Chapter 15

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.