The Three Sisters Part 32

XXVIII

Christmas was over and gone.

It was the last week in January.

All through December Rowcliffe's visits to the Vicarage had continued.

But in January they ceased. That was not to be wondered at. Even Ally couldn't wonder. There was influenza in every other house in the Dale.

Then, one day, Gwenda, walking past Upthorne, heard wheels behind her and the clanking hoofs of the doctor's horse. She knew what would happen. Rowcliffe would pull up a yard or two in front of her. He would ask her where she was going and he would make her drive with him over the moor. And she knew that she would go with him. She would not be able to refuse him.

But the clanking hoofs went by and never stopped. There were two men in the trap. Acroyd, Rowcliffe's groom, sat in Rowcliffe's place, driving. He touched his hat to her as he pa.s.sed her.

Beside him there was a strange man.

She said to herself, "He's away then. I think he might have told me."

And Ally, pa.s.sing through the village, had seen the strange man too.

"Dr. Rowcliffe must be away," she said at tea-time. "I wonder if he'll be back by Wednesday."

Wednesday, the last day in January, came, but Rowcliffe did not come.

The strange man took his place in the surgery.

Mrs. Gale brought the news into the Vicarage dining-room at four o'clock.

She had taken her daughter's place for the time being. She was a just woman and she bore no grudge against the Vicar on Essy's account. He had done no more than he was obliged to do. Essy had given trouble enough in the Vicarage, and she had received a month's wages that she hadn't worked for. Mrs. Gale was working double to make up for it.

And the innocence of her face being gone, she went lowly and humbly, paying for Essy, Essy's debt of shame. That was her view.

"Sall I set the tae here, Miss Gwanda," she enquired. "Sence doctor isn't coomin'?"

"How do you know he isn't coming?" Alice asked.

Mrs. Gale's face was solemn and oppressed. She turned to Gwenda, ignoring Alice. (Mary was upstairs in her room.)

"'Aven't yo 'eerd, Miss Gwanda?"

Gwenda looked up from her book.

"No," she said. "He's away, isn't he?"

"Away? 'El'll nat get away fer long enoof. 'E's too ill."

"Ill?" Alice sent the word out on a terrified breath. n.o.body took any notice of her.

"T' poastman tell mae," said Mrs. Gale. "From what 'e's 'eerd, 'twas all along o' Nad Alderson's lil baaby up to Morfe. It was took wi'

the diptheery a while back. An' doctor, 'e sat oop wi' 't tree nights roonin', 'e did. 'E didn' so mooch as taak 's cleathes off. Nad Alderson, 'e said, 'e'd navver seen anything like what doctor 'e doon for t' lil' thing."

Mrs. Gale's face reddened and she sniffed.

"'E's saaved Nad's baaby for 'm, right enoof, Dr. Rawcliffe 'as. But 'e's down wi't hissel, t' poastman says."

It was at Gwenda that she gazed. And as Gwenda made no sign, Mrs.

Gale, still more oppressed by that extraordinary silence, gave her own feelings way.

"Mebbe wae sall navver see 'im in t' Daale again. It'll goa 'ard, look yo, wi' a girt man like 'im, what's navver saaved 'isself. Naw, 'e's navver saaved 'issel."

She ceased. She gazed upon both the sisters now. Alice, her face white and averted, shrank back in the corner of the sofa. Gwenda's face was still. Neither of them had spoken.

Mary had tea alone that afternoon.

Alice had dragged herself upstairs to her bedroom and locked herself in. She had flung herself face downward on her bed. She lay there while the room grew gray and darkened. Suddenly she pa.s.sed from a violent fit of writhing and of weeping into blank and motionless collapses. From time to time she hiccoughed helplessly.

But in the moment before Mary came downstairs Gwenda had slipped on the rough coat that hung on its peg in the pa.s.sage. Her hat was lying about somewhere in the room where Alice had locked herself in. She went out bareheaded.

There was a movement in the little group of villagers gathered on the bridge before the surgery door. They slunk together and turned their backs on her as she pa.s.sed. They knew where she was going as well as she did. And she didn't care.

She was doing the sort of thing that Alice had done, and had suffered for doing. She knew it and she didn't care. It didn't matter what Alice had done or ever would do. It didn't matter what she did herself. It was quite simple. Nothing mattered to her so long as Rowcliffe lived. And if he died nothing would ever matter to her again.

For she knew now what it was that had happened to her. She could no longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it, not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid. She had been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe. He might see in it something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally. She went in terror of the taint. Where it should have held its head up defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.

And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly defenseless, her terror of it ceased.

It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.

Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something lacking in her feeling. Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got more "out of" Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did. Gwenda had known nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths, the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools. In Rowcliffe's presence she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy. But, if she stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she _stood_ there, firm on the solid earth. She could balance herself; she could even lean forward a little and look over, without losing her head, thrilled with the uncertainty and peril of the adventure. And of course it wasn't as if Rowcliffe had left her standing. He hadn't. He had held out his hand to her, as it were, and said, "Let's get on--get on!" which was as good as saying that, as long as it lasted, it was _their_ adventure, not hers. He had drawn her after him at an exciting pace, along the edge of the abyss, never losing _his_ head for a minute, so that she ought to have felt safe with him. Only she hadn't. She had said to herself, "If I knew him better, if I saw what was in him, perhaps I should feel safe."

There was something she wanted to see in him; something that her innermost secret self, fastidious and exacting, demanded from him before it would loosen the grip that held her back.

And now she knew that it _was_ there. It had been told her in four words: "He never saved himself."

She might have known it. For she remembered things, now; how he had nursed old Greatorex like a woman; how he had sat up half the night with Jim Greatorex's mare Daisy; how he kept Jim Greatorex from drinking; and how he had been kind to poor Essy when she had the face ache; and gentle to little Ally.

And now Ned Alderson's ridiculous baby would live and Rowcliffe would die. Was _that_ what she had required of him? She felt as if somehow _she_ had done it; as if her innermost secret self, iniquitously exacting, had thrown down the gage into the arena and that he had picked it up.

"He saved others. Himself he"--never saved.

He had become G.o.d-like to her.

And the pa.s.sion she had trampled on lifted itself and pa.s.sed into the phase of adoration. It had received the dangerous sanction of the soul.

She turned off the high road at the point where, three months ago, she had seen Mary cycling up the hill from Morfe. Now, as then, she descended upon Morfe by the stony lane from the moor below Karva.