Chapter 10

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.