"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?




XXIX


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_.




XXX


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.




XXXI


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.




XXXII


The Vicar had called Gwenda into his study one day.

"What's this I hear," he said, "of you and young Rowcliffe scampering
about all over the country?"

The Vicar had drawn a bow at a venture. He had not really heard
anything, but he had seen something; two forms scrambling hand in hand
up Karva; not too distant to be recognisable as young Rowcliffe and
his daughter Gwenda, yet too distant to be pleasing to the Vicar. It
was their distance that made them so improper.

"I don't know, Papa," said Gwenda.

"Perhaps you know what was said about your sister Alice? Do you want
the same thing to be said about you?"

"It won't be, Papa. Unless you say it yourself."

She had him there; for what was said about Alice had been said first
of all by him.

"What do you mean, Gwenda?"

"I mean that I'm a little different from Alice."

"Are you? _Are_ you? When you're doing the same thing?"

"Let me see. What _was_ the dreadful thing that Ally did? She ran
after young Rickards, didn't she? Well--if you'd really seen us
scampering you'd know that I'm generally running away from young
Rowcliffe and that young Rowcliffe is generally running after me. He
says it's as much as he can do to keep up with me."

"Gwenda," said the Vicar solemnly. "I won't have it."

"How do you propose to stop it, Papa?"

"You'll see how."

(It was thus that his god lured the Vicar to destruction. For he had
no plan. He knew that he couldn't move into another parish.)

"It's no good locking me up in my room," said Gwenda, "for I can get
out at the window. And you can't very well lock young Rowcliffe up in
his surgery."

"I can forbid him the house."

"That's no good either so long as he doesn't forbid me his."

"You can't go to him there, my girl."

"I can do anything when I'm driven."

The Vicar groaned.

"You're right," he said. "You _are_ different from Alice. You're worse
than she is--ten times worse. _You_'d stick at nothing. I've always
known it."

"So have I."

The Vicar leaned against the chimney-piece and hid his face in his
hands to shut out the shame of her.

And then Gwenda had pity on him.

"It's all right, Papa. I'm not going to Dr. Rowcliffe, because there's
no need. You're not going to lock him up in his surgery and you're not
going to forbid him the house. You're not going to do anything. You're
going to listen to me. It's not a bit of good trying to bully me.
You'll be beaten every time. You can bully Alice as much as you like.
You can bully her till she's ill. You can shut her up in her bedroom
and lock the door and I daresay she won't get out at the window. But
even Alice will beat you in the end. Of course there's Mary. But I
shouldn't try it on with Mary either. She's really more dangerous than
I am, because she looks so meek and mild. But she'll beat you, too, if
you begin bullying her."

The Vicar raised his stricken head.

"Gwenda," he said, "you're terrible."

"No, Papa, I'm not terrible. I'm really awfully kind. I'm telling you
these things for your good. Don't you worry. I shan't run very far
after young Rowcliffe."




XXXIII


Left to himself, the Vicar fairly wallowed in his gloom. He pressed
his hands tightly to his face, crushing into darkness the image of his
daughter Gwenda that remained with him after the door had shut between
them.

It came over him with the very shutting of the door not only that
there never was a man so cursed in his children (that thought had
occurred to him before) but that, of the three, Gwenda was the one in
whom the curse was, so to speak, most active, through whom it was most
likely to fall on him at any moment. In Alice it could be averted.
He knew, he had always known, how to deal with Alice. And it would be
hard to say exactly where it lurked in Mary. Therefore, in his times
of profoundest self-commiseration, the Vicar overlooked the existence
of his daughter Mary. He was an artist in gloom and Mary's sweetness
and goodness spoiled the picture. But in Gwenda the curse was imminent
and at the same time incalculable. Alice's behavior could be fairly
predicted and provided for. There was no knowing what Gwenda would do
next. The fear of what she might do hung forever over his head, and it
made him jumpy.

And yet in this sense of cursedness the Vicar had found shelter for
his self-esteem.

And now his fear, his noble and righteous fear of what Gwenda might
do, his conviction that she would do something, disguised more
than ever his humiliating fear of Gwenda. She was, as he had said,
terrible. There was no dealing with Gwenda; there never had been.
Patience failed before her will and wisdom before the deadly thrust of
her intelligence. She had stabbed him in several places before she had
left the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

The outcome of his brooding (it would have shocked the Vicar if he
could have traced its genesis) was an extraordinary revulsion in
Rowcliffe's favor. So far from shutting the Vicarage door in the young
man's face, the Vicar was, positively he was, inclined to open it.
He couldn't stand the idea of other people marrying since he wasn't
really married himself, and couldn't be as long as Robina persisted
in being alive (thus cruelly was he held up by that unscrupulous and
pitiless woman) and the idea of any of his daughters marrying
was peculiarly disagreeable to him. He didn't know why it was
disagreeable, and it would have shocked him unspeakably if you had
told him why. And if you had asked him he would have had half a dozen
noble and righteous reasons ready for you at his finger-ends. But
the Vicar with his eyes shut could see clearly that if Gwenda married
Rowcliffe the unpleasant event would have its compensation. He would
be rid of an everlasting source of unpleasantness at home. He didn't
say to himself that his egoism would be rid of an everlasting fear. He
said that if Rowcliffe married Gwenda he would keep her straight.

And then another consoling thought struck him.

He could deal with Alice more effectually than ever. Neither Mary nor
Alice knew what he knew. They hadn't dreamed that it was Gwenda that
young Rowcliffe wanted. He would use his knowledge to bring Alice to
her senses.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was on a Wednesday that he dealt with her.

He was coming in some hours earlier than usual from his rounds when
she delivered herself into his hands by appearing at the foot of the
staircase with her hair extravagantly dressed, and wearing what he
took, rightly, to be a new blue gown.

He opened the study door, and, with a treacherous smile, invited her
to enter. Then he looked at her.

"Is that another new dress you've got on?" he inquired, still with his
bland treachery.

"Yes, Papa," said Alice. "Do you like it?"

The Vicar drew himself up, squared his shoulders and smiled again, not
quite so blandly. His attitude gave him a sensation of exquisite and
powerful virility.

"Do I like it? I should, perhaps, if I were a millionaire."

"It didn't cost so much as all that," said Alice.

"I'm not asking you what it cost. But I think you must have
anticipated your next allowance."

Alice stared with wide eyes of innocence.

"What if I did? It won't make any difference in the long run."

The Vicar, with his hands plunged in his trousers pockets, jerked
forward at her from the waist. It was his gesture when he thrust.

"For all the difference it'll make to _you_, my dear child, you might
have spared yourself the trouble and expense."

He paused.

"Has young Rowcliffe been here to-day?"

"No," said Alice defiantly, "he hasn't."

"You expected him?"

"I daresay Mary did."

"I'm not asking what Mary did. Did you expect him or did you not?"

"He _said_ he might turn up."

"He said he might turn up. You expected him. And he hasn't turned up.
And you can't think why. Isn't that so?"

"I don't know what you mean, Papa."

"I mean, my child, that you're living in a fool's paradise."

"I haven't a notion what you mean by _that_."

"Perhaps Gwenda can enlighten you."

The color died in Ally's scared face.

"I can't see," she said, "what Gwenda's got to do with it."

"She's got something to do with young Rowcliffe's not turning up, I
think. I met the two of them half way between Upthorne and Bar Hill at
half past four."

He took out his watch.

"And it's ten past six now."

He sat down, turning his chair so as not to see her face. He did not,
at the moment, care to look at her.

"You might go and ask Mrs. Gale to send me in a cup of tea."

Alice went out.




XXXIV


"It's a quarter past six now," she said to herself. "They must come
back from Bar Hill by Upthorne. I shall meet them at Upthorne if I
start now."

She slipped her rough coat over the new gown and started.

Her fear drove her, and she went up the hill at an impossible pace.
She trembled, staggered, stood still and went on again.

The twilight of the unborn moon was like the horrible twilight of
dreams. She walked as she had walked in nightmares, with knees, weak
as water, that sank under her at every step.

She passed the schoolhouse with its beckoning ash-tree. The
schoolhouse stirred the pain under her heart. She remembered the
shining night when she had shown herself there and triumphed.

The pain then was so intolerable that her mind revolted from it as
from a thing that simply could not be. The idea by which she lived
asserted itself against the menace of destruction. It was not so much
an idea as an instinct, blind, obstinate, immovable. It had behind it
the wisdom and the persistence of life. It refused to believe where
belief meant death to it.

She said to herself, "He's lying. He's lying. He's made it all up. He
never met them."

       *       *       *       *       *

She had passed the turn of the hill. She had come to the high towers,
sinister and indistinct, to the hollow walls and haunted arcades of
the dead mining station. Upthorne was hidden by the shoulder of the
hill.

She stopped suddenly, there where the road skirted the arcades. She
was struck by a shock of premonition, an instinct older and profounder
than that wisdom of the blood. She had the sense that what was
happening now, her coming, like this, to the towers and the arcades,
had happened before, and was so related to what was about to happen
that she knew this also and with the same shock of recognition.

It would happen when she had come to the last arch of the colonnade.

It was happening now. She had come to the last arch.

       *       *       *       *       *

That instant she was aware of Rowcliffe and Gwenda coming toward her
down the hill.

Their figures were almost indiscernible in the twilight. It was by
their voices that she knew them.

Before they could see her she had slipped out of their path behind the
shelter of the arch.

She knew them by their voices. Yet their voices had something in them
that she did not know, something that told her that they had been with
each other many times before; that they understood each other; that
they were happy in each other and absorbed.

The pain was no longer inside her heart but under it. It was dull
rather than sharp, yet it moved there like a sharp sickle, a sickle
that gathered and ground the live flesh it turned in and twisted. A
sensation of deadly sickness made her draw farther yet into the corner
of the arcade, feeling her way in the darkness with her hand on the
wall. She stumbled on a block of stone, sank on it and cowered there,
sobbing and shivering.

Down in Garth village the church clock struck the half hour and the
quarter and the hour.

At the half hour Blenkiron, the blacksmith, put Rowcliffe's horse into
the trap. The sound of the clanking hoofs came up the hill. Rowcliffe
heard them first.

"There's something wrong down there," he said. "They're coming for
me."

In his heart he cursed them. For it was there, at the turn of the
road, below the arches, that he had meant to say what he had not said
the other night. There was no moon. The moment was propitious. And
there (just like his cursed luck) was Blenkiron with the trap.

They met above the schoolhouse as the clock struck the quarter.

"You're wanted, sir," said the blacksmith, "at Mrs. Gale's."

"Is it Essy?"

"Ay, it's Assy."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the cottage down by the beck Essy groaned and cried in her agony.

And on the road to Upthorne, under the arches by the sinister towers,
Alice Cartaret, crouching on her stone, sobbed and shivered.

Not long after seven Essy's child was born.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just before ten the three sisters sat waiting, as they had always
waited, bored and motionless, for the imminent catastrophe of Prayers.

"I wonder how Essy's getting on," said Gwenda.

"Poor little Essy!" Mary said.

"She's as pleased as Punch," said Gwenda. "It's a boy. Ally--did you
know that Essy's had a baby?"

"I don't care if she has," said Ally violently. "It's got nothing to
do with me. I wish you wouldn't talk about her beastly baby."

As the Vicar came out of his study into the dining-room, he fixed his
eyes upon his youngest daughter.

"What's the matter with you?" he said.

"Nothing's the matter," said Alice defiantly. "Why?"

"You look," he said, "as if somebody was murdering you."




XXXV


Ally was ill; so ill this time that even the Vicar softened to her.
He led her upstairs himself and made her go to bed and stay there. He
would have sent for Rowcliffe but that Ally refused to see him.

Her mortal apathy passed for submission. She took her milk from her
father's hand without a murmur. "There's a good girl," he said, as she
drank it down.

But it didn't do her any good. Nothing did. The illness itself was no
good to her, considering that she didn't want to be ill this time. She
wanted to die. And of course she couldn't die. It would have been too
much happiness and they wouldn't let her have it.

At first she resented what she called their interference. She
declared, as she had declared before, that there was nothing the
matter with her. She was only tired. Couldn't they see that she was
tired? That _they_ tired her?

"Why can't you leave me alone? If only you'd go away," she moaned,
"--all of you--and leave me alone."

But very soon she was too tired even to be irritable. She lay quiet,
sunk in the hollow of her bed, and kept her eyes shut, so that she
never knew, she said, whether they were there or not. And it didn't
matter. Nothing mattered so long as she could just lie there.

It was only when they talked of sending for Rowcliffe that they roused
her. Then she sat up and became, first vehement, then violent.

"You shan't send for him," she cried. "I won't see him. If he comes
into the house I'll crawl out of it."

       *       *       *       *       *

One day (it was the last Wednesday in April) Gwenda came to her and
told her that Rowcliffe was there and had asked to see her.

Ally's pale eyes lightened and grew large. They were transparent as
glass in her white face.

"Did _you_ send for him?"

"No."

"Who did then?"

"Papa."

She closed her eyes. The old sense of ecstasy came over her, of
triumph too, of solemn triumph, as if she, whom they thought so
insignificant, had vindicated her tragic dignity at last.

For if her father had sent for Rowcliffe it could only mean that she
was really dying. Nothing else--nothing short of that--would have made
him send.

And of course that was what she wanted, that Rowcliffe should see her
die. He wouldn't forget her then. He would be compelled to think of
her.

"You _will_ see him, won't you, Ally?"

Ally smiled her little triumphant and mysterious smile.

"Oh yes, I'll see him."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Vicar did not go on his rounds that afternoon. He stayed at home
to talk to Rowcliffe. The two were shut up together in his study for
more than half an hour.

As they entered the drawing-room at tea-time it could be seen from
their manner and their faces that something had gone wrong. The Vicar
bore himself like a man profoundly aggrieved, not to say outraged, in
his own house, who nevertheless was observing a punctilious courtesy
towards the offending guest. Rowcliffe's shoulders and his jaw were
still squared in the antagonism that had closed their interview.
He too observed the most perfect courtesy. Only by the consummate
restraint of his manner did he show how impossible he had found the
Vicar, while his face betrayed a grave preoccupation in which the
Vicar counted not at all.

Mary began to talk to him about the weather. Neither she nor Gwenda
dared ask him what he thought of Alice.

And in ten minutes he was gone. The Vicar went with him to the gate.

Still standing as they had stood to take leave of Rowcliffe, the
sisters looked at each other. Mary spoke first.

"Whatever _can_ Papa have said to him?"

This time Gwenda knew what Mary was thinking.

"It isn't that," she said. "It's something he's said to Papa."




XXXVI


That night, about nine o'clock, Gwenda came for the third time to
Rowcliffe at his house.

She was shown into his study, where Rowcliffe was reading.

Though the servant had prepared him for her, he showed signs of
agitation.

Gwenda's eyes were ominously somber and she had the white face of
a ghost, a face that to Rowcliffe, as he looked at it, recalled the
white face of Alice. He disliked Alice's face, he always had disliked
it, he disliked it more than ever at that moment; yet the sight
of this face that was so like it carried him away in an ecstasy of
tenderness. He adored it because of that likeness, because of all that
the likeness revealed to him and signified. And it increased, quite
unendurably, his agitation.

Gwenda was supernaturally calm.

In another instant the illusion that her presence had given him
passed. He saw what she had come for.

"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked.

She drew in her breath sharply.

"It's Alice."

"Yes, I know it's Alice. _Is_ anything wrong?" he said. "What is it?"

"I don't know. I want you to tell me. That's what I've come for. I'm
frightened."

"D'you mean, is she worse?"

She did not answer him. She looked at him as if she were trying to
read in his eyes something that he was trying not to tell her.

"Yes," he said, "she _is_ worse."

"I know that," she said impatiently. "I can see it. You've got to tell
me more."

"But I _have_ told you. You _know_ I have," he pleaded.

"I know you tried to tell me."

"Didn't I succeed?"

"You told me why she was ill--I know all that----"

"Do sit down." He turned from her and dragged the armchair forward.
"There." He put a cushion at her back. "That's better."

As she obeyed him she kept her eyes on him. The book he had been
reading lay where he had put it down, on the hearthrug at her feet.
Its title, "_Г‰tat mental des hystГ©riques_;" Janet, stared at him. He
picked it up and flung it out of sight as if it had offended him. With
all his movements her head lifted and turned so that her eyes followed
him.

He sat down and gazed at her quietly.

"Well," he said, "and what didn't I tell you?"

"You didn't tell me how it would end."

He was silent.

"Is that what you told father?"

"Hasn't he said anything?"

"He hasn't said a word. And you went away without saying anything."

"There isn't much to say that you don't know----"

"I know why she was ill. You told me. But I don't know why she's
worse. She _was_ better. She was quite well. She was running about
doing things and looking so pretty--only the other day. And look at
her now."

"It's like that," said Rowcliffe. "It comes and goes."

He said it quietly. But the blood rose into his face and forehead in a
painful flush.

"But why? Why?" she persisted. "It's so horribly sudden."

"It's like that, too," said Rowcliffe.

"If it's like that now what is it going to be? How is it going to end?
That's what you _won't_ tell me."

"It's difficult----" he began.

"I don't care how difficult it is or how you hate it. You've got to."

All he said to that was "You're very fond of her?"

Her upper lip trembled. "Yes. But I don't think I knew it until now."

"That's what makes it difficult."

"My not knowing it?"

"No. Your being so fond of her."

"Isn't that just the reason why I ought to know?"

"Yes. I think it is. Only----"

She held him to it.

"Is she going to die?"

"I don't say she's _going_ to die. But--in the state she's in--she
_might_ get anything and die of it if something isn't done to make her
happy."

"Happy----"

"I mean of course--to get her married. After all, you know, you've got
to face the facts."

"You think she's dying now, and you're afraid to tell me."

"No--I'm afraid I think--she's not so likely to die as to go out of
her mind."

"Did you tell my father that?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said she was out of her mind already."


"She isn't!"

"Of course she isn't. No more than you and I. He talks about putting
the poor child under restraint----"

"Oh----"

"It's preposterous. But he'll make it necessary if he continues his
present system. What I tried to impress on him is that she _will_
go out of her mind if she's kept shut up in that old Vicarage much
longer. And that she'd be all right--perfectly all right--if she was
married. As far as I can make out he seems to be doing his best to
prevent it. Well--in her case--that's simply criminal. The worse of it
is I can't make him see it. He's annoyed with me."

"He never will see anything he doesn't like."

"There's no reason why he should dislike it so much--I mean her
illness. There's nothing awful about it."

"There's nothing awful about Ally. She's as good as gold."

"I know she's as good as gold. And she'd be as strong as iron if she
was married and had children. I've seen no end of women like that, and
I'm not sure they don't make the best wives and mothers. I told your
father that. But it's no good trying to tell him the truth."

"No. It's the one thing he can't stand."

"He seems," said Rowcliffe, "to have such an extraordinary distaste
for the subject. He approaches it from an impossible point of view--as
if it was sin or crime or something. He talks about her controlling
herself, as if she could help it. Why, she's no more responsible for
being like that than I am for the shape of my nose. I'm afraid I told
him that if anybody was responsible _he_ was, for bringing her to the
worst place imaginable."

"He did that on purpose."

"I know. And I told him he might as well have put her in a lunatic
asylum at once."

He meditated.

"It's not as if he hadn't anybody but himself to think of."

"That's no good. He never does think of anybody but himself. And yet
he'd be awfully sorry, you know, if Ally died."

They sat silent, not looking at each other, until Gwenda spoke again.

"Dr. Rowcliffe--"

He smiled as if it amused him to be addressed so formally.

"Do you _really_ mean it, or are you frightening us? Will Ally really
die--or go mad--if she isn't--happy?"

He was grave again.

"I really mean it. It's a rather serious case. But it's only 'if.' As
I told you, there are scores of women--"

But she waived them all away.

"I only wanted to know."

Her voice stopped suddenly, and he thought that she was going to break
down.

"You mustn't take it so hard," he said. "It's not as if it wasn't
absolutely curable. You must take her away."

Suddenly he remembered that he didn't particularly want Gwenda to go
away. He couldn't, in fact, bear the thought of it.

"Better still," he said, "send her away. Is there anybody you could
send her to?"

"Only Mummy--my stepmother." She smiled through her tears. "Papa would
never let Ally go to _her_."

"Why not?"

"Because she ran away from him."

He tried not to laugh.

"She's really quite decent, though you mightn't think it." Rowcliffe
smiled. "And she's fond of Ally. She's fond of all of us--except Papa.
And," she added, "she knows a lot of people."

He smiled again. He pictured the third Mrs. Cartaret as a woman of
affectionate gaiety and a pleasing worldliness, so well surrounded by
adorers of his own sex that she could probably furnish forth her three
stepdaughters from the numbers of those she had no use for. He was
more than ever disgusted with the Vicar who had driven from him a
woman so admirably fitted to play a mother's part.

"She sounds," he said, "as if she'd be the very one."

"She would be. It's an awful pity."

"Well," he said, "we won't talk any more about it now. We'll think of
something. We simply _must_ get her away."

He was thinking that he knew of somebody--a doctor's widow--who
also would be fitted. If they could afford to pay her. And if they
couldn't, he would very soon have the right----

That was what his "we" meant.