The Three Sisters Part 91

He was silent as they threaded the garden path together. She thought, "I know why I like him."

They came to a standstill at the south wall where the tall blue lupins rose between them, vivid in the tender air and very still.

Greatorex also was still. His eyes looked away over the blue spires of the lupins to the naked hillside. They saw neither the hillside nor anything between.

When he spoke his voice was thick, almost as though he were in love or intoxicated.

"I knaw what yo mane about those thorn-trees. 'Tisn' no earthly beauty what yo see in 'em."

"Jim," she said, "shall I always see it?"

"I dawn--knaw. It cooms and it goas, doos sech-like."

"What makes it come?"

"What maakes it coom? Yo knaw better than I can tall yo."

"If I only did know. I'm afraid it's going."

"I can tell yo this for your coomfort. Ef yo soofer enoof mebbe it'll coom t' yo again. Ef yo're snoog and 'appy sure's death it'll goa."

He paused.

"It 'a.s.sn't coom t' mae sence I married Ally."

She was wrong about Jim. He had not forgotten her. He was not saying these things for himself; he was saying them for her, getting them out of himself with pain and difficulty. It was odd to think that n.o.body but she understood Jim, and that n.o.body but Jim had ever really understood her. Steven didn't understand her, any more than Ally understood her husband. And it made no difference to her, and it made no difference to Jim.

"I'll tell yo anoother quare thing. 'T' a.s.sn't got mooch t' do wi'

good and baad. T' drink 'll nat drive it from yo, an' sin'll nat drive it from yo. Saw I raakon 't is mooch t' saame thing as t' graace o'

Gawd."

"Did the grace of G.o.d go away from you when you married, Jim?"

"Mebbe t' would 'aave ef I'd roon aaffter it. 'Tis a tricky thing is Gawd's graace."

"But _it's_ gone," she said. "You gave your _soul_ for Ally when you married her."

He smiled. "I toald 'er I'd give my sawl t' marry 'er," he said.

LXII

As she went home she tried to recapture the magic of the flowering thorn-trees. But it had gone and she could not be persuaded that it would come again. She was still too young to draw joy from the memory of joy, and what Greatorex had told her seemed incredible.

She said to herself, "Is it going to be taken from me like everything else?"

And a dreadful duologue went on in her.

"It looks like it."

"But it _was_ mine. It was mine like nothing else."

"It never had anything for you but what you gave it."

"Am I to go on giving the whole blessed time? Am I never to have anything for myself?"

"There never is anything for anybody but what they give. Or what they take from somebody else. You should have taken. You had your chance."

"I'd have died, rather."

"Do you call this living?"

"I _have_ lived."

"He hasn't. Why did you sacrifice him?"

"For Mary."

"It wasn't for Mary. It was for yourself. For your own wretched soul."

"For _his_ soul."

"How much do you suppose Mary cares about his soul? It would have had a chance with you. Its one chance."

The unconsoling voice had the last word. For it was not in answer to it that a certain phrase came into her brooding mind.

"I couldn't do a caddish thing like that."

It puzzled her. She had said it to Steven that night. But it came to her now attached to an older memory. Somebody had said it to her before then. Years before.

She remembered. It was Ally.

LXIII

A year pa.s.sed. It was June again.

For more than a year there had been rumors of changes in Morfe. The doctor talked of going. He was always talking of going and n.o.body had yet believed that he would go. This time, they said, he was serious, it had been a toss-up whether he stayed or went. But in the end he stayed. Things had happened in Rowcliffe's family. His mother had died and his wife had had a son.

Rowcliffe's son was the image of Rowcliffe.

The doctor had no brothers or sisters, and by his mother's death he came into possession both of his father's income and of hers. He had now more than a thousand a year over and above what he earned.