Chapter 13

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.