isn't one like it in the choir."
+
+"Ay, there's not mooch wrong with my voice, I rackon. But it's like
+this, look yo. I joost soong fer t' schoolmaaster. He was a friend--a
+personal friend of mine. And he's gone. And I'm sure I doan' knaw--"
+
+"I know, Mr. Greatorex. I know exactly how you feel about it. You
+sang to please your friend. He's gone and you don't like the idea of
+singing for anybody else--for a set of people you don't know."
+
+She had said it. It was the naked truth and he wasn't going to deny
+it.
+
+She went on. "We're strangers and perhaps you don't like us very much,
+and you feel that singing for us would be like singing the Lord's song
+in a strange country; you feel as if it would be profanation--a kind
+of disloyalty."
+
+"Thot's it. Thot's it." Never had he been so well interpreted.
+
+"It's that--and it's because you miss him so awfully."
+
+"Wall--" He seemed inclined, in sheer honesty, to deprecate the
+extreme and passionate emotion she suggested. I would n' saay--O'
+course, I sort o' miss him. I caann't afford to lose a friend--I
+'aven't so many of 'em."
+
+"I know. It's the waters of Babylon, and you're hanging up your
+voice in the willow tree." She could be gay and fluent enough with
+Greatorex, who was nothing to her. "But it's an awful pity. A willow
+tree can't do anything with a big barytone voice hung up in it."
+
+He laughed then. And afterward, whenever he thought of it, he laughed.
+
+She saw that he had adopted his attitude first of all in resentment,
+that he had continued it as a passionate, melancholy pose, and that he
+was only keeping it up through sheer obstinacy. He would be glad of a
+decent excuse to abandon it, if he could find one.
+
+"And your friend must have been proud of your voice, wasn't he?"
+
+"He sat more store by it than what I do. It was he, look yo, who
+trained me so as I could sing proper."
+
+"Well, then, he must have taken some trouble over it. Do you think
+he'd like you to go and hang it up in a willow tree?"
+
+Greatorex looked up, showing a shamefaced smile. The little lass had
+beaten him.
+
+"Coom to think of it, I doan' knaw as he would like it mooch."
+
+"Of course he wouldn't like it. It would be wasting what he'd done."
+
+"So 't would. I naver thought of it like thot."
+
+She rose. She knew the moment of surrender, and she knew, woman-like,
+that it must not be overpassed. She stood before him, drawing on her
+gloves, fastening her squirrel collar and settling her chin in the
+warm fur with the movement of a small burrowing animal, a movement
+that captivated Greatorex. Then, deliberately and finally, she held
+out her hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Greatorex. It's all right, isn't it? You're coming to
+sing for _him,_ you know, not for _us_."
+
+"I'm coomin'," said Greatorex.
+
+She settled her chin again, tucked her hands away in the squirrel muff
+and went quickly toward the door. He followed.
+
+"Let me putt Daasy in t' trap, Miss Cartaret, and drive yo' home."
+
+"I wouldn't think of it. Thank you all the same."
+
+She was in the kitchen now, on the outer threshold. He followed her
+there.
+
+"Miss Cartaret--"
+
+She turned. "Well?"
+
+His face was flushed to the eyes. He struggled visibly for expression.
+"Yo' moosn' saay I doan' like yo'. Fer it's nat the truth."
+
+"I'm glad it isn't," she said.
+
+He walked with her down the bridle path to the gate. He was dumb after
+his apocalypse.
+
+They parted at the gate.
+
+With long, slow, thoughtful strides Greatorex returned along the
+bridle path to his house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alice went gaily down the hill to Garth. It was the hill of Paradise.
+And if she thought of Greatorex and of how she had cajoled him into
+singing, and of how through singing she would reclaim him, it was
+because Greatorex and his song and his redemption were a small, hardly
+significant part of the immense thought of Rowcliffe.
+
+"How pleased he'll be when he knows what I've done!"
+
+And her pure joy had a strain in it that was not so pure. It pleased
+her to please Rowcliffe, but it pleased her also that he should
+realise her as a woman who could cajole men into doing for her what
+they didn't want to do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I've got him! I've got him!" she cried as she came, triumphant, into
+the dining-room where her father and her sisters still sat round the
+table. "No, thanks. I've had tea."
+
+"Where did you get it?" the Vicar asked with his customary suspicion.
+
+"At Upthorne. Jim Greatorex gave it me."
+
+The Vicar was appeased. He thought nothing of it that Greatorex should
+have given his daughter tea. Greatorex was part of the parish.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Rowcliffe was coming to the concert. Neither floods nor tempests, he
+declared, would keep him away from it.
+
+For hours, night after night, of the week before the concert, Jim
+Greatorex had been down at Garth, in the schoolhouse, practicing with
+Alice Cartaret until she assured him he was perfect.
+
+Night after night the schoolhouse, gray in its still yard, had a door
+kept open for them and a light in the solemn lancet windows. The tall
+gray ash tree that stood back in the angle of the porch knew of their
+coming and their going. The ash tree was friendly. When the north wind
+tossed its branches it beckoned to the two, it summoned them from up
+and down the hill.
+
+And now the tables and blackboards had been cleared out of the big
+schoolroom. The matchboarding of white pine that lined the lower half
+of its walls had been hung with red twill, with garlands of ivy and
+bunches of holly. Oil lamps swung from the pine rafters of the ceiling
+and were set on brackets at intervals along the walls. A few boards
+raised on joists made an admirable platform. One broad strip of red
+felt was laid along the platform, another hid the wooden steps that
+led to it. On the right a cottage piano was set slantwise. In the
+front were chairs for the principal performers. On the left, already
+in their places, were the glee-singers chosen from the village choir.
+Behind, on benches, the rest of the choir.
+
+Over the whole scene, on the chalk white of the dado, the blond yellow
+of varnished pinewood, the blazing scarlet of the hangings, the dark
+glitter of the ivy and the holly; on the faces, ruddy and sallow,
+polished with cleanliness, on the sleek hair, on the pale frocks of
+the girls, the bright neckties of the men, the lamplight rioted and
+exulted; it rippled and flowed; it darted; it lay suave and smooth as
+still water; it flaunted; it veiled itself. Stately and tall and in a
+measured order, the lancet windows shot up out of the gray walls, the
+leaded framework of their lozenges gray on the black and solemn night
+behind them.
+
+A smell of dust, of pine wood, of pomade, of burning oil, of an iron
+stove fiercely heated, a thin, bitter smell of ivy and holly; that
+wonderful, that overpowering, inspiring and revolting smell, of
+elements strangely fused, of flying vapors, of breathing, burning,
+palpitating things.
+
+Greatorex, conspicuous in his front seat on the platform, drew it
+in with great heavings of his chest. He loved that smell. It fairly
+intoxicated him every time. It soared singing through his nostrils
+into his brain, like gin. There could be no more violent and
+voluptuous contrast of sensations than to come straight from the cold,
+biting air of Upthorne and to step into that perfect smell. It was a
+thick, a sweet, a fiery and sustaining smell. It helped him to face
+without too intolerable an agony the line of alien (he deemed them
+alien) faces in the front row of the audience: Mr. Cartaret and Miss
+Cartaret (utter strangers; he had never got, he never would get used
+to them) and Dr. Rowcliffe (not altogether a stranger, after what he
+had done one night for Greatorex's mare Daisy); then Miss Gwendolen
+(not a stranger either after what she had done, and yet formidably
+strange, the strangest, when he came to think of it, and the queerest
+of them all). Rowcliffe, he observed, sat between her and her sister.
+Divided from them by a gap, more strangers, three girls whom Rowcliffe
+had driven over from Morfe and afterward (Greatorex observed that
+also, for he kept his eye on him) had shamelessly abandoned.
+
+If Greatorex had his eye on Rowcliffe, Rowcliffe had his eye, though
+less continuously, on him. He did not know very much about Greatorex,
+after all, and he could not be sure that his man would turn
+up entirely sober. He was unaware of Greatorex's capacity for
+substituting one intoxication for another. He had no conception of
+what the smell of that lighted and decorated room meant for this man
+who lived so simply and profoundly by his senses and his soul. It was
+interfused and tangled with Greatorex's sublimest feelings. It was the
+draw-net of submerged memories, of secret, unsuspected passions. It
+held in its impalpable web his dreams, the divine and delicate things
+that his grosser self let slip. He would forget, forget for ages,
+until, in the schoolroom at concert time, at the first caress of the
+magical smell, those delicate and divine, those secret, submerged, and
+forgotten things arose, and with the undying poignancy and subtlety of
+odors they entered into him again. And besides these qualities which
+were indefinable, the smell was vividly symbolic. It was entwined with
+and it stood for his experience of art and ambition and the power to
+move men and women; for song and for the sensuous thrill and spiritual
+ecstasy of singing and for the subsequent applause. It was the only
+form of intoxication known to him that did not end in headache and in
+shame.
+
+Suddenly the charm that had sustained him ceased to work.
+
+Under it he had been sitting in suspense, waiting for something,
+knowing and not daring to own to himself what it was he waited
+for. The suspense and the waiting seemed all part of the original
+excitement.
+
+Then Alice Cartaret came up the room.
+
+Her passage had been obscured and obstructed by the crowd of villagers
+at the door. But they had cleared a way for her and she came.
+
+She carried herself like a crowned princess. The cords of her cloak
+(it was of dove color, lined with blue) had loosened in her passage,
+and the cloak had slipped, showing her naked shoulders. She wore a
+little dove-gray gown with some blue about it and a necklace of pale
+amber. Her white arms hung slender as a child's from the immense puffs
+of the sleeves. Her fair hair was piled in front of a high amber comb.
+
+As she appeared before the platform Rowcliffe rose and took her cloak
+from her (Greatorex saw him take it, but he didn't care; he knew more
+about the doctor than the doctor knew himself). He handed her up the
+steps on to the platform and then turned, like a man who has done all
+that chivalry requires of him, to his place between her sisters. The
+hand that Rowcliffe had let go went suddenly to her throat, seizing
+her necklace and loosening it as if it choked her. Rowcliffe was not
+looking at her.
+
+Still with her hand at her throat, she smiled and bowed to the
+audience, to the choir, to Greatorex, to the schoolmaster who came
+forward (Greatorex cursed him) and led her to the piano.
+
+She sat down, wiped her hands on her handkerchief, and waited,
+enduring like an angel the voices of the villagers and the shuffling
+of their feet.
+
+Then somebody (it was the Vicar) said, "Hush!" and she began to play.
+In her passion for the unattainable she had selected Chopin's Grande
+Valse in A Flat, beginning with the long shake of eight bars.
+
+Greatorex did not know whether she played well or badly. He only knew
+it looked and sounded wonderful. He could have watched forever her
+little hands that were like white birds. He had never seen anything
+more delicious and more amusing than their fluttering in the long
+shake and their flying with spread wings all over the piano.
+
+Then the jumping and the thumping began; and queer noises, the like of
+which Greatorex had never heard, came out of the piano. It jarred him;
+but it made him smile. The little hands were marvelous the way they
+flew, the way they leaped across great spaces of piano.
+
+Alice herself was satisfied. She had brought out the air; she had made
+it sing above the confusion of the bass and treble that evidently had
+had no clear understanding when they started; as for the bad bits, the
+tremendous crescendo chords that your hands must take at a flying leap
+or miss altogether, Rowcliffe had already assured her that they were
+impracticable anyhow; and Rowcliffe knew.
+
+Flushed and softened with the applause (Rowcliffe had joined in
+it), she took her place between Greatorex and the schoolmaster. The
+glee-singers, two men and two women, came forward and sang their
+glees, turning and bowing to each other like mummers. The schoolmaster
+recited the "Pied Piper of Hamelin." A young lady who had come over
+from Morfe expressly for that purpose sang the everlasting song about
+the miller.
+
+Leaning stiffly forward, her thin neck outstretched, her brows bent
+toward Rowcliffe, summoning all that she knew of archness to her eyes,
+she sang.
+
+  "Oh miller, miller, miller, miller, miller, let me go!"
+
+sang the young lady from Morfe. Alice could see that she sang for
+Rowcliffe and at Rowcliffe; she sang into his face until he turned it
+away, and then, utterly unabashed, she sang into his left ear.
+
+The presence and the song of the young lady from Morfe would have been
+torture to Alice, but that her eyelids and her face were red as if
+perpetually smitten by the east wind and scarified with weeping. To
+Alice, at the piano, it was terrible to be associated with the song of
+the young lady from Morfe. She felt that Rowcliffe was looking at her
+(he wasn't) and she strove by look and manner to detach herself.
+As the young lady flung herself into it and became more and more
+intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the
+accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew
+graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge
+of the last hope of the young lady from Morfe.
+
+When it ceased there rose from the piano that was its grave the
+Grande Polonaise of Chopin. It rose in splendor and defiance; Alice's
+defiance of the young lady from Morfe. It brought down the schoolhouse
+in a storm of clapping and thumping, of "Bravos" and "Encores." Even
+Rowcliffe said, "Bravo!"
+
+But Alice, still seated at the piano, smiled and signaled.
+
+And Jim Greatorex stood up to sing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stood facing the room, but beside her, so that she could sign to
+him if anything went wrong.
+
+  "'Oh, that we two-oo were May-ing
+  Down the stream of the so-oft spring breeze,
+  Like children with vi-olets pla-aying.'"
+
+Greatorex's voice was a voice of awful volume and it ranged somewhere
+from fairly deep barytone almost to tenor. It was at moments
+unmanageable, being untrained, yet he seemed to do as much with it as
+if it had been bass and barytone and tenor all in one. It had grown
+a little thick in the last year, but he brought out of its very
+thickness a brooding, yearning passion and an intolerable pathos.
+
+The song, overladen with emotion, appealed to him; it expressed as
+nothing else could have expressed the passions that were within him at
+that moment. It swept the whole range of his experiences, there were
+sheep in it and a churchyard and children (his lady could never be
+anything more to him than a child).
+
+  "'Oh, that we two-oo were ly-ing
+  In our nest in the chu-urch-yard sod,
+  With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast,
+  And our souls--at home--with God!'"
+
+That finished it. There was no other end.
+
+And as he sang it, looking nobly if a little heavily over the heads of
+his audience, he saw Essy Gale hidden away, and trying to hide herself
+more, beside her mother in the farthest corner of the room.
+
+He had forgotten Essy.
+
+And at the sight of her his nobility went from him and only his
+heaviness remained.
+
+It didn't matter that they shouted for him to sing again, that they
+stamped and bellowed, and that he did sing, again and again, taking
+the roof off at the last with "John Peel."
+
+Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered. Nothing could matter now.
+
+And then something bigger than his heart, bigger than his voice,
+something immense and brutal and defiant, asserted itself and said
+that Come to that Essy didn't matter. She had put herself in his way.
+And Maggie had been before and after her. And Maggie didn't matter
+either.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the magical smell had wrapped itself round Alice Cartaret, and her
+dove-gray gown and dove-gray eyes, and round the thought of her. It
+twined and tangled her in the subtle mesh. She was held and embalmed
+in it forever.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+It was Wednesday, the day after the concert.
+
+Mr. Cartaret was standing before the fire in his study. He had just
+rung the bell and now he waited in an attitude of wisdom and of
+patience. It was only ten o'clock in the morning and wisdom and
+patience should not be required of any man at such an hour. But the
+Vicar had a disagreeable duty to perform.
+
+Whenever the Vicar had a disagreeable duty to perform he performed
+it as early as possible in the morning, so that none of its
+disagreeableness was lost. The whole day was poisoned by it.
+
+He waited a little longer. And as he waited his patience began to
+suffer imperceptibly, though his wisdom remained intact.
+
+He rang again. The bell sounded through the quiet house, angry and
+terrifying.
+
+In another moment Essy came in. She had on a clean apron.
+
+She stood by the roll-top desk. It offered her a certain cover and
+support. Her brown eyes, liquid and gentle, gazed at him. But for all
+her gentleness there was a touch of defiance in her bearing.
+
+"Did you not hear me ring?" said the Vicar.
+
+"Naw, sir."
+
+Nothing more clear and pure than the candor of Essy's eyes. They
+disconcerted him.
+
+"I have nothing to say to you, Essy. You know why I sent for you."
+
+"Naw, sir." She thought it was a question.
+
+He underlined it.
+
+"You--know--why."
+
+"Naw. I doan' knaw, sir."
+
+"Then, if you don't know, you must find out. You will go down to the
+surgery this afternoon and see Dr. Rowcliffe, and he will report on
+your case."
+
+She started and the red blood rose in her face.
+
+"I s'all not goa and see him, Mr. Cartaret."
+
+She was very quiet.
+
+"Very good. Then I shall pay you a month's wages and you will go on
+Saturday."
+
+It was then that her mouth trembled so that her eyes shone large
+through her tears.
+
+"I wasn't gawn to staay, sir--to be a trooble. I sud a gien yo'
+nawtice in anoother moonth."
+
+She paused. There was a spasm in her throat as if she swallowed with
+difficulty her bitter pride. Her voice came thick and hoarse.
+
+"Woan't yo' kape me till th' and o' t' moonth, sir?" Her voice cleared
+suddenly. "Than I can see yo' trow Christmas."
+
+The Vicar opened his mouth to speak; but instead of speaking he
+stared. His open mouth stared with a supreme astonishment. Up till
+now, in his wisdom and his patience, he had borne with Essy, the Essy
+who had come before him one evening in September, dejected and afraid.
+He hated Essy and he hated her sin, but he had borne with her then
+because of her sorrow and her shame.
+
+And here was Essy with not a sign of sorrow or of shame about her,
+offering (in the teeth of her deserved dismissal), actually offering
+as a favor to stay over Christmas and to see them through. The naked
+impudence of it was what staggered him.
+
+"I have no intention of keeping you over Christmas. You will take your
+notice and your wages from to-day, and you will go on Saturday."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+In her going Essy turned.
+
+"Will yo' taake me back, sir, when it's all over?"
+
+"No. No. I shouldn't think of taking you back."
+
+The Vicar hid his hands in his pockets and leaned forward, thrusting
+his face toward Essy as he spoke.
+
+"I'm afraid, my girl, it never will be all over, as long as you regard
+your sin as lightly as you do."
+
+Essy did not see the Vicar's face thrust toward her. She was sidling
+to the door. She had her hand on the doorknob.
+
+"Come back," said the Vicar. "I have something else to say to you."
+
+Essy came no nearer. She remained standing by the door.
+
+"Who is the man, Essy?"
+
+At that Essy's face began to shake piteously. Standing by the door,
+she cried quietly, with soft sobs, neither hiding her face nor drying
+her tears as they came.
+
+"You had better tell me," said the Vicar.
+
+"I s'all nat tall yo'," said Essy, with passionate determination,
+between the sobs.
+
+"You must."
+
+"I s'all nat--I s'all nat."
+
+"Hiding it won't help you," said the Vicar.
+
+Essy raised her head.
+
+"I doan' keer. I doan' keer what 'appens to mae. What wae did--what
+wae did--lies between him and mae."
+
+"Did he tell you he'd marry you, Essy?"
+
+Essy sobbed for answer.
+
+"He didn't? Is he going to marry you?"
+
+"'Tisn' likely 'e'll marry mae. An' I'll not force him."
+
+"You think, perhaps, it doesn't matter?"
+
+She shook her head in utter helplessness.
+
+"Come, make a clean breast of it."
+
+Then the storm burst. She turned her tormented face to him.
+
+"A clane breast, yo' call it? I s'all mak' naw clane breasts, Mr.
+Cartaret, to yo' or anybody. I'll 'ave nawbody meddlin' between him
+an' mae!"
+
+"Then," said the Vicar, "I wash my hands of you."
+
+But he said it to an empty room. Essy had left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the outer room the three sisters sat silent and motionless. Their
+faces were turned toward the closed door of the study. They were
+listening to the sounds that went on behind it. The burden of Essy
+hung heavy over them.
+
+The study door opened and shut. Then the kitchen door.
+
+"Poor Essy," said Gwenda.
+
+"Poor Essy," said Alice. She was sorry for Essy now. She could afford
+to be sorry for her.
+
+Mary said nothing, and from her silence you could not tell what she
+was thinking.
+
+The long day dragged on to prayer time.
+
+The burden of Essy hung heavy over the whole house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, at a quarter to ten, fifteen minutes before prayer time,
+Gwenda came to her father in his study.
+
+"Papa," she said, "is it true that you've sacked Essy at three days'
+notice?"
+
+"I have dismissed Essy," said the Vicar, "for a sufficient reason."
+
+"There's no reason to turn her out before Christmas."
+
+"There is," said the Vicar, "a very grave reason. We needn't go into
+it."
+
+He knew that his daughter knew his reason. But he ignored her
+knowledge as he ignored all things that were unpleasant to him.
+
+"We must go into it," said Gwenda. "It's a sin to turn her out at
+three days' notice."
+
+"I know what I'm doing, Gwenda, and why I'm doing it."
+
+"So do I. We all do. None of us want her to go--yet. You could easily
+have kept her another two months. She'd have given notice herself."
+
+"I am not going to discuss it with you."
+
+The Vicar put his head under the roll top of his desk and pretended to
+be looking for papers. Gwenda seated herself familiarly on the arm of
+the chair he had left.
+
+"You'll have to, I'm afraid," she said. "Please take your head out of
+the desk, Papa. There's no use behaving like an ostrich. I can see you
+all the time. The trouble is, you know, that you won't _think_. And
+you _must_ think. How's Essy going to do without those two months'
+wages she might have had? She'll want every shilling she can lay her
+hands on for the baby."
+
+"She should have thought of that before."
+
+The Vicar was answering himself. He did not acknowledge his daughter's
+right to discuss Essy.
+
+"She'll think of it presently," said Gwenda in her unblushing calm.
+"Look here, Papa, while you're trying how you can make this awful
+thing more awful for her, what do you think poor Essy's bothering
+about? She's not bothering about her sin, nor about her baby. She's
+bothering about how she's landed _us_."
+
+The Vicar closed his eyes. His patience was exhausted. So was his
+wisdom.
+
+"I am not arguing with you, Gwenda."
+
+"You can't. You know perfectly well what a beastly shame it is."
+
+That roused him.
+
+"You seem to think no more of Essy's sin than Essy does."
+
+"How do you know what Essy thinks? How do I know? It isn't any
+business of ours what Essy thinks. It's what we do. I'd rather do what
+Essy's done, any day, than do mean or cruel things. Wouldn't you?"
+
+The Vicar raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. It was the gesture of
+a man helpless before the unspeakable.
+
+He took refuge in his pathos.
+
+"I am very tired, Gwenda; and it's ten minutes to ten."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may have been because the Vicar was tired that his mind wandered
+somewhat that night during family prayers.
+
+Foremost among the many things that the Vicar's mind refused to
+consider was the question of the status, of the very existence, of
+family prayers in his household.
+
+But for Essy, though the Vicar did not know it, it was doubtful
+whether family prayers would have survived what he called his
+daughters' godlessness. Mary, to be sure, conformed outwardly. She was
+not easily irritated, and, as she put it, she did not really _mind_
+prayers. But to Alice and Gwendolen prayers were a weariness and
+an exasperation. Alice would evade them under any pretext. By her
+father's action in transporting her to Gardale, she considered that
+she was absolved from her filial allegiance. But Gwendolen was loyal.
+In the matter of prayers, which--she made it perfectly clear to Alice
+and Mary--could not possibly annoy them more than they did her, she
+was going to see Papa through. It would be beastly, she said, not to.
+They couldn't give him away before Essy.
+
+But of the clemency and generosity of Gwendolen's attitude Mr.
+Cartaret was not aware. He believed that the custom of prayers was
+maintained in his household by his inflexible authority and will. He
+gloried in them as an expression of his power. They were a form of
+coercion which it seemed he could apply quite successfully to his
+womenkind, those creatures of his flesh and blood, yet so alien and
+intractable. Family prayers gave him a keener spiritual satisfaction
+than the church services in which, outwardly, he cut a far more
+imposing figure. In a countryside peopled mainly by abominable
+Wesleyans and impure Baptists (Mr. Cartaret spoke and thought of
+Wesleyans and Baptists as if they were abominable and impure pure) he
+had some difficulty in procuring a congregation. The few who came
+to the parish church came because it was respectable and therefore
+profitable, or because they had got into the habit and couldn't well
+get out of it, or because they liked it, not at all because his
+will and his authority compelled them. But to emerge from his
+study inevitably at ten o'clock, an hour when the souls of Mary
+and Gwendolen and Alice were most reluctant and most hostile to the
+thought of prayers, and by sheer worrying to round up the fugitives,
+whatever they happened to be doing and wherever they happened to be,
+this (though he said it was no pleasure to him) was more agreeable to
+Mr. Cartaret than he knew. The very fact that Essy was a Wesleyan
+and so far an unwilling conformist gave a peculiar zest to the
+performance.
+
+It was always the same. It started with a look through his glasses,
+leveled at each member of his household in turn, as if he desired to
+satisfy himself as to the expression of their faces while at the same
+time he defied them to protest. For the rest, his rule was that of his
+father, the schoolmaster, before him. First, a chapter from the Bible,
+the Old Testament in the morning, the New Testament in the evening,
+working straight through from Genesis to Revelation (omitting
+Leviticus as somewhat unsuitable for family reading). Then prayers
+proper, beginning with what his daughter Gwendolen, seventeen years
+ago, had called "fancy prayers," otherwise prayers not lifted from
+the Liturgy, but compiled and composed in accordance with the freer
+Evangelical taste in prayers. Then (for both Mr. Cartaret and the
+schoolmaster, his father, held that the Church must not be ignored)
+there followed last Sunday's Collect, the Collect for Grace, the
+Benediction, and the Lord's Prayer.
+
+Now, as his rule would have it, that evening of the fifth of December
+brought him to the Eighth chapter of St. John, in the one concerning
+the woman taken in adultery, which was the very last chapter which
+Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always
+considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as
+a defense of laxity.
+
+"'Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?'
+
+"She said, 'No man, Lord.' And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I
+condemn thee.'"
+
+Mr. Cartaret lowered his voice and his eyes as he read, for he felt
+Gwendolen's eyes upon him.
+
+But he recovered himself on the final charge.
+
+"'Go'"--now he came to think of it, that was what he had said to
+Essy--"'and sin no more.'"
+
+(After all, he was supported.)
+
+Casting another and more decidedly uneasy glance at his family, he
+knelt down. He felt better when they were all kneeling, for now he had
+their backs toward him instead of their faces.
+
+He then prayed. On behalf of himself and Essy and his family he prayed
+to a God who (so he assumed his Godhead) was ever more ready to hear
+than they to pray, a God whom he congratulated on His ability to
+perform for them far more than they either desired or deserved; he
+thanked him for having mercifully preserved them to the close of
+another blessed day (as in the morning he would thank him for having
+spared them to see the light of another blessed day); he besought him
+to pardon anything which that day they had done amiss; to deliver them
+from disobedience and self-will, from pride and waywardness (he had
+inserted this clause ten years ago for Gwendolen's benefit) as well as
+from the sins that did most easily beset them, for the temptations to
+which they were especially prone. This clause covered all the things
+he couldn't mention. It covered his wife, Robina's case; it covered
+Essy's; he had dragged Alice's case as it were from under it; he had a
+secret fear that one day it might cover Gwendolen's.
+
+Gwendolen was the child who, he declared and believed, had always
+given him most trouble. He recalled (perversely) a certain thing that
+(at thirteen) she had said about this prayer.
+
+"It oughtn't to be prayed," she had said. "You don't really think you
+can fool God that way, Papa? If I had a servant who groveled to me
+like that I'd tell him he must learn to keep his chin up or go."
+
+She had said it before Robina who had laughed. And Mr. Cartaret's
+answer to it had been to turn his back on both of them and leave the
+room. At least he thought it was his answer. Gwendolen had thought
+that in a flash of intellectual honesty he agreed with her, only that
+he hadn't quite enough honesty to say so before Mummy.
+
+All this he recalled, and the question she had pursued him with about
+that time. "_What_ are the sins that do most easily beset us? _What_
+are the temptations to which we are especially prone?" And his own
+evasive answer. "Ask yourself, my child."
+
+Another year and she had left off asking him questions. She drew back
+into herself and became every day more self-willed, more solitary,
+more inaccessible.
+
+And now, if he could have seen things as they really were, Mr.
+Cartaret would have perceived that he was afraid of Gwenda. As it was,
+he thought he was only afraid of what Gwenda might do.
+
+Alice was capable of some things; but Gwenda was capable of anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly, to Gwenda's surprise, her father sighed; a dislocating sigh.
+It came between the Benediction and the Lord's Prayer.
+
+For, even as he invoked the blessing Mr. Cartaret suddenly felt sorry
+for himself again. His children were no good to him.
+
+By which he meant that his third wife, Robina, was no good.
+
+But he did not know that he visited his wife's shortcomings on their
+heads, any more than he knew that he hated Essy and her sin because he
+himself was an enforced, reluctant celibate.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+The next day at dusk, Essy Gale slipped out to her mother's cottage
+down by the beck.
+
+Mrs. Gale had just cleared the table after her tea, had washed up
+the tea-things and was putting them away in the cupboard when Essy
+entered. She looked round sharply, inimically.
+
+Essy stood by the doorway, shamefaced.
+
+"Moother," she said softly, "I want to speaak to yo."
+
+Mrs. Gale struck an attitude of astonishment and fear, although she
+had expected Essy to come at such an hour and with such a look, and
+only wondered that she had not come four months ago.
+
+"Yo're nat goain' t' saay as yo've got yoresel into trooble?"
+
+For four months Mrs. Gale had preserved an innocent face before her
+neighbors and she desired to preserve it to the last possible moment.
+And up to the last possible moment, even to her daughter, she was
+determined to ignore what had happened.
+
+But she knew and Essy knew that she knew.
+
+"Doan yo saay it, Assy. Doan yo saay it."
+
+Essy said nothing.
+
+"D'yo 'ear mae speaakin' to yo? Caann't yo aanswer? Is it thot, Assy?
+Is it thot?"
+
+"Yas, moother, yo knaw 'tis thot."
+
+"An' yo dare to coom 'ear and tell mae! Yo dirty 'oossy! Toorn an'
+lat's 'ave a look at yo."
+
+Now that the innocence of her face was gone, Mrs. Gale had a stern
+duty to perform by Essy.
+
+"They've gien yo t' saack?"
+
+"T' Vicar give it mae."
+
+"Troost'im! Whan did 'e gie it yo?"
+
+"Yasterda'."
+
+"T'moonth's nawtice?"
+
+"Naw. I aassked 'im t' kape me anoother two moonths an' 'e woonna.
+I aassked 'im t' kape me over Christmas an' 'e woonna. I'm to leaave
+Saturda'."
+
+"Did yo expact 'im t' kape yo, yo gawpie? Did yo think you'd nowt to
+do but t' laay oop at t' Vicarage an' 'ave th yoong laadies t' do yore
+wark for yo, an' t' waait on yo 'and an' foot? Miss Gwanda t' mak'
+yore bafe-tae an' chicken jally and t' Vicar t' daandle t' baaby?
+
+"'Oo's goan t' kape yo? Mae? I woonna kape yo an' I canna' kape yo. Yo
+ain' t' baaby! I doan' waant naw squeechin', squallin' brats mookin'
+oop t' plaace as faast as I clanes it, An' '_E_ woonna kape yo--ef
+yo're raakonin' on 'im. Yo need na tall mae oo t' maan is. I knaw."
+
+"'Tis'n 'im, Moother. 'Tis'n 'im."
+
+"Yo lil blaack liar! '_Tis_ 'im. Ooo alse could it bae? Yo selly!
+Whatten arth possessed yo t' goa an' tak oop wi' Jim Greatorex? Ef yo
+mun get into trooble yo medda chawsen battern Jim. What for did I tak'
+yo from t' Farm an' put yo into t' Vicarage ef 't wasn't t' get yo out
+o' Jimmy's road? '_E_'ll naver maarry yo. Nat 'e! Did 'e saay as 'e'd
+maarry yo? Naw, I warrant yo did na waat fer thot. Yo was mad t' roon
+affter 'im afore 'e called yo. Yo dirty cat!"
+
+That last taunt drew blood. Essy spoke up.
+
+"Naw, naw. 'E looved mae. 'E wanted mae bad."
+
+"'E wanted yo? Coorse 'e wanted yo. Yo sud na 'ave gien in to 'im, yo
+softie. D'yo think yo're the only woon thot's tampted? Look at mae. I
+could 'a got into trooble saven times to yore woonce, ef I 'ad'n kaped
+my 'ead an' respected mysel. Yore Jim Greatorex! Ef a maan like Jim
+'ad laaid a 'and on mae, 'e'd a got soomthin' t' remamber afore I'd
+'a gien in to 'im. An' yo've naw 'scuse for disgracin' yoresel. Yo was
+brought oop ralegious an' respactable. Did yo aver 'ear saw mooch aa a
+bad woord?"
+
+"It's doon, Moother, it's doon. There's naw good taalkin'."
+
+"Eh! Yo saay it's doon, it's doon, an' yo think nowt o' 't. An' nowt
+yo think o' t' trooble yo're brengin' on mae. I sooppawse yo'll be
+tallin' mae naxt yo looved 'im! Yo looved'im!"
+
+At that Essy began to cry, softly, in her manner.
+
+"Doan' yo tall mae _thot_ taale."
+
+Mrs. Gale suddenly paused in her tirade and began to poke the fire
+with fury.
+
+"It's enoof t' sicken t' cat!"
+
+She snatched the kettle that stood upon the hob; she stamped out to
+the scullery and re-filled it at the tap. She returned, stamping, and
+set it with violence upon the fire.
+
+She tore out of the cupboard a teapot, a cup and a saucer, a loaf on
+a plate and a jar of dripping. Still with violence (slightly modulated
+to spare the comparative fragility of the objects she was handling)
+she dashed them one by one upon the table where Essy, with elbows
+planted, propped her head upon her hands and wept.
+
+Mrs. Gale sat down herself in the chair facing her, and kept one
+eye on the kettle and the other on her daughter. From time to time
+mutterings came from her, breaking the sad rhythm of Essy's sobs.
+
+"Eh dear! I'd like t' knaw what I've doon t' ave _this_ trooble!"--
+
+--"'Tis enoof t' raaise yore pore feyther clane out of 'is graave!"--
+
+--"'E'd sooner 'ave seed yo in yore coffin, Assy."--
+
+She rose and took down the tea-caddy from the chimney-piece and flung
+a reckless measure into the tea-pot.
+
+"Ef 'e'd 'a been a-livin', 'E'd a _killed_ yo. Thot's what 'e'd 'a
+doon."
+
+As she said it she grasped the kettle and poured the boiling water
+into the tea-pot.
+
+She set the tea-pot before Essy.
+
+"There's a coop of tae. An' there's bread an' drippin'. Yo'll drink it
+oop."
+
+But Essy, desolated, shook her head.
+
+"Wall," said Mrs. Gale. "I doan' want ter look at yo. 'T mak's mae
+seek."
+
+As if utterly revolted by the sight of her daughter, she turned from
+her and left the kitchen by the staircase door.
+
+Her ponderous stamping could be heard going up the staircase and
+on the floor overhead. There was a sound as of drawers opening and
+shutting and of a heavy box being dragged from under the bed.
+
+Essy poured herself out a cup of tea, tried to drink it, choked and
+pushed it from her.
+
+She was still weeping when her mother came to her.
+
+Mrs. Gale came softly.
+
+All alone in the room overhead she had evidently been doing something
+that had pleased her. The ghost of a smile still haunted her bleak
+face. She carried on her arm tenderly a pile of little garments.
+
+These she began to spread out on the table before Essy, having first
+removed the tea-things.
+
+"There!" she said. "'Tis the lil cleathes fer t' baaby. Look, Assy,
+my deear--there's t' lil rawb, wi' t' lil slaves, so pretty--an' t'
+flanny petticut--an' t' lil vasst--see. 'Tis t' lil things I maade fer
+'ee afore tha was born."
+
+But Essy pushed them from her. She was weeping violently now.
+
+"Taake 'em away!" she cried. "I doan' want t' look at 'em."
+
+Mrs. Gale sat and stared at her.
+
+"Coom," she said, "tha moos'n' taake it saw 'ard, like."
+
+Between the sobs Essy looked up with her shining eyes. She whispered.
+
+"Will yo kape mae, Moother?"
+
+"I sail 'ave t' kape yo. There's nawbody 'll keer mooch fer thot job
+but yore moother."
+
+But Essy still wept. Once started on the way of weeping, she couldn't
+stop.
+
+Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Gale's face became distorted.
+
+She got up and put her hand heavily on her daughter's shoulder.
+
+"There, there, Assy, loove," she said. "Doan' tha taake on thot road.
+It's doon, an' it caann't be oondoon."
+
+She stood there in a heavy silence. Now and again she patted the
+heaving shoulder, marking time to Essy's sobs. Then she spoke.
+
+"Tha'll feel batter whan t' lil baaby cooms."
+
+Profoundly disturbed and resentful of her own emotion Mrs. Gale seized
+upon the tea-pot as a pretext and shut herself up with it in the
+scullery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Essy, staggering, rose and dried her eyes. For a moment or so she
+stared idly at the square window with the blue-black night behind it.
+
+Then she looked down. She smiled faintly. One by one she took the
+little garments spread out in front of her. She folded them in a pile.
+
+Her face was still and dreamy.
+
+She opened the scullery door and looked in.
+
+"Good-night, Moother."
+
+"Good-night, Assy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was striking seven as she passed the church.
+
+Above the strokes of the hour she heard through the half-open door a
+sound of organ playing and of a big voice singing.
+
+And she began to weep again. She knew the singer, and the player too.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Christmas was over and gone.
+
+It was the last week in January.
+
+All through December Rowcliffe's visits to the Vicarage had continued.
+But in January they ceased. That was not to be wondered at. Even Ally
+couldn't wonder. There was influenza in every other house in the Dale.
+
+Then, one day, Gwenda, walking past Upthorne, heard wheels behind
+her and the clanking hoofs of the doctor's horse. She knew what would
+happen. Rowcliffe would pull up a yard or two in front of her. He
+would ask her where she was going and he would make her drive with him
+over the moor. And she knew that she would go with him. She would not
+be able to refuse him.
+
+But the clanking hoofs went by and never stopped. There were two men
+in the trap. Acroyd, Rowcliffe's groom, sat in Rowcliffe's place,
+driving. He touched his hat to her as he passed her.
+
+Beside him there was a strange man.
+
+She said to herself, "He's away then. I think he might have told me."
+
+And Ally, passing through the village, had seen the strange man too.
+
+"Dr. Rowcliffe must be away," she said at tea-time. "I wonder if he'll
+be back by Wednesday."
+
+Wednesday, the last day in January, came, but Rowcliffe did not come.
+The strange man took his place in the surgery.
+
+
+Mrs. Gale brought the news into the Vicarage dining-room at four
+o'clock.
+
+She had taken her daughter's place for the time being. She was a just
+woman and she bore no grudge against the Vicar on Essy's account. He
+had done no more than he was obliged to do. Essy had given trouble
+enough in the Vicarage, and she had received a month's wages that she
+hadn't worked for. Mrs. Gale was working double to make up for it.
+And the innocence of her face being gone, she went lowly and humbly,
+paying for Essy, Essy's debt of shame. That was her view.
+
+"Sall I set the tae here, Miss Gwanda," she enquired. "Sence doctor
+isn't coomin'?"
+
+"How do you know he isn't coming?" Alice asked.
+
+Mrs. Gale's face was solemn and oppressed. She turned to Gwenda,
+ignoring Alice. (Mary was upstairs in her room.)
+
+"'Aven't yo 'eerd, Miss Gwanda?"
+
+Gwenda looked up from her book.
+
+"No," she said. "He's away, isn't he?"
+
+"Away? 'El'll nat get away fer long enoof. 'E's too ill."
+
+"Ill?" Alice sent the word out on a terrified breath. Nobody took any
+notice of her.
+
+"T' poastman tell mae," said Mrs. Gale. "From what 'e's 'eerd, 'twas
+all along o' Nad Alderson's lil baaby up to Morfe. It was took wi'
+the diptheery a while back. An' doctor, 'e sat oop wi' 't tree nights
+roonin', 'e did. 'E didn' so mooch as taak 's cleathes off. Nad
+Alderson, 'e said, 'e'd navver seen anything like what doctor 'e doon
+for t' lil' thing."
+
+Mrs. Gale's face reddened and she sniffed.
+
+"'E's saaved Nad's baaby for 'm, right enoof, Dr. Rawcliffe 'as. But
+'e's down wi't hissel, t' poastman says."
+
+It was at Gwenda that she gazed. And as Gwenda made no sign, Mrs.
+Gale, still more oppressed by that extraordinary silence, gave her own
+feelings way.
+
+"Mebbe wae sall navver see 'im in t' Daale again. It'll goa 'ard, look
+yo, wi' a girt man like 'im, what's navver saaved 'isself. Naw, 'e's
+navver saaved 'issel."
+
+She ceased. She gazed upon both the sisters now. Alice, her face white
+and averted, shrank back in the corner of the sofa. Gwenda's face was
+still. Neither of them had spoken.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mary had tea alone that afternoon.
+
+Alice had dragged herself upstairs to her bedroom and locked herself
+in. She had flung herself face downward on her bed. She lay there
+while the room grew gray and darkened. Suddenly she passed from a
+violent fit of writhing and of weeping into blank and motionless
+collapses. From time to time she hiccoughed helplessly.
+
+But in the moment before Mary came downstairs Gwenda had slipped on
+the rough coat that hung on its peg in the passage. Her hat was lying
+about somewhere in the room where Alice had locked herself in. She
+went out bareheaded.
+
+There was a movement in the little group of villagers gathered on the
+bridge before the surgery door. They slunk together and turned their
+backs on her as she passed. They knew where she was going as well as
+she did. And she didn't care.
+
+She was doing the sort of thing that Alice had done, and had suffered
+for doing. She knew it and she didn't care. It didn't matter what
+Alice had done or ever would do. It didn't matter what she did
+herself. It was quite simple. Nothing mattered to her so long as
+Rowcliffe lived. And if he died nothing would ever matter to her
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For she knew now what it was that had happened to her. She could no
+longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The
+thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been
+secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it,
+not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful
+instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid. She had
+been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe. He might see in it
+something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally. She
+went in terror of the taint. Where it should have held its head up
+defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and
+skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.
+
+And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly
+defenseless, her terror of it ceased.
+
+It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.
+
+Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something
+lacking in her feeling. Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got
+more "out of" Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did. Gwenda had known
+nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or
+Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths,
+the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools. In Rowcliffe's presence
+she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy. But, if she
+stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she _stood_ there, firm on the
+solid earth. She could balance herself; she could even lean forward
+a little and look over, without losing her head, thrilled with the
+uncertainty and peril of the adventure. And of course it wasn't as if
+Rowcliffe had left her standing. He hadn't. He had held out his hand
+to her, as it were, and said, "Let's get on--get on!" which was as
+good as saying that, as long as it lasted, it was _their_ adventure,
+not hers. He had drawn her after him at an exciting pace, along the
+edge of the abyss, never losing _his_ head for a minute, so that she
+ought to have felt safe with him. Only she hadn't. She had said to
+herself, "If I knew him better, if I saw what was in him, perhaps I
+should feel safe."
+
+There was something she wanted to see in him; something that her
+innermost secret self, fastidious and exacting, demanded from him
+before it would loosen the grip that held her back.
+
+And now she knew that it _was_ there. It had been told her in four
+words: "He never saved himself."
+
+She might have known it. For she remembered things, now; how he had
+nursed old Greatorex like a woman; how he had sat up half the night
+with Jim Greatorex's mare Daisy; how he kept Jim Greatorex from
+drinking; and how he had been kind to poor Essy when she had the face
+ache; and gentle to little Ally.
+
+And now Ned Alderson's ridiculous baby would live and Rowcliffe would
+die. Was _that_ what she had required of him? She felt as if somehow
+_she_ had done it; as if her innermost secret self, iniquitously
+exacting, had thrown down the gage into the arena and that he had
+picked it up.
+
+"He saved others. Himself he"--never saved.
+
+He had become god-like to her.
+
+And the passion she had trampled on lifted itself and passed into
+the phase of adoration. It had received the dangerous sanction of the
+soul.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She turned off the high road at the point where, three months ago,
+she had seen Mary cycling up the hill from Morfe. Now, as then, she
+descended upon Morfe by the stony lane from the moor below Karva.
+
+It came over her that she was too late, that she would see rows of
+yellow blinds drawn down in the long front of Rowcliffe's house.
+
+The blinds were up. The windows looked open-eyed upon the Green. She
+noticed that one of them on the first floor was half open, and she
+said to herself, "He is up there, in that room, dying of diphtheria."
+
+The sound of the bell, muffled funereally, at the back of the house,
+fulfilled her premonition.
+
+The door opened wide. The maid stood back from it to let her pass in.
+
+"How is Dr. Rowcliffe?"
+
+Her voice sounded abrupt and brutal, as it tore its way from her tense
+throat.
+
+The maid raised her eyebrows. She held the door wider.
+
+"Would you like to see him, miss?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her throat closed on the word and choked it.
+
+Down at the end of the passage, where it was dark, a door opened, the
+door of the surgery, and a man came out, went in as if to look for
+something, and came out again.
+
+As he moved there in the darkness she thought it was the strange
+doctor and that he had come out to forbid her seeing Rowcliffe. He
+would say that she mustn't risk the infection. As if she cared about
+the risk.
+
+Perhaps he wouldn't see her. He, too, might say she mustn't risk it.
+
+While the surgery door opened and shut, opened and shut again, she saw
+that her seems him was of all things the most unlikely. She remembered
+the house at Upthorne, and she knew that Rowcliffe was lying dead in
+the room upstairs.
+
+And the man there was coming out to stop her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only--in that case--why hadn't they drawn the blinds down?
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+She was still thinking of the blinds when she saw that the man who
+came towards her was Rowcliffe.
+
+He was wearing his rough tweed suit and his thick boots, and he had
+the look of the open air about him.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Cartaret? Good!"
+
+He grasped her hand. He behaved exactly as if he had expected her. He
+never even wondered what she had come for. She might have come to say
+that her father or one of her sisters was dying, and would he go at
+once; but none of these possibilities occurred to him.
+
+He didn't want to account for her coming to him. It was natural and
+beautiful that she should come.
+
+Then, as she stepped into the lighted passage, he saw that she was
+bareheaded and that her eyelashes were parted and gathered into little
+wet points.
+
+He took her arm gently and led her into his study and shut the door.
+They faced each other there.
+
+"I say--is anything wrong?"
+
+"I thought you were ill."
+
+She hadn't grasped the absurdity of it yet. She was still under the
+spell of the illusion.
+
+"I? Ill? Good heavens, no!"
+
+"They told me in the village you'd got diphtheria. And I came to know
+if it was true. It _isn't_ true?"
+
+He smiled; an odd little embarrassed smile; almost as if he were
+owning that it was or had been true.
+
+"_Is_ it?" she persisted as he went on smiling.
+
+"Of course it isn't."
+
+She frowned as if she were annoyed with him for not being ill.
+
+"Then what was that other man here for?"
+
+"Harker? Oh, he just took my place for a day or two while I had a sore
+throat."
+
+"You _had_ a throat then?"
+
+Thus she accused him.
+
+"And you _did_ sit up for three nights with Ned Alderson's baby?"
+
+She defied him to deny it.
+
+"That's nothing. Anybody would. I had to."
+
+"And--you saved the baby?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Some thing or other pulled
+the little beggar through."
+
+"And you might have got it?"
+
+"I might but I didn't."
+
+"You _did_ get a throat. And it _might_ have been diphtheria."
+
+Thus by accusing him she endeavored to justify herself.
+
+"It might," he said, "but it wasn't. I had to knock off work till I
+was sure."
+
+"And you're sure now?"
+
+"I can tell you _you_ wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
+
+"And they told me you were dying."
+
+(She was utterly disgusted.)
+
+At that he laughed aloud. An irresistible, extravagantly delighted
+laugh. When he stopped he choked and began all over again; the idea of
+his dying was so funny; so was her disgust.
+
+"That," she said, "was why I came."
+
+"Then I'm glad they told you."
+
+"I'm not," said she.
+
+He laughed again at her sudden funny dignity. Then, as suddenly, he
+was grave.
+
+"I say--it _was_ nice of you."
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"And now--as you're not dead--I'm off."
+
+"Oh no, you're not. You're going to stay and have tea and I'm going to
+walk back with you."
+
+She stayed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked over the moor by Karva. And as they went he talked to her
+as he hadn't talked before. It was all about himself and his tone
+was very serious. He talked about his work and (with considerable
+reservations and omissions) about his life in Leeds, and about his
+ambition. He told her what he had done and why he had done it and what
+he was going to do. He wasn't going to stay in Garthdale all his life.
+Not he. Presently he would want to get to the center of things. (He
+forgot to mention that this was the first time he had thought of it.)
+Nothing would satisfy him but a big London practice and a name. He
+might--ultimately--specialise. If he did he rather thought it would be
+gynaecology. He was interested in women's cases. Or it might be nervous
+diseases. He wasn't sure. Anyhow, it must be something big.
+
+For under Gwenda Cartaret's eyes his romantic youth became fiery and
+turbulent inside him. It not only urged him to tremendous heights,
+it made him actually feel that he would reach them. For a solid
+three-quarters of an hour, walking over the moor by Karva, he had
+ceased to be one of the obscurest of obscure little country doctors.
+He was Sir Steven Rowcliffe, the great gynaecologist, or the great
+neurologist (as the case might be) with a row of letters after his
+name and a whole column under it in the Medical Directory.
+
+
+And Gwenda Cartaret's eyes never for a moment contradicted him. They
+agreed with every one of his preposterous statements.
+
+She didn't know that it was only his romantic youth and that he
+never had been and never would be more youthful than he was for that
+three-quarters of an hour. On the contrary, to _her_ youth he seemed
+to have left youth behind him, and to have grown suddenly serious and
+clear-sighted and mature.
+
+And then he stopped, right on the moor, as if he were suddenly aware
+of his absurdity.
+
+"I say," he said, "what must you think of me? Gassing about myself
+like that."
+
+"I think," she said, "it's awfully nice of you."
+
+"I don't suppose I shall do anything really big. Do you?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Honestly now, do you think I shall?"
+
+"I think the things you've done already, the things that'll never be
+heard of, are really big."
+
+His silence said, "They are not enough for me," and hers, "For me they
+are enough."
+
+"But the other things," he insisted--"the things I want to do----Do
+you think I'll do them?"
+
+"I think"--she said slowly--"in fact I'm certain that you'll do them,
+if you really mean to."
+
+"That's what you think of me?"
+
+"That's what I think of you."
+
+"Then it's all right," he said. "For what I think of _you_ is that
+you'd never say a thing you didn't really mean."
+
+They parted at the turn of the road, where, as he again reminded her,
+he had seen her first.
+
+Going home by himself over the moor, Rowcliffe wondered whether he
+hadn't missed his opportunity.
+
+He might have told her that he cared for her. He might have asked her
+if she cared. If he hadn't, it was only because there was no need to
+be precipitate. He felt rather than knew that she was sure of him.
+
+Plenty of time. Plenty of time. He was so sure of _her_.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Plenty of time. The last week of January passed. Through the first
+weeks of February Rowcliffe was kept busy, for sickness was still in
+the Dale.
+
+Whether he required it or not, Rowcliffe had a respite from decision.
+No opportunity arose. If he looked in at the Vicarage on Wednesdays
+it was to drink a cup of tea in a hurry while his man put his horse
+in the trap. He took his man with him now on his longer rounds to save
+time and trouble. Once in a while he would meet Gwenda Cartaret or
+overtake her on some road miles from Garth, and he would make her get
+up and drive on with him, or he would give her a lift home.
+
+It pleased her to be taken up and driven. She liked the rapid motion
+and the ways of the little brown horse. She even loved the noise he
+made with his clanking hoofs. Rowcliffe said it was a beastly trick.
+He made up his mind about once a week that he'd get rid of him. But
+somehow he couldn't. He was fond of the little brown horse. He'd had
+him so long.
+
+And she said to herself. "He's faithful then. Of course. He would be."
+
+It was almost as if he had wanted her to know it.
+
+Then April came and the long spring twilights. The sick people had got
+well. Rowcliffe had whole hours on his hands that he could have spent
+with Gwenda now, if he had known.
+
+And as yet he did not altogether know.
+
+
+There was something about Gwenda Cartaret for which Rowcliffe with
+all his sureness and all his experience was unprepared. Their
+whole communion rested and proceeded on undeclared, unacknowledged,
+unrealised assumptions, and it was somehow its very secrecy that made
+it so secure. Rather than put it to the test he was content to leave
+their meetings to luck and his own imperfect ingenuity. He knew
+where and at what times he would have the best chance of finding her.
+Sometimes, returning from his northerly rounds, he would send the trap
+on, and walk back to Morfe by Karva, on the chance. Once, when the
+moon was up, he sighted her on the farther moors beyond Upthorne, when
+he got down and walked with her for miles, while his man and the trap
+waited for him in Garth.
+
+Once, and only once, driving by himself on the Rathdale moors beyond
+Morfe, he overtook her, picked her up and drove her through Morfe (to
+the consternation of its inhabitants) all the way to Garth and to the
+very gate of the Vicarage.
+
+But that was reckless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And in all those hours, for his opportunities counted by hours now,
+he had never found his moment. There was plenty of time, and their
+isolation (his and hers) in Garthdale left him dangerously secure. All
+the same, by April Rowcliffe was definitely looking for the moment,
+the one shining moment, that must sooner or later come.
+
+It was, indeed, always coming. Over and over again he had caught
+sight of it; it signaled, shining; he had been ready to seize it, when
+something happened, something obscured it, something put him off.
+
+He never knew what it was at the time, but when he looked back on
+these happenings he discovered that it was always something that
+Gwenda Cartaret did. You would have said that no scene on earth could
+have been more favorable to a lover's enterprise than these long,
+deserted roads and the vast, twilit moors; and that a young woman
+could have found nothing to distract her from her lover there.
+
+But it was not so. On the open moors, as often as not, they had to go
+single file through the heather, along a narrow sheep track, Rowcliffe
+leading; and it is difficult, not to say impossible, to command the
+attention of a young woman walking in your rear. And a thousand things
+distracted Gwenda: the cry of a mountain sheep, the sound and
+sight of a stream, the whirr of dark wings and the sudden
+"Krenk-er-renk-errenk!" of the grouse shooting up from the heather.
+And on the high roads where they went abreast she was apt to be
+carried away by the pageant of earth and sky; the solid darkness
+that came up from the moor; the gray, aerial abysses of the dale; the
+awful, blank withdrawal of Greffington Edge into the night. She was
+off, Heaven knew where, at the lighting of a star in the thin blue;
+the movement of a cloud excited her; or she was held enchanted by
+the pale aura of moonrise along the rampart of Greffington Edge. She
+shared the earth's silence and the throbbing passion of the earth as
+the orbed moon swung free.
+
+And in her absorption, her estranging ecstasy, Rowcliffe at last found
+something inimical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He told himself that it was an affectation in her, or a lure to draw
+him after her, as it would have been in any other woman. The little
+red-haired nurse would have known how to turn the earth and the moon
+to her own purposes and his. But all the time he knew that it was not
+so. There was no purpose in it at all, and it was unaware of him and
+of his purposes. Gwenda's joy was pure and profound and sufficient to
+itself. He gathered that it had been with her before he came and that
+it would remain with her after he had gone.
+
+He hated to think that she should know any joy that had not its
+beginning and its end in him. It took her from him. As long as it
+lasted he was faced with an incomprehensible and monstrous rivalry.
+
+And as a man might leave a woman to his uninteresting rival in
+the certainty that she will be bored and presently return to him,
+Rowcliffe left Gwenda to the earth and moon. He sulked and was silent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, suddenly, he made up his mind.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+It was one night in April. He had met her at the crossroads on Morfe
+Green, and walked home with her by the edge of the moor. It had blown
+hard all day, and now the wind had dropped, but it had left darkness
+and commotion in the sky. The west was a solid mass of cloud that
+drifted slowly in the wake of the departing storm, its hindmost part
+shredded to mist before the path of the hidden moon.
+
+For, mercifully, the moon was hidden. Rowcliffe knew his moment.
+
+He meditated--the fraction of a second too long.
+
+"I wonder----" he began.
+
+Just then the rear of the cloud opened and cast out the moon, sheeted
+in the white mist that she had torn from it.
+
+And then, before he knew where he was, he was quarreling with Gwenda.
+
+"Oh, look at the moon!" she cried. "All bowed forward with the cloud
+wrapped round her head. Something's calling her across the sky, but
+the mist holds her and the wind beats her back--look how she staggers
+and charges head-downward. She's fighting the wind. And she goes--she
+goes!"
+
+"She doesn't go," said Rowcliffe. "At least you can't see her going,
+and the cloud isn't wrapped round her head, it's nowhere near her. And
+the wind isn't driving her, it's driving the cloud on. It's the cloud
+that's going. Why can't you see things as they are?"
+
+She was detestable to him in that moment.
+
+"Because nobody sees them as they are. And you're spoiling the idea."
+
+"The idea being so much more valuable than the truth."
+
+He longed to say cruel and biting things to her.
+
+"It isn't valuable to anybody but me, so you might have left it to
+me."
+
+"Oh, I'll leave it to you, if you're in love with it."
+
+"I'm not in love with it because it's mine. Anyhow, if I _am_ in love
+I'm in love with the moon and not with my idea of the moon."
+
+"You don't know how to be in love with anything--even the moon. But I
+suppose it's all right as long as you're happy."
+
+"Of course I'm happy. Why shouldn't I be?"
+
+"Because you haven't got anything to make you happy."
+
+"Oh, haven't I?"
+
+"You might have. But you haven't. You're too obstinate to be happy."
+
+"But I've just told you that I _am_ happy."
+
+"What have you _got?_" he persisted.
+
+"I've got heaps of things. I've got my two hands and my two feet. I've
+got my brain----"
+
+"So have I. And yet----"
+
+"It's absurd to say I've 'got' these things. They're me. Happiness
+isn't in the things you've got. It's either in you or it isn't."
+
+"It generally isn't. Go on. What else? You've got the moon and your
+idea of the moon. I don't see that you've got much more."
+
+"Anyhow, I've got my liberty."
+
+"Your liberty--if that's all you want!"
+
+"It's pretty nearly all. It covers most things."
+
+"It does if you're an incurable egoist."
+
+"You think I'm an egoist? And incurable?"
+
+"It doesn't matter what I think."
+
+"Not much. If you think that."
+
+Silence. And then Rowcliffe burst out again.
+
+"There are two things that I can't stand--a woman nursing a dog and
+a woman in love with the moon. They mean the same thing. And it's
+horrible."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because if it's humbug she's a hypocrite, and if it's genuine she's a
+monster."
+
+"And if I'm in love with the moon--and you said I was----"
+
+"I didn't. You said it yourself."
+
+"Not at all. I said _if_ I was in love with the moon, I'd be in love
+with _it_ and not with my idea of it. I want reality."
+
+"So do I. We're not likely to get it if we can't see it."
+
+"No. If you're only in love with what you see."
+
+"Oh, you're too clever. Too clever for me."
+
+"Am I too clever for myself?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+He laughed abominably.
+
+"I don't see the joke."
+
+"If you don't see it this minute you'll see it in another ten years."
+
+"Now," she said, "you're too clever for _me_."
+
+They walked on in silence again. The mist gathered and dripped about
+them.
+
+Abruptly she spoke.
+
+"Has anything happened?"
+
+"No, it hasn't."
+
+"I mean--anything horrid?"
+
+Her voice sounded such genuine distress that he dropped his hostile
+and contemptuous tone.
+
+"No," he said, "why should it?"
+
+"Because I've noticed that, when people are unusually horrid, it
+always means that something horrid's happened to them."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Papa, for instance, is only horrid to us because Mummy--my
+stepmother, you know--was horrid to him."
+
+"What did Mummy do to him?"
+
+"She ran away from him. It's always that way. People aren't horrid on
+purpose. At least I'm sure _you_ wouldn't be."
+
+"_Was_ I horrid?"
+
+"Well--for the last half-hour----"
+
+"You see, I find you a little exasperating at times."
+
+"Not always?"
+
+"No. Not by any means always."
+
+"Can I tell when I am? Or when I'm going to be?"
+
+He laughed (not at all abominably). "No. I don't think you can. That's
+rather what I resent in you."
+
+"I wish I could tell. Then perhaps I might avoid it. You might just
+give me warning when you think I'm going to be it."
+
+"I did give you warning."
+
+"When?"
+
+"When it began."
+
+"There you are. I don't know when it did begin. What were we talking
+about?"
+
+"I wasn't talking about anything. You were talking about the moon."
+
+"It was the moon that did it."
+
+"I suppose it was the moon."
+
+"I see. I bored you. How awful."
+
+"I didn't say you bored me. You never have bored me. You couldn't bore
+me."
+
+"No--I just irritate you and drive you mad."
+
+"You just irritate me and drive me mad."
+
+The words were brutal but the voice caressed her. He took her by the
+arm and steered her amicably round a hidden boulder.
+
+"Do you know many women?" she asked.
+
+The question was startling by reason of its context. The better to
+consider it Rowcliffe withdrew his protecting arm.
+
+"No," he said, "not very many."
+
+"But those you do know you get on with? You get on all right with
+Mary?"
+
+"Yes. I get on all right with 'Mary.'"
+
+"You'd be horrid if you didn't. Mary's a dear."
+
+"Well--I know where I am with _her_."
+
+"And you get on all right--really--with Papa, as long as I'm not
+there."
+
+"As long as you're not there, yes."
+
+"So that," she pursued, "_I'm_ the horrid thing that's happened to
+you? It looks like it."
+
+"It feels like it. Let's say you're the horrid thing that's happened
+to me, and leave it at that."
+
+They left it.
+
+Rowcliffe had a sort of impression that he had said all that he had
+had to say.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The Vicar had called Gwenda into his study one day.
+
+"What's this I hear," he said, "of you and young Rowcliffe scampering
+about all over the country?"
+
+The Vicar had drawn a bow at a venture. He had not really heard
+anything, but he had seen something; two forms scrambling hand in hand
+up Karva; not too distant to be recognisable as young Rowcliffe and
+his daughter Gwenda, yet too distant to be pleasing to the Vicar. It
+was their distance that made them so improper.
+
+"I don't know, Papa," said Gwenda.
+
+"Perhaps you know what was said about your sister Alice? Do you want
+the same thing to be said about you?"
+
+"It won't be, Papa. Unless you say it yourself."
+
+She had him there; for what was said about Alice had been said first
+of all by him.
+
+"What do you mean, Gwenda?"
+
+"I mean that I'm a little different from Alice."
+
+"Are you? _Are_ you? When you're doing the same thing?"
+
+"Let me see. What _was_ the dreadful thing that Ally did? She ran
+after young Rickards, didn't she? Well--if you'd really seen us
+scampering you'd know that I'm generally running away from young
+Rowcliffe and that young Rowcliffe is generally running after me. He
+says it's as much as he can do to keep up with me."
+
+"Gwenda," said the Vicar solemnly. "I won't have it."
+
+"How do you propose to stop it, Papa?"
+
+"You'll see how."
+
+(It was thus that his god lured the Vicar to destruction. For he had
+no plan. He knew that he couldn't move into another parish.)
+
+"It's no good locking me up in my room," said Gwenda, "for I can get
+out at the window. And you can't very well lock young Rowcliffe up in
+his surgery."
+
+"I can forbid him the house."
+
+"That's no good either so long as he doesn't forbid me his."
+
+"You can't go to him there, my girl."
+
+"I can do anything when I'm driven."
+
+The Vicar groaned.
+
+"You're right," he said. "You _are_ different from Alice. You're worse
+than she is--ten times worse. _You_'d stick at nothing. I've always
+known it."
+
+"So have I."
+
+The Vicar leaned against the chimney-piece and hid his face in his
+hands to shut out the shame of her.
+
+And then Gwenda had pity on him.
+
+"It's all right, Papa. I'm not going to Dr. Rowcliffe, because there's
+no need. You're not going to lock him up in his surgery and you're not
+going to forbid him the house. You're not going to do anything. You're
+going to listen to me. It's not a bit of good trying to bully me.
+You'll be beaten every time. You can bully Alice as much as you like.
+You can bully her till she's ill. You can shut her up in her bedroom
+and lock the door and I daresay she won't get out at the window. But
+even Alice will beat you in the end. Of course there's Mary. But I
+shouldn't try it on with Mary either. She's really more dangerous than
+I am, because she looks so meek and mild. But she'll beat you, too, if
+you begin bullying her."
+
+The Vicar raised his stricken head.
+
+"Gwenda," he said, "you're terrible."
+
+"No, Papa, I'm not terrible. I'm really awfully kind. I'm telling you
+these things for your good. Don't you worry. I shan't run very far
+after young Rowcliffe."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Left to himself, the Vicar fairly wallowed in his gloom. He pressed
+his hands tightly to his face, crushing into darkness the image of his
+daughter Gwenda that remained with him after the door had shut between
+them.
+
+It came over him with the very shutting of the door not only that
+there never was a man so cursed in his children (that thought had
+occurred to him before) but that, of the three, Gwenda was the one in
+whom the curse was, so to speak, most active, through whom it was most
+likely to fall on him at any moment. In Alice it could be averted.
+He knew, he had always known, how to deal with Alice. And it would be
+hard to say exactly where it lurked in Mary. Therefore, in his times
+of profoundest self-commiseration, the Vicar overlooked the existence
+of his daughter Mary. He was an artist in gloom and Mary's sweetness
+and goodness spoiled the picture. But in Gwenda the curse was imminent
+and at the same time incalculable. Alice's behavior could be fairly
+predicted and provided for. There was no knowing what Gwenda would do
+next. The fear of what she might do hung forever over his head, and it
+made him jumpy.
+
+And yet in this sense of cursedness the Vicar had found shelter for
+his self-esteem.
+
+And now his fear, his noble and righteous fear of what Gwenda might
+do, his conviction that she would do something, disguised more
+than ever his humiliating fear of Gwenda. She was, as he had said,
+terrible. There was no dealing with Gwenda; there never had been.
+Patience failed before her will and wisdom before the deadly thrust of
+her intelligence. She had stabbed him in several places before she had
+left the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The outcome of his brooding (it would have shocked the Vicar if he
+could have traced its genesis) was an extraordinary revulsion in
+Rowcliffe's favor. So far from shutting the Vicarage door in the young
+man's face, the Vicar was, positively he was, inclined to open it.
+He couldn't stand the idea of other people marrying since he wasn't
+really married himself, and couldn't be as long as Robina persisted
+in being alive (thus cruelly was he held up by that unscrupulous and
+pitiless woman) and the idea of any of his daughters marrying
+was peculiarly disagreeable to him. He didn't know why it was
+disagreeable, and it would have shocked him unspeakably if you had
+told him why. And if you had asked him he would have had half a dozen
+noble and righteous reasons ready for you at his finger-ends. But
+the Vicar with his eyes shut could see clearly that if Gwenda married
+Rowcliffe the unpleasant event would have its compensation. He would
+be rid of an everlasting source of unpleasantness at home. He didn't
+say to himself that his egoism would be rid of an everlasting fear. He
+said that if Rowcliffe married Gwenda he would keep her straight.
+
+And then another consoling thought struck him.
+
+He could deal with Alice more effectually than ever. Neither Mary nor
+Alice knew what he knew. They hadn't dreamed that it was Gwenda that
+young Rowcliffe wanted. He would use his knowledge to bring Alice to
+her senses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Wednesday that he dealt with her.
+
+He was coming in some hours earlier than usual from his rounds when
+she delivered herself into his hands by appearing at the foot of the
+staircase with her hair extravagantly dressed, and wearing what he
+took, rightly, to be a new blue gown.
+
+He opened the study door, and, with a treacherous smile, invited her
+to enter. Then he looked at her.
+
+"Is that another new dress you've got on?" he inquired, still with his
+bland treachery.
+
+"Yes, Papa," said Alice. "Do you like it?"
+
+The Vicar drew himself up, squared his shoulders and smiled again, not
+quite so blandly. His attitude gave him a sensation of exquisite and
+powerful virility.
+
+"Do I like it? I should, perhaps, if I were a millionaire."
+
+"It didn't cost so much as all that," said Alice.
+
+"I'm not asking you what it cost. But I think you must have
+anticipated your next allowance."
+
+Alice stared with wide eyes of innocence.
+
+"What if I did? It won't make any difference in the long run."
+
+The Vicar, with his hands plunged in his trousers pockets, jerked
+forward at her from the waist. It was his gesture when he thrust.
+
+"For all the difference it'll make to _you_, my dear child, you might
+have spared yourself the trouble and expense."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Has young Rowcliffe been here to-day?"
+
+"No," said Alice defiantly, "he hasn't."
+
+"You expected him?"
+
+"I daresay Mary did."
+
+"I'm not asking what Mary did. Did you expect him or did you not?"
+
+"He _said_ he might turn up."
+
+"He said he might turn up. You expected him. And he hasn't turned up.
+And you can't think why. Isn't that so?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Papa."
+
+"I mean, my child, that you're living in a fool's paradise."
+
+"I haven't a notion what you mean by _that_."
+
+"Perhaps Gwenda can enlighten you."
+
+The color died in Ally's scared face.
+
+"I can't see," she said, "what Gwenda's got to do with it."
+
+"She's got something to do with young Rowcliffe's not turning up, I
+think. I met the two of them half way between Upthorne and Bar Hill at
+half past four."
+
+He took out his watch.
+
+"And it's ten past six now."
+
+He sat down, turning his chair so as not to see her face. He did not,
+at the moment, care to look at her.
+
+"You might go and ask Mrs. Gale to send me in a cup of tea."
+
+Alice went out.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+"It's a quarter past six now," she said to herself. "They must come
+back from Bar Hill by Upthorne. I shall meet them at Upthorne if I
+start now."
+
+She slipped her rough coat over the new gown and started.
+
+Her fear drove her, and she went up the hill at an impossible pace.
+She trembled, staggered, stood still and went on again.
+
+The twilight of the unborn moon was like the horrible twilight of
+dreams. She walked as she had walked in nightmares, with knees, weak
+as water, that sank under her at every step.
+
+She passed the schoolhouse with its beckoning ash-tree. The
+schoolhouse stirred the pain under her heart. She remembered the
+shining night when she had shown herself there and triumphed.
+
+The pain then was so intolerable that her mind revolted from it as
+from a thing that simply could not be. The idea by which she lived
+asserted itself against the menace of destruction. It was not so much
+an idea as an instinct, blind, obstinate, immovable. It had behind it
+the wisdom and the persistence of life. It refused to believe where
+belief meant death to it.
+
+She said to herself, "He's lying. He's lying. He's made it all up. He
+never met them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had passed the turn of the hill. She had come to the high towers,
+sinister and indistinct, to the hollow walls and haunted arcades of
+the dead mining station. Upthorne was hidden by the shoulder of the
+hill.
+
+She stopped suddenly, there where the road skirted the arcades. She
+was struck by a shock of premonition, an instinct older and profounder
+than that wisdom of the blood. She had the sense that what was
+happening now, her coming, like this, to the towers and the arcades,
+had happened before, and was so related to what was about to happen
+that she knew this also and with the same shock of recognition.
+
+It would happen when she had come to the last arch of the colonnade.
+
+It was happening now. She had come to the last arch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That instant she was aware of Rowcliffe and Gwenda coming toward her
+down the hill.
+
+Their figures were almost indiscernible in the twilight. It was by
+their voices that she knew them.
+
+Before they could see her she had slipped out of their path behind the
+shelter of the arch.
+
+She knew them by their voices. Yet their voices had something in them
+that she did not know, something that told her that they had been with
+each other many times before; that they understood each other; that
+they were happy in each other and absorbed.
+
+The pain was no longer inside her heart but under it. It was dull
+rather than sharp, yet it moved there like a sharp sickle, a sickle
+that gathered and ground the live flesh it turned in and twisted. A
+sensation of deadly sickness made her draw farther yet into the corner
+of the arcade, feeling her way in the darkness with her hand on the
+wall. She stumbled on a block of stone, sank on it and cowered there,
+sobbing and shivering.
+
+Down in Garth village the church clock struck the half hour and the
+quarter and the hour.
+
+At the half hour Blenkiron, the blacksmith, put Rowcliffe's horse into
+the trap. The sound of the clanking hoofs came up the hill. Rowcliffe
+heard them first.
+
+"There's something wrong down there," he said. "They're coming for
+me."
+
+In his heart he cursed them. For it was there, at the turn of the
+road, below the arches, that he had meant to say what he had not said
+the other night. There was no moon. The moment was propitious. And
+there (just like his cursed luck) was Blenkiron with the trap.
+
+They met above the schoolhouse as the clock struck the quarter.
+
+"You're wanted, sir," said the blacksmith, "at Mrs. Gale's."
+
+"Is it Essy?"
+
+"Ay, it's Assy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the cottage down by the beck Essy groaned and cried in her agony.
+
+And on the road to Upthorne, under the arches by the sinister towers,
+Alice Cartaret, crouching on her stone, sobbed and shivered.
+
+Not long after seven Essy's child was born.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just before ten the three sisters sat waiting, as they had always
+waited, bored and motionless, for the imminent catastrophe of Prayers.
+
+"I wonder how Essy's getting on," said Gwenda.
+
+"Poor little Essy!" Mary said.
+
+"She's as pleased as Punch," said Gwenda. "It's a boy. Ally--did you
+know that Essy's had a baby?"
+
+"I don't care if she has," said Ally violently. "It's got nothing to
+do with me. I wish you wouldn't talk about her beastly baby."
+
+As the Vicar came out of his study into the dining-room, he fixed his
+eyes upon his youngest daughter.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he said.
+
+"Nothing's the matter," said Alice defiantly. "Why?"
+
+"You look," he said, "as if somebody was murdering you."
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+Ally was ill; so ill this time that even the Vicar softened to her.
+He led her upstairs himself and made her go to bed and stay there. He
+would have sent for Rowcliffe but that Ally refused to see him.
+
+Her mortal apathy passed for submission. She took her milk from her
+father's hand without a murmur. "There's a good girl," he said, as she
+drank it down.
+
+But it didn't do her any good. Nothing did. The illness itself was no
+good to her, considering that she didn't want to be ill this time. She
+wanted to die. And of course she couldn't die. It would have been too
+much happiness and they wouldn't let her have it.
+
+At first she resented what she called their interference. She
+declared, as she had declared before, that there was nothing the
+matter with her. She was only tired. Couldn't they see that she was
+tired? That _they_ tired her?
+
+"Why can't you leave me alone? If only you'd go away," she moaned,
+"--all of you--and leave me alone."
+
+But very soon she was too tired even to be irritable. She lay quiet,
+sunk in the hollow of her bed, and kept her eyes shut, so that she
+never knew, she said, whether they were there or not. And it didn't
+matter. Nothing mattered so long as she could just lie there.
+
+It was only when they talked of sending for Rowcliffe that they roused
+her. Then she sat up and became, first vehement, then violent.
+
+"You shan't send for him," she cried. "I won't see him. If he comes
+into the house I'll crawl out of it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day (it was the last Wednesday in April) Gwenda came to her and
+told her that Rowcliffe was there and had asked to see her.
+
+Ally's pale eyes lightened and grew large. They were transparent as
+glass in her white face.
+
+"Did _you_ send for him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Who did then?"
+
+"Papa."
+
+She closed her eyes. The old sense of ecstasy came over her, of
+triumph too, of solemn triumph, as if she, whom they thought so
+insignificant, had vindicated her tragic dignity at last.
+
+For if her father had sent for Rowcliffe it could only mean that she
+was really dying. Nothing else--nothing short of that--would have made
+him send.
+
+And of course that was what she wanted, that Rowcliffe should see her
+die. He wouldn't forget her then. He would be compelled to think of
+her.
+
+"You _will_ see him, won't you, Ally?"
+
+Ally smiled her little triumphant and mysterious smile.
+
+"Oh yes, I'll see him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Vicar did not go on his rounds that afternoon. He stayed at home
+to talk to Rowcliffe. The two were shut up together in his study for
+more than half an hour.
+
+As they entered the drawing-room at tea-time it could be seen from
+their manner and their faces that something had gone wrong. The Vicar
+bore himself like a man profoundly aggrieved, not to say outraged, in
+his own house, who nevertheless was observing a punctilious courtesy
+towards the offending guest. Rowcliffe's shoulders and his jaw were
+still squared in the antagonism that had closed their interview.
+He too observed the most perfect courtesy. Only by the consummate
+restraint of his manner did he show how impossible he had found the
+Vicar, while his face betrayed a grave preoccupation in which the
+Vicar counted not at all.
+
+Mary began to talk to him about the weather. Neither she nor Gwenda
+dared ask him what he thought of Alice.
+
+And in ten minutes he was gone. The Vicar went with him to the gate.
+
+Still standing as they had stood to take leave of Rowcliffe, the
+sisters looked at each other. Mary spoke first.
+
+"Whatever _can_ Papa have said to him?"
+
+This time Gwenda knew what Mary was thinking.
+
+"It isn't that," she said. "It's something he's said to Papa."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+That night, about nine o'clock, Gwenda came for the third time to
+Rowcliffe at his house.
+
+She was shown into his study, where Rowcliffe was reading.
+
+Though the servant had prepared him for her, he showed signs of
+agitation.
+
+Gwenda's eyes were ominously somber and she had the white face of
+a ghost, a face that to Rowcliffe, as he looked at it, recalled the
+white face of Alice. He disliked Alice's face, he always had disliked
+it, he disliked it more than ever at that moment; yet the sight
+of this face that was so like it carried him away in an ecstasy of
+tenderness. He adored it because of that likeness, because of all that
+the likeness revealed to him and signified. And it increased, quite
+unendurably, his agitation.
+
+Gwenda was supernaturally calm.
+
+In another instant the illusion that her presence had given him
+passed. He saw what she had come for.
+
+"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked.
+
+She drew in her breath sharply.
+
+"It's Alice."
+
+"Yes, I know it's Alice. _Is_ anything wrong?" he said. "What is it?"
+
+"I don't know. I want you to tell me. That's what I've come for. I'm
+frightened."
+
+"D'you mean, is she worse?"
+
+She did not answer him. She looked at him as if she were trying to
+read in his eyes something that he was trying not to tell her.
+
+"Yes," he said, "she _is_ worse."
+
+"I know that," she said impatiently. "I can see it. You've got to tell
+me more."
+
+"But I _have_ told you. You _know_ I have," he pleaded.
+
+"I know you tried to tell me."
+
+"Didn't I succeed?"
+
+"You told me why she was ill--I know all that----"
+
+"Do sit down." He turned from her and dragged the armchair forward.
+"There." He put a cushion at her back. "That's better."
+
+As she obeyed him she kept her eyes on him. The book he had been
+reading lay where he had put it down, on the hearthrug at her feet.
+Its title, "_Etat mental des hysteriques_;" Janet, stared at him. He
+picked it up and flung it out of sight as if it had offended him. With
+all his movements her head lifted and turned so that her eyes followed
+him.
+
+He sat down and gazed at her quietly.
+
+"Well," he said, "and what didn't I tell you?"
+
+"You didn't tell me how it would end."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Is that what you told father?"
+
+"Hasn't he said anything?"
+
+"He hasn't said a word. And you went away without saying anything."
+
+"There isn't much to say that you don't know----"
+
+"I know why she was ill. You told me. But I don't know why she's
+worse. She _was_ better. She was quite well. She was running about
+doing things and looking so pretty--only the other day. And look at
+her now."
+
+"It's like that," said Rowcliffe. "It comes and goes."
+
+He said it quietly. But the blood rose into his face and forehead in a
+painful flush.
+
+"But why? Why?" she persisted. "It's so horribly sudden."
+
+"It's like that, too," said Rowcliffe.
+
+"If it's like that now what is it going to be? How is it going to end?
+That's what you _won't_ tell me."
+
+"It's difficult----" he began.
+
+"I don't care how difficult it is or how you hate it. You've got to."
+
+All he said to that was "You're very fond of her?"
+
+Her upper lip trembled. "Yes. But I don't think I knew it until now."
+
+"That's what makes it difficult."
+
+"My not knowing it?"
+
+"No. Your being so fond of her."
+
+"Isn't that just the reason why I ought to know?"
+
+"Yes. I think it is. Only----"
+
+She held him to it.
+
+"Is she going to die?"
+
+"I don't say she's _going_ to die. But--in the state she's in--she
+_might_ get anything and die of it if something isn't done to make her
+happy."
+
+"Happy----"
+
+"I mean of course--to get her married. After all, you know, you've got
+to face the facts."
+
+"You think she's dying now, and you're afraid to tell me."
+
+"No--I'm afraid I think--she's not so likely to die as to go out of
+her mind."
+
+"Did you tell my father that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said she was out of her mind already."
+
+
+"She isn't!"
+
+"Of course she isn't. No more than you and I. He talks about putting
+the poor child under restraint----"
+
+"Oh----"
+
+"It's preposterous. But he'll make it necessary if he continues his
+present system. What I tried to impress on him is that she _will_
+go out of her mind if she's kept shut up in that old Vicarage much
+longer. And that she'd be all right--perfectly all right--if she was
+married. As far as I can make out he seems to be doing his best to
+prevent it. Well--in her case--that's simply criminal. The worse of it
+is I can't make him see it. He's annoyed with me."
+
+"He never will see anything he doesn't like."
+
+"There's no reason why he should dislike it so much--I mean her
+illness. There's nothing awful about it."
+
+"There's nothing awful about Ally. She's as good as gold."
+
+"I know she's as good as gold. And she'd be as strong as iron if she
+was married and had children. I've seen no end of women like that, and
+I'm not sure they don't make the best wives and mothers. I told your
+father that. But it's no good trying to tell him the truth."
+
+"No. It's the one thing he can't stand."
+
+"He seems," said Rowcliffe, "to have such an extraordinary distaste
+for the subject. He approaches it from an impossible point of view--as
+if it was sin or crime or something. He talks about her controlling
+herself, as if she could help it. Why, she's no more responsible for
+being like that than I am for the shape of my nose. I'm afraid I told
+him that if anybody was responsible _he_ was, for bringing her to the
+worst place imaginable."
+
+"He did that on purpose."
+
+"I know. And I told him he might as well have put her in a lunatic
+asylum at once."
+
+He meditated.
+
+"It's not as if he hadn't anybody but himself to think of."
+
+"That's no good. He never does think of anybody but himself. And yet
+he'd be awfully sorry, you know, if Ally died."
+
+They sat silent, not looking at each other, until Gwenda spoke again.
+
+"Dr. Rowcliffe--"
+
+He smiled as if it amused him to be addressed so formally.
+
+"Do you _really_ mean it, or are you frightening us? Will Ally really
+die--or go mad--if she isn't--happy?"
+
+He was grave again.
+
+"I really mean it. It's a rather serious case. But it's only 'if.' As
+I told you, there are scores of women--"
+
+But she waived them all away.
+
+"I only wanted to know."
+
+Her voice stopped suddenly, and he thought that she was going to break
+down.
+
+"You mustn't take it so hard," he said. "It's not as if it wasn't
+absolutely curable. You must take her away."
+
+Suddenly he remembered that he didn't particularly want Gwenda to go
+away. He couldn't, in fact, bear the thought of it.
+
+"Better still," he said, "send her away. Is there anybody you could
+send her to?"
+
+"Only Mummy--my stepmother." She smiled through her tears. "Papa would
+never let Ally go to _her_."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because she ran away from him."
+
+He tried not to laugh.
+
+"She's really quite decent, though you mightn't think it." Rowcliffe
+smiled. "And she's fond of Ally. She's fond of all of us--except Papa.
+And," she added, "she knows a lot of people."
+
+He smiled again. He pictured the third Mrs. Cartaret as a woman of
+affectionate gaiety and a pleasing worldliness, so well surrounded by
+adorers of his own sex that she could probably furnish forth her three
+stepdaughters from the numbers of those she had no use for. He was
+more than ever disgusted with the Vicar who had driven from him a
+woman so admirably fitted to play a mother's part.
+
+"She sounds," he said, "as if she'd be the very one."
+
+"She would be. It's an awful pity."
+
+"Well," he said, "we won't talk any more about it now. We'll think of
+something. We simply _must_ get her away."
+
+He was thinking that he knew of somebody--a doctor's widow--who
+also would be fitted. If they could afford to pay her. And if they
+couldn't, he would very soon have the right----
+
+That was what his "we" meant.
+
+Presently he excused himself and went out to see, he said, about
+getting her some tea. He judged that if she were left alone for a
+moment she would pull herself together and be as ready as ever for
+their walk back to Garthdale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in that moment when he left her that she made her choice.
+Not that when her idea had come to her she had known a second's
+hesitation. She didn't know when it had come. It seemed to her that it
+had been with her all through their awful interview.
+
+It was she and not Ally who would have to go away.
+
+She could see it now.
+
+It had been approaching her, her idea, from the very instant that she
+had come into the room and had begun to speak to him. And with every
+word that _he_ had said it had come closer. But not until her final
+appeal to him had she really faced it. Then it became clear. It
+crystallised. There was no escaping from the facts.
+
+Ally would die or go mad if she didn't marry.
+
+Ally (though Rowcliffe didn't know it) was in love with him.
+
+And, even if she hadn't been, as long as they stayed in Garthdale
+there was nobody but Rowcliffe whom she could marry. It was her one
+chance.
+
+And there were three of them there. Three women to one man.
+
+And since _she_ was the one--she knew it--who stood between him and
+Ally, it was she who would have to go away.
+
+It seemed to her that long ago--all the time, in fact, ever since she
+had known Rowcliffe--she had known that this was what she would have
+to face.
+
+She faced it now with a strange courage and a sort of spiritual
+exaltation, as she would have faced any terrible truth that Rowcliffe
+had told her, if, for instance, he had told her that she was going to
+die.
+
+That, of course, was what it felt like. She had known that it would
+feel like that.
+
+And, as sometimes happens to people who are going to die and know
+it, there came to her a peculiar vivid and poignant sense of her
+surroundings. Of Rowcliffe's room and the things in it,--the chair he
+had sat in, the pipe he had laid aside, the book he had been reading
+and that he had flung away. Outside the open window the trees of the
+little orchard, whitened by the moonlight, stood as if fixed in a
+tender, pure and supernatural beauty. She could see the flags on the
+path and the stones in the gray walls. They stood out with a strange
+significance and importance. As if near and yet horribly far away, she
+could hear Rowcliffe's footsteps in the passage.
+
+It came over her that she was sitting in Rowcliffe's room--like
+this--for the last time.
+
+Then her heart dragged and tore at her, as if it fought against her
+will to die. But it never occurred to her that this dying of hers was
+willed by her. It seemed foredoomed, inevitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now she was looking up in Rowcliffe's face and smiling at him as
+he brought her her tea.
+
+"That's right," he said.
+
+He was entirely reassured by her appearance.
+
+"Look here, shall I drive you back or do you feel like another
+four-mile walk?"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"It's late," he said. "But no matter. Let's be reckless."
+
+"There's no need. I've got my bicycle."
+
+"Then I'll get mine."
+
+She rose. "Don't. I'm going back alone."
+
+"You're not. I'm coming with you. I want to come."
+
+"If you don't mind, I'd rather you didn't--to-night."
+
+"I'll drive you, then. I can't let you go alone."
+
+"But I _want_," she said, "to be alone."
+
+He stood looking at her with a sort of sullen tenderness.
+
+"You're not going to worry about what I told you?"
+
+"You didn't tell me. I knew."
+
+"Then----"
+
+But she persisted.
+
+"No. I shall be all right," she said. "There's a moon."
+
+In the end he let her have her way.
+
+Moon or no moon he saw that it was not his moment.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+What Gwenda had to do she did quickly.
+
+She wrote to the third Mrs. Cartaret that night. She told her nothing
+except that she wanted to get something to do in London and to get it
+as soon as possible, and she asked her stepmother if she could put her
+up for a week or two until she got it. And would Mummy mind wiring Yes
+or No on Saturday morning?
+
+It was then Thursday night.
+
+She slipped out into the village about midnight to post the letter,
+though she knew that it couldn't go one minute before three o'clock on
+Friday afternoon.
+
+She had no conscious fear that her will would fail her, but her
+instinct was appeased by action.
+
+On Saturday morning Mrs. Cartaret wired: "Delighted. Expect you
+Friday. Mummy."
+
+Five intolerable days. They were not more intolerable than the days
+that would come after, when the thing she was doing would be every bit
+as hard. Only her instinct was afraid of something happening within
+those five days that would make the hard thing harder.
+
+On Sunday Mrs. Cartaret's letter came. Her house, she said, was
+crammed with fiends till Friday. There was a beast of a woman in
+Gwenda's room who simply wouldn't go. But on Friday Gwenda's room
+would be ready. It had been waiting for her all the time. Hadn't they
+settled it that Gwenda was to come and live with her if things became
+impossible at home? Robina supposed they _were_ impossible? She sent
+her love to Alice and Mary, and she was always Gwenda's loving Mummy.
+And she enclosed a five-pound note; for she was a generous soul.
+
+On Monday Gwenda told Peacock the carrier to bring her a Bradshaw from
+Reyburn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She then considered how she was to account to her family for her
+departure.
+
+She decided that she would tell Mary first. And she might as well tell
+her the truth while she was about it, since, if she didn't, Mary would
+be sure to find it out. She was sweet and good. Not so sweet and good
+that she couldn't hold her own against Papa if she was driven to
+it, but sweet enough and good enough to stand by Ally and to see her
+through.
+
+It would be easy for Mary. It wasn't as if she had ever even begun to
+care for Rowcliffe. It wasn't as if Rowcliffe had ever cared for her.
+
+And she could be trusted. A secret was always safe with Mary. She was
+positively uncanny in her silence, and quite superhumanly discreet.
+
+Mary, then, should be told the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
+Her father should be told as much of it as he was likely to believe.
+Ally, of course, mustn't have an inkling.
+
+Mary herself had an inkling already when she appeared that evening in
+the attic where Gwenda was packing a trunk. She had a new Bradshaw in
+her hand.
+
+"Peacock gave me this," said Mary. "He said you ordered it."
+
+"So I did," said Gwenda.
+
+"What on earth for?"
+
+"To look up trains in."
+
+"Why--is anybody coming?"
+
+"Does anybody _ever_ come?"
+
+Mary's face admitted her absurdity.
+
+"Then"--she made it out almost with difficulty--"somebody must be
+going away."
+
+"How clever you are. Somebody _is_ going away."
+
+Mary twisted her brows in her perplexity. She was evidently thinking
+things.
+
+"Do you mean--Steven Rowcliffe?"
+
+"No, dear lamb." (What on earth had put Steven Rowcliffe into Mary's
+head?) "It's not as bad as all that. It's only a woman. In fact, it's
+only me."
+
+Mary's face emptied itself of all expression; it became a blank
+screen suddenly put up before the disarray of hurrying, eager things,
+unclothed and unexpressed.
+
+"I'm going to stay with Mummy."
+
+Gwenda closed the lid of the trunk and sat on it.
+
+(Perturbation was now in Mary's face.)
+
+"You can't, Gwenda. Papa'll never let you go."
+
+"He can't stop me."
+
+"What on earth are you going for?"
+
+"Not for my own amusement, though it sounds amusing."
+
+"Does Mummy want you?"
+
+"Whether she wants me or not, she's got to have me."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+(Mary's face was heavy with thought now.)
+
+"I don't know. I'm going to get something to do."
+
+"To _do?_"
+
+(Mary said to herself, then certainly it was not amusing. She pondered
+it.)
+
+"Is it," she brought out, "because of Steven Rowcliffe?"
+
+"No. It's because of Ally."
+
+"Ally?"
+
+"Yes. Didn't Papa tell you about her?"
+
+"Not he. Did he tell you?"
+
+"No. It was Steven Rowcliffe."
+
+And she told Mary what Rowcliffe had said to her.
+
+She had made room for her on her trunk and they sat there, their
+bodies touching, their heads drawn back, each sister staring with eyes
+that gave and took the other's horror.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Don't, Molly, don't----"
+
+Mary was crying now.
+
+"Does Papa know--that she'll die--or go mad?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But"--Mary lifted her stained face--"that's what they said about
+Mother."
+
+"If she had children. It's if Ally hasn't any."
+
+"And Papa knew it _then_. And he knows it now--how awful."
+
+"It isn't as awful as Steven Rowcliffe thinks. He doesn't really know
+what's wrong with her. He doesn't know she's in love with _him_."
+
+"Poor Ally. What's the good? He isn't in love with her."
+
+"He isn't now," said Gwenda. "But he will be."
+
+"Not he. It's you he cares for--if he cares for anybody."
+
+"I know. That's why I'm going."
+
+"Oh, Gwenda----"
+
+Mary's face was somber as she took it in.
+
+"That won't do Ally any good. If you _know_ he cares."
+
+"I don't absolutely know it. And if I did it wouldn't make any
+difference."
+
+"And if--you care for him?"
+
+"That doesn't make any difference either. I've got to clear out. It's
+her one chance, Molly. I've got to give it her. How _can_ I let her
+die, poor darling, or go mad? She'll be all right if he marries her."
+
+"And if he doesn't?"
+
+"He may, Molly, he may, if I clear out in time. Anyhow, there isn't
+anybody else."
+
+"If only," Mary said, "Papa had kept a curate."
+
+"But he hasn't kept a curate. He never will keep a curate. And if
+he does he'll choose a man with a wife and seven children--no, he'll
+choose no children. The wife mustn't have a chance of dying."
+
+"Gwenda--do you think anybody _knows?_ They did, you know--before, and
+it was awful."
+
+"Nobody knows this time, except Papa and Steven Rowcliffe and you and
+me."
+
+"I wish I didn't. I wish you hadn't told me."
+
+"You _had_ to know or I wouldn't have told you. Do you think Steven
+Rowcliffe would have told _me----_"
+
+"How could he? It was awful of him."
+
+"He could because he isn't a coward or a fool and he knew that I'm not
+a coward or a fool either. He thought Ally had nobody but me. She'll
+have nobody but you when I'm gone. You mustn't let her see you think
+her awful. You mustn't _think_ it. She isn't. She's as good as gold.
+Steven Rowcliffe said so. If she wasn't, Molly, I wouldn't ask you to
+help her--with him."
+
+"Gwenda, you mustn't put it all on me. I'd do anything for poor Ally,
+but I _can't_ make him marry her if he doesn't want to."
+
+"I think Ally can make him want to, if she gets a chance. You've only
+got to stick to her and see her through. You'll have to ask him here,
+you know. _She_ can't. And you'll have to keep Papa off her. If you're
+not very careful, he'll go and put her under restraint or something."
+
+"Oh--would it come to that?"
+
+"Yes. Papa'd do it like a shot. I believe he'd do it just to stop her
+marrying him. You mustn't tell Papa what I've told you. You mustn't
+tell Ally. And you mustn't tell him. Do you hear, Molly? You must
+never tell him."
+
+"Of course I won't tell him. But it's no use thinking we can do
+things."
+
+Gwenda stood up.
+
+"We haven't got to _do_ things. That's his business. We've only got to
+sit tight and play the game."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gwenda went on with her packing.
+
+"It will be time enough," she thought, "to tell Ally tomorrow."
+
+Ally was in her room. She never came downstairs now; and this week she
+was worse and had stayed all day in bed. They couldn't rouse her.
+
+But something had roused her this evening.
+
+A sort of scratching on the door made Gwenda look up from her packing.
+
+Ally stood on the threshold. She had dressed herself completely in her
+tweed skirt, white blouse and knitted tie. Her strength had failed her
+only in the struggle with her hair. The coil had fallen, and hung in
+a loose pigtail down her back. Slowly, in the weakness of her apathy,
+she trailed across the floor.
+
+"Ally, what is it? Why didn't you send for me?"
+
+"It's all right. I wanted to get up. I'm coming down to supper. You
+can leave off packing that old trunk. You haven't got to go."
+
+"Who told you I was going?"
+
+"Nobody. I knew it." She answered Gwenda's eyes. "I don't know how
+I knew it, but I did. And I know why you're going and it's all rot.
+You're going because you know that if you stay Steven Rowcliffe'll
+marry you, and you think that if you go he'll marry me."
+
+"Whatever put that idea into your head?"
+
+"Nothing put it. It came. It shows how awful you must think me if you
+think I'd go and do a beastly thing like that."
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Why--sneaking him away from you behind your back when I know you like
+him. You needn't lie about it. You _do_ like him.
+
+"I may be awful," she went on. "In fact I know I'm awful. But I'm
+decent. I couldn't do a caddish thing like that--I couldn't really.
+And, if I couldn't, there's no need for you to go."
+
+She was sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to
+speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge
+of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They
+ceased and she looked up.
+
+And in her look, a look that for the moment was divinely lucid, Gwenda
+saw Ally's secret and hidden kinship with herself. She saw it as if
+through some medium, once troubled and now made suddenly transparent.
+It was because of that queer kinship that Ally had divined her.
+However awful she was, however tragically foredoomed and driven, Ally
+was decent. She knew what Gwenda was doing because it was what, if any
+sustained lucidity were ever given her, she might have done herself.
+
+But in Ally no idea but the one idea was very deeply rooted. Sustained
+lucidity never had been hers. It would be easy to delude her.
+
+"I'm going," Gwenda said, "because I want to. If I stayed I wouldn't
+marry Steven Rowcliffe, and Steven Rowcliffe wouldn't marry me."
+
+"But--I thought--I thought----"
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"That there was something between you. Papa said so."
+
+"If Papa said so you might have known there was nothing in it."
+
+"And isn't there?"
+
+"Of course there isn't. You can put that idea out of your head
+forever."
+
+"All the same I believe that's why you're going."
+
+"I'm going because I can't stand this place any longer. You said I'd
+be sick of it in three months."
+
+"You're not sick of it. You love it. It's me you can't stand."
+
+"No, Ally--no."
+
+She plunged for another argument and found it.
+
+"What I can't stand is living with Papa."
+
+Ally agreed that this was rather more than plausible.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+As Rowcliffe went back to his surgery he recalled two things he had
+forgotten. One was a little gray figure he had seen once or twice
+lately wandering through the fields about Upthorne Farm. The other was
+a certain interview he had had with Alice when she had come to ask him
+to get Greatorex to sing. That was in November, not long before the
+concert. He remembered the suggestion he had then made that Alice
+should turn her attention to reclaiming Greatorex. And, though he had
+no morbid sense of responsibility in the matter, it struck him with
+something like compunction that he had put Greatorex into Alice's head
+chiefly to distract her from throwing herself at his.
+
+And then, he had gone and forgotten all about it.
+
+He told himself now that he had been a fool not to think of it. And if
+he was a fool, what was to be said of the Vicar, under whose nose this
+singular form of choir practice had been going on for goodness knew
+how long?
+
+It did not occur to the doctor that if his surgery day had been a
+Friday, which was choir practice day, he would have been certain to
+have thought of it. Neither was he aware that what he had observed
+this evening was only the unforeseen result of a perfectly innocent
+parochial arrangement. It had begun at Christmas and again at Easter,
+when it was understood that Greatorex, who was nervous about his
+voice, should turn up for practice ten minutes before the rest of the
+choir to try over his part in an anthem or cantata, so that, as Alice
+said, he might do himself justice.
+
+Since Easter the ten minutes had grown to fifteen or even twenty. And
+twice in the last three weeks Greatorex, by collusion with Alice, had
+arrived a whole hour before his time. Still, there was nothing in
+this circumstance itself to alarm the Vicar. Choir practice was choir
+practice, a mysterious thing he never interfered with, knowing himself
+to be unmusical.
+
+Rowcliffe had had good reason for refusing to urge Greatorex to marry
+Essy Gale. But what he had seen in Garth church made him determined to
+say something to Greatorex, after all.
+
+He went on his northerly round the very next Sunday and timed it
+so that he overtook his man on his way home from church. He gave
+Greatorex a lift with the result (which he had calculated) that
+Greatorex gave him dinner, as he had done once or twice before. The
+after-dinner pipe made Jim peculiarly approachable, and Rowcliffe
+approached him suddenly and directly. "I say, Greatorex, why don't you
+marry? Not a bad thing for you, you know."
+
+"Ay. Saw they tall me," said Greatorex amicably.
+
+Rowcliffe went on to advise his marrying Essy, not on the grounds of
+morality or of justice to the girl (he was a tactful person), but on
+Greatorex's account, as the best thing Greatorex could do for himself.
+
+"Yo mane," said Greatorex, "I ought to marry her?"
+
+Rowcliffe said no, he wasn't going into that.
+
+Greatorex was profoundly thoughtful.
+
+Presently he said that he would speak to Essy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He spoke to her that afternoon.
+
+In the cottage down by the beck Essy sat by the hearth, nursing her
+baby. He had recovered from his ailment and lay in her lap, gurgling
+and squinting at the fire. He wore the robe that Mrs. Gale had brought
+to Essy five months ago. Essy had turned it up above his knees, and
+smiling softly she watched his little pink feet curling and uncurling
+as she held them to the fire. Essy's back and the back of the baby's
+head were toward the door, which stood open, the day being still warm.
+
+Greatorex stood there a moment looking at them before he tapped on the
+door.
+
+He felt no tenderness for either of them, only a sullen pity that was
+half resentment.
+
+As if she had heard his footsteps and known them, Essy spoke without
+looking round.
+
+"Yo' can coom in ef yo' want," she said.
+
+"Thank yo'," he said stiffly and came in.
+
+"I caan't get oop wi' t' baaby. But there's a chair soomwhere."
+
+He found it and sat down.
+
+"Are yo' woondering why I've coom, Essy?"
+
+"Naw, Jim. I wasn't woondering about yo' at all."
+
+Her voice was sweet and placable. She followed the direction of his
+eyes.
+
+"'E's better. Ef thot's what yo've coom for."
+
+"It isn' what I've coom for. I've soomthing to saay to yo', Essy."
+
+"There's nat mooch good yo're saayin' anything, Jim. I knaw all yo'
+'ave t' saay."
+
+"Yo'll 'ave t' 'ear it, Essy, whether yo' knaw it or not. They're
+tallin' mae I ought to marry yo'."
+
+Essy's eyes flashed.
+
+"Who's tallin' yo'?"
+
+"T' Vicar, for woon."
+
+"T' Vicar! 'E's a nice woon t' taalk o' marryin', whan 'is awn wife
+caan't live wi' 'im, nor 'is awn daughter, neither. And 'oo alse
+talled yo'? 'Twasn' Moother?"
+
+"Naw. It wasn' yore moother."
+
+"An' 'twasn' mae, Jim, and navver will bae."
+
+"'Twas Dr. Rawcliffe."
+
+"'E? 'E's anoother. 'Ooo's 'e married? Miss Gwanda? Nat' e!"
+
+"Yo' let t' doctor bae, Essy. 'E's right enoof. Saw I ought t' marry
+yo'. But I'm nat goain' to."
+
+"'Ave yo' coom t' tall mae thot? 'S ef I didn' knaw it. 'Ave I avver
+aassked yo' t' marry mae?"
+
+"Haw, Essy."
+
+"Yo' _can_ aassk mae; yo'll bae saafe enoof. Fer I wawn't 'ave yo'.
+Woonce I med 'a' been maad enoof. I med 'a' said yes t' yo'. But I'd
+saay naw to-day."
+
+At that he smiled.
+
+"Yo' wouldn' 'ave a good-fer-noothin' falla like mae, would yo, laass?
+Look yo'--it's nat that I couldn' 'ave married yo'. I could 'ave
+married yo' right enoof. An' it's nat thot I dawn' think yo' pretty.
+Yo're pretty enoof fer me. It's--it's--I caan't rightly tall whot it
+is."
+
+"Dawn' tall mae. I dawn' want t' knaw."
+
+He looked hard at her.
+
+"I might marry yo' yat," he said. "But yo' knaw you wouldn' bae happy
+wi' mae. I sud bae crool t' yo'. Nat because I wanted t' bae crool,
+but because I couldn' halp mysel. Theer'd bae soomthin' alse I sud bae
+thinkin' on and wantin' all t' while."
+
+"I knaw. I knaw. I wouldn' lat yo', Jim. I wouldn' lat yo'."
+
+"I knaw there's t' baaby an' all. It's hard on yo', Essy. But--I dawn'
+knaw--I ned bae crool to t' baaby, too."
+
+Then she looked up at him, but with more incredulity than reproach.
+
+"Yo' wudn'," she said. "Yo' cudn' bae crool t' lil Jimmy."
+
+He scowled.
+
+"Yo've called 'im thot, Essy?"
+
+"An' why sudn' I call 'im? 'E's a right to thot naame, annyhow. Yo'
+caann't taake thot awaay from 'im."
+
+"I dawn' want t' taake it away from 'im. But I wish yo' 'adn'. I wish
+you 'adn', Essy."
+
+"Why 'alf t' lads in t' village is called Jimmy. Yo're called Jimmy
+yourself, coom t' thot."
+
+He considered it. "Well--it's nat as ef they didn' knaw--all of 'em."
+
+"Oh--they knaws!"
+
+"D'yo' mind them, Essy? They dawn't maake yo' feel baad about it, do
+they?"
+
+She shook her head and smiled her dreamy smile.
+
+He rose and looked down at her with his grieved, resentful eyes.
+
+"Yo' moosn' suppawse I dawn feel baad, Essy. I've laaid awaake manny a
+night, thinkin' what I've doon t'yo'."
+
+"What _'ave_ yo' doon, Jimmy? Yo' maade mae 'appy fer sex moonths.
+An' there's t' baaby. I didn' want 'im before 'e coom--seemed like I'd
+'ave t' 'ave 'im stead o' yo'. But yo' can goa right awaay, Jimmy, an'
+I sudn' keer ef I navver saw yo' again, so long's I 'ad 'im."
+
+"Is thot truth, Essy?"
+
+"It's Gawd's truth."
+
+He put out his hand and caressed the child's downy head as if it was
+the head of some young animal.
+
+"I wish I could do more fer 'im, Essy. I will, maaybe, soom daay."
+
+"I wouldn' lat yo'. I wouldn' tooch yo're mooney now ef I could goa
+out t' wark an' look affter 'im too. I wouldn' tooch a panny of it, I
+wouldn'."
+
+"Dawn' yo' saay thot, Essy. Yo' dawn' want to spite mae, do yo'?"
+
+"I didn' saay it t' spite yo', Jimmy. I said it saw's yo' sudn' feel
+saw baad."
+
+He smiled mournfully.
+
+"Poor Essy," he said.
+
+She gave him a queer look. "Yo' needn' pity _mae,_" she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went away considerably relieved in his mind, but still suffering
+that sullen uneasiness in his soul.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+It was the last week in June.
+
+Mary Cartaret sat in the door of the cottage by the beck. And in her
+lap she held Essy's baby. Essy had run in to the last cottage in the
+row to look after her great aunt, the Widow Gale, who had fallen out
+of bed in the night.
+
+The Widow Gale, in her solitude, had formed the habit of falling out
+of bed. But this time she had hurt her head, and Essy had gone for the
+doctor and had met Miss Mary in the village and Mary had come with her
+to help.
+
+For by good luck--better luck than the Widow Gale deserved--it was a
+Wednesday. Rowcliffe had sent word that he would come at three.
+
+It was three now.
+
+And as he passed along the narrow path he saw Mary Cartaret in the
+doorway with the baby in her lap.
+
+She smiled at him as he went by.
+
+"I'm making myself useful," she said.
+
+"Oh, more than that!"
+
+His impression was that Mary had made herself beautiful. He looked
+back over his shoulder and laughed as he hurried on.
+
+Up till now it hadn't occurred to him that Mary could be beautiful.
+But it didn't puzzle him. He knew how she had achieved that momentary
+effect.
+
+He knew and he was to remember. For the effect repeated itself.
+
+As he came back Mary was standing in the path, holding the baby in her
+arms. She was looking, she said, for Essy. Would Essy be coming soon?
+
+Rowcliffe did not answer all at once. He stood contemplating the
+picture. It wasn't all Mary. The baby did his part. He had been
+"short-coated" that month, and his thighs, crushed and delicately
+creased, showed rose red against the white rose of Mary's arm. She
+leaned her head, brooding tenderly, to his, and his head (he was a
+dark baby) was dusk to her flame.
+
+Rowcliffe smiled. "Why?" he said. "Do you want to get rid of him?"
+
+As if unconsciously she pressed the child closer to her. As if
+unconsciously she held his head against her breast. And when his
+fingers worked there, in their way, she covered them with her hand.
+
+"No," she said. "He's a nice baby. (Aren't you a nice baby? There!)
+Essy's unhappy because he's going to have blue eyes and dark hair. But
+I think they're the prettiest, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Rowcliffe.
+
+He was grave and curt.
+
+And Mary remembered that that was what Gwenda had--blue eyes and dark
+hair.
+
+It was what Gwenda's children might have had, too. She felt that she
+had made him think of Gwenda.
+
+Then Essy came and took the baby from her.
+
+"'E's too 'eavy fer yo', Miss," she said. She laughed as she took him;
+she gazed at him with pride and affection unabashed. His one fault,
+for Essy, was that, though he had got Greatorex's eyes, he had not got
+Greatorex's hair.
+
+Mary and Rowcliffe went back together.
+
+"You're coming in to tea, aren't you?" she said.
+
+"Rather." He had got into the habit again of looking in at the
+Vicarage for tea every Wednesday. They were having tea in the orchard
+now. And in June the Vicarage orchard was a pleasanter place than the
+surgery.
+
+It was in fact a very pleasant place. Pleasanter than the gray and
+amber drawing-room.
+
+When Rowcliffe came to think of it, he owed the Cartarets many
+pleasant things. So he had formed another habit of asking them back
+to tea in his orchard. He had had no idea what a pleasant place his
+orchard could be too.
+
+Now, though Rowcliffe nearly always had tea alone with Mary at the
+Vicarage, Mary never came to tea at Rowcliffe's house alone. She
+always brought Alice with her. And Rowcliffe found that a nuisance.
+For one thing, Alice had the air of being dragged there against
+her will, so completely had she recovered from him. For another, he
+couldn't talk to Mary quite so well. He didn't know that he wanted to
+talk to Mary. He didn't know that he particularly wanted to be alone
+with her, but somehow Alice's being there made him want it.
+
+He was to be alone with Mary to-day, in the orchard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The window of the Vicar's study raked the orchard. But that didn't
+matter, for the Vicar was not at home this Wednesday.
+
+The orchard waited for them. Two wicker-work armchairs and the little
+round tea-table were set out under the trees. Mary's knitting lay in
+one of the chairs. She had the habit of knitting while she talked, or
+while Rowcliffe talked and she listened. The act of knitting disposed
+her to long silences. It also occupied her, so that Rowcliffe, when he
+liked, could be silent too.
+
+But generally he talked and Mary listened.
+
+They hadn't many subjects. But Mary made the most of what they had.
+And she always knew the precise moment when Rowcliffe had ceased to
+be interested in any one of them. She knew, as if by instinct, all his
+moments.
+
+They were talking now, at tea-time, about the Widow Gale. Mary wanted
+to know how the poor thing was getting on. The Widow Gale had been
+rather badly shaken and she had bruised her poor old head and one
+hip. But she wouldn't fall out of bed again to-night. Rowcliffe had
+barricaded the bed with a chest of drawers. Afterward there must be a
+rail or something.
+
+Mary was interested in the Widow Gale as long as Rowcliffe liked to
+talk about her. But the Widow Gale didn't carry them very far.
+
+What would have carried them far was Rowcliffe himself. But Rowcliffe
+never wanted to talk about himself to Mary. When Mary tried to lead
+gently up to him, Rowcliffe shied. He wouldn't talk about himself any
+more than he would talk about Gwenda.
+
+But Mary didn't want to talk about Gwenda either now. So that her face
+showed the faintest flicker of dismay when Rowcliffe suddenly began to
+talk about her.
+
+"Have you any idea," he said, "when your sister's coming back?"
+
+"She won't be long," said Mary. "She's only gone to Upthorne village."
+
+"I meant your other sister."
+
+"Oh, Gwenda----"
+
+Mary brooded. And the impression her brooding made on Rowcliffe was
+that Mary knew something about Gwenda she did not want to tell.
+
+"I don't think," said Mary gravely, "that Gwenda ever will come back
+again. At least not if she can help it. I thought you knew that."
+
+"I suppose I must have known."
+
+He left it there.
+
+Mary took up her knitting. She was making a little vest for Essy's
+baby. Rowcliffe watched it growing under her hands.
+
+"As I can't knit, do you mind my smoking?"
+
+She didn't.
+
+"If more women knitted," he said, "it would be a good thing. They
+wouldn't be bothered so much with nerves."
+
+"I don't do it for nerves. I haven't any," said Mary.
+
+He laughed. "No, I don't think you have."
+
+She fell into one of her gentle silences. A silence not of her own
+brooding, he judged. It had no dreams behind it and no imagination
+that carried her away. A silence, rather, that brought her nearer to
+him, that waited on his mood.
+
+His eyes watched under half-closed lids the movements of her hands and
+the pretty droop of her head. And he said to himself, "How sweet she
+is. And how innocent. And good."
+
+Their chairs were set near together in the small plot of grass. The
+little trees of the orchard shut them in. He began to notice things
+about her that he had not noticed before, the shape and color of her
+finger nails, the modeling of her supple wrists, the way her ears were
+curved and laid close to her rather broad head. He saw that her
+skin was milk-white at the throat, and honey-white at her ears, and
+green-white, the white of an elder flower, at the roots of her red
+hair.
+
+And as she unwound her ball of wool it rolled out of her lap and fell
+between her feet.
+
+She stooped suddenly, bringing under Rowcliffe's eyes the nape of her
+neck, shining with golden down, and her shoulders, sun-warmed and rosy
+under the thin muslin of her blouse.
+
+They dived at the same moment, and as their heads came up again their
+faces would have touched but that Rowcliffe suddenly drew back his
+own.
+
+"I say, I _do_ beg your pardon!"
+
+It was odd, but in the moment of his recoil from that imminent contact
+Rowcliffe remembered the little red-haired nurse. Not that there was
+much resemblance; for, though the little nurse was sweet, she was
+not altogether innocent, neither was she what good people like Mary
+Cartaret would call good. And Mary, leaning back in her chair with
+the recovered ball in her lap, was smiling at his confusion with an
+innocence and goodness of which he could have no doubt.
+
+When he tried to account to himself for the remembrance he supposed it
+must have been the red hair that did it.
+
+And up to the end and to the end of the end Rowcliffe never knew
+that, though he had been made subject to a sequence of relentless
+inhibitions and of suggestions overpowering in their nature and
+persistently sustained, it was ultimately by aid of that one
+incongruous and irresistible association that Mary Cartaret had cast
+her spell.
+
+He had never really come under it until that moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+July passed. It was the end of August. To the west Karva and Morfe
+High Moor were purple. To the east the bare hillsides with their
+limestone ramparts smouldered in mist and sun, or shimmered, burning
+like any hillside of the south. The light even soaked into the gray
+walls of Garth in its pastures. The little plum-trees in the Vicarage
+orchard might have been olive trees twinkling in the sun.
+
+Mary was in the Vicar's bedroom, looking now at the door, and now
+at her own image in the wardrobe glass. It was seven o'clock in the
+evening and she had chosen a perilous moment for the glass. She wore
+a childlike frock of rough green silk; it had no collar but was cut
+square at the neck showing her white throat. The square was bordered
+with an embroidered design of peacock's eyes. The parted waves of her
+red hair were burnished with hard brushing; its coils lay close, and
+smooth as a thick round cap. It needed neither comb nor any ornament.
+
+Mary had dressed, for Rowcliffe was coming to dinner. Such a thing had
+never been heard of at the Vicarage; but it had come to pass. And as
+Mary thought of how she had accomplished it, she wondered what Alice
+could possibly have meant when she said to her "There are moments when
+I hate you," as she hooked her up the back.
+
+For it never could have happened if she had not persuaded the Vicar
+(and herself as well) that she was asking Rowcliffe on Alice's
+account.
+
+The Vicar had come gradually to see that if Alice must be married she
+had better marry Rowcliffe and have done with it. He had got used to
+Rowcliffe and he rather liked him; so he had only held out against
+the idea for a fortnight or so. He had even found a certain austere
+satisfaction in the thought that he, the doctor, who had tried to
+terrify him about Ally's insanity, having thrown that bomb into
+the peaceful Vicarage, should be blown up, as it were, with his own
+explosion.
+
+The Vicar never doubted that it was Ally that Rowcliffe wanted. For
+the idea of his wanting Gwenda was so unpleasant to him that he had
+dismissed it as preposterous; as for Mary, he had made up his mind
+that Mary would never dream of marrying and leaving him, and that, if
+she did, he would put his foot down.
+
+There had been changes in the Vicarage in the last two months. The
+shabby gray and amber drawing-room was not all shabbiness and not all
+gray and amber now. There were new cretonne covers on the chairs and
+sofa, and pure white muslin curtains at the windows, and the lamp had
+a new frilled petticoat. Every afternoon Mrs. Gale was arrayed in a
+tight black gown and irreproachable cap and apron.
+
+All day long Mary and Mrs. Gale had worked like galley slaves over
+the preparations for dinner, and between them they had achieved
+perfection. What was more they had produced an effect of achieving it
+every day, clear soup, mayonnaise salad and cheese straws and all.
+
+And the black coffee made by Mary and served in the orchard afterward
+was perfection too.
+
+And the impression made on Rowcliffe by the Vicarage was that of
+a house and a household rehabilitated after a long period of
+devastation, by the untiring, selfless labor of a woman who was good
+and sweet.
+
+After they had drunk Mary's coffee the Vicar strolled away to his
+study so as to leave Rowcliffe alone with Mary, and Alice strolled
+away heaven knew where so as to leave Mary alone with Rowcliffe. And
+the Vicar said to himself, "Mary is really doing it very well. Ally
+ought to be grateful to her."
+
+But Ally wasn't a bit grateful. She said to herself, "I've half a
+mind to tell him; only Gwenda would hate me." And she called over her
+shoulder as she strolled away, "You'd better not stay out too long,
+you two. It's going to rain."
+
+Morfe High Moor hangs over Garth and a hot and swollen cloud was
+hanging over Morfe High Moor. Above the gray ramparts the very east
+was sultry. In the orchard under the low plum-trees it was as airless
+as in a tent.
+
+Rowcliffe didn't want to stay out too long in the orchard. He knew
+that the window of the Vicar's study raked it. So he asked Mary if she
+would come with him for a stroll. (His only criticism of Mary was that
+she didn't walk enough.)
+
+Mary thought, "My nice frock will be ruined if the rain comes." But
+she went.
+
+"Shall it be the moor or the fields?" he said.
+
+Mary thought again, and said, "The fields."
+
+He was glad she hadn't said "The moor."
+
+They strolled past the village and turned into the pasture that lay
+between the high road and the beck. The narrow paths led up a slope
+from field to field through the gaps in the stone walls. The fields
+turned with the turning of the dale and with that turning of the road
+that Rowcliffe knew, under Karva. Instinctively, with a hand on her
+arm he steered her, away from the high road and its turning, toward
+the beck, so that they had their backs to the thunder storm as it came
+up over Karva and the High Moor.
+
+It was when they were down in the bottom that it burst.
+
+There was shelter on the further side of the last field. They ran to
+it, climbed, and crouched together under the stone wall.
+
+Rowcliffe took off the light overcoat he wore and tried to put it
+on her. But Mary wouldn't let him. She looked at his clothes, at the
+round dinner jacket with its silk collar and at the beautiful evening
+trousers with their braided seams. He insisted. She refused. He
+insisted still, and compromised by laying the overcoat round both of
+them.
+
+And they crouched together under the wall, sitting closer so that the
+coat might cover them.
+
+It thundered and lightened. The rain pelted them from the high
+batteries of Karva. And Rowcliffe drew Mary closer. She laughed like a
+happy child.
+
+Rowcliffe sighed.
+
+It was after he had sighed that he kissed her under the cover of the
+coat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sat there for half an hour; three-quarters; till the storm ceased
+with the rising of the moon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I'm afraid the pretty frock's spoiled," he said.
+
+"That doesn't matter. Your poor suit's ruined."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Whatever's been ruined," he said, "it was worth it."
+
+Hand in hand they went back together through the drenched fields.
+
+At the first gap he stopped.
+
+"It's settled?" he said. "You won't go back on it? You _do_ care for
+me? And you _will_ marry me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"Yes; soon."
+
+At the last gap he stopped again.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I suppose you knew about Gwenda?"
+
+"I knew there was something. What was it?"
+
+He had said to himself, "I shall have to tell her. I shall have to say
+I cared for her."
+
+What he did say was, "There was nothing in it. It's all over. It was
+all over long ago."
+
+"I knew," she said, "it was all over."
+
+And the solemn white moon came up, the moon that Gwenda loved; it came
+up over Greffington Edge and looked at them.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+It was Sunday afternoon, the last Sunday of August, the first since
+that evening (it was a Thursday) when Steven Rowcliffe had dined at
+the Vicarage. Mary had announced her engagement the next day.
+
+The news had an extraordinary effect on Alice and the Vicar.
+
+Mary had come to her father in his study on Friday evening after
+Prayers. She informed him of the bare fact in the curtest manner,
+without preface or apology or explanation. A terrible scene had
+followed; at least the Vicar's part in it had been terrible. Nothing
+he had ever said to Gwenda could compare with what he then said to
+Mary. Alice's behavior he had been prepared for. He had expected
+anything from Gwenda; but from Mary he had not expected this. It was
+her treachery he resented, the treachery of a creature he had depended
+on and trusted. He absolutely forbade the engagement. He said it was
+unheard of. He spoke of her "conduct" as if it had been disgraceful or
+improper. He declared that "that fellow" Rowcliffe should never come
+inside his house again. He bullied and threatened and bullied again.
+And through it all Mary sat calm and quiet and submissive. The
+expression of the qualities he had relied on, her sweetness and
+goodness, never left her face. She replied to his violence, "Yes,
+Papa. Very well, Papa, I see." But, as Gwenda had warned him, bully as
+he would, Mary beat him in the end.
+
+She looked meekly down at the hearth-rug and said, "I know how you
+feel about it, Papa dear. I understand all you've got to say and I'm
+sorry. But it isn't any good. You know it isn't just as well as I do."
+
+It might have been Gwenda who spoke to him, only that Gwenda could
+never have looked meek.
+
+The Vicar had not recovered from the shock. He was convinced that
+he never would recover from it. But on that Sunday he had found a
+temporary oblivion, dozing in his study between two services.
+
+There had been no scene like that with Alice. But what had passed
+between the sisters had been even worse.
+
+Mary had gone straight from the study to Ally's room. Ally was
+undressing.
+
+Ally received the news in a cruel silence. She looked coldly, sternly
+almost, and steadily at Mary.
+
+"You needn't have told me that," she said at last. "I could see what
+you were doing the other night."
+
+"What _I_ was doing?"
+
+"Yes, you. I don't imagine Steven Rowcliffe did it"
+
+"Really Ally--what do you suppose I did?"
+
+"I don't know what it was. But I know you did something and I know
+that--whatever it was--_I_ wouldn't have done it."
+
+And Mary answered quietly. "If I were you, Ally, I wouldn't show my
+feelings quite so plainly."
+
+And Ally looked at her again.
+
+"It's not _my_ feelings--" she said.
+
+Mary reddened. "I don't know what you mean."
+
+"You'll know, some day," Ally said and turned her back on her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mary went out, closing the door softly, as if she spared her sick
+sister's unreasonably irritated nerves. She felt rather miserable as
+she undressed alone in her bedroom. She was wounded in her sweetness
+and her goodness, and she was also a little afraid of what Ally might
+take it into her head to say or do. She didn't try to think what
+Ally had meant. Her sweetness and goodness, with their instinct of
+self-preservation, told her that it might be better not.
+
+The August night was warm and tender, and, when Mary had got into bed
+and lay stretched out in contentment under the white sheet, she began
+to think of Rowcliffe to the exclusion of all other interests; and
+presently, between a dream and a dream, she fell asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Ally could not sleep.
+
+She lay till dawn thinking and thinking, and turning from side to
+side between her thoughts. They were not concerned with Gwenda or with
+Rowcliffe. After her little spurt of indignation she had ceased to
+think about Gwenda or Rowcliffe either. Mary's news had made her think
+about herself, and her thoughts were miserable. Ally was so far like
+her father the Vicar, that the idea of Mary's marrying was intolerable
+to her and for precisely the same reason, because she saw no prospect
+of marrying herself. Her father had begun by forbidding Mary's
+engagement but he would end by sanctioning it. He would never sanction
+_her_ marriage to Jim Greatorex.
+
+Even if she defied her father and married Jim Greatorex in spite of
+him there would be almost as much shame in it as if, like Essy, she
+had never married him at all.
+
+And she couldn't live without him.
+
+Ally had suffered profoundly from the shock that had struck her down
+under the arcades on the road to Upthorne. It had left her more than
+ever helpless, more than ever subject to infatuation, more than ever
+morally inert. Ally's social self had grown rigid in the traditions
+of her class, and she was still aware of the unsuitability of her
+intimacy with Jim Greatorex; but disaster had numbed her once poignant
+sense of it. She had yielded to his fascination partly through
+weakness, partly in defiance, partly in the sheer, healthy
+self-assertion of her suffering will and her frustrated senses. But
+she had not will enough to defy her father. She credited him with an
+infinite capacity to crush and wound. And for a day and a half the
+sight of Mary's happiness--a spectacle which Mary did not spare
+her---had made Ally restless. Under the incessant sting of it her
+longing for Greatorex became insupportable.
+
+On Sunday the Vicar was still too deeply afflicted by the same
+circumstance to notice Ally's movements, and Ally took advantage of
+his apathy to excuse herself from Sunday school that afternoon. And
+about three o'clock she was at Upthorne Farm. She and Greatorex had
+found a moment after morning service to arrange the hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now they were standing together in the doorway of the Farmhouse.
+
+In the house behind them, in the mistal and the orchard, in the long
+marshes of the uplands and on the brooding hills there was stillness
+and solitude.
+
+Maggie had gone up to her aunt at Bar Hill. The farm servants were
+scattered in their villages.
+
+Alice had just told Greatorex of Mary's engagement and the Vicar's
+opposition.
+
+"Eh, I was lookin' for it," he said. "But I maade sure it was your
+oother sister."
+
+"So did I, Jim. So it was. So it would have been, only--"
+
+She stopped herself. She wasn't going to give Mary away to Jim.
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"Wall, it's nowt t' yo, is it?"
+
+"No. It's nothing to me--now. How did you know I cared for him?"
+
+"I knew because I looved yo. Because I was always thinkin' of yo.
+Because I watched yo with him."
+
+"Oh Jim--would other people know?"
+
+"Naw. Nat they. They didn't look at yo the saame as I did."
+
+He became thoughtful.
+
+"Wall--this here sattles it," he said presently. "Yo caann't be laft
+all aloan in t' Vicarage. Yo'll _'ave_ t' marry mae."
+
+"No," she said. "It won't be like that. It won't, really. If my father
+won't let my sister marry Dr. Rowcliffe, you don't suppose he'll let
+me marry you? It makes it more impossible than ever. That's what I
+came to tell you."
+
+"It's naw use yo're tallin' mae. I won't hear it."
+
+He bent to her.
+
+"Ally--d'yo knaw we're aloan here?"
+
+"Yes, Jim."
+
+"We're saafe till Naddy cooms back for t' milkin'. We've three hours."
+
+She shook her head. "Only an hour and a half, Jim. I must be back for
+tea."
+
+"Yo'll 'ave tae here. Yo've had it before. I'll maake it for yo."
+
+"I daren't, Jim. They'll expect me. They'll wonder."
+
+"Ay, 'tis thot waay always. Yo're no sooner coom than yo've got to be
+back for this, thot and toother. I'm fair sick of it."
+
+"So am I."
+
+She sighed.
+
+"Wall then--yo must end it."
+
+"How can I end it?"
+
+"Yo knaw how."
+
+"Oh Jim--darling--haven't I told you?"
+
+"Yo've toald mae noothin' that makes a hap'orth o' difference to mae.
+Yo've coom to mae. Thot's all I keer for."
+
+He put his hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the house-place.
+
+"Let me shaw yo t' house--now you've coom."
+
+His voice pleaded and persuaded. In spite of its north-country accent
+Ally loved his voice. It sounded musical and mournful, like the voices
+of the mountain sheep coming from far across the moor and purified by
+distance.
+
+He took her through the kitchen and the little parlor at the end of
+the house.
+
+As he looked round it, trying to see it with her eyes, doubt came to
+him. But Ally, standing there, looked toward the kitchen.
+
+"Will Maggie be there?" she said.
+
+"Ay, Maaggie'll be there, ready when yo want her."
+
+"But," she said, "I don't want her."
+
+He followed her look.
+
+"I'll 'ave it all claned oop and paapered and paainted. Look yo--I
+could have a hole knocked through t' back wall o' t' kitchen and a
+winder put there--and roon oop a wooden partition and make a passage
+for yo t' goa to yore awn plaace, soa's Maaggie'll not bae in yore
+road."
+
+"You needn't. I like it best as it is."
+
+"Do yo? D'yo mind thot Soonda yo caame laasst year? Yo've aassked mae
+whan it was I started thinkin' of yo. It was than. Thot daay whan yo
+sot there in thot chair by t' fire, taalkin' t' mae and drinkin' yore
+tae so pretty."
+
+She drew closer to him.
+
+"Did you really love me then?"
+
+"Ay--I looved yo than."
+
+She pondered it.
+
+"Jim--what would you have done if I hadn't loved you?"
+
+He choked back something in his throat before he answered her. "What
+sud I have doon? I sud have goan on looving yo joost the saame.
+
+"We'll goa oopstairs now."
+
+He took her back and out through the kitchen and up the stone stairs
+that turned sharply in their narrow place in the wall. He opened the
+door at the head of the landing.
+
+"This would bae our room. 'Tis t' best."
+
+He took her into the room where John Greatorex had died. It was the
+marriage chamber, the birth-chamber, and the death-chamber of all the
+Greatorexes. The low ceiling still bulged above the big double bed
+John Greatorex had died in.
+
+The room was tidy and spotlessly clean. The walls had been
+whitewashed. Fresh dimity curtains hung at the window. The bed was
+made, a clean white counterpane was spread on it.
+
+The death room had been made ready for the living. The death-bed
+waited for the bride.
+
+Ally stood there, under the eyes of her lover, looking at those
+things. She shivered slightly.
+
+She said to herself, "It's the room his father died in."
+
+And there came on her a horror of the room and of all that had
+happened in it, a horror of death and of the dead.
+
+She turned away to the window and looked out. The long marshland
+stretched below, white under the August sun. Beyond it the green hills
+with their steep gray cliffs rose and receded, like a coast line, head
+after head.
+
+To Ally the scene was desolate beyond all bearing and the house was
+terrible.
+
+Her eyelids pricked. Her mouth trembled. She kept her back turned to
+Greatorex while she stifled a sob with her handkerchief pressed tight
+to her lips.
+
+He saw and came to her and put his arm round her.
+
+"What is it, Ally? What is it, loove?"
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"I don't know, Jim. But--I think--I'm afraid."
+
+"What are you afraid of?"
+
+She thought a moment. "I'm afraid of father."
+
+"Yo med bae ef yo staayed with him. Thot's why I want yo t' coom to
+mae."
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"'Tisn' thot yo're afraid of. 'Tis soomthin' alse thot yo wawn't tall
+mae."
+
+"Well--I think--I'm a little bit afraid of this house. It's--it's so
+horribly lonely."
+
+He couldn't deny it.
+
+"A'y; it's rackoned t' bae loanly. But I sall navver leaave yo.
+I'm goain' t' buy a new trap for yo, soa's yo can coom with mae and
+Daaisy. Would yo like thot, Ally?"
+
+"Yes, Jim, I'd love it. But----"
+
+"It'll not bae soa baad. Whan I'm out in t' mistal and in t' fields
+and thot, yo'll have Maaggie with yo."
+
+She whispered. "Jim--I can't bear Maggie. I'm afraid of her."
+
+"Afraid o' pore Maaggie?"
+
+He took it in. He wondered. He thought he understood.
+
+"Maaggie sall goa. I'll 'ave anoother. An' yo sall 'ave a yooung laass
+t' waait on yo. Ef it's Maaggie, shea sall nat stand in yore road."
+
+"It isn't Maggie--altogether."
+
+"Than--for Gawd's saake, loove, what is it?"
+
+She sobbed. "It's everything. It's something in this house--in this
+room."
+
+He looked at her gravely now.
+
+"Naw," he said slowly, "'tis noon o' thawse things. It's mae. It's mae
+yo're afraid of. Yo think I med bae too roough with yo."
+
+But at that she cried out with a little tender cry and pressed close
+to him.
+
+"No--no--no--it isn't you. It isn't. It couldn't be."
+
+He crushed her in his arms. His mouth clung to her face and passed
+over it and covered it with kisses.
+
+"Am I too roough? Tall mae--tall mae."
+
+"No," she whispered.
+
+He pushed back her hat from her forehead, kissing her hair. She took
+off her hat and flung it on the floor.
+
+His voice came fast and thick.
+
+"Kiss mae back ef yo loove mae."
+
+She kissed him. She stiffened and leaned back in the crook of his arm
+that held her.
+
+His senses swam. He grasped her as if he would have lifted her bodily
+from the floor. She was light in his arms as a child. He had turned
+her from the window.
+
+He looked fiercely round the room that shut them in. His eyes lowered;
+they fixed themselves on the bed with its white counterpane. They
+saw under the white counterpane the dead body of his father stretched
+there, and the stain on the grim beard tilted to the ceiling.
+
+He loosed her and pushed her from him.
+
+"We moost coom out o' this," he muttered.
+
+He pushed her from the room, gently, with a hand on her shoulder, and
+made her go before him down the stairs.
+
+He went back into the room to pick up her hat.
+
+He found her waiting for him, looking back, at the turn of the stair
+where John Greatorex's coffin had stuck in the corner of the wall.
+
+"Jim--I'm so frightened," she said.
+
+"Ay. Yo'll bae all right downstairs."
+
+They stood in the kitchen, each looking at the other, each panting,
+she in her terror and he in his agony.
+
+"Take me away," she said. "Out of the house. That room frightened me.
+There's something there."
+
+"Ay;" he assented. "There med bae soomthing. Sall we goa oop t'
+fealds?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Three Fields looked over the back of Upthorne Farm. Naked and
+gray, the great stone barn looked over the Three Fields. A narrow
+track led to it, through the gaps, slantwise, from the gate of the
+mistal.
+
+Above the fields the barren, ruined hillside ended and the moor began.
+It rolled away southward and westward, in dusk and purple and silver
+green, utterly untamed, uncaught by the network of the stone walls.
+
+The barn stood high and alone on the slope of the last field, a long,
+broad-built nave without its tower. A single thorn-tree crouched
+beside it.
+
+Alice Cartaret and Greatorex went slowly up the Three Fields. There
+was neither thought nor purpose in their going.
+
+The quivering air was like a sheet of glass let down between plain and
+hill.
+
+Slowly, with mournful cries, a flock of mountain sheep came down over
+the shoulder of the moor. Behind them a solitary figure topped the
+rise as Alice and Greatorex came up the field-track.
+
+Alice stopped in the track and turned.
+
+"Somebody's coming over the moor. He'll see us."
+
+Greatorex stood scanning the hill.
+
+"'Tis Nad, wi' t' dawg, drivin' t' sheep."
+
+"Oh, Jim, he'll see us."
+
+"Nat he!"
+
+But he drew her behind the shelter of the barn.
+
+"He'll come down the fields. He'll be sure to see us."
+
+"Ef he doos, caann't I walk in my awn fealds wi' my awn sweetheart?"
+
+"I don't want to be seen," she moaned.
+
+"Wall--?" he pushed open the door of the barn. "Wae'll creep in here
+than, tall he's paassed."
+
+A gray light slid through the half-shut door and through the long,
+narrow slits in the walls. From the open floor of the loft there came
+the sweet, heavy scent of hay.
+
+"He'll see the door open. He'll come in. He'll find us here."
+
+"He wawn't."
+
+But Jim shut the door.
+
+"We're saafe enoof. But 'tis naw plaace for yo. Yo'll mook yore lil
+feet. Staay there--where yo are--tell I tall yo."
+
+He groped his way in the half darkness up the hay loft stair. She
+heard his foot going heavily on the floor over her head.
+
+He drew back the bolt and pushed open the door in the high wall. The
+sunlight flooded the loft; it streamed down the stair. The dust danced
+in it.
+
+Jim stood on the stair. He smiled down at Alice where she waited
+below.
+
+"Coom oop into t' haay loft, Ally."
+
+He stooped. He held out his hand and she climbed to him up the stair.
+
+They sat there on the floor of the loft, silent, in the attitude of
+children who crouch hiding in their play. He had strewn for her a
+carpet of the soft, sweet hay and piled it into cushions.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said at last. "I'm so frightened. I'm so horribly
+frightened."
+
+She stretched out her arm and slid her hand into his.
+
+Jim's hand pressed hers and let it go. He leaned forward, his elbows
+propped on his knees, his hands clutching his forehead. And in his
+thick, mournful voice he spoke.
+
+"Yo wouldn't bae freetened ef yo married mae. There'd bae an and of
+these scares, an' wae sudn't 'ave t' roon these awful risks."
+
+"I can't marry you, darling. I can't."
+
+"Yo caann't, because yo're freetened o' mae. I coom back to thot. Yo
+think I'm joost a roough man thot caann't understand yo. But I do. I
+couldn't bae roough with yo, Ally, anny more than Nad, oop yon, could
+bae roough wi' t' lil laambs."
+
+He was lying flat on his back now, with his arms stretched out above
+his head. He stared up at the rafters as he went on.
+
+"Yo wouldn't bae freetened o' mae ef yo looved mae as I loove yo."
+
+That brought her to his side with her soft cry.
+
+For a moment he lay rigid and still.
+
+Then he turned and put his arm round her. The light streamed on them
+where they lay. Through the open doorway of the loft they heard the
+cry of the sheep coming down into the pasture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greatorex got up and slid the door softly to.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Morfe Fair was over and the farmers were going home.
+
+A broken, straggling traffic was on the roads from dale to dale. There
+were men who went gaily in spring carts and in wagons. There were men
+on horseback and on foot who drove their sheep and their cattle before
+them.
+
+A train of three were going slowly up Garthdale, with much lingering
+to gather together and rally the weary and bewildered flocks.
+
+Into this train there burst, rocking at full gallop, a trap drawn
+by Greatorex's terrified and indignant mare. Daisy was not driven
+by Greatorex, for the reins were slack in his dropped hands, she was
+urged, whipped up, and maddened to her relentless speed. Her open
+nostrils drank the wind of her going.
+
+Greatorex's face flamed and his eyes were brilliant. They declared a
+furious ecstasy. Ever and again he rose and struggled to stand upright
+and recover his grip of the reins. Ever and again he was pitched
+backward on to the seat where he swayed, perilously, with the swaying
+of the trap.
+
+Behind him, in the bottom of the trap, two young calves, netted in,
+pushed up their melancholy eyes and innocent noses through the mesh.
+Hurled against each other, flung rhythmically from side to side, they
+shared the blind trouble of the man and the torment of the mare.
+
+For the first two miles out of Morfe the trap charged, scattering men
+and beasts before it and taking the curves of the road at a tangent.
+With the third mile the pace slackened. The mare had slaked her thirst
+for the wind of her going and Greatorex's fury was appeased. At the
+risk of pitching forward over the step he succeeded in gathering up
+the reins as they neared the dangerous descent to Garthdale.
+
+He had now dropped from the violence of his ecstasy into a dream-like
+state in which he was borne swaying on a vague, interminable road that
+overhung, giddily, the bottomless pit and was flanked by hills that
+loomed and reeled, that oppressed him with their horrible immensity.
+
+He passed the bridge, the church, the Vicarage, the schoolhouse with
+its beckoning tree, and by the mercy of heaven he was unaware of them.
+
+At the turn of the road, On Upthorne hill, the mare, utterly sobered
+by the gradient, bowed her head and went with slow, wise feet, taking
+care of the trap and of her master.
+
+As for Greatorex, he had ceased to struggle. And at the door of his
+house his servant Maggie received him in her arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stayed in bed the whole of the next day, bearing his sickness,
+while Maggie waited on him. And in the evening when he lay under her
+hand, weak, but clear-headed, she delivered herself of what was in her
+mind.
+
+"Wall--yo may thank Gawd yo're laayin' saafe in yore bed, Jim
+Greatorex. It'd sarve yo right ef Daaisy 'd lat yo coom hoam oopside
+down wi yore 'ead draggin' in t' road. Soom daay yo'll bae laayin'
+there with yore nack brawken.
+
+"Ay, yo may well scootle oonder t' sheets, though there's nawbody
+but mae t' look at yo. Yo'd navver tooch anoother drap o' thot felthy
+stoof, Jimmy, ef yo could sea yoreself what a sight yo bae. Naw
+woonder Assy Gaale wouldn't 'ave yo, for all yo've laft her wi' t' lil
+baaby."
+
+"Who toald yo she wouldn't 'ave mae?"
+
+"Naybody toald mae. But I knaw. I knaw. I wouldn't 'ave yo myself ef
+yo aassked mae. I want naw droonkards to marry mae."
+
+Greatorex became pensive.
+
+"Yo'd bae freetened o' mae, Maaggie?" he asked.
+
+And Maggie, seeing her advantage, drove it home.
+
+"There's more than mae and Assy thot's freetened t' marry yo," she
+said.
+
+He darkened. "Yo 'oald yore tongue. Yo dawn't knaw what yo're saayin',
+my laass."
+
+"Dawn't I? There's more than mae thot knaws, Mr. Greatorex. Assy isn't
+t' awnly woon yo've maade talk o' t' plaace."
+
+"What do yo mane? Speaak oop. What d'yo mane----Yo knaw?"
+
+"Yo'd best aassk Naddy. He med tall ye 'oo was with yo laasst Soonda
+oop t' feald in t' girt byre."
+
+"Naddy couldn't sae 'oo 't was. Med a been Assy. Med a been yo."
+
+"'T wasn' mae, Mr. Greatorex, an' 't was n' Assy. Look yo 'ere. I tall
+yo Assy's freetened o' yo."
+
+"'Oo says she's freetened?"
+
+"I saays it. She's thot freetened thot she'd wash yore sweet'eart's
+dirty cleathes sooner 'n marry yo."
+
+"She doesn't wash them?"
+
+"Shea does. T' kape yore baaby, Jim Greatorex."
+
+With that she left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the next three months Greatorex was more than ever uneasy in his
+soul. The Sunday after Maggie's outburst he had sat all morning and
+afternoon in his parlor with his father's Bible. He had not even tried
+to see Alice Cartaret.
+
+For three months, off and on, in the intervals of seeing Alice, he
+longed, with an intense and painful longing, for his God. He longed
+for him just because he felt that he was utterly separated from him by
+his sin. He wanted the thing he couldn't have and wasn't fit to have.
+He wanted it, just as he wanted Alice Cartaret.
+
+And by his sin he did not mean his getting drunk. Greatorex did not
+think of God as likely to take his getting drunk very seriously,
+any more than he had seemed to take Maggie and Essy seriously. For
+Greatorex measured God's reprobation by his own repentance.
+
+His real offense against God was his offense against Alice Cartaret.
+He had got drunk in order to forget it.
+
+But that resource would henceforth be denied him. He was not going
+to get drunk any more, because he knew that if he did Alice Cartaret
+wouldn't marry him.
+
+Meanwhile he nourished his soul on its own longing, on the Psalms of
+David and on the Book of Job.
+
+Greatorex would have made a happy saint. But he was a most lugubrious
+sinner.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+The train from Durlingham rolled slowly into Reyburn station.
+
+Gwenda Cartaret leaned from the window of a third class carriage and
+looked up and down the platform. She got out, handing her suit-case
+to a friendly porter. Nobody had come to meet her. They were much too
+busy up at the Vicarage.
+
+From the next compartment there alighted a group of six persons, a
+lady in widow's weeds, an elderly lady and gentleman who addressed her
+affectionately as "Fanny, dear," and (obviously belonging to the pair)
+a very young man and a still younger woman.
+
+There was also a much older man, closely attached to them, but not
+quite so obviously related.
+
+These six people also looked up and down the platform, expecting to
+be met. They were interested in Gwenda Cartaret. They gazed at her as
+they had already glanced, surreptitiously and kindly, on the platform
+at Durlingham. Now they seemed to be saying to themselves that they
+were sure it must be she.
+
+Gwenda walked quickly away from them and disappeared through the
+booking-office into the station yard.
+
+And then Rowcliffe, who had apparently been hiding in the general
+waiting-room, came out on to the platform.
+
+The six fell upon him with cries of joy and affection.
+
+They were his mother, his paternal uncle and aunt, his two youngest
+cousins, and Dr. Harker, his best friend and colleague who had taken
+his place in January when he had been ill.
+
+They had all come down from Leeds for Rowcliffe's wedding.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe's trap and Peacock's from Garthdale stood side by side in
+the station-yard.
+
+Gwenda in Peacock's trap had left the town before she heard behind her
+the clanking hoofs of Rowcliffe's little brown horse.
+
+She thought, "He will pass in another minute. I shall see him."
+
+But she did not see him. All the way up Rathdale to Morfe the sound of
+the wheels and of the clanking hoofs pursued her, and Rowcliffe still
+hung back. He did not want to pass her.
+
+"Well," said Peacock, "thot beats mae. I sud navver a thought thot t'
+owd maare could a got away from t' doctor's horse. Nat ef e'd a mind
+t' paass 'er."
+
+"No," said Gwenda. She was thinking, "It's Mary. It's Mary. How could
+she, when she _knew_, when she was on her honor not to think of him?"
+
+And she remembered a conversation she had had with her stepmother two
+months ago, when the news came. (Robina had seized the situation at a
+glance and she had probed it to its core.)
+
+"You wanted him to marry Ally, did you? It wasn't much good you're
+going away if you left him with Mary."
+
+"But," she had said, "Mary knew."
+
+And Robina had answered, marvelously. "You should never have let her.
+It was her knowing that did it. You were three women to one man, and
+Mary was the one without a scruple. Do you suppose she'd think of Ally
+or of you, either?"
+
+And she had tried to be loyal to Mary and to Rowcliffe. She had said,
+"If we _were_ three, we all had our innings, and he made his choice."
+
+And Robina, "It was Mary did the choosing."
+
+She had added that Gwenda was a little fool, and that she ought to
+have known that though Mary was as meek as Moses she was that sort.
+
+She went on, thinking, to the steady clanking of the hoofs.
+
+"I suppose," she said to herself, "she couldn't help it."
+
+The lights of Morfe shone through the November darkness. The little
+slow mare crawled up the winding hill to the top of the Green;
+Rowcliffe's horse was slower. But no sooner had Peacock's trap passed
+the doctor's house on its way out of the village square, than the
+clanking hoofs went fast.
+
+Rowcliffe was free to go his own pace now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Which of you two is going to hook me up?" said Mary.
+
+She was in the Vicar's room, putting on her wedding-gown before the
+wardrobe glass. Her two sisters were dressing her.
+
+"I will," said Gwenda.
+
+"You'd better let me," said Alice. "I know where the eyes are."
+
+Gwenda lifted up the wedding-veil and held it ready. And while Alice
+pulled and fumbled Mary gazed at her own reflection and at Alice's.
+
+"You should have done as Mummy said and had your frock made in London,
+like Gwenda. They'd have given you a decent cut. You look as if you
+couldn't breathe."
+
+"My frock's all right," said Alice.
+
+Her fingers trembled as she strained at the hooks and eyes.
+
+And in the end it was Gwenda who hooked Mary up while Alice held the
+veil. She held it in front of her. The long streaming net shivered
+with the trembling of her hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wedding was at two o'clock. The church was crowded, so were the
+churchyard and the road beside the Vicarage and the bridge over the
+beck. Morfe and Greffington had emptied themselves into Garthdale.
+(Greffington had lent its organist.)
+
+It was only when it was all over that somebody noticed that Jim
+Greatorex was not there with the village choir. "Celebrating a bit too
+early," somebody said.
+
+And it was only when it was all over that Rowcliffe found Gwenda.
+
+He found her in the long, flat pause, the half-hour of profoundest
+realisation that comes when the bride disappears to put off her
+wedding-gown for the gown she will go away in. She had come out to the
+wedding-party gathered at the door, to tell them that the bride would
+soon be ready. Rowcliffe and Harker were standing apart, at the end of
+the path, by the door that led from the garden to the orchard.
+
+He came toward her. Harker drew back into the orchard. They followed
+him and found themselves alone.
+
+For ten minutes they paced the narrow flagged path under the orchard
+wall. And they talked, quickly, like two who have but a short time.
+
+"Well--so you've come back at last?"
+
+"At last? I haven't been gone six months."
+
+"You see, time feels longer to us down here."
+
+"That's odd. It goes faster."
+
+"Anyhow, you're not tired of London?"
+
+She stared at him for a second and then looked away.
+
+"Oh no, I'm not tired of it yet."
+
+They turned.
+
+"Shall you stop long here?"
+
+"I'm going back to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow? You're so glad to get back then?"
+
+"So glad to get back. I only came down for Mary's wedding."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"You won't come for anything but a wedding?"
+
+"A funeral might fetch me."
+
+"Well, Gwenda, I can't say you look as if London agreed with you
+particularly."
+
+"I can't say you look as if Garthdale agreed very well with you."
+
+"I'm only tired--tired to death."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"I want a holiday. And I'm going to get one--for a month. _You_ look
+as if you'd been burning the candle at both ends, if you'll forgive my
+saying so."
+
+"Oh--for all the candles I burn! It isn't such awfully hard work, you
+know."
+
+"What isn't?"
+
+"What I'm doing."
+
+He stopped straight in the narrow path and looked at her.
+
+"I say, what _are_ you doing?"
+
+She told him.
+
+His face expressed surprise and resentment and a curious wonder and
+bewilderment.
+
+"But I thought--I thought----They told me you were having no end of a
+time."
+
+"Tunbridge Wells isn't very amusing. No more is Lady Frances."
+
+Again he stopped dead and stared at her.
+
+"But they told me--I mean I thought you were in London with Mrs.
+Cartaret, all the time."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Did Papa tell you that?"
+
+"No. I don't know who told me. I--I got the impression." He almost
+stammered. "I must have misunderstood."
+
+She meditated.
+
+"It sounds awfully like Papa. He simply can't believe, poor thing,
+that I'd stick to anything so respectable."
+
+"Hah!" He laughed out his contempt for the Vicar. He had forgotten
+that he too had wondered.
+
+"Chuck it, Gwenda," he said, "chuck it."
+
+"I can't," she said. "Not yet. It's too lucrative."
+
+"But if it makes you seedy?"
+
+"It doesn't. It won't. It isn't hard work. Only----" She broke off.
+"It's time for you to go."
+
+"Steve! Steve!"
+
+Rowcliffe's youngest cousin was calling from the study window.
+
+"Come along. Mary's ready."
+
+"All right," he shouted. "I'm coming."
+
+But he stood still there at the end of the orchard under the gray
+wall.
+
+"Good-bye, Steven."
+
+Gwenda put out her hand.
+
+He held her with his troubled eyes. He did not see her hand. He saw
+her eyes only that troubled his.
+
+"I say, is it very beastly?"
+
+"No. Not a bit. You must go, Steven, you must go."
+
+"If I'd only known," he persisted.
+
+They were going down the path now toward the house.
+
+"I wouldn't have let you----"
+
+"You couldn't have stopped me."
+
+(It was what she had always said to all of them.)
+
+She smiled. "You didn't stop me going, you know."
+
+"If you'd only told me--"
+
+She smiled again, a smile as of infinite wisdom. "Dear Steven, there
+was nothing to tell."
+
+They had come to the door in the wall. It led into the garden. He
+opened to let her pass through.
+
+The wedding-party was gathered together on the flagged path before the
+house. It greeted them with laughter and cries, cheerfully ironic.
+
+The bride in her traveling dress stood on the threshold. Outside the
+carriage waited at the open gate.
+
+Rowcliffe took Mary's hand in his and they ran down the path.
+
+"He can sprint fast enough now," said Rowcliffe's uncle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But his youngest cousin and Harker, his best friend, had gone faster.
+They were waiting together on the bridge, and the girl had a slipper
+in her hand.
+
+"Were you ever," she said, "at such an awful wedding?"
+
+Harker saw nothing wrong about the wedding but he admitted that his
+experience was small.
+
+The youngest cousin was not appeased by his confession. She went on.
+
+"Why on earth didn't Steven _try_ to marry Gwenda?"
+
+"Not much good trying," said the doctor, "if she wouldn't have him."
+
+"You believe that silly story? I don't. Did you see her face?"
+
+Harker admitted that he had seen her face.
+
+And then, as the carriage passed, Rowcliffe's youngest cousin did an
+odd thing. She tossed the slipper over the bridge into the beck.
+
+Harker had not time to comment on her action. They were coming for him
+from the house.
+
+Rowcliffe's youngest sister-in-law had fainted away on the top
+landing.
+
+Everybody remembered then that it was she who had been in love with
+him.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+Alice had sent for Gwenda.
+
+Three months had gone by since her sister's wedding, and all her fears
+were gathered together in the fear of her father and of what was about
+to happen to her.
+
+And before Gwenda could come to her, Rowcliffe and Mary had come to
+the Vicar in his study. They had been a long time with him, and then
+Rowcliffe had gone out. They had sent him to Upthorne. And the two had
+gone into the dining-room and they had her before them there.
+
+It was early in a dull evening in February. The lamps were lit and in
+their yellow light Ally's face showed a pale and quivering exaltation.
+It was the face of a hunted and terrified thing that has gathered
+courage in desperation to turn and stand. She defended herself with
+sullen defiance and denial.
+
+It had come to that. For Ned, the shepherd at Upthorne, had told what
+he had seen. He had told it to Maggie, who told it to Mrs. Gale. He
+had told it to the head-gamekeeper at Garthdale Manor, who had a tale
+of his own that he too had told. And Dr. Harker had a tale. Harker had
+taken his friend's practice when Rowcliffe was away on his honeymoon.
+He had seen Alice and Greatorex on the moors at night as he had driven
+home from Upthorne. And he had told Rowcliffe what he had seen. And
+Rowcliffe had told Mary and the Vicar.
+
+And at the cottage down by the beck Essy Gale and her mother had
+spoken together, but what they had spoken and what they had heard they
+had kept secret.
+
+"I haven't been with him," said Alice for the third time. "I don't
+know what you're talking about."
+
+"Ally--there's no use your saying that when you've been seen with
+him."
+
+It was Mary who spoke.
+
+"I ha--haven't."
+
+"Don't lie," said the Vicar.
+
+"I'm not. They're l-l-lying," said Ally, shaken into stammering now.
+
+"Who do you suppose would lie about it?" Mary said.
+
+"Essy would."
+
+"Well--I may tell you, Ally, that you're wrong. Essy's kept your
+secret. So has Mrs. Gale. You ought to go down on your knees and thank
+the poor girl--after what you did to her."
+
+"It _was_ Essy. I know. She's mad to marry him herself, so she goes
+lying about _me_."
+
+"Nobody's lying about her," said the Vicar, "but herself. And she's
+condemning herself with every word she says. You'd better have left
+Essy out of it, my girl."
+
+"I tell you that she's lying if she says she's seen me with him. She's
+never seen me."
+
+"It wasn't Essy who saw you," Mary said.
+
+"Somebody else is lying then. Who was it?"
+
+"If you _must_ know who saw you," the Vicar said, "it was Dr. Harker.
+You were seen a month ago hanging about Upthorne alone with that
+fellow."
+
+"Only once," Ally murmured.
+
+"You own to 'once'? You--you----" he stifled with his fury. "Once is
+enough with a low blackguard like Greatorex. And you were seen more
+than once. You've been seen with him after dark." He boomed. "There
+isn't a poor drunken slut in the village who's disgraced herself like
+you."
+
+Mary intervened. "Sh--sh--Papa. They'll hear you in the kitchen."
+
+"They'll hear _her_." (Ally was moaning.) "Stop that whimpering and
+whining."
+
+"She can't help it."
+
+"She can help it if she likes. Come, Ally, we're all here----Poor
+Mary's come up and Steven. There are things we've got to know and
+I insist on knowing them. You've brought the most awful trouble and
+shame on me and your sister and brother-in-law, and the least you can
+do is to answer truthfully. I can't stand any more of this distressing
+altercation. I'm not going to extort any painful confession. You've
+only got to answer a simple Yes or No. Were you anywhere with Jim
+Greatorex before Dr. Harker saw you in December? Think before you
+speak. Yes or No."
+
+She thought.
+
+"N-no."
+
+"Remember, Ally," said Mary, "he saw you in November."
+
+"He didn't. Where?"
+
+The Vicar answered her. "At your sister's wedding."
+
+She recovered. "Of course he did. Jim Greatorex wasn't there, anyhow."
+
+"He was _not_."
+
+The stress had no significance for Ally. Her brain was utterly
+bewildered.
+
+"Well. You say you were never anywhere with Greatorex before December.
+You were not with him in--when was it, Mary?"
+
+"August," said Mary. "The end of August."
+
+Ally simply stared at him in her white bewilderment. Dates had no
+meaning as yet for her cowed brain.
+
+He helped her.
+
+"In the Three Fields. On a Sunday afternoon. Did you or did you not go
+into the barn?"
+
+At that she cried out with a voice of anguish. "No--No--No!"
+
+But Mary had her knife ready and she drove it home.
+
+"Ally--Ned Langstaff _saw_ you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Rowcliffe came back from Upthorne he found Alice cowering in a
+corner of the couch and crying out to her tormentors.
+
+"You brutes--you brutes--if Gwenda was here she wouldn't let you bully
+me!"
+
+Mary turned to her husband.
+
+"Steven--will you speak to her? She won't tell us anything. We've been
+at it more than half an hour."
+
+Rowcliffe stared at her and the Vicar with strong displeasure.
+
+"I should think you had by the look of her. Why can't you leave the
+poor child alone?"
+
+At the sound of his voice, the first voice of compassion that had yet
+spoken to her, Alice cried to him.
+
+"Steven! Steven! They've been saying awful things to me. Tell them it
+isn't true. Tell them you don't believe it."
+
+"There--there----" His voice stuck in his throat.
+
+He put his hand on her shoulder, standing between her and her father.
+
+"Tell them----" She looked up at him with her piteous eyes.
+
+"She's worried to death," said Rowcliffe. "You might have left it for
+to-night at any rate."
+
+"We couldn't, Steven, when you've sent for Greatorex. We _must_ get at
+the truth before he comes."
+
+Rowcliffe shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Have you brought him?" said the Vicar.
+
+"No, I haven't. He's in Morfe. I've sent word for him to come on
+here."
+
+Alice looked sharply at him.
+
+"What have you sent for _him_ for? Do you suppose _he'd_ give me
+away?"
+
+She began to weep softly.
+
+"All this," said Rowcliffe, "is awfully bad for her."
+
+"You don't seem to consider what it is for us."
+
+Rowcliffe took no notice of the Vicar.
+
+"Look here, Mary--you'd better take her upstairs before he comes. Put
+her to bed. Try and get her to sleep."
+
+"Very well. Come, Ally." Mary was gentler now.
+
+Then Ally became wonderful.
+
+She stood up and faced them all.
+
+"I won't go," she said. "I'll stay till he comes if I sit up all
+night. How do I know what you're going to do to him? Do you suppose
+I'm going to leave him with you? If anybody touches him I'll _kill_
+them."
+
+"Ally, dear----"
+
+Mary put her hand gently on her sister's arm to lead her from the
+room.
+
+Ally shook off the hand and turned on her in hysteric fury.
+
+"Stop pawing me--you! How dare you touch me after what you've said.
+Steven--she says I took Essy's lover from her."
+
+"I didn't, Ally. She doesn't know what she's saying."
+
+"You _did_ say it. She did, Steven. She said I ought to thank Essy for
+not splitting on me when I took her lover from her. As if _she_ could
+talk when _she_ took Steven from Gwenda."
+
+"Oh--Steven!"
+
+Rowcliffe shook his head at Mary, frowning, as a sign to her not to
+mind what Alice said.
+
+"You treat me as if I was dirt, but I'd have died rather than have
+done what she did."
+
+"Come, Alice, come. You know you don't mean it," said Rowcliffe,
+utterly gentle.
+
+"I do mean it! She sneaked you from behind Gwenda's back and lied to
+you to make you think she didn't care for you----"
+
+"Be quiet, you shameful girl!"
+
+"Be quiet yourself, Papa. I'm not as shameful as Molly is. I'm not as
+shameful as you are yourself. You killed Mother."
+
+"Oh--my--God----" The words were almost inaudible in the Vicar's
+shuddering groan.
+
+He advanced on her to turn her from the room. Ally sank on her sofa as
+she saw him come.
+
+Rowcliffe stepped between them.
+
+"For God's sake, sir----"
+
+Ally was struggling in hysterics now, choking between her piteous and
+savage cries.
+
+Rowcliffe laid her on the sofa and put a cushion under her head. When
+he tried to loosen her gown at her throat she screamed.
+
+"It's all right, Ally, it's all right."
+
+"_Is_ it? _Is_ it?" The Vicar hissed at him.
+
+"It won't be unless you leave her to me. If you go on bullying her
+much longer I won't answer for the consequences. You surely don't
+want----"
+
+"It's all right, Ally. Lie quiet, there--like that. That's a good
+girl. Nobody's going to worry you any more."
+
+He was kneeling by the sofa, pressing his hand to her forehead. Ally
+still sobbed convulsively, but she lay quiet. She closed her eyes
+under Rowcliffe's soothing hand.
+
+"You might go and see if you can find some salvolatile, Mary," he
+said.
+
+Mary went.
+
+The Vicar, who had turned his back on this scene, went, also, into his
+study.
+
+Ally still kept her eyes shut.
+
+"Has Mary gone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Papa?"
+
+"Yes. Lie still."
+
+She lay still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was the sound of wheels on the road. It brought Mary and the
+Vicar back into the room. The wheels stopped. The gate clanged.
+
+Rowcliffe rose.
+
+"That's Greatorex. I'll go to him."
+
+Ally lay very still now, still as a corpse, with closed eyes.
+
+The house door opened.
+
+Rowcliffe drew back into the room.
+
+"It isn't Greatorex," he said. "It's Gwenda."
+
+"Who sent for her?" said the Vicar.
+
+"I did," said Ally.
+
+She had opened her eyes.
+
+"Thank God for that, anyhow," said Rowcliffe.
+
+Mary and her father looked at each other. Neither of them seemed
+to want to go out to Gwenda. It struck Rowcliffe that the Vicar was
+afraid.
+
+They waited while Gwenda paid her driver and dismissed him. They could
+hear her speaking out there in the passage.
+
+The house door shut and she came to them. She paused in the doorway,
+looking at the three who stood facing her, embarrassed and expectant.
+She seemed to be thinking that it was odd that they should stand
+there. The door, thrown back, hid Alice, who lay behind it on her
+sofa.
+
+"Come in, Gwenda," said the Vicar with exaggerated suavity.
+
+She came in and closed the door. Then she saw Alice.
+
+She took the hand that Rowcliffe held out to her without looking at
+him. She was looking at Alice.
+
+Alice gave a low cry and struggled to her feet.
+
+"I thought you were never coming," she said.
+
+Gwenda held her in her arms. She faced them.
+
+"What have you been doing to her--all of you?"
+
+Rowcliffe answered. Though he was the innocent one of the three he
+looked the guiltiest. He looked utterly ashamed.
+
+"We've had rather a scene, and it's been a bit too much for her," he
+said.
+
+"So I see," said Gwenda. She had not greeted Mary or her father.
+
+"If you could persuade her to go upstairs to bed----"
+
+"I've told you I won't go till he comes," said Ally.
+
+She sat down on the sofa as a sign that she was going to wait.
+
+"Till who comes?" Gwenda asked.
+
+She stared at the three with a fierce amazement. And they were
+abashed.
+
+"She doesn't know, Steve," said Mary.
+
+"I certainly don't," said Gwenda.
+
+She sat down beside Ally.
+
+"Has anybody been bullying you, Ally?"
+
+"They've all been bullying me except Steven. Steven's been an angel.
+He doesn't believe what they say. Papa says I'm a shameful girl, and
+Mary says I took Jim Greatorex from Essy. And they think----"
+
+"Never mind what they think, darling."
+
+"I must protest----"
+
+The Vicar would have burst out again but that his son-in-law
+restrained him.
+
+"Better leave her to Gwenda," he said.
+
+He opened the door of the study. "Really, sir, I think you'd better.
+And you, too, Mary."
+
+And with her husband's compelling hand on her shoulder Mary went into
+the study.
+
+The Vicar followed them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the door closed on them Alice looked furtively around.
+
+"What is it, Ally?" Gwenda said.
+
+"Don't you know?" she whispered.
+
+"No. You haven't told me anything."
+
+"You don't know why I sent for you? Can't you think?"
+
+Gwenda was silent.
+
+"Gwenda--I'm in the most awful trouble----" She looked around again.
+Then she spoke rapidly and low with a fearful hoarse intensity.
+
+"I won't tell them, but I'll tell you. They've been trying to get it
+out of me by bullying, but I wasn't going to let them. Gwenda--they
+wanted to make me tell straight out, there--before Steven. And I
+wouldn't--I wouldn't. They haven't got a word out of me. But it's
+true, what they say."
+
+She paused.
+
+"About me."
+
+"My lamb, I don't know what they say about you."
+
+"They say that I'm going to----"
+
+Crouching where she sat, bent forward, staring with her stare, she
+whispered.
+
+"Oh--Ally--darling----"
+
+"I'm not ashamed, not the least little bit ashamed. And I don't care
+what they think of me. But I'm not going to tell them. I've told _you_
+because I know you won't hate me, you won't think me awful. But I
+won't tell Mary, and I won't tell Papa. Or Steven. If I do they'll
+make me marry him."
+
+"Was it--was it----"
+
+Ally's instinct heard the name that her sister spared her.
+
+"Yes--Yes--Yes. It is."
+
+She added, "I don't care."
+
+"Ally--what made you do it?"
+
+"I don't--know."
+
+"Was it because of Steven?"
+
+Ally raised her head.
+
+"No. It was _not_. Steven isn't fit to black his boots. I know
+that----"
+
+"But--you don't care for him?"
+
+"I did--I did. I do. I care awfully----"
+
+"Well----"
+
+"Oh, Gwenda, can they _make_ me marry him?"
+
+"You don't want to marry him?"
+
+Ally shook her head, slowly, forlornly.
+
+"I see. You're ashamed of him."
+
+"I'm _not_ ashamed. I told you I wasn't. It isn't that----"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I'm afraid."
+
+"Afraid----"
+
+"It isn't his fault. He wants to marry me. He wanted to all the time.
+He never meant that it should be like this. He asked me to marry him.
+Before it happened. Over and over again he asked me and I wouldn't
+have him."
+
+"Why wouldn't you?"
+
+"I've told you. Because I'm afraid."
+
+"Why are you afraid?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm not really afraid of _him_. I think I'm afraid of
+what he might do to me if I married him."
+
+"_Do_ to you?"
+
+"Yes. He might beat me. They always do, you know, those sort of men,
+when you marry them. I couldn't bear to be beaten."
+
+"Oh----" Gwenda drew in her breath.
+
+"He wouldn't do it, Gwenda, if he knew what he was about. But he might
+if he didn't. You see, they say he drinks. That's what frightens me.
+That's why I daren't tell Papa. Papa wouldn't care if he did beat me.
+He'd say it was my punishment."
+
+"If you feel like that about it you mustn't marry him."
+
+"They'll make me."
+
+"They shan't make you. I won't let them. It'll be all right, darling.
+I'll take you away with me to-morrow, and look after you, and keep you
+safe."
+
+"But--they'll have to know."
+
+"Yes. They'll have to know. I'll tell them."
+
+She rose.
+
+"Stay here," she said. "And keep quiet. I'm going to tell them now."
+
+"Not now--please, not now."
+
+"Yes. Now. It'll be all over. And you'll sleep."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went in to where they waited for her.
+
+Her father and her sister lifted their eyes to her as she came in.
+Rowcliffe had turned away.
+
+"Has she said anything?"
+
+(Mary spoke.)
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Vicar looked sternly at his second daughter.
+
+"She denies it?"
+
+"No, Papa. She doesn't deny it."
+
+He drove it home. "Has--she--confessed?"
+
+"She's told me it's true--what you think."
+
+In the silence that fell on the four Rowcliffe stayed where he stood,
+downcast and averted. It was as if he felt that Gwenda could have
+charged him with betrayal of a trust.
+
+The Vicar looked at his watch. He turned to Rowcliffe.
+
+"Is that fellow coming, or is he not?"
+
+"He won't funk it," said Rowcliffe.
+
+He turned. His eyes met Gwenda's. "I think I can answer for his
+coming."
+
+"Do you mean Jim Greatorex?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is it that he won't funk?"
+
+She looked from one to the other. Nobody answered her. It was as if
+they were, all three, afraid of her.
+
+"I see," she said. "If you ask me I think he'd much better not come."
+
+"My dear Gwenda----" The Vicar was deferent to the power that had
+dragged Ally's confession from her.
+
+"We _must_ get through with this. The sooner the better. It's what
+we're all here for."
+
+"I know. Still--I think you'll have to leave it."
+
+"Leave it?"
+
+"Yes, Papa."
+
+"We can't leave it," said Rowcliffe. "Something's got to be done."
+
+The Vicar groaned and Rowcliffe had pity on him.
+
+"If you'd like me to do it--I can interview him."
+
+"I wish you would."
+
+"Very well." He moved uneasily. "I'd better see him here, hadn't I?"
+
+"You'd better not see him anywhere," said Gwenda. "He can't marry
+her."
+
+She held them all three by the sheer shock of it.
+
+The Vicar spoke first. "What do you mean, 'he can't'? He _must_."
+
+"He must not. Ally doesn't want to marry him. He asked her long ago
+and she wouldn't have him."
+
+"Do you mean," said Rowcliffe, surprised out of his reticence, "before
+this happened?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And she wouldn't have him?"
+
+"No. She was afraid of him."
+
+"She was afraid of him--and yet----" It was Mary who spoke now.
+
+"Yes, Mary. And yet--she cared for him."
+
+The Vicar turned on her.
+
+"You're as bad as she is. How can you bring yourself to speak of
+it, if you're a modest girl? You've just told us that your sister's
+shameless. Are we to suppose that you're defending her?"
+
+"I am defending her. There's nobody else to do it. You've all set on
+her and tortured her----"
+
+"Not all, Gwenda," said Rowcliffe. But she did not heed him.
+
+"She'd have told you everything if you hadn't frightened her. You
+haven't had an atom of pity for her. You've never thought of _her_ for
+a minute. You've been thinking of yourselves. You might have killed
+her. And you didn't care."
+
+The Vicar looked at her.
+
+"It's you, Gwenda, who don't care."
+
+"About what she's done, you mean? I don't. You ought to be gentle with
+her, Papa. You drove her to it."
+
+Rowcliffe answered.
+
+"We'll not say what drove her, Gwenda."
+
+"She was driven," she said.
+
+"'Let no man say he is tempted of God when he is driven by his own
+lusts and enticed,'" said the Vicar.
+
+He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda.
+And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the
+first time the profound unspirituality of her father's face. She knew
+from what source his eyes drew their darkness. She understood the
+meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce
+lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache. And she conceived a horror of
+his fatherhood.
+
+"No man ought to say that of his own daughter. How does he know what's
+her own and what's his?" she said.
+
+Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration. She was
+terrible; she was fierce; she was mad. But it was the fierceness and
+the madness of pity and of compassion.
+
+She went on.
+
+"You've no business to be hard on her. You must have known."
+
+"I knew nothing," said the Vicar.
+
+He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.
+
+"You did know. You were warned. You were told not to shut her up. And
+you did shut her up. You can't blame her if she got away. You flung
+her to Jim Greatorex. There wasn't anybody who cared for her but him."
+
+"Cared for her!" He snarled his disgust.
+
+"Yes. Cared for her. You think that's horrible of her--that she should
+have gone to him--and yet you want to tie her to him when she's afraid
+of him. And I think it's horrible of you."
+
+"She must marry him." Mary spoke again. "She's brought it on herself,
+Gwenda."
+
+"She hasn't brought it on herself. And she shan't marry him."
+
+"I'm afraid she'll have to," Rowcliffe said.
+
+"She won't have to if I take her away somewhere and look after her. I
+mean to do it. I'll work for her. I'll take care of the child."
+
+"Oh, you--_you----!_" The Vicar waved her away with a frantic flapping
+of his hands.
+
+He turned to his son-in-law.
+
+"Rowcliffe--I beg you--will you use your influence?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+That drew her. "Steven--help me--can't you see how terrible it is if
+she's afraid of him?"
+
+"But _is_ she?"
+
+He looked at her with his miserable eyes, then turned them from her,
+considering gravely what she had said. It was then, while Rowcliffe
+was considering it, that the garden gate opened violently and fell to.
+
+They waited for the sound of the front door bell.
+
+Instead of it they heard two doors open and Ally's voice calling to
+Greatorex in the hall.
+
+As the Vicar flung himself from his study into the other room he saw
+Alice standing close to Greatorex by the shut door. Her lover's arms
+were round her.
+
+He laid his hands on them as if to tear them apart.
+
+"You shall not touch my daughter--until you've married her."
+
+The young man's right arm threw him off; his left arm remained round
+Alice.
+
+"It's yo' s'all nat tooch her, Mr. Cartaret," he said. "Ef yo' coom
+between her an' mae I s'all 'ave t' kill yo'. I'd think nowt of it.
+Dawn't yo' bae freetened, my laass," he murmured tenderly.
+
+The next instant he was fierce again.
+
+"An' look yo' 'ere, Mr. Cartaret. It was yo' who aassked mae t' marry
+Assy. Do yo' aassk mae t' marry Assy now? Naw! Assy may rot for all
+yo' care. (It's all right, my sweet'eart. It's all right.) I'd a
+married Assy right enoof ef I'd 'a' looved her. But do yo' suppawss
+I'd 'a' doon it fer yore meddlin'? Naw! An' yo' need n' aassk mae t'
+marry yore daughter--(There--there--my awn laass)--"
+
+"You are not going to be asked," said Gwenda. "You are not going to
+marry her."
+
+"Gwenda," said the Vicar, "you will be good enough to leave this to
+me."
+
+"It can't be left to anybody but Ally."
+
+"It s'all be laft to her," said Greatorex.
+
+He had loosened his hold of Alice, but he still stood between her and
+her father.
+
+"It's for her t' saay ef she'll 'aave mae."
+
+"She has said she won't, Mr. Greatorex."
+
+"Ay, she's said it to mae, woonce. But I rackon she'll 'ave mae now."
+
+"Not even now."
+
+"She's toald yo'?"
+
+He did not meet her eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She's toald yo' she's afraid o' mae?"
+
+"Yes. And you know why."
+
+"Ay. I knaw. Yo're afraid o' mae, Ally, because yo've 'eard I haven't
+always been as sober as I might bae; but yo're nat 'aalf as afraid o'
+mae, droonk or sober, as yo' are of yore awn faather. Yo' dawn't think
+I s'all bae 'aalf as 'ard an' crooil to yo' as yore faather is. She
+doosn't, Mr. Cartaret, an' thot's Gawd's truth."
+
+"I protest," said the Vicar.
+
+"Yo' stond baack, sir. It's for 'er t' saay."
+
+He turned to her, infinitely reverent, infinitely tender.
+
+"Will yo' staay with 'im? Or will yo' coom with mae?"
+
+"I'll come with you."
+
+With one shoulder turned to her father, she cowered to her lover's
+breast.
+
+"Ay, an' yo' need n' be afraaid I'll not bae sober. I'll bae sober
+enoof now. D'ye 'ear, Mr. Cartaret? Yo' need n' bae afraaid, either.
+I'll kape sober. I'd kape sober all my life ef it was awnly t' spite
+yo'. An' I'll maake 'er 'appy. For I rackon theer's noothin' I could
+think on would spite yo' moor. Yo' want mae t' marry 'er t' poonish
+'er. _I_ knaw."
+
+"That'll do, Greatorex," said Rowcliffe.
+
+"Ay. It'll do," said Greatorex with a grin of satisfaction.
+
+He turned to Alice, the triumph still flaming in his face. "Yo're
+_nat_ afraaid of mae?"
+
+"No," she said gently. "Not now."
+
+"Yo navver were," said Greatorex; and he laughed.
+
+
+That laugh was more than Mr. Cartaret could bear. He thrust out his
+face toward Greatorex.
+
+Rowcliffe, watching them, saw that he trembled and that the
+thrust-out, furious face was flushed deeply on the left side.
+
+The Vicar boomed.
+
+"You will leave my house this instant, Mr. Greatorex. And you will
+never come into it again."
+
+But Greatorex was already looking for his cap.
+
+"I'll navver coom into et again," he assented placably.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were no prayers at the Vicarage that night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. Greatorex was gone. Gwenda was upstairs
+helping Alice to undress. Mary sat alone in the dining-room, crying
+steadily. The Vicar and Rowcliffe were in the study.
+
+In all this terrible business of Alice, the Vicar felt that his
+son-in-law had been a comfort to him.
+
+"Rowcliffe," he said suddenly, "I feel very queer."
+
+"I don't wonder, sir. I should go to bed if I were you."
+
+"I shall. Presently."
+
+The one-sided flush deepened and darkened as he brooded. It fascinated
+Rowcliffe.
+
+"I think it would be better," said the Vicar slowly, "if I left the
+parish. It's the only solution I can see."
+
+He meant to the problem of his respectability.
+
+Rowcliffe said yes, perhaps it would be better.
+
+He was thinking that it would solve his problem too.
+
+For he knew that there would be a problem if Gwenda came back to her
+father.
+
+The Vicar rose heavily and went to his roll-top desk. He opened it and
+began fumbling about in it, looking for things.
+
+He was doing this, it seemed to his son-in-law, for quite a long time.
+
+But it was only eleven o'clock when Mary heard sounds in the study
+that terrified her, of a chair overturned and of a heavy body falling
+to the floor. And then Steven called to her.
+
+She found him kneeling on the floor beside her father, loosening his
+clothes. The Vicar's face, which she discerned half hidden between
+the bending head of Rowcliffe and his arms, was purple and horribly
+distorted.
+
+Rowcliffe did not look at her.
+
+"He's in a fit," he said. "Go upstairs and fetch Gwenda. And for God's
+sake don't let Ally see him."
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+The village knew all about Jim Greatorex and Alice Cartaret now. Where
+their names had been whispered by two or three in the bar of the Red
+Lion, over the post office counter, in the schoolhouse, in the smithy,
+and on the open road, the loud scandal of them burst with horror.
+
+For the first time in his life Jim Greatorex was made aware that
+public opinion was against him. Wherever he showed himself the men
+slunk from him and the women stared. He set his teeth and held his
+chin up and passed them as if he had not seen them. He was determined
+to defy public opinion.
+
+Standing in the door of his kinsman's smithy, he defied it.
+
+It was the day before his wedding. He had been riding home from Morfe
+Market and his mare Daisy had cast a shoe coming down the hill. He
+rode her up to the smithy and called for Blenkiron, shouting his need.
+
+Blenkiron came out and looked at him sulkily.
+
+"I'll shoe t' maare," he said, "but yo'll stand outside t' smithy, Jim
+Greatorex."
+
+For answer Jim rode the mare into the smithy and dismounted there.
+
+Then Blenkiron spoke.
+
+"You'd best 'ave staayed where yo' were. But yo've coom in an' yo'
+s'all 'ave a bit o' my toongue. To-morra's yore weddin' day, I 'ear?"
+
+Jim intimated that if it was his wedding day it was no business of
+Blenkiron's.
+
+"Wall," said the blacksmith, "ef they dawn't gie yo' soom roough music
+to-morra night, it'll bae better loock than yo' desarve--t' two o'
+yo'."
+
+Greatorex scowled at his kinsman.
+
+"Look yo' 'ere, John Blenkiron, I warn yo'. Any man in t' Daale thot
+speaaks woon word agen my wife 'e s'all 'ave 'is nack wroong."
+
+"An' 'ow 'bout t' women, Jimmy? There'll bae a sight o' nacks fer yo'
+t' wring, I rackon. They'll 'ave soomat t' saay to 'er, yore laady."
+
+"T' women? T' women? Domned sight she'll keer for what they saay.
+There is n' woon o' they bitches as is fit t' kneel in t' mood to 'er
+t' tooch t' sawle of 'er boots."
+
+Blenkiron peered up at him from the crook of the mare's hind leg.
+
+"Nat Assy Gaale?" he said.
+
+"Assy Gaale? 'Oo's she to mook _'er_ naame with 'er dirty toongue?"
+
+"Yo'll not goa far thot road, Jimmy. 'Tis wi' t' womenfawlk yo'll
+'aave t' racken."
+
+He knew it.
+
+The first he had to reckon with was Maggie.
+
+Maggie, being given notice, had refused to take it.
+
+"Yo' can please yoresel, Mr. Greatorex. I can goa. I can goa. But ef I
+goa yo'll nat find anoother woman as'll coom to yo'. There's nat woon
+as'll keer mooch t' work for _yore_ laady."
+
+"Wull yo' wark for 'er, Maaggie?" he had said.
+
+And Maggie, with a sullen look and hitching her coarse apron, had
+replied remarkably:
+
+"Ef Assy Gaale can wash fer er I rackon _I_ can shift to baake an'
+clane."
+
+"Wull yo' waait on 'er?" he had persisted.
+
+Maggie had turned away her face from him.
+
+
+"Ay, I'll waait on 'er," she said.
+
+And Maggie had stayed to bake and clean. Rough and sullen, without a
+smile, she had waited on young Mrs. Greatorex.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Alice was not afraid of Maggie. She was not going to admit for a
+moment that she was afraid of her. She was not going to admit that she
+was afraid of anything but one thing--that her father would die.
+
+If he died she would have killed him.
+
+Or, rather, she and Greatorex would have killed him between them.
+
+This statement Ally held to and reiterated and refused to qualify.
+
+For Alice at Upthorne had become a creature matchless in cunning and
+of subtle and marvelous resource. She had been terrified and tortured,
+shamed and cowed. She had been hounded to her marriage and conveyed
+with an appalling suddenness to Upthorne, that place of sinister and
+terrible suggestion, and the bed in which John Greatorex had died had
+been her marriage bed. Her mind, like a thing pursued and in deadly
+peril, took instantaneously a line. It doubled and dodged; it hid
+itself; its instinct was expert in disguises, in subterfuges and
+shifts.
+
+In her soul she knew that she was done for if she once admitted and
+gave in to her fear of Upthorne and of her husband's house, or if
+she were ever to feel again her fear of Greatorex, which was the most
+intolerable of all her fears. It was as if Nature itself were aware
+that, if Ally were not dispossessed of that terror before Greatorex's
+child was born her own purpose would be insecure; as if the unborn
+child, the flesh and blood of the Greatorexes that had entered into
+her, protested against her disastrous cowardice.
+
+So, without Ally being in the least aware of it, Ally's mind,
+struggling toward sanity, fabricated one enormous fear, the fear of
+her father's death, a fear that she could own and face, and set it up
+in place of that secret and dangerous thing which was the fear of life
+itself.
+
+Ally, insisting a dozen times a day that she had killed poor Papa,
+was completely taken in by this play of her surreptitiously
+self-preserving soul. Even Rowcliffe was taken in by it. He called
+it a morbid obsession. And he began to wonder whether he had not been
+mistaken about Ally after all, whether her nature was not more subtle
+and sensitive than he had guessed, more intricately and dangerously
+mixed.
+
+For the sadness of the desolate land, of the naked hillsides, of the
+moor marshes with their ghostly mists; the brooding of the watchful,
+solitary house, the horror of haunted twilights, of nightfall and of
+midnights now and then when Greatorex was abroad looking after his
+cattle and she lay alone under the white ceiling that sagged above her
+bed and heard the weak wind picking at the pane; her fear of Maggie
+and of what Maggie had been to Greatorex and might be again; her fear
+of the savage, violent and repulsive elements in the man who was
+her god; her fear of her own repulsion; the tremor of her recoiling
+nerves; premonitions of her alien blood, the vague melancholy of her
+secret motherhood; they were all mingled together and hidden from her
+in the vast gloom of her one fear.
+
+And once the dominant terror was set up, her instinct found a thousand
+ways of strengthening it. Through her adoration of her lover her mind
+had become saturated with his mournful consciousness of sin. In their
+moments of contrition they were both convinced that they would be
+punished. But Ally had borne her sin superbly; she had declared that
+it was hers and hers only, and that she and not Greatorex would be
+punished. And now the punishment had come. She persuaded herself that
+her father's death was the retribution Heaven required.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And all the time, through the perilous months, Nature, mindful of her
+own, tightened her hold on Ally through Ally's fear. Ally was afraid
+to be left alone with it. Therefore she never let Greatorex out of her
+sight if she could help it. She followed him from room to room of the
+sad house where he was painting and papering and whitewashing to make
+it fine for her. Where he was she had to be. Stowed away in some swept
+corner, she would sit with her sweet and sorrowful eyes fixed on him
+as he labored. She trotted after him through the house and out into
+the mistal and up the Three Fields. She would crouch on a heap of
+corn-sacks, wrapped in a fur coat, and watch him at his work in the
+stable and the cow-byre. In her need to immortalise this passion she
+could not have done better. Her utter dependence on him flattered and
+softened the distrustful, violent and headstrong man. Her one chance,
+and Ally knew it, was to cling. If she had once shamed him by her
+fastidious shrinking she would have lost him; for, as Mrs. Gale had
+told her long ago, you could do nothing with Jimmy when he was shamed.
+Maggie, for all her coarseness, had contrived to shame him; so had
+Essy in her freedom and her pride. Ally's clinging, so far from
+irritating or obstructing him, drew out the infinite pity and
+tenderness he had for all sick and helpless things. He could no more
+have pushed little Ally from him than he could have kicked a mothering
+ewe, or stamped on a new dropped lamb. He would call to her if she
+failed to come. He would hold out his big hand to her as he would
+have held it to a child. Her smallness, her fineness and fragility
+enchanted him. The palms of her hands had the smoothness and softness
+of silk, and they made a sound like silk as they withdrew themselves
+with a lingering, stroking touch from his. He still felt, with a
+fearful and admiring wonder, the difference of her flesh from his.
+
+To be sure Jim's tenderness was partly penitential. Only it was Ally
+alone who had moved him to a perfect and unbearable contrition. For
+the two women whom he had loved and left Greatorex had felt nothing
+but a passing pang. For the woman he had made his wife he would go
+always with a wound in his soul.
+
+And with Ally, too, the supernatural came to Nature's aid. Her fear
+had a profound strain of the uncanny in it, and Jim's bodily presence
+was her shelter from her fear. And as it bound them flesh to flesh,
+closer and closer, it wedded them in one memory, one consolation and
+one soul.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day she had followed him into the stable, and on the window-sill,
+among all the cobwebs where it had been put away and forgotten, she
+found the little bottle of chlorodyne.
+
+She took it up, and Jim scolded her gently as if she had been a child.
+
+"Yore lil haands is always maddlin'. Yo' put thot down."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's poison, is thot. There's enoof there t' kill a maan. Yo' put it
+down whan I tall yo'."
+
+She put it down obediently in its place on the window-sill among the
+cobwebs.
+
+He made a nest for her of clean hay, where she sat and watched him
+as he gave Daisy her feed of corn. She watched every movement of him,
+every gesture, thoughtful and intent.
+
+"I can't think, Jim, why I ever was afraid of you. _Was_ I afraid of
+you?"
+
+Greatorex grinned.
+
+"Yo' used t' saay yo' were."
+
+"How silly of me. And I used to be afraid of Maggie."
+
+"_I_'ve been afraaid of Maaggie afore now. She's got a roough side t'
+'er toongue and she can use it. But she'll nat use it on yo'. Yo've
+naw call to be afraaid ef annybody. There isn't woon would hoort a lil
+thing like yo'."
+
+"They say things about me. I know they do."
+
+"And yo' dawn't keer what they saay, do yo'?"
+
+"I don't care a rap. But I think it's cruel of them, all the same."
+
+"But yo're happy enoof, aren't yo'--all the same?"
+
+"I'm very happy. At least I would be if it wasn't for poor Papa. It
+wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for what we did."
+
+Wherever they started, whatever round they fetched, it was to this
+that they returned.
+
+And always Jim met it with the same answer:
+
+"'Tisn' what we doon; 'tis what 'e doon. An' annyhow it had to bae."
+
+Every week Rowcliffe came to see her and every week Jim said to him:
+"She's at it still and I caan't move 'er."
+
+And every week Rowcliffe said: "Wait. She'll be better before long."
+
+And Jim waited.
+
+He waited till one afternoon in February, when they were again in the
+stable together. He had turned his back on her for a moment.
+
+When he looked round she was gone from her seat on the cornsacks. She
+was standing by the window-sill with the bottle of chlorodyne in her
+hand and at her lips. He thought she was smelling it.
+
+She tilted her head back. Her eyes slewed sidelong toward him. They
+quivered as he leaped to her.
+
+She had not drunk a drop and he knew it, but she clutched her bottle
+with a febrile obstinacy. He had to loosen her little fingers one by
+one.
+
+He poured the liquid into the stable gutter and flung the bottle on to
+the dung heap in the mistal.
+
+"What were you doing wi' thot stoof?" he said.
+
+"I don't know. I was thinking of Papa."
+
+After that he never left her until Rowcliffe came.
+
+Rowcliffe said: "She's got it into her head he's going to die, and she
+thinks she's killed him. You'd better let me take her to see him."
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+The Vicar had solved his problem by his stroke, but not quite as he
+had anticipated.
+
+Nothing had ever turned out as he had planned or thought or willed. He
+had planned to leave the parish. He had thought that in his wisdom he
+had saved Alice by shutting her up in Garthdale. He had thought that
+she was safe at choir-practice with Jim Greatorex. He had thought
+that Mary was devoted to him and that Gwenda was capable of all
+disobedience and all iniquity. She had gone away and he had forbidden
+her to come back again. He had also forbidden Greatorex to enter his
+house.
+
+And Greatorex was entering it every day, for news of him to take to
+Alice at Upthorne. Gwenda had come back and would never go again, and
+it was she and not Mary who had proved herself devoted. And it was not
+his wisdom but Greatorex's scandalous passion for her that had saved
+Alice. As for leaving the parish because of the scandal, the Vicar
+would never leave it now. He was tied there in his Vicarage by his
+stroke.
+
+It left him with a paralysis of the right side and an utter confusion
+and enfeeblement of intellect.
+
+In three months he recovered partially from the paralysis. But the
+flooding of his brain had submerged or carried away whole tracts
+of recent memory, and the last vivid, violent impression--Alice's
+affair--was wiped out.
+
+There was no reason why he should not stay on. What was left of his
+memory told him that Alice was at the Vicarage, and he was worried
+because he never saw her about.
+
+He did not know that the small gray house above the churchyard had
+become a place of sinister and scandalous tragedy; that his name and
+his youngest daughter's name were bywords in three parishes; and that
+Alice had been married in conspicuous haste by the horrified Vicar
+of Greffington to a man whom only charitable people regarded as her
+seducer.
+
+And the order of time had ceased for him with this breach in the
+sequence of events. He had a dim but enduring impression that it
+was always prayer time. No hours marked the long stretches of blank
+darkness and of confused and crowded twilight. Only, now and then, a
+little light pulsed feebly in his brain, a flash that renewed itself
+day by day; and day by day, in a fresh experience, he was aware that
+he was ill.
+
+It was as if the world stood still and his mind moved. It "wandered,"
+as they said. And in its wanderings it came upon strange gaps and
+hollows and fantastic dislocations, landslips where a whole foreground
+had given way. It looked at these things with a serene and dreamlike
+wonder and passed on.
+
+And in the background, on some half-lit, isolated tract of memory,
+raised above ruin, and infinitely remote, he saw the figure of his
+youngest daughter. It was a girlish, innocent figure, and though,
+because of the whiteness of its face, he confused it now and then with
+the figure of Alice's dead mother, his first wife, he was aware that
+it was really Alice.
+
+This figure of Alice moved him with a vague and tender yearning.
+
+What puzzled and worried him was that in his flashes of luminous
+experience he didn't see her there. And it was then that the Vicar
+would make himself wonderful and piteous by asking, a dozen times a
+day, "Where's Ally?"
+
+For by the stroke that made him wonderful and piteous the Vicar's
+character and his temperament were changed. Nothing was left of Ally's
+tyrant and Robina's victim, the middle-aged celibate, filled with the
+fury of frustration and profoundly sorry for himself. His place was
+taken by a gentle old man, an old man of an appealing and childlike
+innocence, pure from all lust, from all self-pity, enjoying, actually
+enjoying, the consideration that his stroke had brought him.
+
+He was changed no less remarkably in his affections. He was utterly
+indifferent to Mary, whom he had been fond of. He yearned for Alice,
+whom he had hated. And he clung incessantly to Gwenda, whom he had
+feared.
+
+When he looked round in his strange and awful gentleness and said,
+"Where's Ally?" his voice was the voice of a mother calling for her
+child. And when he said, "Where's Gwenda?" it was the voice of a child
+calling for its mother.
+
+And as he continually thought that Alice was at the Vicarage when she
+was at Upthorne, so he was convinced that Gwenda had left him when she
+was there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe judged that this confusion of the Vicar's would be favorable
+to his experiment.
+
+And it was.
+
+When Mr. Cartaret saw his youngest daughter for the first time since
+their violent rupture he gazed at her tranquilly and said, "And where
+have _you_ been all this time?"
+
+"Not very far, Papa."
+
+He smiled sweetly.
+
+"I thought you'd run away from your poor old father. Let me see--was
+it Ally? My memory's going. No. It was Gwenda who ran away. Wasn't it
+Gwenda?"
+
+"Yes, Papa."
+
+"Well--she must come back again. I can't do without Gwenda."
+
+"She has come back, Papa."
+
+"She's always coming hack. But she'll go away again. Where is she?"
+
+"I'm here, Papa dear."
+
+"Here one minute," said the Vicar, "and gone the next."
+
+"No--no. I'm not going. I shall never go away and leave you."
+
+"So you say," said the Vicar. "So you say."
+
+He looked round uneasily.
+
+"It's time for Ally to go to bed. Has Essy brought her milk?"
+
+His head bowed to his breast. He fell into a doze. Ally watched.
+
+And in the outer room Gwenda and Steven Rowcliffe talked together.
+
+"Steven--he's always going on like that. It breaks my heart."
+
+"I know, dear, I know."
+
+"Do you think he'll ever remember?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't think so."
+
+Then they sat together without speaking. She was thinking: "How good
+he is. Surely I may love him for his goodness?" And he that the old
+man in there had solved _his_ problem, but that his own had been taken
+out of his hands.
+
+And he saw no solution.
+
+If the Vicar had gone away and taken Gwenda with him, that would have
+solved it. God knew he had been willing enough to solve it that way.
+
+But here they were, flung together, thrust toward each other when they
+should have torn themselves apart; tied, both of them, to a place they
+could not leave. Week in, week out, he would be obliged to see her
+whether he would or no. And when her tired face rebuked his senses,
+she drew him by her tenderness; she held him by her goodness. There
+was only one thing for him to do--to clear out. It was his plain and
+simple duty. If it hadn't been for Alice and for that old man he
+would have done it. But, because of them, it was his still plainer
+and simpler duty to stay where he was, to stick to her and see her
+through.
+
+He couldn't help it if his problem was taken out of his hands.
+
+They started. They looked at each other and smiled their strained and
+tragic smile.
+
+In the inner room the Vicar was calling for Gwenda.
+
+It was prayer time, he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rowcliffe had to drive Alice back that night to Upthorne.
+
+"Well," he said, as they left the Vicarage behind them, "you see he
+isn't going to die."
+
+"No," said Alice. "But he's out of his mind. I haven't killed him.
+I've done worse. I've driven him mad."
+
+And she stuck to it. She couldn't afford to part with her fear--yet.
+
+Rowcliffe was distressed at the failure of his experiment. He told
+Greatorex that there was nothing to be done but to wait patiently till
+June. Then--perhaps--they would see.
+
+In his own mind he had very little hope. He said to himself that he
+didn't like the turn Ally's obsession had taken. It was _too_ morbid.
+
+But when May came Alice lay in the big bed under the sagging ceiling
+with a lamentably small baby in her arms, and Greatorex sat beside her
+by the hour together, with his eyes fixed on her white face. Rowcliffe
+had told him to be on the lookout for some new thing or for some more
+violent sign of the old obsession. But nine days had passed and he had
+seen no sign. Her eyes looked at him and at her child with the same
+lucid, drowsy ecstasy.
+
+And in nine days she had only asked him once if he knew how poor Papa
+was?
+
+Her fear had left her. It had served its purpose.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+There was no prayer time at the Vicarage any more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no more time at all there as the world counts time.
+
+The hours no longer passed in a procession marked by distinguishable
+days. They rolled round and round in an interminable circle,
+monotonously renewed, monotonously returning upon itself. The Vicar
+was the center of the circle. The hours were sounded and measured by
+his monotonously recurring needs. But the days were neither measured
+nor marked. They were all of one shade. There was no difference
+between Sunday and Monday in the Vicarage now. They talked of the
+Vicar's good days and his bad days, that was all.
+
+For in this house where time had ceased they talked incessantly of
+time. But it was always _his_ time; the time for his early morning
+cup of tea; the time for his medicine; the time for his breakfast;
+the time for reading his chapter to him while he dozed; the time for
+washing him, for dressing him, for taking him out (he went out now,
+in a wheel-chair drawn by Peacock's pony); the time for his medicine
+again; his dinner time; the time for his afternoon sleep; his
+tea-time; the time for his last dose of medicine; his supper time and
+his time for being undressed and put to bed. And there were several
+times during the night which were his times also.
+
+The Vicar had desired supremacy in his Vicarage and he was at last
+supreme. He was supreme over his daughter Gwenda. The stubborn,
+intractable creature was at his feet. She was his to bend or break
+or utterly destroy. She who was capable of anything was capable of an
+indestructible devotion. His times, the relentless, the monotonously
+recurring, were her times too.
+
+If it had not been for Steven Rowcliffe she would have had none to
+call her own (except night time, when the Vicar slept). But Rowcliffe
+had kept to his days for visiting the Vicarage. He came twice or
+thrice a week; not counting Wednesdays. Only, though Mary did not know
+it, he came as often as not in the evenings at dusk, just after the
+Vicar had been put to bed. When it was wet he sat in the dining-room
+with Gwenda. When it was fine he took her out on to the moor under
+Karva.
+
+They always went the same way, up the green sheep-track that they
+knew; they always turned back at the same place, where the stream he
+had seen her jumping ran from the hill; and they always took the same
+time to go and turn. They never stopped and never lingered; but went
+always at the same sharp pace, and kept the same distance from each
+other. It was as if by saying to themselves, "Never any further than
+the stream; never any longer than thirty-five minutes; never any
+nearer than we are now," they defined the limits of their whole
+relation. Sometimes they hardly spoke as they walked. They parted with
+casual words and with no touching of their hands and with the same
+thought unspoken--"Till the next time."
+
+But these times which were theirs only did not count as time. They
+belonged to another scale of feeling and another order of reality.
+Their moments had another pulse, another rhythm and vibration. They
+burned as they beat. While they lasted Gwenda's life was lived with an
+intensity that left time outside its measure. Through this intensity
+she drew the strength to go on, to endure the unendurable with joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Rowcliffe could not endure the unendurable at all. He was savage
+when he thought of it. That was her life and she would never get away
+from it. She, who was born for the wild open air and for youth and
+strength and freedom, would be shut up in that house and tied to that
+half-paralyzed, half-imbecile old man forever. It was damnable. And
+he, Rowcliffe, could have prevented it if he had only known. And if
+Mary had not lied to him.
+
+And when his common sense warned him of their danger, and his
+conscience reproached him with leading her into it, he said to
+himself, "I can't help it if it is dangerous. It's been taken out of
+my hands. If somebody doesn't drag her out of doors, she'll get ill.
+If somebody doesn't talk to her she'll grow morbid. And there's nobody
+but me."
+
+He sheltered himself in the immensity of her tragedy. Its darkness
+covered them. Her sadness and her isolation sanctified them. Alice had
+her husband and her child. Mary had--all she wanted. Gwenda had nobody
+but him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had never had anybody but him. For in the beginning the Vicar and
+his daughters had failed to make friends among their own sort. Up in
+the Dale there had been few to make, and those few Mr. Cartaret had
+contrived to alienate one after another by his deplorable legend and
+by the austere unpleasantness of his personality. People had not been
+prepared for intimacy with a Vicar separated so outrageously from his
+third wife. Nobody knew whether it was he or his third wife who had
+been outrageous, but the Vicar's manner was not such as to procure for
+him the benefit of any doubt. The fact remained that the poor man
+was handicapped by an outrageous daughter, and Alice's behavior was
+obviously as much the Vicar's fault as his misfortune. And it had been
+felt that Gwenda had not done anything to redeem her father's and her
+sister's eccentricities, and that Mary, though she was a nice girl,
+had hardly done enough. For the last eighteen months visits at the
+Vicarage had been perfunctory and very brief, month by month they had
+diminished, and before Mary's marriage they had almost ceased.
+
+Still, Mary's marriage had appeased the parish. Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe
+had atoned for the third Mrs. Cartaret's suspicious absence and for
+Gwenda Cartaret's flight. Lady Frances Gilbey's large wing had further
+protected Gwenda.
+
+Then, suddenly, the tale of Alice Cartaret and Greatorex went round,
+and it was as if the Vicarage had opened and given up its secret.
+
+At first, the sheer extremity of his disaster had sheltered the Vicar
+from his own scandal. Through all Garthdale and Rathdale, in the
+Manors and the Lodges and the Granges, in the farmhouses and the
+cottages, in the inns and little shops, there was a stir of pity and
+compassion. The people who had left off calling at the Vicarage called
+again with sympathy and kind inquiries. They were inclined to forget
+how impossible the Cartarets had been. They were sorry for Gwenda. But
+they had been checked in their advances by Gwenda's palpable recoil.
+She had no time to give to callers. Her father had taken all her time.
+The callers considered themselves absolved from calling.
+
+Slowly, month by month, the Vicarage was drawn back into its
+silence and its loneliness. It assumed, more and more, its aspect of
+half-sinister, half-sordid tragedy. The Vicar's calamity no longer
+sheltered him. It took its place in the order of accepted and
+irremediable events.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only the village preserved its sympathy alive. The village, that
+obscure congregated soul, long-suffering to calamity, welded together
+by saner instincts and profound in memory, the soul that inhabited
+the small huddled, humble houses, divided from the Vicarage by no more
+than the graveyard of its dead, the village remembered and it knew.
+
+It remembered how the Vicar had come and gone over its thresholds,
+how no rain nor snow nor storm had stayed him in his obstinate and
+punctual visiting. And whereas it had once looked grimly on its Vicar,
+it looked kindly on him now. It endured him for his daughter Gwenda's
+sake, in spite of what it knew.
+
+For it knew why the Vicar's third wife had left him. It knew why Alice
+Cartaret had gone wrong with Greatorex. It knew what Gwenda Cartaret
+had gone for when she went away. It knew why and how Dr. Rowcliffe had
+married Mary Cartaret. And it knew why, night after night, he was to
+be seen coming and going on the Garthdale road.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The village knew more about Rowcliffe and Gwenda Cartaret than
+Rowcliffe's wife knew.
+
+For Rowcliffe's wife's mind was closed to this knowledge by a certain
+sensual assurance. When all was said and done, it was she and not
+Gwenda who was Rowcliffe's wife. And she had other grounds for
+complacency. Her sister, a solitary Miss Cartaret, stowed away in
+Garth Vicarage, was of no account. She didn't matter. And as Mary
+Cartaret Mary would have mattered even less. But Steven Rowcliffe's
+professional reputation served him well. He counted. People who had
+begun by trusting him had ended by liking him, and in two years' time
+his social value had become apparent. And as Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe
+Mary had a social value too.
+
+But while Steven, who had always had it, took it for granted and never
+thought about it, Mary could think of nothing else. Her social value,
+obscured by the terrible two years in Garthdale, had come to her as a
+discovery and an acquisition. For all her complacency, she could not
+regard it as a secure thing. She was sensitive to every breath that
+threatened it; she was unable to forget that, if she was Steven
+Rowcliffe's wife, she was Alice Greatorex's sister.
+
+Even as Mary Cartaret she had been sensitive to Alice. But in those
+days of obscurity and isolation it was not in her to cast Alice off.
+She had felt bound to Alice, not as Gwenda was bound, but pitiably,
+irrevocably, for better, for worse. The solidarity of the family had
+held.
+
+She had not had anything to lose by sticking to her sister. Now it
+seemed to her that she had everything to lose. The thought of Alice
+was a perpetual annoyance to her.
+
+For the neighborhood that had received Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe had
+barred her sister.
+
+As long as Alice Greatorex lived at Upthorne Mary went in fear.
+
+This fear was so intolerable to her that at last she spoke of it to
+Rowcliffe.
+
+They were sitting together in his study after dinner. The two
+armchairs were always facing now, one on each side of the hearth.
+
+"I wish I knew what to do about Alice," she said.
+
+"What to _do_ about her?"
+
+"Yes. Am I to have her at the house or not?"
+
+He stared.
+
+"Of course you're to have her at the house."
+
+"I mean when we've got people here. I can't ask her to meet them."
+
+"You must ask her. It's the very least you can do for her."
+
+"People aren't going to like it, Steven."
+
+"People have got to stick a great many things they aren't going to
+like. I'm continually meeting people I'd rather not meet. Aren't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid poor Alice is--"
+
+"Is what?"
+
+"Well, dear, a little impossible, to say the least of it. Isn't she?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't see anything impossible about 'poor Alice.' I never did."
+
+"It's nice of you to say so."
+
+He maintained himself in silence under her long gaze.
+
+"Steven," she said, "you are awfully good to my people."
+
+She saw that she could hardly have said anything that would have
+annoyed him more.
+
+He positively writhed with irritation.
+
+"I'm not in the least good to your people."
+
+The words stung her like a blow. She flushed, and he softened.
+
+"Can't you see, Molly, that I hate the infernal humbug and the cruelty
+of it all? That poor child had a dog's life before she married. She
+did the only sane thing that was open to her. You've only got to look
+at her now to see that she couldn't have done much better for herself
+even if she hadn't been driven to it. What's more, she's done the best
+thing for Greatorex. There isn't another woman in the world who could
+have made that chap chuck drinking. You mayn't like the connection. I
+don't suppose any of us like it."
+
+"My dear Steven, it isn't only the connection. I could get over that.
+It's--the other thing."
+
+His blank stare compelled her to precision.
+
+"I mean what happened."
+
+"Well--if Gwenda can get over 'the other thing', I should think _you_
+might. She has to see more of her."
+
+"It's different for Gwenda."
+
+"How is it different for Gwenda?"
+
+She hesitated. She had meant that Gwenda hadn't anything to lose.
+What she said was, "Gwenda hasn't anybody but herself to think of. She
+hasn't let you in for Alice."
+
+"No more have you."
+
+He smiled. Mary did not understand either his answer or his smile.
+
+He was saying to himself, "Oh, hasn't she? It was Gwenda all the time
+who let me in."
+
+Mary had a little rush of affection.
+
+"My dear--I think I've let you in for everything. I wouldn't mind--I
+wouldn't really--if it wasn't for you."
+
+"You needn't bother about me," he said. "I'd rather you bothered about
+your sister."
+
+"Which sister?"
+
+For the life of her she could not tell what had made her say that. The
+words seemed to leap out suddenly from her mind to her tongue.
+
+"Alice," he said.
+
+"Was it Alice we were talking about?"
+
+"It was Alice I was thinking about."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+Again her mind took its insane possession of her tongue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening dragged on. The two chairs still faced each other, pushed
+forward in their attitude of polite attention and expectancy.
+
+But the persons in the chairs leaned back as if each withdrew as far
+as possible from the other. They made themselves stiff and upright as
+if they braced themselves, each against the other in the unconscious
+tension of hostility. And they were silent, each thinking an
+intolerable thought.
+
+Rowcliffe had taken up a book and was pretending to read it. Mary's
+hands were busy with her knitting. Her needles went with a rapid jerk,
+driven by the vibration of her irritated nerves. From time to time she
+glanced at Rowcliffe under her bent brows. She saw the same blocks of
+print, a deep block at the top, a short line under it, then a narrower
+block. She saw them as vague, meaningless blurs of gray stippled on
+white. She saw that Rowcliffe's eyes never moved from the deep top
+paragraph on the left-hand page. She noted the light pressure of his
+thumbs on the margins.
+
+He wasn't reading at all; he was only pretending to read. He had set
+up his book as a barrier between them, and he was holding on to it for
+dear life.
+
+Rowcliffe moved irritably under Mary's eyes. She lowered them and
+waited for the silken sound that should have told her that he had
+turned a page.
+
+And all the time she kept on saying to herself, "He _was_ thinking
+about Gwenda. He's sorry for Alice because of Gwenda, not because of
+me. It isn't _my_ people that he's good to."
+
+The thought went round and round in Mary's mind, troubling its
+tranquillity.
+
+She knew that something followed from it, but she refused to see it.
+Her mind thrust from it the conclusion. "Then it's Gwenda that he
+cares for." She said to herself, "After all I'm married to him." And
+as she said it she thrust up her chin in a gesture of assurance and
+defiance.
+
+In the chair that faced her Rowcliffe shifted his position. He crossed
+his legs and the tilted foot kicked out, urged by a hidden savagery.
+The clicking of Mary's needles maddened him.
+
+He glanced at her. She was knitting a silk tie for his birthday.
+
+She saw the glance. The fierceness of the small fingers slackened;
+they knitted off a row or two, then ceased. Her hands lay quiet in her
+lap.
+
+She leaned her head against the back of the chair. Her grieved eyes
+let down their lids before the smouldering hostility in his.
+
+Her stillness and her shut eyes moved him to compunction. They
+appeased him with reminiscence, with suggestion of her smooth and
+innocent sleep.
+
+He had been thinking of what she had done to him; of how she had lied
+to him about Gwenda; of the abominable thing that Alice had cried out
+to him in her agony. The thought of Mary's turpitude had consoled him
+mysteriously. Instead of putting it from him he had dwelt on it, he
+had wallowed in it; he had let it soak into him till he was poisoned
+with it.
+
+For the sting of it and the violence of his own resentment were more
+tolerable to Rowcliffe than the stale, dull realisation of the fact
+that Mary bored him. It had come to that. He had nothing to say to
+Mary now that he had married her. His romantic youth still moved
+uneasily within him; it found no peace in an armchair, facing Mary.
+He dreaded these evenings that he was compelled to spend with her. He
+dreaded her speech. He dreaded her silences ten times more. They no
+longer soothed him. They were pervading, menacing, significant.
+
+He thought that Mary's turpitude accounted for and justified the
+exasperation of his nerves.
+
+Now as he looked at her, lying back in the limp pose reminiscent of
+her sleep, he thought, "Poor thing. Poor Molly." He put down his book.
+He stood over her a moment, sighed a long sigh like a yawn, turned
+from her and went to bed.
+
+Mary opened her eyes, sighed, stretched herself, put out the light,
+and followed him.
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+Not long after that night it struck Mary that Steven was run down. He
+worked too hard. That was how she accounted to herself for his fits of
+exhaustion, of irritability and depression.
+
+But secretly, for all her complacence, she had divined the cause.
+
+She watched him now; she inquired into his goings out and comings in.
+Sometimes she knew that he had been to Garthdale, and, though he went
+there many more times than she knew, she had noticed that these moods
+of his followed invariably on his going. It was as if Gwenda left her
+mark on him. So much was certain, and by that certainty she went on to
+infer his going from his mood.
+
+One day she taxed him with it.
+
+Rowcliffe had tried to excuse his early morning temper on the plea
+that he was "beastly tired."
+
+"Tired?" she had said. "Of course you're tired if you went up to
+Garthdale last night."
+
+She added, "It isn't necessary."
+
+He was silent and she knew that she was on his trail.
+
+Two evenings later she caught him as he was leaving the house.
+
+"Where are you going?" she said.
+
+"I'm going up to Garthdale to see your father."
+
+Her eyes flinched.
+
+"You saw him yesterday."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Is he worse?"
+
+He hesitated. Lying had not as yet come lightly to him.
+
+"I'm not easy about him," he said.
+
+She was not satisfied. She had caught the hesitation.
+
+"Can't you tell me," she persisted, "if he's worse?"
+
+He looked at her calmly.
+
+"I can't tell you till I've seen him."
+
+That roused her. She bit her lip. She knew that whatever she did she
+must not show temper.
+
+"Did Gwenda send for you?"
+
+Her voice was quiet.
+
+"She did not."
+
+He strode out of the house.
+
+After that he never told her when he was going up to Garthdale toward
+nightfall. He was sometimes driven to lie. It was up Rathdale he was
+going, or to Greffington, or to smoke a pipe with Ned Alderson, or to
+turn in for a game of billiards at the village club.
+
+And whenever he lied to her she saw through him. She was prepared for
+the lie. She said to herself, "He is going to see Gwenda. He can't
+keep away from her."
+
+And then she remembered what Alice had said to her. "You'll know some
+day."
+
+She knew.
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+
+And with her knowledge there came a curious calm.
+
+She no longer watched and worried Rowcliffe. She knew that no wife
+ever kept her husband by watching and worrying him.
+
+She was aware of danger and she faced it with restored complacency.
+
+For Mary was a fount of sensual wisdom. Rowcliffe was ill. And
+from his illness she inferred his misery, and from his misery his
+innocence.
+
+She told herself that nothing had happened, that she knew nothing that
+she had not known before. She saw that her mistake had been in showing
+that she knew it. That was to admit it, and to admit it was to give it
+a substance, a shape and color it had never had and was not likely to
+have.
+
+And Mary, having perceived her blunder, set herself to repair it.
+
+She knew how. Under all his energy she had discerned in her husband a
+love of bodily ease, and a capacity for laziness, undeveloped because
+perpetually frustrated. Insidiously she had set herself to undermine
+his energy while she devised continual opportunities for ease.
+
+Rowcliffe remained incurably energetic. His profession demanded
+energy.
+
+Still, there were ways by which he could be captured. He was not
+so deeply absorbed in his profession as to be indifferent to the
+arrangements of his home. He liked and he showed very plainly that he
+liked, good food and silent service, the shining of glass and silver,
+white table linen and fragrant sheets for his bed.
+
+With all these things Mary had provided him.
+
+And she had her own magic and her way.
+
+Her way, the way she had caught him, was the way she would keep him.
+She had always known her power, even unpracticed. She had always known
+by instinct how she could enthrall him when her moment came. Gwenda
+had put back the hour; but she had done (and Mary argued that
+therefore she could do) no more.
+
+Here Mary's complacency betrayed her. She had fallen into the error of
+all innocent and tranquil sensualists. She trusted to the present. She
+had reckoned without Rowcliffe's future or his past.
+
+And she had done even worse. By habituating Rowcliffe's senses to her
+way, she had produced in him, through sheer satisfaction, that sense
+of security which is the most dangerous sense of all.
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+One week in June Rowcliffe went up to Garthdale two nights running. He
+had never done this before and he had had to lie badly about it both
+to himself and Mary.
+
+He had told himself that the first evening didn't count.
+
+For he had quarreled with Gwenda the first evening. Neither of them
+knew how it had happened or what it was about. But he had hardly come
+before he had left her in his anger.
+
+The actual outburst moved her only to laughter, but the memory of it
+was violent in her nerves, it shook and shattered her. She had not
+slept all night and in the morning she woke tired and ill. And, as
+if he had known what he had done to her, he came to see her the next
+evening, to make up.
+
+That night they stayed out later than they had meant.
+
+As they touched the moor the lambs stirred at their mothers' sides and
+the pewits rose and followed the white road to lure them from their
+secret places; they wheeled and wheeled round them, sending out their
+bored and weary cry. In June the young broods kept the moor and the
+two were forced to the white road.
+
+And at the turn they came in sight of Greffington Edge.
+
+She stood still. "Oh--Steven--look," she said.
+
+He stood with her and looked.
+
+The moon was hidden in the haze where the gray day and the white night
+were mixed. Across the bottom on the dim, watery green of the eastern
+slope, the thorn trees were in flower. The hot air held them like
+still water. It quivered invisibly, loosening their scent and
+scattering it. And of a sudden she saw them as if thrown back to a
+distance where they stood enchanted in a great stillness and clearness
+and a piercing beauty.
+
+There went through her a sudden deep excitement, a subtle and
+mysterious joy. This passion was as distant and as pure as ecstasy.
+It swept her, while the white glamour lasted, into the stillness where
+the flowering thorn trees stood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She wondered whether Steven had seen the vision of the flowering thorn
+trees. She longed for him to see it. They stood a little apart and her
+hand moved toward him without touching him, as if she would draw him
+to the magic.
+
+"Steven--" she said.
+
+He came to her. Her hand hung limply by her side again. She felt his
+hand close on it and press it.
+
+She knew that he had seen the vision and felt the subtle and
+mysterious joy.
+
+She wanted nothing more.
+
+"Say good-night now," she said.
+
+"Not yet. I'm going to walk back with you."
+
+They walked back in a silence that guarded the memory of the mystic
+thing.
+
+They lingered a moment by the half-open door; she on the threshold, he
+on the garden path; the width of a flagstone separated them.
+
+"In another minute," she thought, "he will be gone."
+
+It seemed to her that he wanted to be gone and that it was she who
+held him there against his will and her own.
+
+She drew the door to.
+
+"Don't shut it, Gwenda."
+
+It was as if he said, "Don't let's stand together out here like this
+any longer."
+
+She opened the door again, leaning a little toward it across the
+threshold with her hand on the latch.
+
+She smiled, raising her chin in the distant gesture that was their
+signal of withdrawal.
+
+But Steven did not go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"May I come in?" he said.
+
+Something in her said, "Don't let him come in." But she did not heed
+it. The voice was thin and small and utterly insignificant, as if
+one little brain cell had waked up and started speaking on its own
+account. And something seized on her tongue and made it say "Yes," and
+the full tide of her blood surged into her throat and choked it, and
+neither the one voice nor the other seemed to be her own.
+
+He followed her into the little dining-room where the lamp was. The
+Vicar was in bed. The whole house was still.
+
+Rowcliffe looked at her in the lamplight.
+
+"We've walked a bit too far," he said.
+
+He made her lean back on the couch. He put a pillow at her head and a
+footstool at her feet.
+
+"Just rest," he said, and she rested.
+
+But Rowcliffe did not rest. He moved uneasily about the room.
+
+A sudden tiredness came over her.
+
+She thought, "Yes. We walked too far." She leaned her head back on
+the cushion. Her thin arms lay stretched out on either side of her,
+supported by the couch.
+
+Rowcliffe ceased to wander. He drew up with his back against the
+chimney-piece, where he faced her.
+
+"Close your eyes," he said.
+
+She did not close them. But the tired lids drooped. The lifted bow of
+her mouth drooped. The small, sharp-pointed breasts drooped.
+
+And as he watched her he remembered how he had quarreled with her in
+that room last night. And the thought of his brutality was intolerable
+to him.
+
+His heart ached with tenderness, and his tenderness was intolerable
+too.
+
+The small white face with its suffering eyes and drooping eyelids, the
+drooping breasts, the thin white arms slackened along the couch, the
+childlike helplessness of the tired body moved him with a vehement
+desire. And his strength that had withstood her in her swift, defiant
+beauty melted away.
+
+"Steven--"
+
+"Don't speak," he said.
+
+She was quiet for a moment.
+
+"But I want to, Steven. I want to say something."
+
+He sighed.
+
+"Well--say it."
+
+"It's something I want to ask you."
+
+"Don't ask impossibilities."
+
+"I don't think it's impossible. At least it wouldn't be if you really
+knew. I want you to be more careful with me."
+
+She paused.
+
+He turned from her abruptly.
+
+His turning made it easier for her. She went on.
+
+"It's only a little thing--a silly little thing. I want you, when
+you're angry with me, not to show it quite so much."
+
+He had turned again to her suddenly. The look on his face stopped her.
+
+"I'm never angry with you," he said.
+
+"I know you aren't--really. I know. I know. But you make me think you
+are; and it hurts so terribly."
+
+"I didn't know you minded."
+
+"I don't always mind. But sometimes, when I'm stupid, I simply can't
+bear it. It makes me feel as if I'd done something. Last night I got
+it into my head--"
+
+"What did you get into your head? Tell me--"
+
+"I thought I'd made you hate me. I thought you thought I was
+awful--like poor Ally."
+
+"_You?_"
+
+He drew a long breath and sent it out again.
+
+"You know what I think of you."
+
+He looked at her, threw up his head suddenly and went to her.
+
+His words came fast now and thick.
+
+"You know I love you. That's why I've been such a brute to
+you--because I couldn't have you in my arms and it made me mad. And
+you know it. That's what you mean when you say it hurts you. You
+shan't be hurt any more. I'm going to end it."
+
+He stooped over her suddenly, steadying himself by his two hands laid
+on the back of her chair. She put out her arms and pushed with her
+hands against his shoulders, as if she would have beaten him off. He
+sank to her knees and there caught her hands in his and kissed them.
+He held them together helpless with his left arm and his right arm
+gathered her to him violently and close.
+
+His mouth came crushing upon her parted lips and her shut eyes.
+
+Her small thin hands struggled piteously in his and for pity he
+released them. He felt them pushing with their silk-soft palms against
+his face. Their struggle and their resistance were pain to him and
+exquisite pleasure.
+
+"Not that, Steven! Not that! Oh, I didn't think--I didn't think you
+would."
+
+"Don't send me away, Gwenda. It's all right. We've suffered enough.
+We've got to end it this way."
+
+"No. Not this way."
+
+"Yes--yes. It's all right, darling. We've struggled till we can't
+struggle any more. You must. Why not? When you love me."
+
+He pressed her closer in his arms. She lay quiet there. When she was
+quiet he let her speak.
+
+"I can't," she said. "It's Molly. Poor little Molly."
+
+"Don't talk to me of Molly. She lied about you."
+
+"Whatever she did she couldn't help it."
+
+"Whatever we do now we can't help it."
+
+"We can. We're different. Oh--don't! Don't hold me like that. I can't
+bear it."
+
+His arms tightened. His mouth found hers again as if he had not heard
+her.
+
+She gave a faint cry that pierced him.
+
+He looked at her. The lips he had kissed were a purplish white in her
+thin bloodless face. "I say, are you ill?"
+
+She saw her advantage and took it.
+
+"No. But I can't stand things very well. They make me ill. That's what
+I meant when I asked you to be careful."
+
+Her helplessness stilled his passion as it had roused it. He released
+her suddenly.
+
+He took the thin arm surrendered to his gentleness, turned back her
+sleeve and felt the tense jerking pulse.
+
+He saw what she had meant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Do you mind my sitting beside you if I keep quiet?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Can you stand my talking about it?"
+
+"Yes. If you don't touch me."
+
+"I won't touch you. We've got to face the thing. It's making you ill."
+
+"It isn't."
+
+"What is, then?"
+
+"Living with Papa."
+
+He smiled through his agony. "That's only another name for it.
+
+"It can't go on. Why shouldn't we be happy?
+
+"Why shouldn't we?" he insisted. "It's not as if we hadn't tried."
+
+"I--can't."
+
+"You're afraid?"
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not afraid. It's simply that I can't."
+
+"You think it's a sin? It isn't. It's we who are sinned against.
+
+"If you're afraid of deceiving Mary--I don't care if I do. She
+deceived me first. Besides we can't. She knows and she doesn't mind.
+She can't suffer as you suffer. She can't feel as you feel. She can't
+care."
+
+"She does care. She must have cared horribly or she wouldn't have done
+it."
+
+"She didn't. Anybody would have done for her as well as me. I tell you
+I don't want to talk about Mary or to think about her."
+
+"Then I must."
+
+"No. You must think of me. You don't owe anything to Mary. It's me
+you're sinning against. You think a lot about sinning against Mary,
+but you think nothing about sinning against me."
+
+"When did I ever sin against you?"
+
+"Last year. When you went away. That was the beginning of it all. Why
+_did_ you go, Gwenda? You knew. We should have been all right if you
+hadn't."
+
+"I went because of Ally. She had to be married. I thought--perhaps--if
+I wasn't there----"
+
+"That I'd marry her? Good God! Ally! What on earth made you think
+I'd do that? I wouldn't have married her if there hadn't been another
+woman in the world."
+
+"I couldn't be sure. But after what you said about her I had to give
+her a chance."
+
+"What _did_ I say?"
+
+"That she'd die or go mad if somebody didn't marry her."
+
+"I never said that. I wouldn't be likely to."
+
+"But you did, dear. You frightened me. So I went away to see if that
+would make it any better."
+
+"Any better for whom?"
+
+"For Ally."
+
+"Oh--Ally. I see."
+
+"I thought if it didn't--if you didn't marry her--I could come back
+again. And when I did come back you'd married Mary."
+
+"And Mary knew that?"
+
+"There's no good bothering about Mary now."
+
+Utterly weary of their strife, she lay back and closed her eyes.
+
+"Poor Gwenda."
+
+Again he had compassion on her. He waited.
+
+"You see how it was," she said.
+
+"It doesn't help us much, dear. What are we going to do?"
+
+"Not what you want, Steven, I'm afraid."
+
+"Not now. But some day. You'll see it differently when you've thought
+of it."
+
+"Never. Never any day. I've had all these months to think of it and I
+can't see it differently yet."
+
+"You _have_ thought of it?"
+
+"Not like that."
+
+"But you did think. You knew it would come to this."
+
+"I tried not to make it come. Do you know why I tried? I don't think
+it was for Molly. It was for myself. It was because I wanted to keep
+you. That's why I shall never do what you want."
+
+"But that's how you _would_ keep me. There's no other way."
+
+She rose with a sudden gesture of her shoulders as if she shook off
+the obsession of him.
+
+She stood leaning against the chimney-piece in the attitude he knew,
+an attitude of long-limbed, insolent, adolescent grace that gave her
+the advantage. Her eyes disdained their pathos. They looked at him
+with laughter under their dropped lids.
+
+"How funny we are," she said, "when we know all the time we couldn't
+really do a caddish thing like that."
+
+He smiled queerly.
+
+"I suppose we couldn't."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He too rose and faced her.
+
+"Do you know what this means?" he said. "It means that I've got to
+clear out of this."
+
+"Oh, Steven----" The brave light in her face went out.
+
+"You wouldn't go away and leave me?"
+
+"God knows I don't want to leave you, Gwenda. But we can't go on like
+this. How can we?"
+
+"I could."
+
+"Well, I can't. That's what it means to me. That's what it means to a
+man. If we're going to be straight we simply mustn't see each other."
+
+"Do you mean for always? That we're never to see each other again?"
+
+"Yes, if it's to be any good."
+
+"Steven, I can bear anything but that. It _can't_ mean that."
+
+"I tell you it's what it means for me. There's no good talking about
+it. You've seen what I've been like tonight."
+
+"This? This is nothing. You'll get over this. But think what it would
+mean to me."
+
+"It would be hard, I know."
+
+"Hard?"
+
+"Not half so hard as this."
+
+"But I can bear this. We've been so happy. We can be happy still."
+
+"This isn't happiness."
+
+"It's _my_ happiness. It's all I've got. It's all I've ever had."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"Seeing you. Or not even seeing you. Knowing you're there."
+
+"Poor child. Does that make you happy?"
+
+"Utterly happy. Always."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+He stooped forward, hiding his face in his hands.
+
+"You don't realise it. You've no idea what it'll mean to be boxed up
+in this place together, all our lives, with this between us."
+
+"It's always been between us. We shall be no worse off. It may have
+been bad now and then, but conceive what it'll be like when you go."
+
+"I suppose it would be pretty beastly for you if I did go."
+
+"Would it be too awful for you if you stayed?"
+
+He was a long time before he answered.
+
+"Not if it really made you happier."
+
+"Happier?"
+
+She smiled her pitiful, strained smile. It said, "Don't you see that
+it would kill me if you went?"
+
+And again it was by her difference, her helplessness, that she had
+him.
+
+He too smiled drearily.
+
+"You don't suppose I really could have left you?"
+
+He saw that it was impossible, unthinkable, that he should leave her.
+
+He rose. She went with him to the door. She thought of something
+there.
+
+"Steven," she said, "don't worry about to-night. It was all my fault."
+
+"You--you," he murmured. "You're adorable."
+
+"It was really," she said. "I made you come in."
+
+She gave him her cold hand. He raised it and brushed it with his lips
+and put it from him.
+
+"Your little conscience was always too tender."
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+Two years passed.
+
+Life stirred again in the Vicarage, feebly and slowly, with the slow
+and feeble stirring of the Vicar's brain.
+
+Ten o'clock was prayer time again.
+
+Twice every Sunday the Vicar appeared in his seat in the chancel.
+Twice he pronounced the Absolution. Twice he tottered to the altar
+rails, turned, shifted his stick from his left hand to his right, and,
+with his one good arm raised, he gave the Benediction. These were the
+supreme moments of his life.
+
+Once a month, kneeling at the same altar rails, he received the bread
+and wine from the hands of his ritualistic curate, Mr. Grierson.
+
+It was his uttermost abasement.
+
+But, whether he was abased or exalted, the parish was proud of
+its Vicar. He had shown grit. His parishioners respected the
+indestructible instinct that had made him hold on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For Mr. Cartaret was better, incredibly better. He could creep about
+the house and the village without any help but his stick. He could
+wash and feed and dress himself. He had no longer any use for his
+wheel-chair. Once a week, on a Wednesday, he was driven over his
+parish in an ancient pony carriage of Peacock's. It was low enough for
+him to haul himself in and out.
+
+And he had recovered large tracts of memory, all, apparently, but
+the one spot submerged in the catastrophe that had brought about his
+stroke. He was aware of events and of their couplings and of their
+sequences in time, though the origin of some things was not clear
+to him. Thus he knew that Alice was married and living at Upthorne,
+though he had forgotten why. That she should have married Greatorex
+was a strange thing, and he couldn't think how it had happened. He
+supposed it must have happened when he was laid aside, for he would
+never have permitted it if he had known. Mary's marriage also puzzled
+him, for he had a most distinct idea that it was Gwenda who was to
+have married Rowcliffe, and he said so. But he would own humbly that
+he might be mistaken, his memory not being what it was.
+
+He had settled more or less into his state of gentleness and
+submission, broken from time to time by fits of violent irritation and
+relieved by pride, pride in his feats of independence, his comings and
+goings, his washing, his dressing and undressing of himself. Sometimes
+this pride was stubborn and insistent; sometimes it was sweet and
+joyous as a child's. His mouth, relaxed forever by his stroke, had
+acquired a smile of piteous and appealing innocence. It smiled upon
+the just and upon the unjust. It smiled even on Greatorex, whom
+socially he disapproved of (he took care to let it be known that he
+disapproved of Greatorex socially), though he tolerated him.
+
+He tolerated all persons except one. And that one was the ritualistic
+curate, Mr. Grierson.
+
+He had every reason for not tolerating him. Not only was Mr.
+Grierson a ritualist, which was only less abominable than being a
+non-conformist, but he had been foisted on him without his knowledge
+or will. The Vicar had simply waked up one day out of his confused
+twilight to a state of fearful lucidity and found the young man there.
+Worse than all it was through the third Mrs. Cartaret that he had got
+there.
+
+For the Vicar of Greffington had applied to the Additional Curates Aid
+Society for a grant on behalf of his afflicted brother, the Vicar of
+Garthdale, and he had applied in vain. There was a prejudice against
+the Vicar of Garthdale. But the Vicar of Greffington did not relax his
+efforts. He applied to young Mrs. Rowcliffe, and young Mrs. Rowcliffe
+applied to her step-mother, and not in vain. Robina, answering by
+return of post, offered to pay half the curate's salary. Rowcliffe
+made himself responsible for the other half.
+
+Robina, in her compact little house in St. John's Wood, had become the
+prey of remorse. Her conscience had begun to bother her by suggesting
+that she ought to go back to her husband now that he was helpless
+and utterly inoffensive. She ought not to leave him on poor Gwenda's
+hands. She ought, at any rate, to take her turn.
+
+But Robina couldn't face it. She couldn't leave her compact little
+house and go back to her husband. She couldn't even take her turn.
+Flesh and blood shrank from the awful sacrifice. It would be a living
+death. Your conscience has no business to send you to a living death.
+
+Robina's heart ached for poor Gwenda. She wrote and said so. She said
+she knew she was a brute for not going back to Gwenda's father. She
+would do it if she could, but she simply couldn't. She hadn't got the
+nerve.
+
+And Robina did more. She pulled wires and found the curate. That
+he was a ritualist was no drawback in Robina's eyes. In fact, she
+declared it was a positive advantage. Mr. Grierson's practices would
+wake them up in Garthdale. They needed waking. She had added that Mr.
+Grierson was well connected, well behaved and extremely good-looking.
+
+Even charity couldn't subdue the merry devil in Robina.
+
+"I can't see," said Mary reading Robina's letter, "what Mr. Grierson's
+good looks have got to do with it."
+
+Rowcliffe's face darkened. He thought he could see.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Mr. Grierson did not wake Garthdale up. It opened one astonished
+eye on his practices and turned over in its sleep again. Mr. Grierson
+was young, and the village regarded all he did as the folly of his
+youth. It saw no harm in Mr. Grierson; not even when he conceived a
+Platonic passion for Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe, and spent all his spare
+time in her drawing-room and on his way to and from it.
+
+The curate lodged in the village at the Blenkirons' over Rowcliffe's
+surgery, and from that vantage ground he lay in wait for Rowcliffe.
+He watched his movements. He was ready at any moment to fling open his
+door and spring upon Rowcliffe with ardor and enthusiasm. It was as if
+he wanted to prove to him how heartily he forgave him for being Mrs.
+Rowcliffe's husband. There was a robust innocence about him that
+ignored the doctor's irony.
+
+Mary had her own use for Mr. Grierson. His handsome figure, assiduous
+but restrained, the perfect image of integrity in adoration, was the
+very thing she wanted for her drawing-room. She knew that its presence
+there had the effect of heightening her own sensual attraction. It
+served as a reminder to Rowcliffe that his wife was a woman of charm,
+a fact which for some time he appeared to have forgotten. She could
+play off her adorer against her husband, while the candid purity
+of young Grierson's homage renewed her exquisite sense of her own
+goodness.
+
+And then the Curate really was a cousin of Lord Northfleet's and Mrs.
+Rowcliffe had calculated that to have him in her pocket would increase
+prodigiously her social value. And it did. And Mrs. Rowcliffe's social
+value, when observed by Grierson, increased his adoration.
+
+And when Rowcliffe told her that young Grierson's Platonic friendship
+wasn't good for him, she made wide eyes at him and said, "Poor boy! He
+must have _some_ amusement."
+
+She didn't suppose the curate could be much amused by calling at the
+Vicarage. Young Grierson had confided to her that he couldn't "make
+her sister out."
+
+"I never knew anybody who could," she said, and gave him a subtle look
+that disturbed him horribly.
+
+"I only meant--" He stammered and stopped, for he wasn't quite sure
+what he did mean. His fair, fresh face was strained with the effort to
+express himself.
+
+He meditated.
+
+"You know, she's really rather fascinating. You can't help looking at
+her. Only--she doesn't seem to see that you're there. I suppose that's
+what puts you off."
+
+"I know. It does, dreadfully," said Mary.
+
+She summoned a flash and let him have it. "But she's magnificent."
+
+"Magnificent!" he echoed with his robust enthusiasm.
+
+But what he thought was that it was magnificent of Mrs. Rowcliffe to
+praise her sister.
+
+And Rowcliffe smiled grimly at young Grierson and his Platonic
+passion. He said to himself, "If I'd only known. If I'd only had the
+sense to wait six months. Grierson would have done just as well for
+Molly."
+
+Still, though Grierson had come too late, he welcomed him and his
+Platonic passion. It wasn't good for Grierson but it was good for
+Molly. At least, he supposed it was better for her than nothing. And
+for him it was infinitely better. It kept Grierson off Gwenda.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Young Grierson was right when he said that Gwenda didn't see that he
+was there. He had been two years in Garthdale and she was as far
+from seeing it as ever. He didn't mind; he was even amused by her
+indifference, only he couldn't help thinking that it was rather odd of
+her, considering that he _was_ there.
+
+The village, as simple in its thinking as young Grierson, shared his
+view. It thought that it was something more than odd. And it had a
+suspicion that Mrs. Rowcliffe was at the bottom of it. She wouldn't
+be happy if she didn't get that young man away from her sister. The
+village hinted that it wouldn't be for the first time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But in two years, with the gradual lifting of the pressure that had
+numbed her, Gwenda had become aware. Not of young Grierson, but of
+her own tragedy, of the slow life that dragged her, of its
+relentless motion and its mass. Now that her father's need of her was
+intermittent she was alive to the tightness of the tie. It had been
+less intolerable when it had bound her tighter; when she hadn't had
+a moment; when it had dragged her all the time. Its slackening was
+torture. She pulled then, and was jerked on her chain.
+
+It was not only that Rowcliffe's outburst had waked her and made
+her cruelly aware. He had timed it badly, in her moment of revived
+lucidity, the moment when she had become vulnerable again. She was the
+more sensitive because of her previous apathy, as if she had died and
+was new-born to suffering and virgin to pain.
+
+What hurt her most was her father's gentleness. She could stand his
+fits of irritation and obstinacy; they braced her, they called forth
+her will. But she was defenseless against his pathos, and he knew it.
+He had phrases that wrung her heart. "You're a good girl, Gwenda."
+"I'm only an irritable old man, my dear. You mustn't mind what I say."
+She suffered from the incessant drain on her pity; for she wanted all
+her will if she was to stand against Rowcliffe. Pity was a dangerous
+solvent in which her will sank and was melted away.
+
+There were moments when she saw herself as two women. One had still
+the passion and the memory of freedom. The other was a cowed and
+captive creature who had forgotten; whose cramped motions guided her;
+whose instinct of submission she abhorred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her isolation was now extreme. She had had nothing to give to any
+friends she might have made. Rowcliffe had taken all that was left
+of her. And now, when intercourse was possible, it was they who had
+withdrawn. They shared Mr. Grierson's inability to make her out. They
+had heard rumors; they imagined things; they remembered also. She was
+the girl who had raced all over the country with Dr. Rowcliffe, the
+girl whom Dr. Rowcliffe, for all their racing, had not cared to marry.
+She was the girl who had run away from home to live with a dubious
+step-mother; and she was the sister of that awful Mrs. Greatorex,
+who--well, everybody knew what Mrs. Greatorex was.
+
+Gwenda Cartaret, like her younger sister, had been talked about. Not
+so much in the big houses of the Dale. The queer facts had been tossed
+up and down a smokeroom for one season and then dropped. In the big
+houses they didn't remember Gwenda Cartaret. They only remembered to
+forget her.
+
+But in the little shops and in the little houses in Morfe there had
+been continual whispering. They said that even after Dr. Rowcliffe's
+marriage to that nice wife of his, who was her own sister, the two
+had been carrying on. If there wasn't any actual harm done, and maybe
+there wasn't, the doctor had been running into danger. He was up at
+Garthdale more than he need be now that the old Vicar was about again.
+And they had been seen together. The head gamekeeper at Garthdale had
+caught them more than once out on the moor, and after dark too. It was
+said in the little houses that it wasn't the doctor's fault. (In the
+big houses judgment had been more impartial, but Morfe was loyal
+to its doctor.) It was hers, every bit, you might depend on it. Of
+Rowcliffe it was said that maybe he'd been tempted, but he was a good
+man, was Dr. Rowcliffe, and he'd stopped in time. Because they didn't
+know what Gwenda Cartaret was capable of, they believed, like the
+Vicar, that she was capable of anything.
+
+It was only in her own village that they knew. The head gamekeeper had
+never told his tale in Garth. It would have made him too unpopular.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gwenda Cartaret remained unaware of what was said. Rumor protected her
+by cutting her off from its own sources.
+
+And she had other consolations besides her ignorance. So long as she
+knew that Rowcliffe cared for her and always had cared, it did not
+seem to matter to her so much that he had married Mary. She actually
+considered that, of the two, Mary was the one to be pitied; it was so
+infinitely worse to be married to a man who didn't care for you than
+not to be married to a man who did.
+
+Of course, there was the tie. Her sister had outward and visible
+possession of him. But she said to herself "I wouldn't give what I
+have for _that,_ if I can't have both."
+
+And of course there was Steven, and Steven's misery which was more
+unbearable to her than her own. At least she thought it was more
+unbearable. She didn't ask herself how bearable it would have been if
+Steven's marriage had brought him a satisfaction that denied her and
+cast her out.
+
+For she was persuaded that Steven also had his consolation. He knew
+that she cared for him. She conceived this knowledge of theirs as
+constituting an immaterial and immutable possession of each other.
+And it did not strike her that this knowledge might be less richly
+compensating to Steven than to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her woman's passion, forced inward, sustained her with an inward
+peace, an inward exaltation. And in this peace, this exaltation, it
+became one with her passion for the place.
+
+She was unaware of what was happening in her. She did not know that
+her soul had joined the two beyond its own power to put asunder. She
+still looked on her joy in the earth as a solitary emotion untouched
+by any other. She still said to herself "Nothing can take this away
+from me."
+
+For she had hours, now and again, when she shook off the slave-woman
+who held her down. In those hours her inner life moved with the large
+rhythm of the seasons and was soaked in the dyes of the visible
+world; and the visible world, passing into her inner life, took on its
+radiance and intensity. Everything that happened and that was great
+and significant in its happening, happened there.
+
+Outside nothing happened; nothing stood out; nothing moved. No
+procession of events trod down or blurred her perfect impressions of
+the earth and sky. They eternalised themselves in memory. They became
+her memory.
+
+The days were carved for her in the lines of the hills and painted
+for her in their colors; days that were dim green and gray, when
+the dreaming land was withdrawn under a veil so fine that it had the
+transparency of water, or when the stone walls, the humble houses and
+the high ramparts, drenched with mist and with secret sunlight, became
+insubstantial; days when all the hills were hewn out of one opal; days
+that had the form of Karva under snow, and the thin blues and violets
+of the snow. She remembered purely, without thinking, "It was in April
+that I went away from Steven," or, "It was in November that he married
+Mary," or "It was in February that we knew about Ally, and Father had
+his stroke."
+
+Her nature was sound and sane; it refused to brood over suffering. She
+was not like Alice and in her unlikeness she lacked some of Alice's
+resources. She couldn't fling herself on to a Polonaise of a Sonata
+any more than she could lie on a couch all day and look at her own
+white hands and dream. Her passion found no outlet in creating violent
+and voluptuous sounds. It was passive, rather, and attentive. Cut
+off from all contacts of the flesh, it turned to the distant and the
+undreamed. Its very senses became infinitely subtle; they discerned
+the hidden soul of the land that had entranced her.
+
+There were no words for this experience. She had no sense of self
+in it and needed none. It seemed to her that she _was_ what she
+contemplated, as if all her senses were fused together in the sense of
+seeing and what her eyes saw they heard and touched and felt.
+
+But when she came to and saw herself seeing, she said, "At least this
+is mine. Nobody, not even Steven, can take it away from me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She also reminded herself that she had Alice.
+
+She meant Alice Greatorex. Alice Cartaret, oppressed by her own
+"awfulness," had loved her with a sullen selfish love, the love of
+a frustrated and unhappy child. But there was no awfulness in Alice
+Greatorex. In the fine sanity of happiness she showed herself as good
+as gold.
+
+Marriage, that had made Mary hard, made Alice tender. Mary was wrapped
+up in her husband and her house, and in her social relations and young
+Grierson's Platonic passion, so tightly wrapped that these things
+formed round her an impenetrable shell. They hid a secret and
+inaccessible Mary.
+
+Alice was wrapped up in her husband and children, in the boy of
+three who was so like Gwenda, and in the baby girl who was so like
+Greatorex. But through them she had become approachable. She had the
+ways of some happy household animal, its quick rushes of affection,
+and its gaze, the long, spiritual gaze of its maternity, mysterious
+and appealing. She loved Gwenda with a sad-eyed, remorseful love. She
+said to herself, "If I hadn't been so awful, Gwenda might have married
+Steven." She saw the appalling extent of Gwenda's sacrifice. She saw
+it as it was, monstrous, absurd, altogether futile.
+
+It was the futility of it that troubled Alice most. Even if Gwenda
+had been capable of sacrificing herself for Mary, which had been by
+no means her intention, that would have been futile too. Alice was of
+Rowcliffe's opinion that young Grierson would have done every bit as
+well for Mary.
+
+Better, for Mary had no children.
+
+"And how," said Alice, "could she expect to have them?"
+
+She saw in Mary's childlessness not only God's but Nature's justice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were moments when Mary saw it too. But she left God out of it
+and called it Nature's cruelty.
+
+If it was not really Gwenda. For in flashes of extreme lucidity Mary
+put it down to Rowcliffe's coldness.
+
+And she had come to know that Gwenda was responsible for that.
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+But one day in April, in the fourth year of her marriage, Mary sent
+for Gwenda.
+
+Rowcliffe was out on his rounds. She had thought of that. She was fond
+of having Gwenda with her in Rowcliffe's absence, when she could talk
+to her about him in a way that assumed his complete indifference to
+Gwenda and utter devotion to herself. Gwenda was used to this habit of
+Mary's and thought nothing of it.
+
+She found her in Rowcliffe's study, the room that she knew better than
+any other in his house. The window was closed. The panes cut up the
+colors of the orchard and framed them in small squares.
+
+Mary received her with a gentle voice and a show of tenderness. She
+said very little. They had tea together, and when Gwenda would have
+gone Mary kept her.
+
+She still said very little. She seemed to brood over some happy
+secret.
+
+Presently she spoke. She told her secret.
+
+And when she had told it she turned her eyes to Gwenda with a look of
+subtle penetration and of triumph.
+
+"At last," she said,--"After three years."
+
+And she added, "I knew you would be glad."
+
+"I _am_ glad," said Gwenda.
+
+She _was_ glad. She was determined to be glad. She looked glad. And
+she kissed Mary and said again that she was very glad.
+
+But as she walked back the four miles up Garthdale under Karva, she
+felt an aching at her heart which was odd considering how glad she
+was.
+
+She said to herself, "I _will_ be glad. I want Mary to be happy. Why
+shouldn't I be glad? It's not as if it could make any difference."
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+In September Mary sent for her again.
+
+Mary was very ill. She lay on her bed, and Rowcliffe and her sister
+stood on either side of her. She gazed from one to the other with eyes
+of terror and entreaty. It was as if she cried out to them--the two
+who were so strong--to help her. She stretched out her arms on
+the counterpane, one arm toward each of them; her little hands,
+palm-upward, implored them.
+
+Each of them laid a hand in Mary's hand that closed on it with a
+clutch of agony.
+
+Rowcliffe had sat up all night with her. His face was white and
+haggard and there was fear and misery in his eyes. They never looked
+at Gwenda's lest they should see the same fear and the same misery
+there. It was as if they had no love for each other, only a profound
+and secret pity that sprang in both of them from their fear.
+
+Only once they found each other, outside on the landing, when they
+had left Mary alone with Hyslop, the old doctor from Reyburn, and the
+nurse. Each spoke once.
+
+"Steven, is there really any danger?"
+
+"Yes. I wish to God I'd had Harker. Do you mind sending him a wire? I
+must go and see what that fool Hyslop's doing."
+
+He turned back again into the room.
+
+Gwenda went out and sent the wire.
+
+But at noon, before Harker could come to them, it was over. Mary lay
+as Alice had lain, weak and happy, with her child tucked in the crook
+of her arm. And she smiled at it dreamily.
+
+The old doctor and the nurse smiled at Rowcliffe.
+
+It couldn't, they said, have gone off more easily. There hadn't been
+any danger, nor any earthly reason to have sent for Harker. Though, of
+course, if it had made Rowcliffe happier--!
+
+The old doctor added that if it had been anybody else's wife Rowcliffe
+would have known that it was going all right.
+
+And in the evening, when her sister stood again at her bedside, as
+Mary lifted the edge of the flannel that hid her baby's face, she
+looked at Gwenda and smiled, not dreamily but subtly in a triumph that
+was almost malign.
+
+That night Gwenda dreamed that she saw Mary lying dead and with a dead
+child in the crook of her arm.
+
+She woke in anguish and terror.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+Three years passed and six months. The Cartarets had been in Garthdale
+nine years.
+
+Gwenda Cartaret sat in the dining-room at the Vicarage alone with her
+father.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock of the March evening. They waited for the
+striking of the clock. It would be prayer time then, and after prayers
+the Vicar would drag himself upstairs to bed, and in the peace
+that slid into the room when he left it Gwenda would go on with her
+reading.
+
+She had her sewing in her lap and her book, Bergson's _Evolution
+creatrice_ propped open before her on the table. She sewed as she
+read. For the Vicar considered that sewing was an occupation and that
+reading was not. He was silent as long as his daughter sewed and
+when she read he talked. Toward ten his silence would be broken by a
+continual sighing and yearning. The Vicar longed for prayer time to
+come and end his day. But he had decreed that prayer time was ten
+o'clock and he would not have permitted it to come a minute sooner.
+
+He nursed a book on his knees, but he made no pretence of reading
+it. He had taken off his glasses and sat with his hands folded, in an
+attitude of utter resignation to his own will.
+
+In the kitchen Essy Gale sat by the dying fire and waited for the
+stroke of ten. And as she waited she stitched at the torn breeches of
+her little son.
+
+Essy had come back to the house where she had been turned away. For
+her mother was wanted by Mrs. Greatorex at Upthorne and what Mrs.
+Greatorex wanted she got. There were two more children now at the Farm
+and work enough for three women in the house. And Essy, with all her
+pride, had not been too proud to come back. She had no feeling but
+pity for the old man, her master, who had bullied her and put her to
+shame. If it pleased God to afflict him that was God's affair, and,
+even as a devout Wesleyan, Essy considered that God had about done
+enough.
+
+As Essy sat and stitched, she smiled, thinking of Greatorex's son who
+lay in her bed in the little room over the kitchen. Miss Gwenda let
+her have him with her on the nights when Mrs. Gale slept up at the
+Farm.
+
+It was quiet in the Vicarage kitchen. The door into the back yard was
+shut, the door that Essy used to keep open when she listened for a
+footstep and a whisper. That door had betrayed her many a time when
+the wind slammed it to.
+
+Essy's heart was quiet as the heart of her sleeping child. She had
+forgotten how madly it had leaped to her lover's footsteps, how it
+had staggered at the slamming of the door. She had forgotten the tears
+that she had shed when Alice's wild music had rocked the house, and
+what the Vicar had said to her that night when she spilled the glass
+of water in the study.
+
+But she remembered that Gwenda had given her son his first little
+Sunday suit; and that, before Jimmy came, when Essy was in bed, crying
+with the face-ache, she had knocked at her door and said, "What is it,
+Essy? Can I do anything for you?" She could hear her saying it now.
+
+Essy's memory was like that.
+
+She had thought of Gwenda just then because she heard the sound of Dr.
+Rowcliffe's motor car tearing up the Dale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The woman in the other room heard it too. She had heard its horn
+hooting on the moor road nearly a mile away.
+
+She raised her hand and listened. It hooted again, once, twice,
+placably, at the turning of the road, under Karva. She shivered at the
+sound.
+
+It hooted irritably, furiously, as the car tore through the village.
+Its lamps swung a shaft of light over the low garden wall.
+
+At the garden gate the car made a shuddering pause.
+
+Gwenda's face and all her body listened. A little unborn, undying hope
+quivered in her heart always at that pausing of the car at her gate.
+
+It hardly gave her time for one heart-beat before she heard the
+grinding of the gear as the car took the steep hill to Upthorne.
+
+But she was always taken in by it. She had always that insane hope
+that the course of things had changed and that Steven had really
+stopped at the gate and was coming to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It _was_ insanity, for she knew that Rowcliffe would never come to see
+her in the evening now. After his outburst, more than five years ago,
+there was no use pretending to each other that they were safe. He had
+told her plainly that, if she wanted him to hold out, he must never be
+long alone with her at any time, and he must give up coming to see her
+late at night. It was much too risky.
+
+"When I can come and see you _that_ way," he had said, "it'll mean
+that I've left off caring. But I'll look in every Wednesday if I can.
+Every Wednesday as long as I live."
+
+He _had_ come now and then, not on a Wednesday, but "that way." He had
+not been able to help it. But he had left longer and longer intervals
+between. And he had never come ("that way") since last year, when his
+second child was born.
+
+Nothing but life or death would bring Rowcliffe out in his car after
+nightfall. Yet the thing had her every time. And it was as if her
+heart was ground with the grinding and torn with the tearing of the
+car.
+
+Then she said to herself, "I must end it somehow. It's horrible to go
+on caring like this. He was right. It would be better not to see him
+at all."
+
+And she began counting the days and the hours till Wednesday when she
+would see him.
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+Wednesday was still the Vicar's day for visiting his parish. It was
+also Rowcliffe's day for visiting his daughter. But the Vicar was not
+going to change it on that account. On Wednesday, if it was a fine
+afternoon, she was always sure of having Rowcliffe to herself.
+
+Rowcliffe himself had become the creature of unalterable habit.
+
+She was conscious now of the normal pulse of time, a steady pulse that
+beat with a large rhythm, a measure of seven days, from Wednesday to
+Wednesday.
+
+She filled the days between with reading and walking and parish work.
+
+There had been changes in Garthdale. Mr. Grierson had got married in
+one of his bursts of enthusiasm and had gone away. His place had been
+taken by Mr. Macey, the strenuous son of a Durlingham grocer. Mr.
+Macey had got into the Church by sheer strenuousness and had married,
+strenuously, a sharp and sallow wife. Between them they left very
+little parish work for Gwenda.
+
+She had become a furious reader. She liked hard stuff that her brain
+could bite on. It fell on a book and gutted it, throwing away the
+trash. She read all the modern poets and novelists she cared about,
+English and foreign. They left her stimulated but unsatisfied. There
+were not enough good ones to keep her going. She worked through the
+Elizabethan dramatists and all the Vicar's Tudor Classics, and came
+on Jowett's Translations of the Platonic Dialogues by the way, and
+was lured on the quest of Ultimate Reality, and found that there
+was nothing like Thought to keep you from thinking. She took to
+metaphysics as you take to dram-drinking. She must have strong, heavy
+stuff that drugged her brain. And when she found that she could trust
+her intellect she set it deliberately to fight her passion.
+
+At first it was an even match, for Gwenda's intellect, like her body,
+was robust. It generally held its ground from Thursday morning till
+Tuesday night. But the night that followed Wednesday afternoon would
+see its overthrow.
+
+This Wednesday it fought gallantly till the very moment of Steven's
+arrival. She was still reading Bergson, and her brain struggled to
+make out the sense and rhythm of the sentences across the beating of
+her heart.
+
+After seven years her heart still beat at Steven's coming.
+
+It remained an excitement and adventure, for she never knew how
+he would be. Sometimes he hadn't a word to say to her and left her
+miserable. Sometimes, after a hard day's work, he would be tired
+and heavy; she saw him middle-aged and her heart would ache for him.
+Sometimes he would be young almost as he used to be. She knew that
+he was only young for her. He was young because he loved her. She had
+never seen him so with Mary. Sometimes he would be formal and frigid.
+He talked to her as a man talks to a woman he is determined to keep
+at a distance. She hated Steven then, as passion hates. He had come
+before now in a downright bad temper and was the old, irritable Steven
+who found fault with everything she said and did. And she had loved
+him for it as she had loved the old Steven. It was his queer way of
+showing that he loved her.
+
+But he had not been like that for a very long time. He had grown
+gentler as he had grown older.
+
+To-day he showed her more than one of his familiar moods. She took
+them gladly as so many signs of his unchanging nature.
+
+He still kept up his way of coming in, the careful closing of the
+door, the slight pause there by the threshold, the look that sought
+her and that held her for an instant before their hands met.
+
+She saw it still as the look that pleaded with her while it caressed
+her, that said, "I know we oughtn't to be so pleased to see each
+other, but we can't help it, can we?"
+
+It was the look of his romantic youth.
+
+As long as she saw it there it was nothing to her that Rowcliffe had
+changed physically, that he moved more heavily, that his keenness and
+his slenderness were going, that she saw also a slight thickening of
+his fine nose, a perceptible slackening of the taut muscles of his
+mouth, and a decided fulness about his jaw and chin. She saw all these
+things; but she did not see that his romantic youth lay dying in the
+pathos of his eyes and that if it pleaded still it pleaded forgiveness
+for the sin of dying.
+
+His hand fell slackly from hers as she took it.
+
+It was as if they were still on their guard, still afraid of each
+other's touch.
+
+As he sat in the chair that faced hers he held his hands clasped
+loosely in front of him, and looked at them with a curious attention,
+as if he wondered what kind of hands they were that could resist
+holding her.
+
+When he saw that she was looking at him they fell apart with a nervous
+gesture.
+
+They picked up the book she had laid down and turned it. His eyes
+examined the title page. Their pathos lightened and softened; it
+became compassion; they smiled at her with a little pitiful smile,
+half tender, half ironic, as if they said, "Poor Gwenda, is that what
+you're driven to?"
+
+He opened the book and turned the pages, reading a little here and
+there.
+
+He scowled. His look changed. It darkened. It was angry, resentful,
+inimical. The dying youth in it came a little nearer to death.
+
+Rowcliffe had found that he could not understand what he had read.
+
+"Huh! What do you addle your brains with that stuff for?" he said.
+
+"It amuses me."
+
+"Oh--so long as you're amused."
+
+He pushed away the book that had offended him.
+
+They talked--about the Vicar, about Alice, about Rowcliffe's children,
+about the changes in the Dale, the coming of the Maceys and the going
+of young Grierson.
+
+"He wasn't a bad chap, Grierson."
+
+He softened, remembering Grierson.
+
+"I can't think why you didn't care about him."
+
+And at the thought of how Gwenda might have cared for Grierson and
+hadn't cared his youth revived; it came back into his eyes and lit
+them; it passed into his scowling face and caressed and smoothed it to
+the perfect look of reminiscent satisfaction. Rowcliffe did not know,
+neither did she, how his egoism hung upon her passion, how it drew
+from it food and fire.
+
+He raised his head and squared his shoulders with the unconscious
+gesture of his male pride.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was then that she saw for the first time that he wore the black tie
+and had the black band of mourning on his sleeve.
+
+"Oh Steven--what do you wear that for?"
+
+"This? My poor old uncle died last week."
+
+"Not the one I saw?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"At Mary's wedding."
+
+"No. Another one. My father's brother."
+
+He paused.
+
+"It's made a great difference to me and Mary."
+
+He said it gravely, mournfully almost. She looked at him with tender
+eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry, Steven."
+
+He smiled faintly.
+
+"Sorry, are you?"
+
+"Yes. If you cared for him."
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't very much. It's not as if I'd seen a lot of him."
+
+"You said it's made a difference."
+
+"So it has. He's left me a good four hundred a year."
+
+"Oh--_that_ sort of difference."
+
+"My dear girl, four hundred a year makes all the difference; it's no
+use pretending that it doesn't."
+
+"I'm not pretending. You sounded sorry and I was sorry for you. That
+was all."
+
+At that his egoism winced. It was as if she had accused him of
+pretending to be sorry.
+
+He looked at her sharply. His romantic youth died in that look.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silence fell between them. But she was used to that. She even welcomed
+it. Steven's silences brought him nearer to her than his speech.
+
+Essy came in with the tea-tray.
+
+He lingered uneasily after the meal, glancing now and then at the
+clock. She was used to that, too. She also had her eyes on the clock,
+measuring the priceless moments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is anything worrying you, Steven?" she said presently.
+
+"Why? Do I look worried?"
+
+"Not exactly, but you don't look well."
+
+"I'm getting a bit rusty. That's what's the matter with me. I want
+some hard work to rub me up and put a polish on me and I can't get
+it here. I've never had enough to do since I left Leeds. Harker was a
+wise chap to stick to it. It would do me all the good in the world if
+I went back."
+
+"Then," she said, "you'll _have_ to go, Steven."
+
+She did not know, in her isolation, that Rowcliffe had been going
+about saying that sort of thing for the last seven years. She thought
+it was the formidable discovery of time.
+
+"You ought to go if you feel like that about it. Why don't you?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You _do_ know."
+
+She did not look at him as she spoke, so she missed his bewilderment.
+
+"You know why you stayed, Steven."
+
+He understood. He remembered. The dull red of his face flushed with
+the shock of the memory.
+
+"Do I?" he said.
+
+"I made you."
+
+His flush darkened. But he gave no other sign of having heard her.
+
+"I don't know why I'm staying now."
+
+He rose and looked at his watch.
+
+"I must be going home," he said.
+
+He turned at the threshold.
+
+"I forgot to give you Mary's message. She sent her love and she wants
+to know when you're coming again to see the babies."
+
+"Oh--some day soon."
+
+"You must make it very soon or they won't be babies any more. She's
+dying to show them to you."
+
+"She showed them to me the other day."
+
+"She says it's ages since you've been. And if she says it is she
+thinks it is."
+
+Gwenda was silent.
+
+"I'm coming all right, tell her."
+
+"Well, but what day? We'd better fix it. Don't come on a Tuesday or a
+Friday, I'll be out."
+
+"I must come when I can."
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+She went on a Tuesday.
+
+She had had tea with her father first. Meal-time had become sacred to
+the Vicar and he hated her to be away for any one of them.
+
+She walked the four miles, going across the moor under Karva and
+loitering by the way, and it was past six before she reached Morfe.
+
+She was shown into the room that was once Rowcliffe's study. It had
+been Mary's drawing-room ever since last year when the second child
+was born and they turned the big room over the dining-room into a
+day nursery. Mary had made it snug and gay with cushions and shining,
+florid chintzes. There were a great many things in rosewood and brass;
+a piano took the place of Rowcliffe's writing table; a bureau and a
+cabinet stood against the wall where his bookcases had been; and a
+tall palm-tree in a pot filled the little window that looked on to the
+orchard.
+
+She had only to close her eyes and shut out these objects and she
+saw the room as it used to be. She closed them now and instantly she
+opened them again, for the vision hurt her.
+
+She went restlessly about the room, picking up things and looking at
+them without seeing them.
+
+In the room upstairs she heard the cries of Rowcliffe's children,
+bumping and the scampering of feet. She stood still then and clenched
+her hands. The pain at her heart was like no other pain. It was as if
+she hated Rowcliffe's children.
+
+Presently she would have to go up and see them.
+
+She waited. Mary was taking her own time.
+
+Upstairs the doors opened and shut on the sharp grief of little
+children carried unwillingly to bed.
+
+Gwenda's heart melted and grew tender at the sound. But its tenderness
+was more unbearable to her than its pain.
+
+The maid-servant came to the door.
+
+"Mrs. Rowcliffe says will you please go upstairs to the night nursery,
+Miss Gwenda. She can't leave the children."
+
+That was the message Mary invariably sent. She left the children for
+hours together when other visitors were there. She could never leave
+them for a minute when her sister came. Unless Steven happened to be
+in. Then Mary would abandon whatever she was doing and hurry to the
+two. In the last year Gwenda had never found herself alone with Steven
+for ten minutes in his house. If Mary couldn't come at once she sent
+the nurse in with the children.
+
+Upstairs in the night nursery Mary sat in the nurse's low chair.
+Her year-old baby sprawled naked in her lap. The elder infant stood
+whining under the nurse's hands.
+
+Mary had changed a little in three and a half years. She was broader
+and stouter; the tender rose had hardened over her high cheek bones.
+Her face still kept its tranquil brooding, but her slow gray eyes had
+a secret tremor, they were almost alert, as if she were on the watch.
+
+And Mary's mouth, with its wide, turned back lips, had lost its
+subtlety, it had coarsened slightly and loosened, under her senses'
+continual content.
+
+Gwenda brushed Mary's mouth lightly with the winged arch of her upper
+lip. Mary laughed.
+
+"You don't know how to kiss," she said. "If you're going to treat Baby
+that way, and Molly too--"
+
+Gwenda stooped over the soft red down of the baby's head. To Gwenda it
+was as if her heart kept her hands off Rowcliffe's children, as if
+her flesh shrank from their flesh while her lips brushed theirs in
+tenderness and repulsion.
+
+But seeing them was always worse in anticipation than reality.
+
+For there was no trace of Rowcliffe in his children. The little
+red-haired, white-faced things were all Cartaret. Molly, the elder,
+had a look of Ally, sullen and sickly, as if some innermost reluctance
+had held back the impulse that had given it being. Even the younger
+child showed fragile as if implacable memory had come between it and
+perfect life.
+
+Gwenda did not know why her fierceness was appeased by this
+unlikeness, nor why she wanted to see Mary and nothing but Mary in
+Rowcliffe's children, nor why she refused to think of them as his;
+she only knew that to see Rowcliffe in Mary's children would have been
+more than her flesh and blood could bear.
+
+"You've come just in time to see Baby in her bath," said Mary.
+
+"I seem to be always in time for that."
+
+"Well, you're not in time to see Steven. He won't be home till nine at
+least."
+
+"I didn't expect to see him. He told me he'd be out."
+
+She saw the hidden watcher in Mary's eyes looking out at her.
+
+"When did he tell you that?"
+
+"Last Wednesday."
+
+The watcher hid again, suddenly appeased.
+
+Mary busied herself with the washing of her babies. She did it
+thoroughly and efficiently, with no sentimental tendernesses, but with
+soft, sensual pattings and strokings of the white, satin-smooth skins.
+
+And when they were tucked into their cots and disposed of for the
+night Mary turned to Gwenda.
+
+"Come into my room a minute," she said.
+
+Mary's joy was to take her sister into her room and watch her to see
+if she would flinch before the signs of Steven's occupation. She drew
+her attention to these if Gwenda seemed likely to miss any of them.
+
+"We've had the beds turned," she said. "The light hurt Steven's eyes.
+I can't say I like sleeping with my head out in the middle of the
+room."
+
+"Why don't you lie the other way then?"
+
+"My dear, Steven wouldn't like that. Oh, what a mess my hair's in!"
+
+She turned to the glass and smoothed her disordered waves and coils,
+while she kept her eyes fixed on Gwenda's image there, appraising her
+clothes, her slenderness and straightness, the set of her head on her
+shoulders, the air that she kept up of almost insolent adolescence.
+She noted the delicate lines on her forehead and at the corners of her
+eyes; she saw that her small defiant face was still white and firm,
+and that her eyes looked violet blue with the dark shadows under them.
+
+Time was the only power that had been good to Gwenda.
+
+"She ought to look more battered," Mary thought. "She _does_ carry it
+off well. And she's only two years younger than I am.
+
+"It's her figure, really, not her face. She's got more lines than I
+have. But if I wore that long straight coat I should look awful in
+it."
+
+"It's all very well for you," she said. "You haven't had two
+children."
+
+"No. I haven't. But what's all very well?"
+
+"The good looks you contrive to keep, my dear. Nobody would know you
+were thirty-three."
+
+"_I_ shouldn't, Molly, if you didn't remind me every time."
+
+Mary flushed.
+
+"You'll say next that's why you don't come."
+
+"Why--I--don't come?"
+
+"Yes. It's ages since you've been here."
+
+That was always Mary's cry.
+
+"I haven't much time, Molly, for coming on the off-chance."
+
+"The off chance! As if I'd never asked you! You can go to Alice."
+
+"Poor Ally wouldn't have anybody to show the baby to if I didn't. You
+haven't seen one of Ally's babies."
+
+"I can't, Gwenda. I must think of the children. I can't let them grow
+up with little Greatorexes. There are three of them, aren't there?"
+
+"Didn't you know there's been another?"
+
+"Steven _did_ tell me. She had rather a bad time, hadn't she?"
+
+"She had. Molly--it wouldn't do you any harm now to go and see her.
+I think it's horrid of you not to. It's such rotten humbug. Why, you
+used to say _I_ was ten times more awful than poor little Ally."
+
+"There are moments, Gwenda, when I think you are."
+
+"Moments? You always did think it. You think it still. And yet
+you'll have me here but you won't have her. Just because she's gone a
+technical howler and I haven't."
+
+"You haven't. But you'd have gone a worse one if you'd had the
+chance."
+
+Gwenda raised her head.
+
+"You know, Molly, that that isn't true."
+
+"I said if. I suppose you think you had your chance, then?"
+
+"I don't think anything. Except that I've got to go."
+
+"You haven't. You're going to stay for dinner now you're here."
+
+"I can't, really, Mary."
+
+But Mary was obstinate. Whether her sister stayed or went she made it
+hard for her. She kept it up on the stairs and at the door and at the
+garden gate.
+
+"Perhaps you'll come some night when Steven's here. You know he's
+always glad to see you."
+
+The sting of it was in Mary's watching eyes. For, when you came to
+think of it, there was nothing else she could very well have said.
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+That year, when spring warmed into summer, Gwenda's strength went from
+her.
+
+She was always tired. She fought with her fatigue and got the better
+of it, but in a week or two it returned. Rowcliffe told her to
+rest and she rested, for a day or two, lying on the couch in the
+dining-room where Ally used to lie, and when she felt better she
+crawled out on to the moor and lay there.
+
+One day she said to herself, "There's Ally. I'll go and see how she's
+getting on."
+
+She dragged herself up the hill to Upthorne.
+
+It was a day of heat and hidden sunlight. The moor and the marshes
+were drenched in the gray June mist. The hillside wore soft vapor like
+a cloak hiding its nakedness.
+
+At the top of the Three Fields the nave of the old barn showed as
+if lifted up and withdrawn into the distance. But it was no longer
+solitary. The thorn-tree beside it had burst into white flower; it
+shimmered far-off under the mist in the dim green field, like a magic
+thing, half-hidden and about to disappear, remaining only for the hour
+of its enchantment.
+
+It gave her the same subtle and mysterious joy that she had had on
+the night she and Rowcliffe walked together and saw the thorn-trees on
+Greffington Edge white under the hidden moon.
+
+The gray Farm-house was changed, for Jim Greatorex had got on. He
+had built himself another granary on the north side of the mistal. He
+built it long and low, of hewn stone, with a corrugated iron roof. And
+he had made himself two fine new rooms, a dining-room and a nursery,
+one above the other, within the blind walls of the house where the old
+granary had been. The walls were blind no longer, for he had knocked
+four large windows out of them. And it was as if one-half of the house
+were awake and staring while the other half, in its old and alien
+beauty, dozed and dreamed under its scowling mullions.
+
+As Gwenda came to it she wondered how the Farm could ever have seemed
+sinister and ghost-haunted; it had become so entirely the place of
+happy life.
+
+Loud noises came from the open windows of the dining-room where the
+family were at tea; the barking of dogs, the competitive laughter of
+small children, a gurgling and crowing and spluttering; with now and
+then the sudden delicate laughter of Ally and the bellowing of Jim.
+
+"Oh--there's Gwenda!" said Ally.
+
+Jim stopped between a bellowing and a choking, for his mouth was full.
+
+"Ay--it's 'er."
+
+He washed down his mouthful. "Coom, Ally, and open door t' 'er."
+
+But Ally did not come. She had her year-old baby on her knees and was
+feeding him.
+
+At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the
+hand.
+
+"Thot's right," he said. "Yo've joost coom in time for a cup o' tae.
+T' misses is in there wi' t' lil uns."
+
+He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.
+
+Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been. He had lost his
+savage grace. But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he
+still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.
+
+Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed. "I
+can't get up," she said, "I'm feeding Baby. He'd howl if I left off."
+
+"I'd let 'im howl. I'd spank him ef 'twas me," said Jim.
+
+"He wouldn't, Gwenda."
+
+"Ay, thot I would. An' 'e knows it, doos Johnny, t' yoong rascal."
+
+Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and
+little Steven and the baby John. They lifted little sticky faces and
+wiped them on Gwenda's face, and the happy din went on.
+
+Ally didn't seem to mind it. She had grown plump and pink and rather
+like Mary without her subtlety. She sat smiling, tranquil among the
+cries of her offspring.
+
+Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline. He and
+Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained. Now
+and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that
+the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come
+up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz
+cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.
+
+"And Baby's got another tooth," said Ally.
+
+"I'm breaakin' in t' yoong chestnut," said Jim. "Poor Daasy's gettin'
+paasst 'er work."
+
+All these happenings were exciting and wonderful to Ally.
+
+"But you're not interested, Gwenda."
+
+"I am, darling, I am."
+
+She was. Ally knew it but she wanted perpetual reassurance.
+
+"But you never tell us anything."
+
+"There's nothing to tell. Nothing happens."
+
+"Oh, come," said Ally, "how's Papa?"
+
+"Much the same except that he drove into Morfe yesterday to see
+Molly."
+
+"Yes, darling, of course you may."
+
+Ally was abstracted, for Gwenny had slipped from her chair and was
+whispering in her ear.
+
+It never occurred to Ally to ask what Gwenda had been doing, or what
+she had been thinking of, or what she felt, or to listen to anything
+she had to say.
+
+Her sister might just as well not have existed for all the interest
+Ally showed in her. She hadn't really forgotten what Gwenda had done
+for her, but she couldn't go on thinking about it forever. It was the
+sort of thing that wasn't easy or agreeable to think about and Ally's
+instinct of self-preservation urged her to turn from it. She tended
+to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as
+her own terrors and her father's illness and the noises Greatorex made
+when he was eating.
+
+Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally's and it had never hurt her
+till to-day. To-day she wanted something from Ally. She didn't know
+what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn't got.
+
+She only said, "Have you seen the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge?"
+
+And Ally never answered. She was heading off a stream of jam that was
+creeping down Stevey's chin to plunge into his neck.
+
+"Gwenda's aasskin' yo 'ave yo seen t' thorn-trees on Greffington
+Edge," said Greatorex. He spoke to Ally as if she were deaf.
+
+She made a desperate effort to detach herself from Stevey.
+
+"The thorn-trees? Has anybody set fire to them?"
+
+"Tha silly laass!----"
+
+"What about the thorn-trees, Gwenda?"
+
+"Only that they're all in flower," Gwenda said.
+
+She didn't know where it had come from, the sudden impulse to tell
+Ally about the beauty of the thorn-trees.
+
+But the impulse had gone. She thought sadly, "They want me. But they
+don't want me for myself. They don't want to talk to me. They don't
+know what to say. They don't know anything about me. They don't
+care--really. Jim likes me because I've stuck to Ally. Ally loves me
+because I would have given Steven to her. They love what I was, not
+what I am now, nor what I shall be.
+
+"They have nothing for me."
+
+It was Jim who answered her. "I knaw," he said, "I knaw."
+
+"Oh! You little, little--lamb!"
+
+Baby John had his fingers in his mother's hair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greatorex rose. "You'll not get mooch out o' Ally as long as t' kids
+are about. Yo'd best coom wi' mae into t' garden and see t' loopins."
+
+She went with him.
+
+He was silent as they threaded the garden path together. She thought,
+"I know why I like him."
+
+They came to a standstill at the south wall where the tall blue lupins
+rose between them, vivid in the tender air and very still.
+
+Greatorex also was still. His eyes looked away over the blue spires
+of the lupins to the naked hillside. They saw neither the hillside nor
+anything between.
+
+When he spoke his voice was thick, almost as though he were in love or
+intoxicated.
+
+"I knaw what yo mane about those thorn-trees. 'Tisn' no earthly beauty
+what yo see in 'em."
+
+"Jim," she said, "shall I always see it?"
+
+"I dawn--knaw. It cooms and it goas, doos sech-like."
+
+"What makes it come?"
+
+"What maakes it coom? Yo knaw better than I can tall yo."
+
+"If I only did know. I'm afraid it's going."
+
+"I can tell yo this for your coomfort. Ef yo soofer enoof mebbe it'll
+coom t' yo again. Ef yo're snoog and 'appy sure's death it'll goa."
+
+He paused.
+
+"It 'assn't coom t' mae sence I married Ally."
+
+She was wrong about Jim. He had not forgotten her. He was not saying
+these things for himself; he was saying them for her, getting them out
+of himself with pain and difficulty. It was odd to think that nobody
+but she understood Jim, and that nobody but Jim had ever really
+understood her. Steven didn't understand her, any more than Ally
+understood her husband. And it made no difference to her, and it made
+no difference to Jim.
+
+"I'll tell yo anoother quare thing. 'T' assn't got mooch t' do wi'
+good and baad. T' drink 'll nat drive it from yo, an' sin'll nat drive
+it from yo. Saw I raakon 't is mooch t' saame thing as t' graace o'
+Gawd."
+
+"Did the grace of God go away from you when you married, Jim?"
+
+"Mebbe t' would 'aave ef I'd roon aaffter it. 'Tis a tricky thing is
+Gawd's graace."
+
+"But _it's_ gone," she said. "You gave your _soul_ for Ally when you
+married her."
+
+He smiled. "I toald 'er I'd give my sawl t' marry 'er," he said.
+
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+As she went home she tried to recapture the magic of the flowering
+thorn-trees. But it had gone and she could not be persuaded that it
+would come again. She was still too young to draw joy from the memory
+of joy, and what Greatorex had told her seemed incredible.
+
+She said to herself, "Is it going to be taken from me like everything
+else?"
+
+And a dreadful duologue went on in her.
+
+"It looks like it."
+
+"But it _was_ mine. It was mine like nothing else."
+
+"It never had anything for you but what you gave it."
+
+"Am I to go on giving the whole blessed time? Am I never to have
+anything for myself?"
+
+"There never is anything for anybody but what they give. Or what they
+take from somebody else. You should have taken. You had your chance."
+
+"I'd have died, rather."
+
+"Do you call this living?"
+
+"I _have_ lived."
+
+"He hasn't. Why did you sacrifice him?"
+
+"For Mary."
+
+"It wasn't for Mary. It was for yourself. For your own wretched soul."
+
+"For _his_ soul."
+
+"How much do you suppose Mary cares about his soul? It would have had
+a chance with you. Its one chance."
+
+The unconsoling voice had the last word. For it was not in answer to
+it that a certain phrase came into her brooding mind.
+
+"I couldn't do a caddish thing like that."
+
+It puzzled her. She had said it to Steven that night. But it came
+to her now attached to an older memory. Somebody had said it to her
+before then. Years before.
+
+She remembered. It was Ally.
+
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+A year passed. It was June again.
+
+For more than a year there had been rumors of changes in Morfe. The
+doctor talked of going. He was always talking of going and nobody had
+yet believed that he would go. This time, they said, he was serious,
+it had been a toss-up whether he stayed or went. But in the end he
+stayed. Things had happened in Rowcliffe's family. His mother had died
+and his wife had had a son.
+
+Rowcliffe's son was the image of Rowcliffe.
+
+The doctor had no brothers or sisters, and by his mother's death he
+came into possession both of his father's income and of hers. He had
+now more than a thousand a year over and above what he earned.
+
+On an unearned thousand a year you can live like a rich man in
+Rathdale.
+
+Not that Rowcliffe had any idea of giving up. He was well under forty
+and as soon as old Hyslop at Reyburn died or retired he would step
+into his practice. He hadn't half enough to do in Morfe and he wanted
+more.
+
+Meanwhile he had bought the house that joined on to his own and thrown
+the two and their gardens into one. They had been one twenty years
+ago, when the wide-fronted building, with its long rows of windows,
+was the dominating house in Morfe village. Rowcliffe was now the
+dominating man in it. He had given the old place back its own.
+
+And he had spent any amount of money on it. He had had all the
+woodwork painted white, and the whole house repapered and redecorated.
+He had laid down parquet flooring in the big square hall that he had
+made and in the new drawing-room upstairs; and he had bought a great
+deal of beautiful and expensive furniture.
+
+And now he was building a garage and laying out a croquet ground and
+tennis lawns at the back.
+
+He and Mary had been superintending these works all afternoon till a
+shower sent them indoors. And now they were sitting together in the
+drawing-room, in the breathing-space that came between the children's
+hour and dinner.
+
+Mary had sent the children back to the nursery a little earlier than
+usual. Rowcliffe had complained of headache.
+
+He was always complaining of headaches. They dated from his marriage,
+and more particularly from one night in June eight years ago.
+
+But Rowcliffe ignored the evidence of dates. He ignored everything
+that made him feel uncomfortable. He had put Gwenda from him. He had
+said plainly to Mary (in one poignant moment not long before the birth
+of their third child), "If you're worrying about me and Gwenda, you
+needn't. She was never anything to me."
+
+That was not saying there had never been anything between them, but
+Mary knew what he had meant.
+
+He said to himself, and Mary said that he had got over it. But he
+hadn't got over it. He might say to himself and Mary, "She was never
+anything to me"; he might put her and the thought of her away from
+him, but she had left her mark on him. He hadn't put her away. She was
+there, in his heavy eyes and in the irritable gestures of his hands,
+in his nerves and in his wounded memory. She had knitted herself into
+his secret being.
+
+Mary was unaware of the cause of his malady. If it had been suggested
+to her that he had got into this state because of Gwenda she would
+have dismissed the idea with contempt. She didn't worry about
+Rowcliffe's state. On the contrary, Rowcliffe's state was a
+consolation and a satisfaction to her for all that she had endured
+through Gwenda. She would have thought you mad if you had told her so,
+for she was sorry for Steven and tender to him when he was nervous or
+depressed. But to Mary her sorrow and her tenderness were a voluptuous
+joy. She even encouraged Rowcliffe in his state. She liked to make it
+out worse than it really was, so that he might be more dependent on
+her.
+
+And she had found that it could be induced in him by suggestion. She
+had only to say to him, "Steven, you're thoroughly worn out," and he
+_was_ thoroughly worn out. She had more pleasure, because she had more
+confidence, in this lethargic, middle-aged Rowcliffe than in Rowcliffe
+young and energetic. His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and
+his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself,
+secretly, insidiously, to destroy them.
+
+It had taken her seven years.
+
+For the first five years it had been hard work for Mary. It had meant,
+for her body, an ignominious waiting and watching for the moment when
+its appeal would be irresistible, for her soul a complete subservience
+to her husband's moods, and for her mind perpetual attention to his
+comfort, a thousand cares that had seemed to go unnoticed. But in the
+sixth year they had begun to tell. Once Rowcliffe had made up his
+mind that Gwenda couldn't be anything to him he had let go and through
+sheer exhaustion had fallen more and more into his wife's hands, and
+for the last two years her labor had been easy and its end sure.
+
+She had him, bound to her bed and to her fireside.
+
+He said and thought that he was happy. He meant that he was extremely
+comfortable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is your head very bad, Steven?"
+
+He shook his head. It wasn't very bad, but he was worried. He was
+worried about himself.
+
+From time to time his old self rose against this new self that was
+the slave of comfort. It made desperate efforts to shake off the
+strangling lethargy. When he went about saying that he was getting
+rusty, that he ought never to have left Leeds, and that it would do
+him all the good in the world to go back there, he was saying what he
+knew to be the truth. The life he was leading was playing the devil
+with his nerves and brain. His brain had nothing to do. Hard work
+might not be the cure for every kind of nervous trouble, but it was
+the one cure for the kind that he had got.
+
+He ought to have gone away seven years ago. It was Gwenda's fault that
+he hadn't gone. He felt a dull anger against her as against a woman
+who had wrecked his chance.
+
+He had a chance of going now if he cared to take it.
+
+He had had a letter that morning from Dr. Harker asking if he had
+meant what he had said a year ago, and if he'd care to exchange his
+Rathdale practice for his old practice in Leeds. Harker's wife was
+threatened with lung trouble, and they would have to live in the
+country somewhere, and Harker himself wouldn't be sorry for the
+exchange. His present practice was worth twice what it had been ten
+years ago and it was growing. There were all sorts of interesting
+things to be done in Leeds by a man of Rowcliffe's keenness and
+energy.
+
+"Do you know, Steven, you're getting quite stout?"
+
+"I do know," he said almost with bitterness.
+
+"I don't mean horridly stout, dear, just nicely and comfortably
+stout."
+
+"I'm _too_ comfortable," he said. "I don't do enough work to keep me
+fit."
+
+"Is that what's bothering you?"
+
+He frowned. It was Harker's letter that was bothering him. He said so.
+
+For one instant Mary looked impatient.
+
+"I thought we'd settled that," she said.
+
+Rowcliffe sighed.
+
+"What on earth makes you want to go and leave this place when you've
+spent hundreds on it?"
+
+"I should make pots of money in Leeds."
+
+"But we couldn't live there."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It would be too awful. My dear, if it were a big London practice I
+shouldn't say no. That might be worth while. But whatever should we
+have in Leeds?"
+
+"We haven't much here."
+
+"We've got the county. You might think of the children."
+
+"I do," he said mournfully. "I do. I think of nothing else but the
+children--and you. If you wouldn't like it there's an end of it."
+
+"You might think of yourself, dear. You really are not strong enough
+for it."
+
+He felt that he really was not.
+
+He changed the subject.
+
+"I saw Gwenda the other day."
+
+"Looking as young as ever, I suppose?"
+
+"No. Not quite so young. I thought she was looking rather ill."
+
+He meditated.
+
+"I wonder why she never comes."
+
+He really did wonder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's a quarter past seven, Steven."
+
+He rose and stretched himself. They went together to the night nursery
+where the three children lay in their cots, the little red-haired
+girls awake and restless, and the dark-haired baby in his first sleep.
+They bent over them together. Mary's lips touched the red hair and the
+dark where Steven's lips had been.
+
+They spent the evening sitting by the fire in Rowcliffe's study. The
+doctor dozed. Mary, silent over her sewing, was the perfect image of
+tranquillity. From time to time she looked at her husband and smiled
+as his chin dropped to his breast and recovered itself with a start.
+
+At the stroke of ten she murmured, "Steven, are you ready for bed?"
+
+He rose, stumbling for drowsiness.
+
+As they passed into the square hall he paused and looked round him
+before putting out the lights.
+
+"Yes" (he yawned). "Ye-hes. I think we shall do very comfortably here
+for the next seven years."
+
+He was thinking of old Hyslop. He had given him seven years.
+
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+The next day (it was a Friday), when Mary came home to tea after a
+round of ineffectual calling she was told that Miss Gwenda was in the
+drawing-room.
+
+Mary inquired whether the doctor was in.
+
+Dr. Rowcliffe was in but he was engaged in the surgery.
+
+Mary thought she knew why Gwenda had come to-day.
+
+For the last two or three Wednesdays Rowcliffe had left Garthdale
+without calling at the Vicarage.
+
+He had not meant to break his habit, but it happened so. For, this
+year, Mary had decided to have a day, from May to October. And her day
+was Wednesday.
+
+Her sister had ignored her day, and Mary was offended.
+
+She had every reason. Mary believed in keeping up appearances, and
+the appearance she most desired to keep up was that of behaving
+beautifully to her sister. This required her sister's co-operation. It
+couldn't appear if Gwenda didn't. And Gwenda hadn't given it a chance.
+She meant to have it out with her.
+
+She greeted her therefore with a certain challenge.
+
+"What are you keeping away for? Do you suppose we aren't glad to see
+you?"
+
+"I'm not keeping away," said Gwenda.
+
+"It looks uncommonly like it. Do you know it's two months since you've
+been here?"
+
+"Is it? I've lost count."
+
+"I should think you did lose count!"
+
+"I'm sorry, Molly. I couldn't come."
+
+"You talk as if you had engagements every day in Garthdale."
+
+"If it comes to that, it's months since you've been to us."
+
+"It's different for me. I _have_ engagements. And I've my husband and
+children too. Steven hates it if I'm out when he comes home."
+
+"And Papa hates it if _I'm_ out."
+
+"It's no use minding what Papa hates. What's making you so sensitive?"
+
+"Living with him."
+
+"Then for goodness sake get away from him when you can. One afternoon
+here can't matter to him."
+
+Gwenda said nothing, neither did she look at her. But she answered her
+in her heart. "It matters to _me_. It matters to _me_. How stupid
+you are if you don't see how it matters. Yet I'd die rather than you
+should see."
+
+Mary went on, exasperated by her sister's silence.
+
+"We may as well have it out while we're about it. Why can't you look
+me straight in the face and say plump out what I've done?"
+
+"You've done nothing."
+
+"Well, is it Steven, then? Has he done anything?"
+
+"Of course he hasn't. What _could_ he do?"
+
+"Poor Steven, goodness knows! I'm sure I don't. No more does he.
+Unless----"
+
+She stopped. Her sister was looking her straight in the face now.
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"My dear Gwenda, don't glare at me like that. I'm not saying things
+and I'm not thinking them. I don't know what _you're_ thinking. If you
+weren't so nervy you'd own that I've always been decent to you. I'm
+sure I _have_ been. I've always stood up for you. I've always wanted
+to have you here----"
+
+"And why shouldn't you?"
+
+Mary blinked. She had seen her blunder.
+
+"I never said you weren't decent to me, Molly."
+
+"You behave as if I weren't."
+
+"How am I to behave?"
+
+"I know it's difficult," said Mary. The memory of her blunder rankled.
+
+"Are you offended because Steven hasn't been to see you?"
+
+"My _dear_ Molly----"
+
+Mary ignored her look of weary tolerance.
+
+"Because you can't expect him to keep on running up to Garthdale when
+Papa's all right."
+
+"I don't expect him."
+
+"Well then----!" said Mary with the air of having exhausted all
+plausible interpretations.
+
+"If I were offended," said Gwenda, "should I be here?"
+
+The appearance of the tea-tray and the parlormaid absolved Mary from
+the embarrassing compulsion to reply. She addressed herself to the
+parlormaid.
+
+"Tell Dr. Rowcliffe that tea is ready and that Miss Gwendolen is
+here."
+
+She really wanted Steven to come and deliver her from the situation
+she had created. But Rowcliffe delayed his coming.
+
+"Is it true that Steven's going to give up his practice?" Gwenda said
+presently.
+
+"Well no--whatever he does he won't do that," said Mary.
+
+She thought, "So that's what she came for. Steven hasn't told her
+anything."
+
+"What put that idea into your head?" she asked.
+
+"Somebody told me so."
+
+"He _has_ had an offer of Dr. Harker's practice in Leeds, and he'd
+some idea of taking it. He seemed to think it might be a good thing."
+
+There was a flicker in the whiteness of Gwenda's face. It arrested
+Mary.
+
+It was not excitement nor dismay nor eagerness, nor even interest.
+It was a sort of illumination, the movement of some inner light, the
+shining passage of some idea. And in Gwenda's attitude, as it now
+presented itself to Mary, there was a curious still withdrawal and
+detachment. She seemed hardly to listen but to be preoccupied with her
+idea.
+
+"He thought it would be a good thing," she said.
+
+"I think I've convinced him," said Mary, "that it wouldn't."
+
+Gwenda was stiller and more withdrawn than ever, guarding her idea.
+
+"Can I see Steven before I go?" she said presently.
+
+"Of course. He'll be up in a second----"
+
+"I can't--here."
+
+Mary stared. She understood.
+
+"You're ill. Poor dear, you shall see him this minute."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the
+same author, and new fiction.
+
+
+
+By THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+The Return of the Prodigal
+
+Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+"These are stories to be read leisurely with a feeling for the stylish
+and the careful workmanship which is always a part of May Sinclair's
+work. They need no recommendation to those who know the author's work
+and one of the things on which we may congratulate ourselves is the
+fact that so many Americans are her reading friends."--_Kansas City
+Gazette-Globe._
+
+"They are the product of a master workman who has both skill and art,
+and who scorns to produce less than the best."--_Buffalo Express._
+
+"Always a clever writer, Miss Sinclair at her best is an exceptionally
+interesting one, and in several of the tales bound together in this
+new volume we have her at her best."--_N.Y. Times._
+
+"... All of which show the same sensitive apprehension of unusual
+cases and delicate relations, and reveal a truth which would be hidden
+from the hasty or blunt observer."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+"One of the best of the many collections of stories published this
+season."--_N.Y. Sun._
+
+"... All these stories are of deep interest because all of them are
+out of the rut."--_Kentucky Post._
+
+"Let no one who cares for good and sincere work neglect this
+book."--_London Post._
+
+"The stories are touched with a peculiar delicacy and
+whimsicality."--_Los Angeles Times._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
+
+By H.G. WELLS.
+
+Cloth, 12mo. $1.50 net.
+
+The name of H.G. Wells upon a title page is an assurance of merit.
+It is a guarantee that on the pages which follow will be found an
+absorbing story told with master skill. In the present book Mr. Wells
+surpasses even his previous efforts. He is writing of modern society
+life, particularly of one very charming young woman, Lady Harman, who
+finds herself so bound in by conventions, so hampered by restrictions,
+largely those of a well intentioned but short sighted husband, that
+she is ultimately moved to revolt. The real meaning of this revolt,
+its effect upon her life and those of her associates are narrated by
+one who goes beneath the surface in his analysis of human motives.
+In the group of characters, writers, suffragists, labor organizers,
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+dramatic incidents which compose the years of her existence which are
+described by Mr. Wells, there is a novel which is significant in
+its interpretation of the trend of affairs today, and fascinatingly
+interesting as fiction. It is Mr. Wells at his best.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
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+Thracian Sea
+
+A Novel by JOHN HELSTON, Author of "Aphrodite," etc.
+
+With frontispiece in colors. Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+Probably no author to-day has written more powerfully or frankly on
+the conventions of modern society than John Helston, who, however, has
+hitherto confined himself to the medium of verse. In this novel, the
+theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems--problems
+involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in
+one's own way--he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose
+form than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds,
+the skill with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve
+everywhere exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the
+most exacting. The title, it should be explained, refers to a spirited
+race horse with the fortunes of which the lives of two of the leading
+characters are bound up.
+
+
+
+Faces in the Dawn
+
+A Story by HERMANN HAGEDORN
+
+With frontispiece in colors. Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.
+
+A great many people already know Mr. Hagedorn through his verse.
+_Faces in the Dawn_ will, however, be their introduction to him as
+a novelist. The same qualities that have served to raise his poetry
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+village. The theme of the book is the transformation that was wrought
+in the lives of an irritable, domineering German pastor and his wife
+through the influence of a young German girl and her American lover.
+Sentiment, humor and a human feeling, all present in just the right
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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+64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
+
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+
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+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
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+       *       *       *       *       *
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+The Mutiny of the Elsinore
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+By JACK LONDON, Author of "The Sea Wolf," "The Call of the Wild," etc.
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+With frontispiece in colors by Anton Fischer.
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+_Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._
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+Everyone who remembers _The Sea Wolf_ with pleasure will enjoy this
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+interest never lags and which demonstrates anew what a master of his
+art Mr. London is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
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+
+64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+NEW MACMILLAN FICTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+Saturday's Child
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+With frontispiece in colors, by F. Graham Cootes.
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+Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.50 net.
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+  _"Friday's child is loving and giving,
+  Saturday's child must work for her living."_
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+Norris's longest work. Into it has gone the very best of her creative
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+
+
+Neighborhood Stories
+
+By ZONA GALE, Author of "Friendship Village," "The Love of Pelleas and
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+With frontispiece. Decorated cloth, 12mo. boxed. $1.50 net.
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+
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+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE SISTERS***
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