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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id00531" style="margin-top: 4em">XVI</h2> 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. <h2 id="id00636" style="margin-top: 4em">XVII</h2> 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!" * * * * * 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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