Chapter 2

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 anæmia. 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 anæmia. 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.