Chapter 5

Suddenly she shivered. A cold wind blew through the open window. Yet she did not move to shut it out. To have interfered with the attic window would have been a breach of compact, an unholy invasion of her sister's rights. For the attic, the smallest, the coldest, the darkest and most thoroughly uncomfortable room in the whole house, was Gwenda's, made over to her in the Vicar's magnanimity, by way of compensation for the necessity that forced her to share her room with Alice. As the attic was used for storing trunks and lumber, only two square yards of floor could be spared for Gwenda. But the two square yards, cleared, and covered with a strip of old carpet, and furnished with a little table and one chair; the wall-space by the window with its hanging bookcase; the window itself and the corner fireplace near it were hers beyond division and dispute. Nobody wanted them.

And as Mary from among the boxes looked toward her sister's territory, her small, brooding face took on such sadness as good women feel in contemplating a character inscrutable and unlike their own. Mary was sorry for Gwenda because of her inscrutability and unlikeness.

Then, thinking of Gwenda, Mary smiled. The smile began in pity for her sister and ended in a nameless, secret satisfaction. Not for a moment did Mary suspect its source. It seemed to her one with her sense of her own goodness.

When she smiled it was as if the spirit of her small brooding face took wings and fluttered, lifting delicately the rather heavy corners of her mouth and eyes.

Then, quietly, and with no indecorous haste, she went down into the drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe. She was the eldest and it was her duty.

By the mercy of Heaven the Vicar had gone out.

* * * * *

Gwenda left Rowcliffe with Mary and went upstairs to prepare Alice for his visit. She had brushed out her sister's long pale hair and platted it, and had arranged the plats, tied with knots of white ribbon, one over each low breast, and she had helped her to put on a little white flannel jacket with a broad lace collar. Thus arrayed and decorated, Alice sat up in her bed, her small slender body supported by huge pillows, white against white, with no color about her but the dull gold of her hair.

Gwenda was still in the room, tidying it, when Mary brought Rowcliffe there.

It was a Rowcliffe whom she had not yet seen. She had her back to him as he paused in the doorway to let Mary pass through. Ally's bed faced the door, and the look in Ally's eyes made her aware of the change in him. All of a sudden he had become taller (much taller than he really was) and rigid and austere. His youth and its charm dropped clean away from him. He looked ten years older than he had been ten minutes ago. Compared with him, as he stood beside her bed, Ally looked more than ever like a small child, a child vibrating with shyness and fear, a child that implacable adult authority has found out in foolishness and naughtiness; so evident was it to Ally that to Rowcliffe nothing was hidden, nothing veiled.

It was as a child that he treated her, a child who can conceal nothing, from whom most things--all the serious and important things--must be concealed. And Ally knew the terrible advantage that he took of her.

It was bad enough when he asked her questions and took no more notice of her answers than if she had been a born fool. That might have been his north-country manners and probably he couldn't help them. But there was no necessity that Ally could see for his brutal abruptness, and the callous and repellent look he had when she bared her breast to the stethescope that sent all her poor secrets flying through the long tubes that attached her heart to his abominable ears. Neither (when he had disentangled himself from the stethescope) could she understand why he should scowl appallingly as he took hold of her poor wrist to feel her pulse.

She said to herself, "He knows everything about me and he thinks I'm awful."

It was anguish to Ally that he should think her awful.

And (to make it worse, if anything could make it) there was Mary standing at the foot of the bed and staring at her. Mary knew perfectly well that he was thinking how awful she was. It was what Mary thought herself.

If only Gwenda had stayed with her! But Gwenda had left the room when she saw Rowcliffe take out his stethescope.

And as it flashed on Ally what Rowcliffe was thinking of her, her heart stopped as if it was never going on again, then staggered, then gave a terrifying jump.

* * * * *

Rowcliffe had done with Ally's little wrist. He laid it down on the counterpane, not brutally at all, but gently, almost tenderly, as if it had been a thing exquisitely fragile and precious.

He rose to his feet and looked at her, and then, all of a sudden, as he looked, Rowcliffe became young again; charmingly young, almost boyish. And, as if faintly amused at her youth, faintly touched by her fragility, he smiled. With a mouth and with eyes from which all austerity had departed he smiled at Alice.

(It was all over. He had done with her. He could afford to be kind to her as he would have been kind to a little, frightened child.)

And Alice smiled back at him with her white face between the pale gold, serious bands of platted hair.

She was no longer frightened. She forgot his austerity as if it had never been. She saw that he hadn't thought her awful in the least. He couldn't have looked at her like that if he had.

A sense of warmth, of stillness, of soft happiness flooded her body and her brain, as if the stream of life had ceased troubling and ran with an even rhythm. As she lay back, her tormented heart seemed suddenly to sink into it and rest, to be part of it, poised on the stream.

Then, still looking down at her, he spoke.

"It's pretty evident," he said, "what's the matter with you."

"_Is_ it?"

Her eyes were all wide. He had frightened her again.

"It is," he said. "You've been starved."

"Oh," said little Ally, "is _that_ all?"

And Rowcliffe smiled again, a little differently.

Mary said nothing. She had found out long ago that silence was her strength. Her small face brooded. Impossible to tell what she was thinking.

"What has become of the other one, I wonder?" he said to himself.

He wanted to see her. She was the intelligent one of the three sisters, and she was honest. He had said to her quite plainly that he would want her. Why, on earth, he wondered, had she gone away and left him with this sweet and good, this quite exasperatingly sweet and good woman who had told him nothing but lies?

He was aware that Mary Cartaret was sweet and good. But he had found that sweet and good women were not invariably intelligent. As for honesty, if they were always honest they would not always be sweet and good.

Through the door he opened for the eldest sister to pass out the other slipped in. She had been waiting on the landing.

He stopped her. He made a sign to her to come out with him. He closed the door behind them.

"Can I see you for two minutes?"

"Yes."

They whispered rapidly.

At the head of the stairs Mary waited. He turned. His smile acknowledged and paid deference to her sweetness and goodness, for Rowcliffe was sufficiently accomplished.

But not more so than Mary Cartaret. Her face, wide and candid, quivered with subdued interrogation. Her lips parted as if they said, "I am only waiting to know what I am to do. I will do what you like, only tell me."

Rowcliffe stood by the bedroom door, which he had opened for her to pass through again. His eyes, summoning their powerful pathos, implored forgiveness.

Mary, utterly submissive, passed through.

* * * * *

He followed Gwendolen Cartaret downstairs to the dining-room.

He knew what he was going to say, but what he did say was unexpected.

For, as she stood there in the small and old and shabby room, what struck him was her youth.

"Is your father in?" he said.

He surprised her as he had surprised himself.

"No," she said. "Why? Do you want to see him?"

He hesitated. "I almost think I'd better."

"He won't be a bit of good, you know. He never is. He doesn't even know we sent for you."

"Well, then--"

"You'd better tell me straight out. You'll have to, in the end. Is it serious?"

"No. But it will be if we don't stop it. How long has it been going on?"

"Ever since we came to this place."

"Six months, you said. And she's been worse than this last month?"

"Much worse."

"If it was only the anæmia--"

"Isn't it?"

"Yes--among other things."

"Not--her heart?"

"No--her heart's all right." He corrected himself. "I mean there's no disease in it. You see, she ought to have got well up here in this air. It's the sort of place you send anæmic people to to cure them."

"The dreadful thing is that she doesn't like the place."

"Ah--that's what I want to get at. She isn't happy in it?"

"No. She isn't happy."

He meditated. "Your sister didn't tell me that.'

"She couldn't."

"I mean your other sister--Miss Cartaret."

"_She_ wouldn't. She'd think it rather awful."

He laughed. "Heaps of people think it awful to tell the truth. Do you happen to know _why_ she doesn't like the place?"

She was silent. Evidently there was some "awfulness" she shrank from.

"Too lonely for her, I suppose?"

"Much too lonely."

"Where were you before you came here?"

She told him.

"Why did you leave it?"

She hesitated again. "We couldn't help it."

"Well--it seems a pity. But I suppose clergymen can't choose where they'll live."

She looked away from him. Then, as if she were trying to divert her from the trail he followed, "You forget--she's been starving herself. Isn't that enough?"

"Not in her case. You see, she isn't ill because she's been starving herself. She's been starving herself because she's ill. It's a symptom. The trouble is not that she starves herself--but that she's been starved."

"I know. I know."

"If you could get her back to that place where she was happy--"

"I can't. She can never go back there. Besides, it wouldn't be any good if she did."

He smiled. "Are you quite sure?"

"Certain."

"Does she know it?"

"No. She never knew it. But she _would_ know it if she went back."

"That's why you took her away?"

She hesitated again. "Yes."

Rowcliffe looked grave.

"I see. That's rather unfortunate."

He said to himself: "She doesn't take it in _yet_. I don't see how I'm to tell her."

To her he said: "Well, I'll send the medicine along to-night."

As the door closed behind Rowcliffe, Mary appeared on the stairs.

"Gwenda," she said, "Ally wants you. She wants to know what he said."

"He said nothing."

"You look as if he'd said a great deal."

"He said nothing that she doesn't know."

"He told her there was nothing the matter with her except that she'd been starving herself."

"He told me she'd been starved."

"I don't see the difference."

"Well," said Gwenda. "_He_ did."

* * * * *

That night the Vicar scowled over his supper. And before it was ended he broke loose.

"Which of you two sent for Dr. Rowcliffe?"

"I did," said Gwenda.

Mary said nothing.

"And what--do you--mean by doing such a thing without consulting me?"

"I mean," said Gwenda quietly, "that he should see Alice."

"And _I_ meant--most particularly--that he shouldn't see her. If I'd wanted him to see her I'd have gone for him myself."

"When it was a bit too late," said Gwenda.

His blue eyes dilated as he looked at her.

"Do you suppose I don't know what's the matter with her as well as he does?"

As he spoke the stiff, straight moustache that guarded his mouth lifted, showing the sensual redness and fulness of the lips.

And of this expression on her father's face Gwenda understood nothing, divined nothing, knew nothing but that she loathed it.

"You may know what's the matter with her," she said, "but can you cure it?"

"Can he?" said the Vicar.

XVIII

The next day, which was a Tuesday, Alice was up and about again. Rowcliffe saw her on Wednesday and on Saturday, when he declared himself satisfied with her progress and a little surprised.

So surprised was he that he said he would not come again unless he was sent for.

And then in three days Alice slid back.

But they were not to worry about her, she said. There was nothing the matter with her except that she was tired. She was so tired that she lay all Tuesday on the drawing-room sofa and on Wednesday morning she was too tired to get up and dress.

And on Wednesday afternoon Dr. Rowcliffe found a note waiting at the blacksmith's cottage in Garth village, where he had a room with a brown gauze blind in the window and the legend in gilt letters:

SURGERY

Dr. S. Rowcliffe, M.D., F.R.C.S.

Hours of Attendance Wednesday, 2.30-4.30.

The note ran:

"DEAR DR. ROWCLIFFE: Can you come and see me this afternoon? I think I'm rather worse. But I don't want to frighten my people--so perhaps, if you just looked in about teatime, as if you'd called?

"Yours truly,

"ALICE CARTARET."

Essy Gale had left the note that morning.

Rowcliffe looked at it dubiously. He was honest and he had the large views of a man used to a large practice. His patients couldn't complain that he lengthened his bills by paying unnecessary visits. If he wanted to add to his income in that way, he wasn't going to begin with a poor parson's hysterical daughter. But as the Vicar of Garth had called on him and left his card on Monday, there was no reason why he shouldn't look in on Wednesday about teatime. Especially as he knew that the Vicar was in the habit of visiting Upthorne and the outlying portions of his parish on Wednesday afternoons.

* * * * *

All day Alice lay in her little bed like a happy child and waited. Propped on her pillows, with her slender arms stretched out before her on the counterpane, she waited.

Her sullenness was gone. She had nothing but sweetness for Mary and for Essy. Even to her father she was sweet. She could afford it. Her instinct was now sure. From time to time a smile flickered on her small face like a light almost of triumph.

* * * * *

The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her.

He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him.

He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in the village that she was not so well.

"I'm afraid she isn't."

"May I see her? I don't mean professionally--just for a talk."

The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom bills were nightmares.

She took him upstairs.

On the landing she turned to him.

"She doesn't _look_ worse. She looks better."

"All right. She won't deceive me."

She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a faint opaline dawn of color in her face.

Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a quarter of an hour he kept it up.

And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better. You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste all this glorious air?"

"If I could live on air!" said Alice.

"You can--you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live without it."

Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him.

"But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may."

"At teatime?"

"Very well--at teatime."

* * * * *

"How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.

"She's better."

"Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?"

"He called--on you, I think."

(Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving plainly that his visit was not professional.)

"And you made him see her?" he insisted.

"He saw her."

"Well?"

"He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the open air."

"It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."

He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.

"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."

But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it meant--that air of wisdom and of patience.

Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.

"I won't have him sent for--do you hear?"

And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give young Rowcliffe a hint. It was to give him a hint that he had called on Monday.

* * * * *

But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe. For before he could brace himself to the effort Alice was well again.

Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime the next Wednesday and the next after that.

Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him.

XIX

"'Oh Gawd, our halp in a-ages paasst, Our 'awp in yeears ter coom, Our shal-ter from ther storm-ee blaasst, And our ee-tarnal 'oam!'"

"'Ark at 'im! That's Jimmy arl over. T' think that 'is poor feyther's not in 'is graave aboove a moonth, an' 'e singin' fit t' eave barn roof off! They should tak' an' shoot 'im oop in t' owd powder magazine," said Mrs. Gale.

"Well--but it's a wonderful voice," said Gwenda Cartaret.

"I've never heard another like it, and I know something about voices," Alice said.

They had gone up to Upthorne to ask Mrs. Gale to look in at the Vicarage on her way home, for Essy wasn't very well.

But Mrs. Gale had shied off from the subject of Essy. She had done it with the laughter of deep wisdom and a shake of her head. You couldn't teach Mrs. Gale anything about illness, nor about Essy.

"I knaw Assy," she had said. "There's nowt amiss with her. Doan't you woorry."

And then Jim Greatorex, though unseen, had burst out at them with his big voice. It came booming from the mistal at the back.

Alice told the truth when she said she had never heard anything like it; and even in the dale, so critical of strangers, it was admitted that she knew. The village had a new schoolmaster who was no musician, and hopeless with the choir. Alice, as the musical one of the family, had been trained to play the organ, and she played it, not with passion, for it was her duty, but with mechanical and perfunctory correctness, as she had been taught. She was also fairly successful with the village choir.

"Mebbe yo 'aven't 'eard anoother," said Mrs. Gale. "It's rackoned there isn't anoother woon like it in t' daale."

"But it's just what we want for our choir--a big barytone voice. Do you think he'd sing for us, Mrs. Gale?"

Alice said it light-heartedly, for she did not know what she was asking. She knew nothing of the story of Jim Greatorex and his big voice. It had been carefully kept from her.

"I doan knaw," said Mrs. Gale. "Jim, look yo, 'e useter sing in t' Choorch choir."

"Why ever did he leave it?"

Mrs. Gale looked dark and tightened up her face. She knew perfectly well why Jim Greatorex had left. It was because he wasn't going to have that little milk-faced lass learning _him_ to sing. His pride wouldn't stomach it. But not for worlds would Mrs. Gale have been the one to let Miss Alice know that.

Her eyes sought for inspiration in a crack on the stone floor.

"I can't rightly tall yo', Miss Olice. 'E sang fer t' owd schoolmaaster, look yo, an' wann schoolmaaster gaave it oop, Jimmy, 'e said 'e'd give it oop too."

"But don't you think he'd sing for _me_, if I were to ask him?"

"Yo' may aask 'im, Miss Olice, but I doan' knaw. Wann Jim Greatorex is sat, 'e's sat."

"There's no harm in asking him."

"Naw. Naw 'aarm there isn't," said Mrs. Gale doubtfully.

"I think I'll ask him now," said Alice.

"I wouldn', look yo, nat ef I wuss yo, Miss Olice. I wouldn' gaw to 'im in t' mistal all amoong t' doong. Yo'll sha-ame 'im, and yo'll do nowt wi' Jimmy ef 'e's sha-amed."

"Leave it, Ally. We can come another day," said Gwenda.

"Thot's it," said Mrs. Gale. "Coom another daay."

And as they turned away Jim's voice thundered after them from his stronghold in the mistal.

"From av-ver-lasstin'--THOU ART GAWD! To andless ye-ears ther sa-ame!"

The sisters stood listening. They looked at each other.

"I say!" said Gwenda.

"Isn't he gorgeous? We'll _have_ to come again. It would be a sin to waste him."

"It would."

"When shall we come?"

"There's heaps of time. That voice won't run away."

"No. But he might get pneumonia. He might die."

"Not he."

But Alice couldn't leave it alone.

"How about Sunday? Just after dinner? He'll be clean then."

"All right. Sunday."

But it was not till they had passed the schoolhouse outside Garth village that Alice's great idea came to her.

"Gwenda! The Concert! Wouldn't he be ripping for the Concert!"

XX

But the concert was not till the first week in December; and it was in November that Rowcliffe began to form the habit that made him remarkable in Garth, of looking in at the Vicarage toward teatime every Wednesday afternoon.

Mrs. Gale, informed by Essy, was the first to condole with Mrs. Blenkiron, the blacksmith's wife, who had arranged to provide tea for Rowcliffe every Wednesday in the Surgery.

"Wall, Mrs. Blenkiron," she said, "yo' 'aven't got to mak' tae for yore doctor now?"

"Naw. I 'aven't," said Mrs. Blenkiron. "And it's sexpence clane gone out o' me packet av'ry week."

Mrs. Blenkiron was a distant cousin of the Greatorexes. She had what was called a superior manner and was handsome, in the slender, high-nosed, florid fashion of the Dale.

"But there," she went on. "I doan't groodge it. 'E's yoong and you caann't blaame him. They's coompany for him oop at Vicarage."

"'E's coompany fer they, I rackon. And well yo' med saay yo' doan't groodge it ef yo knawed arl we knaw, Mrs. Blenkiron. It's no life fer yoong things oop there, long o' t' Vicar. Mind yo"--Mrs. Gale lowered her voice and looked up and down the street for possible eavesdroppers--"ef 'e was to 'ear on it, thot yoong Rawcliffe wouldn't be 'lowed t' putt 's nawse in at door agen. But theer--there's nawbody'd be thot crool an' spittiful fer to goa an' tall 'im. Our Assy wouldn't. She'd coot 'er toong out foorst, Assy would."

"Nawbody'll get it out of _mae_, Mrs. Gale, though it's wae as 'as to sooffer for 't."

"Eh, but Dr. Rawcliffe's a good maan, and 'e'll mak' it oop to yo', naw feear, Mrs. Blenkiron."

"And which of 'em will it bae, Mrs. Gaale, think you?"

"I caann't saay. But it woonna bae t' eldest. Nor t' yoongest--joodgin'."

"Well--the lil' laass isn' breaaking 'er 'eart fer him, t' joodge by the looks of 'er. I naver saw sech a chaange in anybody in a moonth."

"'T assn' takken mooch to maake 'er 'appy," said Mrs. Gale. For Essy, who had informed her, was not subtle.

* * * * *

But of Ally's happiness there could be no doubt. It lapped her, soaked into her like water and air. Her small head flowered under it and put out its secret colors; the dull gold of her hair began to shine again, her face showed a shallow flush under its pallor; her gray eyes were clear as if they had been dipped in water. Two slender golden arches shone above them. They hadn't been seen there for five years.

"Who would have believed," said Mary, "that Ally could have looked so pretty?"

Ally's prettiness (when she gazed at it in the glass) was delicious, intoxicating joy to Ally. She was never tired of looking at it, of turning round and round to get new views of it, of dressing her hair in new ways to set it off.