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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id00160" style="margin-top: 4em">IX</h2> 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. <h2 id="id00194" style="margin-top: 4em">X</h2> "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. <h2 id="id00248" style="margin-top: 4em">XI</h2> 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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