Chapter 4

"Yes. If I didn't die before I got there," Alice would say, while she thought, "Serve him right, too, if I did."

And the Vicar would turn from her in disgust. He knew what was the matter with his daughter Alice.

At dinner time he would pull himself together again, for, after all, he was her father. He was robust and hearty over the sirloin and the leg of mutton. He would call for a glass and press into it the red juice of the meat.

"Don't peak and pine, girl. Drink that. It'll put some blood into you."

And Alice would refuse to drink it.

Next she refused to drink her milk at eleven. She carried it out to Essy in the scullery.

"I wish you'd drink my milk for me, Essy. It makes me sick," she said.

"I don't want your milk," said Essy.

"Please--" she implored her.

But Essy was angry. Her face flamed and she banged down the dishes she was drying. "I sail not drink it. What should I want your milk for? You can pour it in t' pig's bucket."

And the milk would be left by the scullery window till it turned sour and Essy poured it into the pig's bucket that stood under the sink.

* * * * *

Three weeks passed, and with every week Alice grew more bloodless, more slender, and more inert, and more and more like an unhappy ghost. Her small face was smaller; there was a tinge of green in its honey-whiteness, and of mauve in the dull rose of her mouth. And under her shallow breast her heart seemed to rise up and grow large, while the rest of Alice shrank and grew small. It was as if her fragile little body carried an enormous engine, an engine of infernal and terrifying power. When she lay down and when she got up and with every sudden movement its throbbing shook her savagely.

Night and morning she called to her sister: "Oh Gwenda, come and feel my heart. I do believe it's growing. It's getting too big for my body. It frightens me when it jumps about like that."

It frightened Gwenda.

But it did not really frighten Alice. She rejoiced in it, rather, and exulted. After all, it was a good thing that she had not got pneumonia, which might have killed her as it had killed John Greatorex. She had got what served her purpose better. It served all her purposes. If she had tried she could not have hit on anything that would have annoyed her father more or put him more conspicuously in the wrong. To begin with, it was his doing. He had worried her into it. And he had brought her to a place which was the worst place conceivable for anybody with a diseased heart, since you couldn't stir out of doors without going up hill.

Night and morning Alice stood before the looking-glass and turned out the lining of her lips and eyelids and saw with pleasure the pale rose growing paler. Every other hour she laid her hand on her heart and took again the full thrill of its dangerous throbbing, or felt her pulse to assure herself of the halt, the jerk, the hurrying of the beat. Night and morning and every other hour she thought of Rowcliffe.

"If it goes on like this, they'll _have_ to send for him," she said.

But it had gone on, the three weeks had passed, and yet they had not sent. The Vicar had put his foot down. He wouldn't have the doctor. He knew better than a dozen doctors what was the matter with his daughter Alice.

Alice said nothing. She simply waited. As if some profound and dead-sure instinct had sustained her, she waited, sickening.

And on the last night of the third week she fainted. She had dragged herself upstairs to bed, staggered across the little landing and fallen on the threshold of her room.

They kept her in bed next day. At one o'clock she refused her chicken-broth. She would neither eat nor drink. And a little before three Gwenda went for the doctor.

She had not told Alice she was going. She had not told anybody.

XV

She had to walk, for Mary had taken her bicycle. Nobody knew where Mary had gone or when she had started or when she would be back.

But the four miles between Garth and Morfe were nothing to Gwenda, who would walk twenty for her own amusement. She would have stretched the way out indefinitely if she could; she would have piled Garthdale Moor on Greffington Edge and Karva on the top of them and put them between Garth and Morfe, so violent was her fear of Steven Rowcliffe.

She had no longer any desire to see him or to be seen by him. He had seen her twice too often, and too early and too late. After being caught on the moor at dawn, it was preposterous that she should show herself in the doorway of Upthorne at night.

How was he to know that she hadn't done it on purpose? Girls did these things. Poor little Ally had done them. And it was because Ally had done them that she had been taken and hidden away here where she couldn't do them any more.

But--couldn't she? Gwenda stood still, staring in her horror as the frightful thought struck her that Ally could, and that she would, the very minute she realised young Rowcliffe. And he would think--not that it mattered in the least what he thought--he would think that there were two of them.

If only, she said to herself, if only young Rowcliffe were a married man. Then even Ally couldn't--

Not that she blamed poor little Ally. She looked on little Ally as the victim of a malign and tragic tendency, the fragile vehicle of an alien and overpowering impulse. Little Ally was doomed. It wasn't her fault if she was made like that.

And this time it wouldn't be her fault at all. Their father would have driven her. Gwenda hated him for his persecution and exposure of the helpless creature.

She walked on thinking.

It wouldn't end with Ally. They were all three exposed and persecuted. For supposing--it wasn't likely, but supposing--that this Rowcliffe man was the sort of man she liked, supposing--what was still more unlikely--that he was the sort of man who would like her, where would be the good of it? Her father would spoil it all. He spoiled everything.

Well, no, to be perfectly accurate, not everything. There was one thing he had not spoiled, because he had never suspected its existence--her singular passion for the place. Of course, if he had suspected it, he would have stamped on it. It was his business to stamp on other people's passions. Luckily, it wasn't in him to conceive a passion for a place.

It had come upon her at first sight as they drove between twilight and night from Reyburn through Rathdale into Garthdale. It was when they had left the wooded land behind them and the moors lifted up their naked shoulders, one after another, darker than dark, into a sky already whitening above the hidden moon. And she saw Morfe, gray as iron, on its hill, bearing the square crown and the triple pendants of its lights; she saw the long straight line of Greffington Edge, hiding the secret moon, and Karva with the ashen west behind it. There was something in their form and in their gesture that called to her as if they knew her, as if they waited for her; they struck her with the shock of recognition, as if she had known them and had waited too.

And close beside her own wonder and excitement she had felt the deep and sullen repulsion of her companions. The Vicar sat huddled in his overcoat. His nostrils, pinched with repugnance, sniffed as they drank in the cold, clean air. From time to time he shuddered, and a hoarse muttering came from under the gray woolen scarf he had wound round his mouth and beard. He was the righteous man, sent into uttermost abominable exile for his daughter's sin. Behind him, on the back seat of the trap, Alice and Mary cowed under their capes and rugs. They had turned their shoulders to each other, hostile in their misery. Gwenda was sorry for them.

The gray road dipped and turned and plunged them to the bottom of Garthdale. The small, scattering lights of the village waited for her in the hollow, with something humble and sad and familiar in their setting. They too stung her with that poignant and secret sense of recognition.

"This is the place," the Vicar had said. He had addressed himself to Alice; and it had been as if he had said, This the place, the infernal, the damnable place, you've brought us to with your behavior.

Their hatred of it had made Gwenda love it. "You can have your old Garthdale all to yourself," Alice had said. "Nobody else wants it."

That, to Gwenda, was the charm of it. The adorable place was her own. Nobody else wanted it. She loved it for itself. It had nothing but itself to offer her. And that was enough. It was almost, as she had said, too much. Her questing youth conceived no more rapturous adventure than to follow the sheep over Karva, to set out at twilight and see the immense night come down on the high moors above Upthorne; to get up when Alice was asleep and slip out and watch the dawn turning from gray to rose, and from rose to gold above Greffington Edge.

As it happened you saw sunrise and moonrise best from the platform of Morfe Green. There Greffington Edge breaks and falls away, and lets slip the dawn like a rosy scarf from its shoulder, and sets the moon free of her earth and gives her to the open sky.

But, just as the Vicar had spoiled Rowcliffe, so Rowcliffe had spoiled Morfe for Gwenda. Therefore her fear of him was mingled with resentment. It was as if he had had no business to be living there, in that house of his looking over the Green.

Incredible that she should have wanted to see and to know this person. But now, that she didn't want to, of course she was going to see him.

* * * * *

At the bend of the road, within a mile of Morfe, Mary came riding on Gwenda's bicycle. Large parcels were slung from her handle bars. She had been shopping in the village.

Mary, bowed forward as she struggled with an upward slope, was not aware of Gwenda. But Gwenda was aware of Mary, and, not being in the mood for her, she struck off the road on to the moor and descended upon Morfe by the steep lane that leads from Karva into Rathdale.

It never occurred to her to wonder what Mary had been doing in Morfe, so evident was it that she had been shopping.

XVI

The doctor was at home, but he was engaged, at the moment, in the surgery.

The maid-servant asked if she would wait.

She waited in the little cold and formal dining-room that looked through two windows on to the Green. So formal and so cold, so utterly impersonal was the air of the doctor's mahogany furniture that her fear left her. It was as if the furniture assured her that she would not really _see_ Rowcliffe; as for knowing him, she needn't worry.

She had sent in her card, printed for convenience with the names of the three sisters:

Miss Cartaret. Miss Gwendolen Cartaret. Miss Alice Cartaret.

She felt somehow that it protected her. She said to herself, "He won't know which of us it is."

* * * * *

Rowcliffe was washing his hands in the surgery when the card was brought to him. He frowned at the card.

"But--You've brought this before," he said. "I've seen the lady."

"No, sir. It's another lady."

"Another? Are you certain?"

"Yes, sir. Quite certain."

"Did she come on a bicycle?"

"No, sir, that was the lady you've seen. I think this'll be her sister."

Rowcliffe was still frowning as he dried his hands with fastidious care.

"She's different, sir. Taller like."

"Taller?"

"Yes, sir."

Rowcliffe turned to the table and picked up a probe and a lancet and dropped them into a sterilising solution.

The maid waited. Rowcliffe's absorption was complete.

"Shall I ask her to call again, sir?"

"No. I'll see her. Where is she?"

"In the dining-room, sir."

"Show her into the study."

* * * * *

Nothing could have been more distant and reserved than Rowcliffe's dining-room. But, to a young woman who had made up her mind that she didn't want to know anything about him, Rowcliffe's study said too much. It told her that he was a ferocious and solitary reader; for in the long rows of book shelves the books leaned slantwise across the gaps where his hands had rummaged and ransacked. It told her that his gods were masculine and many--Darwin and Spencer and Haeckel, Pasteur, Curie and Lord Lister, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman and Bernard Shaw. Their photogravure portraits hung above the bookcase. He was indifferent to mere visible luxury, or how could he have endured the shabby drugget, the cheap, country wall-paper with its design of dreadful roses on a white watered ground? But the fire in the grate and the deep arm-chair drawn close to it showed that he loved warmth and comfort. That his tastes made him solitary she gathered from the chair's comparatively unused and unworn companion, lurking and sulking in the corner where it had been thrust aside.

The one window of this room looked to the west upon a little orchard, gray trunks of apple trees and plum trees against green grass, green branches against gray stone, gray that was softened in the liquid autumn air, green that was subtle, exquisite, charmingly austere.

He could see his little orchard as he sat by his fire. She thought she rather liked him for keeping his window so wide open.

She was standing by it looking at the orchard as he came in.

* * * * *

He was so quiet in his coming that she did not see or hear him till he stood before her.

And in his eyes, intensely quiet, there was a look of wonder and of incredulity, almost of concern.

Greetings and introductions over, the unused arm-chair was brought out from its lair in the corner. Rowcliffe, in his own arm-chair, sat in shadow, facing her. What light there was fell full on her.

"I'm sorry you should have had to come to me," he said, "your sister was here a minute or two ago."

"My sister?"

"I think it _must_ have been your sister. She said it was _her_ sister I was to go and see."

"I didn't know she was coming. She never told me."

"Pity. I was coming out to see you first thing tomorrow morning."

"Then you know? She told you?"

"She told me something." He smiled. "She must have been a little overanxious. You don't look as if there was very much the matter with you."

"But there isn't. It isn't me."

"Who is it then?"

"My other sister."

"Oh. I seem to have got a little mixed."

"You see, there are three of us."

He laughed.

"Three! Let me get it right. I've seen Miss Cartaret. You are Miss Gwendolen Cartaret. And the lady I am to see is--?

"My youngest sister, Alice."

"Now I understand. I wondered how you managed those four miles. Tell me about her."

She began. She was vivid and terse. He saw that she made short cuts to the root of the matter. He showed himself keen and shrewd. Once or twice he said "I know, I know," and she checked herself.

"My sister has told you all that."

"No, she hasn't. Nothing like it. Please go on."

She went on till he interrupted her. "How old is she?"

"Just twenty-three."

"I see. Yes." He looked so keen now that she was frightened.

"Does that make it more dangerous?" she said.

He laughed. "No. It makes it less so. I don't suppose it's dangerous at all. But I can't tell till I've seen her. I say, you must be tired after that long walk."

"I'm never tired."

"That's good."

He rang the bell. The maid appeared.

"Tell Acroyd I want the trap. And bring tea--at once."

"For two, sir?"

"For two."

Gwenda rose. "Thanks very much, I must be going."

"Please stay. It won't take five minutes. Then I can drive you back."

"I can walk."

"I know you can. But--you see--" His keenness and shrewdness went from him. He was almost embarrassed. "I _was_ going round to see your sister in the morning. But--I think I'd rather see her to-night. And--" He was improvising freely now--"I ought, perhaps, to see you after, as you understand the case. So, if you don't _mind_ coming back with me--"

She didn't mind. Why should she?

She stayed. She sat in Rowcliffe's chair before his fire and drank his tea and ate his hot griddle-cakes (she had a healthy appetite, being young and strong). She talked to him as if she had known him a long time. All these things he made her do, and when he talked to her he made her forget what had brought her there; he made her forget Alice and Mary and her father.

When he left her for a moment she got up, restless and eager to be gone. And when he came back to her she was standing by the open window again, looking at the orchard.

Rowcliffe looked at _her_, taking in her tallness, her slenderness, the lithe and beautiful line of her body, curved slightly backward as she leaned against the window wall.

Never before and never again, afterwards, never, that was to say, for any other woman, did Rowcliffe feel what he felt then. Looking back on it (afterward) he could only describe it as a sense of certainty. It lacked, surprisingly, the element of surprise.

"You like my north-country orchard?" (He was certain that she did.)

She turned, smiling. "I like it very much."

They had been a long time over tea. It was half-past five before they started. He brought an overcoat and put it on her. He wrapped a rug round her knees and feet and tucked it well in.

"You don't like rugs," he said (he knew she didn't), "but you've got to have it."

She did like it. She liked his rug and his overcoat, and his little brown horse with the clanking hoofs. And she liked him, most decidedly she liked him, too. He was the sort of man you could like.

They were soon out on the moor.

Rowcliffe's youth rose in him and put words into his mouth.

"Ripping country, this."

She said it was ripping.

For the life of them they couldn't have said more about it. There were no words for the inscrutable ecstasy it gave them.

As they passed Karva Rowcliffe smiled.

"It's all right," he said, "my driving you. Of course you don't remember, but we've met--several times before."

"Where?"

"I'll show you where. Anyhow, that's your hill, isn't it?"

"How did you know it was?"

"Because I've seen you there. The first time I ever saw you--No, _that_ was a bit farther on. At the bend of the road. We're coming to it."

They came.

"Just here," he said.

And now they were in sight of Garthdale.

"Funny I should have thought it was you who were ill."

"I'm never ill."

"You won't be as long as you can walk like that. And run. And jump--"

A horrid pause.

"You did it very nicely."

Another pause, not quite so horrid.

And then--"Do you _always_ walk after dark and before sunrise?"

And it was as if he had said, "Why am I always meeting you? What do you do it for? It's queer, isn't it?"

But he had given her her chance. She rose to it.

"I've done it ever since we came here." (It was as if she had said "Long before _you_ came.") "I do it because I like it. That's the best of this place. You can do what you like in it. There's nobody to see you."

("Counting me," he thought, "as nobody.")

"I should like to do it, too," he said--"to go out before sunrise--if I hadn't got to. If I did it for fun--like you."

He knew he would not really have liked it. But his romantic youth persuaded him in that moment that he would.

XVII

Mary was up in the attic, the west attic that looked on to the road through its shy gable window.

She moved quietly there, her whole being suffused exquisitely with a sense of peace, of profound, indwelling goodness. Every act of hers for the last three days had been incomparably good, had been, indeed, perfect. She had waited on Alice hand and foot. She had made the chicken broth refused by Alice. There was nothing that she would not do for poor little Ally. When little Ally was petulant and sullen, Mary was gentle and serene. She felt toward little Ally, lying there so little and so white, a poignant, yearning tenderness. Today she had visited all the sick people in the village, though it was not Wednesday, Dr. Rowcliffe's day. (Only by visiting them on other days could Mary justify and make blameless her habit of visiting them on Wednesdays.) She had put the house in order. She had done her shopping in Morfe to such good purpose that she had concealed even from herself the fact that she had gone into Morfe, surreptitiously, to fetch the doctor.

Of course Mary was aware that she had fetched him. She had been driven to that step by sheer terror. All the way home she kept on saying to herself, "I've saved Ally." "I've saved Ally." That thought, splendid and exciting, rushed to the lighted front of Mary's mind; if the thought of Rowcliffe followed its shining trail, it thrust him back, it spread its luminous wings to hide him, it substituted its heavenly form for his.

So effectually did it cover him that Mary herself never dreamed that he was there.

Neither did the Vicar, when he saw her arrive, laden with parcels, wholesomely cheerful and reddened by her ride. He had said to her "You're a good girl, Mary," and the sadness of his tone implied that he wished her sister Gwendolen and her sister Alice were more like her. And he had smiled at her under his austere moustache, and carried in the biggest parcels for her.

The Vicar was pleased with his daughter Mary. Mary had never given him an hour's anxiety. Mary had never put him in the wrong, never made him feel uncomfortable. He honestly believed that he was fond of her. She was like her poor mother. Goodness, he said to himself, was in her face.

There had been goodness in Mary's face when she went into Alice's room to see what she could do for her. There was goodness in it now, up in the attic, where there was nobody but God to see it; goodness at peace with itself, and utterly content.

She had been back more than an hour. And ever since teatime she had been up in the attic, putting away her summer gowns. She shook them and held them out and looked at them, the poor pretty things that she had hardly ever worn. They hung all limp, all abashed and broken in her hands, as if aware of their futility. She said to herself, "They were no good, no good at all. And next year they'll all be old-fashioned. I shall be ashamed to be seen in them." And she folded them and laid them by for their winter's rest in the black trunk. And when she saw them lying there she had a moment of remorse. After all, they had been part of herself, part of her throbbing, sensuous womanhood, warmed once by her body. It wasn't their fault, poor things, any more than hers, if they had been futile and unfit. She shut the lid down on them gently, and it was as if she buried them gently out of her sight. She could afford to forgive them, for she knew that there was no futility nor unfitness in her. Deep down in her heart she knew it.

She sat on the trunk in the attitude of one waiting, waiting in the utter stillness of assurance. She could afford to wait. All her being was still, all its secret impulses appeased by the slow and orderly movements of her hands.

Suddenly she started up and listened. She heard out on the road the sound of wheels, and of hoofs that struck together. And she frowned. She thought, He might as well have called today, if he's passing.

The clanking ceased, the wheels slowed down, and Mary's peaceful heart moved violently in her breast. The trap drew up at the Vicarage gate.

She went over to the window, the small, shy gable window that looked on to the road. She saw her sister standing in the trap and Rowcliffe beneath her, standing in the road and holding out his hand. She saw the two faces, the man's face looking up, the woman's face looking down, both smiling.

And Mary's heart drew itself together in her breast. Through her shut lips her sister's name forced itself almost audibly.

"_Gwen_-da!"

* * * * *