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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id01509" style="margin-top: 4em">XXVIII</h2> 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 passed 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, passing 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. Nobody 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 passed 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 passage. 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 passed. 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 god-like to her. And the passion she had trampled on lifted itself and passed 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. It came over her that she was too late, that she would see rows of yellow blinds drawn down in the long front of Rowcliffe's house. The blinds were up. The windows looked open-eyed upon the Green. She noticed that one of them on the first floor was half open, and she said to herself, "He is up there, in that room, dying of diphtheria." The sound of the bell, muffled funereally, at the back of the house, fulfilled her premonition. The door opened wide. The maid stood back from it to let her pass in. "How is Dr. Rowcliffe?" Her voice sounded abrupt and brutal, as it tore its way from her tense throat. The maid raised her eyebrows. She held the door wider. "Would you like to see him, miss?" "Yes." Her throat closed on the word and choked it. Down at the end of the passage, where it was dark, a door opened, the door of the surgery, and a man came out, went in as if to look for something, and came out again. As he moved there in the darkness she thought it was the strange doctor and that he had come out to forbid her seeing Rowcliffe. He would say that she mustn't risk the infection. As if she cared about the risk. Perhaps he wouldn't see her. He, too, might say she mustn't risk it. While the surgery door opened and shut, opened and shut again, she saw that her seems him was of all things the most unlikely. She remembered the house at Upthorne, and she knew that Rowcliffe was lying dead in the room upstairs. And the man there was coming out to stop her. * * * * * Only—in that case—why hadn't they drawn the blinds down? <h2 id="id01573" style="margin-top: 4em">XXIX</h2> She was still thinking of the blinds when she saw that the man who came towards her was Rowcliffe. He was wearing his rough tweed suit and his thick boots, and he had the look of the open air about him. "Is that you, Miss Cartaret? Good!" He grasped her hand. He behaved exactly as if he had expected her. He never even wondered what she had come for. She might have come to say that her father or one of her sisters was dying, and would he go at once; but none of these possibilities occurred to him. He didn't want to account for her coming to him. It was natural and beautiful that she should come. Then, as she stepped into the lighted passage, he saw that she was bareheaded and that her eyelashes were parted and gathered into little wet points. He took her arm gently and led her into his study and shut the door. They faced each other there. "I say—is anything wrong?" "I thought you were ill." She hadn't grasped the absurdity of it yet. She was still under the spell of the illusion. "I? Ill? Good heavens, no!" "They told me in the village you'd got diphtheria. And I came to know if it was true. It isn't true?" He smiled; an odd little embarrassed smile; almost as if he were owning that it was or had been true. "Is it?" she persisted as he went on smiling. "Of course it isn't." She frowned as if she were annoyed with him for not being ill. "Then what was that other man here for?" "Harker? Oh, he just took my place for a day or two while I had a sore throat." "You had a throat then?" Thus she accused him. "And you did sit up for three nights with Ned Alderson's baby?" She defied him to deny it. "That's nothing. Anybody would. I had to." "And—you saved the baby?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Some thing or other pulled the little beggar through." "And you might have got it?" "I might but I didn't." "You did get a throat. And it might have been diphtheria." Thus by accusing him she endeavored to justify herself. "It might," he said, "but it wasn't. I had to knock off work till I was sure." "And you're sure now?" "I can tell you you wouldn't be here if I wasn't." "And they told me you were dying." (She was utterly disgusted.) At that he laughed aloud. An irresistible, extravagantly delighted laugh. When he stopped he choked and began all over again; the idea of his dying was so funny; so was her disgust. "That," she said, "was why I came." "Then I'm glad they told you." "I'm not," said she. He laughed again at her sudden funny dignity. Then, as suddenly, he was grave. "I say—it was nice of you." She held out her hand. "And now—as you're not dead—I'm off." "Oh no, you're not. You're going to stay and have tea and I'm going to walk back with you." She stayed. * * * * * They walked over the moor by Karva. And as they went he talked to her as he hadn't talked before. It was all about himself and his tone was very serious. He talked about his work and (with considerable reservations and omissions) about his life in Leeds, and about his ambition. He told her what he had done and why he had done it and what he was going to do. He wasn't going to stay in Garthdale all his life. Not he. Presently he would want to get to the center of things. (He forgot to mention that this was the first time he had thought of it.) Nothing would satisfy him but a big London practice and a name. He might—ultimately—specialise. If he did he rather thought it would be gynæcology. He was interested in women's cases. Or it might be nervous diseases. He wasn't sure. Anyhow, it must be something big. For under Gwenda Cartaret's eyes his romantic youth became fiery and turbulent inside him. It not only urged him to tremendous heights, it made him actually feel that he would reach them. For a solid three-quarters of an hour, walking over the moor by Karva, he had ceased to be one of the obscurest of obscure little country doctors. He was Sir Steven Rowcliffe, the great gynæcologist, or the great neurologist (as the case might be) with a row of letters after his name and a whole column under it in the Medical Directory. And Gwenda Cartaret's eyes never for a moment contradicted him. They agreed with every one of his preposterous statements. She didn't know that it was only his romantic youth and that he never had been and never would be more youthful than he was for that three-quarters of an hour. On the contrary, to her youth he seemed to have left youth behind him, and to have grown suddenly serious and clear-sighted and mature. And then he stopped, right on the moor, as if he were suddenly aware of his absurdity. "I say," he said, "what must you think of me? Gassing about myself like that." "I think," she said, "it's awfully nice of you." "I don't suppose I shall do anything really big. Do you?" She was silent. "Honestly now, do you think I shall?" "I think the things you've done already, the things that'll never be heard of, are really big." His silence said, "They are not enough for me," and hers, "For me they are enough." "But the other things," he insisted—"the things I want to do——Do you think I'll do them?" "I think"—she said slowly—"in fact I'm certain that you'll do them, if you really mean to." "That's what you think of me?" "That's what I think of you." "Then it's all right," he said. "For what I think of you is that you'd never say a thing you didn't really mean." They parted at the turn of the road, where, as he again reminded her, he had seen her first. Going home by himself over the moor, Rowcliffe wondered whether he hadn't missed his opportunity. He might have told her that he cared for her. He might have asked her if she cared. If he hadn't, it was only because there was no need to be precipitate. He felt rather than knew that she was sure of him. Plenty of time. Plenty of time. He was so sure of her. <h2 id="id01640" style="margin-top: 4em">XXX</h2> Plenty of time. The last week of January passed. Through the first weeks of February Rowcliffe was kept busy, for sickness was still in the Dale. Whether he required it or not, Rowcliffe had a respite from decision. No opportunity arose. If he looked in at the Vicarage on Wednesdays it was to drink a cup of tea in a hurry while his man put his horse in the trap. He took his man with him now on his longer rounds to save time and trouble. Once in a while he would meet Gwenda Cartaret or overtake her on some road miles from Garth, and he would make her get up and drive on with him, or he would give her a lift home. It pleased her to be taken up and driven. She liked the rapid motion and the ways of the little brown horse. She even loved the noise he made with his clanking hoofs. Rowcliffe said it was a beastly trick. He made up his mind about once a week that he'd get rid of him. But somehow he couldn't. He was fond of the little brown horse. He'd had him so long. And she said to herself. "He's faithful then. Of course. He would be." It was almost as if he had wanted her to know it. Then April came and the long spring twilights. The sick people had got well. Rowcliffe had whole hours on his hands that he could have spent with Gwenda now, if he had known. And as yet he did not altogether know. There was something about Gwenda Cartaret for which Rowcliffe with all his sureness and all his experience was unprepared. Their whole communion rested and proceeded on undeclared, unacknowledged, unrealised assumptions, and it was somehow its very secrecy that made it so secure. Rather than put it to the test he was content to leave their meetings to luck and his own imperfect ingenuity. He knew where and at what times he would have the best chance of finding her. Sometimes, returning from his northerly rounds, he would send the trap on, and walk back to Morfe by Karva, on the chance. Once, when the moon was up, he sighted her on the farther moors beyond Upthorne, when he got down and walked with her for miles, while his man and the trap waited for him in Garth. Once, and only once, driving by himself on the Rathdale moors beyond Morfe, he overtook her, picked her up and drove her through Morfe (to the consternation of its inhabitants) all the way to Garth and to the very gate of the Vicarage. But that was reckless. * * * * * And in all those hours, for his opportunities counted by hours now, he had never found his moment. There was plenty of time, and their isolation (his and hers) in Garthdale left him dangerously secure. All the same, by April Rowcliffe was definitely looking for the moment, the one shining moment, that must sooner or later come. It was, indeed, always coming. Over and over again he had caught sight of it; it signaled, shining; he had been ready to seize it, when something happened, something obscured it, something put him off. He never knew what it was at the time, but when he looked back on these happenings he discovered that it was always something that Gwenda Cartaret did. You would have said that no scene on earth could have been more favorable to a lover's enterprise than these long, deserted roads and the vast, twilit moors; and that a young woman could have found nothing to distract her from her lover there. But it was not so. On the open moors, as often as not, they had to go single file through the heather, along a narrow sheep track, Rowcliffe leading; and it is difficult, not to say impossible, to command the attention of a young woman walking in your rear. And a thousand things distracted Gwenda: the cry of a mountain sheep, the sound and sight of a stream, the whirr of dark wings and the sudden "Krenk-er-renk-errenk!" of the grouse shooting up from the heather. And on the high roads where they went abreast she was apt to be carried away by the pageant of earth and sky; the solid darkness that came up from the moor; the gray, aerial abysses of the dale; the awful, blank withdrawal of Greffington Edge into the night. She was off, Heaven knew where, at the lighting of a star in the thin blue; the movement of a cloud excited her; or she was held enchanted by the pale aura of moonrise along the rampart of Greffington Edge. She shared the earth's silence and the throbbing passion of the earth as the orbed moon swung free. And in her absorption, her estranging ecstasy, Rowcliffe at last found something inimical. * * * * * He told himself that it was an affectation in her, or a lure to draw him after her, as it would have been in any other woman. The little red-haired nurse would have known how to turn the earth and the moon to her own purposes and his. But all the time he knew that it was not so. There was no purpose in it at all, and it was unaware of him and of his purposes. Gwenda's joy was pure and profound and sufficient to itself. He gathered that it had been with her before he came and that it would remain with her after he had gone. He hated to think that she should know any joy that had not its beginning and its end in him. It took her from him. As long as it lasted he was faced with an incomprehensible and monstrous rivalry. And as a man might leave a woman to his uninteresting rival in the certainty that she will be bored and presently return to him, Rowcliffe left Gwenda to the earth and moon. He sulked and was silent. * * * * * Then, suddenly, he made up his mind. <h2 id="id01663" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXI</h2> It was one night in April. He had met her at the crossroads on Morfe Green, and walked home with her by the edge of the moor. It had blown hard all day, and now the wind had dropped, but it had left darkness and commotion in the sky. The west was a solid mass of cloud that drifted slowly in the wake of the departing storm, its hindmost part shredded to mist before the path of the hidden moon. For, mercifully, the moon was hidden. Rowcliffe knew his moment. He meditated—the fraction of a second too long. "I wonder——" he began. Just then the rear of the cloud opened and cast out the moon, sheeted in the white mist that she had torn from it. And then, before he knew where he was, he was quarreling with Gwenda. "Oh, look at the moon!" she cried. "All bowed forward with the cloud wrapped round her head. Something's calling her across the sky, but the mist holds her and the wind beats her back—look how she staggers and charges head-downward. She's fighting the wind. And she goes—she goes!" "She doesn't go," said Rowcliffe. "At least you can't see her going, and the cloud isn't wrapped round her head, it's nowhere near her. And the wind isn't driving her, it's driving the cloud on. It's the cloud that's going. Why can't you see things as they are?" She was detestable to him in that moment. "Because nobody sees them as they are. And you're spoiling the idea." "The idea being so much more valuable than the truth." He longed to say cruel and biting things to her. "It isn't valuable to anybody but me, so you might have left it to me." "Oh, I'll leave it to you, if you're in love with it." "I'm not in love with it because it's mine. Anyhow, if I am in love I'm in love with the moon and not with my idea of the moon." "You don't know how to be in love with anything—even the moon. But I suppose it's all right as long as you're happy." "Of course I'm happy. Why shouldn't I be?" "Because you haven't got anything to make you happy." "Oh, haven't I?" "You might have. But you haven't. You're too obstinate to be happy." "But I've just told you that I am happy." "What have you got?" he persisted. "I've got heaps of things. I've got my two hands and my two feet. I've got my brain——" "So have I. And yet——" "It's absurd to say I've 'got' these things. They're me. Happiness isn't in the things you've got. It's either in you or it isn't." "It generally isn't. Go on. What else? You've got the moon and your idea of the moon. I don't see that you've got much more." "Anyhow, I've got my liberty." "Your liberty—if that's all you want!" "It's pretty nearly all. It covers most things." "It does if you're an incurable egoist." "You think I'm an egoist? And incurable?" "It doesn't matter what I think." "Not much. If you think that." Silence. And then Rowcliffe burst out again. "There are two things that I can't stand—a woman nursing a dog and a woman in love with the moon. They mean the same thing. And it's horrible." "Why?" "Because if it's humbug she's a hypocrite, and if it's genuine she's a monster." "And if I'm in love with the moon—and you said I was——" "I didn't. You said it yourself." "Not at all. I said if I was in love with the moon, I'd be in love with it and not with my idea of it. I want reality." "So do I. We're not likely to get it if we can't see it." "No. If you're only in love with what you see." "Oh, you're too clever. Too clever for me." "Am I too clever for myself?" "Probably." He laughed abominably. "I don't see the joke." "If you don't see it this minute you'll see it in another ten years." "Now," she said, "you're too clever for me." They walked on in silence again. The mist gathered and dripped about them. Abruptly she spoke. "Has anything happened?" "No, it hasn't." "I mean—anything horrid?" Her voice sounded such genuine distress that he dropped his hostile and contemptuous tone. "No," he said, "why should it?" "Because I've noticed that, when people are unusually horrid, it always means that something horrid's happened to them." "Really?" "Papa, for instance, is only horrid to us because Mummy—my stepmother, you know—was horrid to him." "What did Mummy do to him?" "She ran away from him. It's always that way. People aren't horrid on purpose. At least I'm sure you wouldn't be." "Was I horrid?" "Well—for the last half-hour——" "You see, I find you a little exasperating at times." "Not always?" "No. Not by any means always." "Can I tell when I am? Or when I'm going to be?" He laughed (not at all abominably). "No. I don't think you can. That's rather what I resent in you." "I wish I could tell. Then perhaps I might avoid it. You might just give me warning when you think I'm going to be it." "I did give you warning." "When?" "When it began." "There you are. I don't know when it did begin. What were we talking about?" "I wasn't talking about anything. You were talking about the moon." "It was the moon that did it." "I suppose it was the moon." "I see. I bored you. How awful." "I didn't say you bored me. You never have bored me. You couldn't bore me." "No—I just irritate you and drive you mad." "You just irritate me and drive me mad." The words were brutal but the voice caressed her. He took her by the arm and steered her amicably round a hidden boulder. "Do you know many women?" she asked. The question was startling by reason of its context. The better to consider it Rowcliffe withdrew his protecting arm. "No," he said, "not very many." "But those you do know you get on with? You get on all right with Mary?" "Yes. I get on all right with 'Mary.'" "You'd be horrid if you didn't. Mary's a dear." "Well—I know where I am with her." "And you get on all right—really—with Papa, as long as I'm not there." "As long as you're not there, yes." "So that," she pursued, "I'm the horrid thing that's happened to you? It looks like it." "It feels like it. Let's say you're the horrid thing that's happened to me, and leave it at that." They left it. Rowcliffe had a sort of impression that he had said all that he had had to say. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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