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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id02157" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXVIII</h2> The next person to be told was Rowcliffe. It was known in the village through the telegrams that Gwenda was going away. The postmistress told Mrs. Gale, who told Mrs. Blenkiron. These two persons and four or five others had known ever since Sunday that the Vicar's daughter was going away; and the Vicar did not know it yet. And Mrs. Blenkiron told Rowcliffe on the Wednesday before Alice told him. For it was Alice who told him, and not Gwenda. Gwenda was not at home when he called at the Vicarage at three o'clock. But he heard from Alice that she would be back at four. And it was Alice who told Mrs. Gale that when the doctor called again he was to be shown into the study. He had waited there thirteen minutes before Gwenda came to him. He looked at her and was struck by a difference he found in her, a difference that recalled some look in her face that he had seen before. It was dead white, and in its whiteness her blue eyes, dark and dilated, quivered with defiance and a sort of fear. She looked older and at the same time younger, as young as Alice and as helpless in her fear. Then he remembered that she had looked like that the night she had passed him in the doorway of the house at Upthorne. "How cold your hands are," he said. She hid them behind her back as if they had betrayed her. "Do you want to see me about Ally?" "No, I don't want to see you about Ally. I want to see you about yourself." Her eyes quivered again. "Won't you come into the drawing-room, then?" "I'd rather stay here if you don't mind. I say, how much time have I?" "Till when?" "Well—till your father comes back?" "He won't be back for another hour. But—" "I hear you're going away on Friday; and that you're going for good." "Did Mary tell you?" "No. It was Alice. She said I was to try and stop you." "You can't stop me if I want to go." "I'll do my best." They stood, as they talked, in rigid attitudes that suggested that neither was going to yield an inch. "Why didn't you tell me yourself, Gwenda?" She closed her eyes. It was as if she had forgotten why. "Was it because you knew I wouldn't let you? Did you want to go as much as all that?" "It looks like it, doesn't it?" "Yes. But you don't want to go a bit." "Would I go if I didn't?" "Yes. It's just the sort of thing you would do, if you thought it would annoy me. It's only what you've been doing for the last three months—getting away from me." "Three months—?" "Oh, I cared for you before that. It's only the last three months I've been trying to tell you." "You never told me anything." "Because you never gave me a chance. You kept on putting me off." "And if I did, didn't that show that I didn't want you to tell me? I don't want you to tell me now." He made an impatient movement. "But you knew without telling. You knew then." "I didn't. I didn't." "Well, then, you know now. Will you marry me or will you not? I want it straight." "No. No." "And—why not?" He was horribly cool and calm. "Because I don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody." "Good God! What do you want, then?" "I want to go away and earn my own living as other women do." The absurdity of it melted him. He could have gone down on his knees at her feet and kissed her cold hands. He wondered afterward why on earth he hadn't. Then he remembered that all the time she had kept her hands locked behind her. "You poor child, you don't want to earn your own living. I'll tell you what you do want. You want to get away from home." "And what if I do? You've seen what it's like. Would you stay in it a day longer than you could help if you were me?" "Of course I wouldn't. Of course I've seen what it's like. I saw it the first time I saw you here in this detestable house. I want to take you away out of it. I think I wanted to take you away then." "Oh, no. Not then. Not so long ago as that." It was as if she had said, "Not that. That makes it too hard. Any cruelty you like but that, or I can't go through with it." "Yes," he said, "as long ago as that." "You can't take me away." "Can't I? I can take you anywhere. And I will. Anywhere you like. You've only got to say. I know I can make you happy." "How do you know?" "Because I know you." "That's what you're always saying. And you know nothing about me. Nothing. Nothing." She said to herself: "He doesn't. He doesn't even know why I'm going." "I know a lot more than you think. And a lot more than you know yourself. I know that you're not happy as you are, and I know that you can't live without happiness. If you're not happy you'll be ill; more horribly ill, perhaps, than Alice. Look at Alice." "I'm not like Alice." "Not now. Not next year. Not for ten years, perhaps, or twenty. But you don't know what you may be." She raised her head. "I shall never be like that. Never." Rowcliffe laughed. It struck her then that that was what she ought never to have said if she wanted to carry out her purpose. "When I say I'm not like Ally I mean that I'm not so dependent on people. I'm not gentle like Ally. I'm not as loving and I'm not as womanly. In fact, I'm not womanly at all." "My dear child, do you suppose it matters to me what you're not, as long as I love you as you are?" "No," she said, "you don't love me really. You only think you do." She clung to that. "Why do you say that, Gwenda?" "Because, if you did, I should have known it before now." "Well, considering that you do know it now—" "I mean, you'd have said so before." "I say! I like that. I'd have said so about five times if you'd ever given me a chance." "Oh, no. You had your chance." "When did I have it? When?" "The other day. Up at Bar Hill." "You thought so then?" "I didn't say I thought so then. I think so now." "That's rather clever of you. Because, you see, if you thought so then that shows—" "What does it show?" "Why, that you knew all the time—and that you were thinking of me. You did know. You did think—" "No. No. It's only that I've got to—that you're making me think of you now. But I'm not thinking of you the way you want." "If you're not—if you haven't thought of me—the way I want—then I can't make you out. You're beyond me." They sat down, tired out with the struggle, as if they had reached the same point of exhaustion at the same instant. "Why not leave it at that?" she said. He rallied. "Because I can't leave it at that. You knew I cared. You must have seen. I could have sworn you saw. I could have sworn—" She knew what he was going to swear and she stopped him. "I did see that you thought you cared for me. If you'd been quite sure you'd have told me. You wouldn't have waited. You're not quite sure now. You're only telling me now because I'm going away. If I hadn't said I was going away you'd never have told me. You'd just have gone on waiting till you were quite sure." She had irritated him now beyond endurance. "Gwenda," he said savagely, "you're enough to drive a man mad." "You've told me that before, anyhow. Don't you see that I should go on driving you mad? Don't you see how unhappy you'd be with me, how impossible it all is?" She laughed. It was marvelous to her how she achieved that laugh. It was as if she had just thought of it and it came. "I can see," he said, "that you don't care for me." He had given himself into her hands—hands that seemed to him diabolic in their play. "Did I ever say I cared?" "Well—of all the women—you are——! No, you didn't say it." "Did I ever show it?" "Good God, how do I know what you showed? If it had been any other woman—yes, I could have sworn." "You can't swear to any woman—I'm afraid—till you've married her. Perhaps—not then." "You shouldn't say things like that; they sound——" "How do they sound?" "As if you knew too much." She smiled. "Well, then—there's another reason." He softened suddenly. "I didn't mean that, Gwenda. You don't know what you're saying. You don't know anything. It's only that you're so beastly clever." "That's a better reason still. You don't want to marry a beastly clever woman. You really don't." "I'd risk it. That sort of cleverness doesn't last long." "It would last your time," she said. She rose. It was as much as giving him his dismissal. He stood a moment watching her. She and all her movements still seemed to him incredible. "Do you mind telling me where you're going to?" "I'm going to Mummy." She explained to his blankness: "My stepmother." He remembered. Mummy was the lady who was "the very one," the lady of remarkable resources. It seemed to him then that he saw it all. He knew what she was going for. "I see. Instead of your sister," he sneered. "Papa wouldn't let Ally go to her. But he can't stop me." "Oh, no. Nobody could stop you." She smiled softly. She had missed the brutality of his emphasis. * * * * * He said to himself that Gwenda was impossible. She was obstinate and conceited and wrong-headed. She was utterly selfish, a cold mass of egoism. "Cold?" He was not so sure. She might be. But she was capable, he suspected, of adventures. Instead of taking her sister away to have her chance, she was rushing off to secure it herself. And the irony of the thing was that it was he who had put it into her head. Well—she was no worse, and no better—than the rest of them. Only unlike them in the queerness of her fascination. He wondered how long it would have lasted? You couldn't go on caring for a woman like that, who had never cared a rap about you. And yet—he could have sworn—Oh, that was nothing. She had only thought of him because he had been her only chance. He made himself think these things of her because they gave him unspeakable consolation. All the way back to Morfe he thought them, while on his right hand Karva rose and receded and rose again, and changed at every turn its aspect and its form. He thought them to an accompaniment of an interior, persistent voice, the voice of his romantic youth, that said to him, "That is her hill, her hill—do you remember? That's where you met her first. That's where you saw her jumping. That's her hill—her hill—her hill." <h2 id="id02287" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXIX</h2> The Vicar had been fidgeting in his study, getting up and sitting down, and looking at the clock every two minutes. Gwenda had told him that she wanted to speak to him, and he had stipulated that the interview should be after prayer time, for he knew that he was going to be upset. He never allowed family disturbances, if he could help it, to interfere with the attitude he kept up before his Maker. He knew perfectly well she was going to tell him of her engagement to young Rowcliffe; and though he had been prepared for the news any time for the last three months he had to pull himself together to receive it. He would have to pretend that he was pleased about it when he wasn't pleased at all. He was, in fact, intensely sorry for himself. It had dawned on him that, with Alice left a permanent invalid on his hands, he couldn't really afford to part with Gwenda. She might be terrible in the house, but in her way—a way he didn't altogether approve of—she was useful in the parish. She would cover more of it in an afternoon than Mary could in a month of Sundays. But, though the idea of Gwenda's marrying was disagreeable to him for so many reasons, he was not going to forbid it absolutely. He was only going to insist that she should wait. It was only reasonable and decent that she should wait until Alice got either better or bad enough to be put under restraint. The Vicar's pity for himself reached its climax when he considered that awful alternative. He had been considering it ever since Rowcliffe had spoken to him about Alice. It was just like Gwenda to go and get engaged at such a moment, when he was beside himself. But he smoothed his face into a smile when she appeared. "Well, what is it? What is this great thing you've come to tell me?" It struck him that for the first time in her life Gwenda looked embarrassed; as well she might be. "Oh—it isn't very great, Papa. It's only that I'm going away." "Going—away?" "I don't mean out of the country. Only to London." "Ha! Going to London—" He rolled it ruminatingly on his tongue. "Well, if that's all you've come to say, it's very simple. You can't go." He bent his knees with the little self-liberating gesture that he had when he put his foot down. "But," said Gwenda, "I'm going." He raised his eyebrows. "And why is this the first time I've heard of it?" "Because I want to go without any bother, since I'm going to go." "Oh—consideration for me, I suppose?" "For both of us. I don't want you to worry." "That's why you've chosen a time when I'm worried out of my wits already." "I know, Papa. That's why I'm going." He was arrested both by the astounding statement and by something unusually placable in her tone. He stared at her as his way was. Then, suddenly, he had a light on it. "Gwenda, there must be something behind all this. You'd better tell me straight out what's happened." "Nothing has happened." "You know what I mean. We've spoken about this before. Is there anything between you and young Rowcliffe." "Nothing. Nothing whatever of the sort you mean." "You're sure there hasn't been"—he paused discreetly for his word—"some misunderstanding?" "Quite sure. There isn't anything to misunderstand. I'm going because I want to go. There are too many of us at home." "Too many of you—in the state your sister's in?" "That's exactly why I'm going. I'm trying to tell you. Ally'll go on being ill as long as there are three of us knocking about the house. You'll find she'll buck up like anything when I'm gone. There's nothing the matter with her, really." "That may be your opinion. It isn't Rowcliffe's." "I know it isn't. But it soon will be. It was your own idea a little while ago." "Ye—es; before this last attack, perhaps. D'you know what Rowcliffe thinks of her?" "Yes. But I know a lot more about Ally than he does. So do you." "Well—" They were sitting down to it now. "But I can't afford to keep you if you go away." "Of course you can't. You won't have to keep me. I'm going to keep myself." Again he stared. This was preposterous. "It's all right, Papa. It's all settled." "By whom?" "By me." "You've found something to do in London?" "Not yet. I'm going to look—" "And what," inquired the Vicar with an even suaver irony, "can you do?" "I can be somebody's secretary." "Whose?" "Oh," said Gwenda airily, "anybody's." "And—if I may ask—what will you do, and where do you propose to stay, while you're looking for him?" (He felt that he expressed himself with perspicacity.) "That's all arranged. I'm going to Mummy." The Vicar was silent with the shock of it. "I'm sorry, Papa," said Gwenda; "but there's nowhere else to go to." "If you go there," said Mr. Cartaret, "you will certainly not come back here." All that had passed till now had been mere skirmishing. The real battle had begun. Gwenda set her face to it. "I shall not be coming back in any case," she said. "That question can stand over till you've gone." "I shall be gone on Friday by the three train." "I shall not allow you to go—by any train." "How are you going to stop me?" He had not considered it. "You don't suppose I'm going to give you any money to go with?" "You needn't. I've got heaps." "And how are you going to get your luggage to the station?" "Oh—the usual way." "There'll be no way if I forbid Peacock to carry it—or you." "Can you forbid Jim Greatorex? He'll take me like a shot." "I can put your luggage under lock and key." He was still stern, though, he was aware that the discussion was descending to sheer foolishness. "I'll go without it. I can carry a toothbrush and a comb, and Mummy will have heaps of nightgowns." The Vicar leaned forward and hid his face in his hands before that poignant evocation of Robina. Gwenda saw that she had gone too far. She had a queer longing to go down on her knees before him and drag his hands from his poor face and ask him to forgive her. She struggled with and overcame the morbid impulse. The Vicar lifted his face, and for a moment they looked at each other while he measured, visibly, his forces against hers. She shook her head at him almost tenderly. He was purely pathetic to her now. "It's no use, Papa. You'd far better give it up. You know you can't do it. You can't stop me. You can't stop Jim Greatorex. You can't even stop Peacock. You don't want another scandal in the parish." He didn't. "Oh, go your own way," he said, "and take the consequences." "I have taken them," said Gwenda. She thought, "I wonder what he'd have said if I'd told him the truth? But, if I had, he'd never have believed it." The truth indeed was far beyond the Vicar's power of belief. He only supposed (after some reflection) that Gwenda was going off in a huff, because young Rowcliffe had failed to come to the scratch. He knew what this running up to London and earning her own living meant—she! He would have trusted Ally sooner. Gwenda was capable of anything. And as he thought of what she might be capable of in London, he sighed, "God help her!" <h2 id="id02371" style="margin-top: 4em">XL</h2> It was May, five weeks since Gwenda had left Garthdale. Five Wednesdays came and went and Rowcliffe had not been seen or heard of at the Vicarage. It struck even the Vicar that considerably more had passed between his daughter and the doctor than Gwenda had been willing to admit. Whatever had passed, it had been something that had made Rowcliffe desire not to be seen or heard of. All the same, the Vicar and his daughter Alice were both so profoundly aware of Rowcliffe that for five weeks they had not mentioned his name to each other. When Mary mentioned it on Friday, in the evening of that disgraceful day, he said that he had had enough of Rowcliffe and he didn't want to hear any more about the fellow. Mr. Cartaret had signified that his second daughter's name was not to be mentioned, either. But, becoming as his attitude was, he had not been able to keep it up. In the sixth week after Gwenda's departure, he was obliged to hear (it was Alice, amazed out of all reticence, who told him) that Gwenda had got a berth as companion secretary to Lady Frances Gilbey, at a salary of a hundred a year. Mummy had got it for her. "You may well stare, Molly, but it's what she says." The Vicar, as if he had believed Ally capable of fabricating this intelligence, observed that he would like to see that letter. His face darkened as he read it. He handed it back without a word. The thing was not so incredible to the Vicar as it was to Mary. He had always known that Robina could pull wires. It was, in fact, through her ability to pull wires that Robina had so successfully held him up. She had her hands on the connections of an entire social system. Her superior ramifications were among those whom Mr. Cartaret habitually spoke and thought of as "the best people." And when it came to connections, Robina's were of the very best. Lady Frances was her second cousin. In the days when he was trying to find excuses for marrying Robina, it was in considering her connections that he found his finest. The Vicar had informed his conscience that he was marrying Robina because of what she could do for his three motherless daughters—and himself. Preferment even lay (through the Gilbeys) within Robina's scope. But to have planted Gwenda on Lady Frances Robina must have pulled all the wires she knew. Lady Frances was a distinguished philanthropist and a rigid Evangelical, so rigid and so distinguished that, in the eyes of poor parsons waiting for preferment, she constituted a pillar of the Church. To the Vicar, as he brooded over it, Robina's act was more than mere protection of his daughter Gwenda. Not only was it carrying the war into the enemy's camp with a vengeance, it was an act of hostility subtler and more malignant than overt defiance. Ever since she left him, Robina had been trying to get hold of the girls, regarding them as the finest instruments in her relentless game. For it never occurred to Mr. Cartaret that his third wife's movements could by any possibility refer to anybody but himself. Robina, according to Mr. Cartaret, was perpetually thinking of him and of how she could annoy him. She had shown a fiendish cleverness in placing Gwenda with Lady Frances. She couldn't have done anything that could have annoyed him more. More than anything that Robina had yet done, it put him in the wrong. It put him in the wrong not only with Lady Frances and the best people, but it put him in the wrong with Gwenda and kept him there. Against Gwenda, with Lady Frances and a salary of a hundred a year at her back, he hadn't the appearance of a leg to stand on. The thing had the air of justifying Gwenda's behavior by its consequences. That was what Robina had been reckoning on. For, if it had been Gwenda she had been thinking of, she would have kept her instead of handing her over to Lady Frances. The companion secretaries of that distinguished philanthropist had no sinecure even at a hundred a year. As for Gwenda's accepting such a post, that proved nothing as against his view of her. It only proved, what he had always known, that you could never tell what Gwenda would do next. And because nothing could be said with any dignity, the Vicar had said nothing as he rose and went into his study. It was there, hidden from his daughters' scrutiny, that he pondered these things. * * * * * They waited till the door had closed on him before they spoke. "Well, after all, that'll be very jolly for her," said Mary. "It isn't half as jolly as it looks," said Ally. "It means that she'll have to live at Tunbridge Wells." "Oh," said Mary, "it won't be all Tunbridge Wells." She couldn't bear to think that it would be all Tunbridge Wells. Not that she did think it for a moment. It couldn't be all Tunbridge Wells for a girl like Gwenda. Mummy could never have contemplated that. Gwenda couldn't have contemplated it. And Mary refused to contemplate it either. She persuaded herself that what had happened to her sister was simply a piece of the most amazing luck. She even judged it probable that Gwenda had known very well what she was doing when she went away. Besides she had always wanted to do something. She had learned shorthand and typewriting at Westbourne, as if, long ago, she had decided that, if home became insupportable, she would leave it. And there had always been that agreement between her and Mummy. When Mary put these things together, she saw that nothing could be more certain than that, sooner or later, Ally or no Ally, Gwenda would have gone away. But this was after it had occurred to her that Rowcliffe ought to know what had happened and that she had got to tell him. And that was on the day after Gwenda's letter came, when Mrs. Gale, having brought in the tea-things, paused in her going to say, "'Ave yo' seen Dr. Rawcliffe, Miss Mary? Ey—but 'e's lookin' baad." "Everybody," said Mary, "is looking bad this muggy weather. That reminds me, how's the baby?" "'E's woorse again, Miss. I tall Assy she'll navver rear 'im." "Has the doctor seen him to-day?" "Naw, naw, nat yat. But 'e'll look in, 'e saays, afore 'e goas." Mary looked at the clock. Rowcliffe left the surgery at four-thirty. It was now five minutes past. She wondered: Did he know, then, or did he not know? Would Gwenda have written to him? Was it because she had not written that he was looking bad, or was it because she had written and he knew? She thought and thought it over; and under all her thinking there lurked the desire to know whether Rowcliffe knew and how he was taking it, and under her desire the longing, imperious and irresistible, to see him. She would have to ask him to the house. She had not forgotten that she had to ask him, that she was pledged to ask him on Ally's account if, as Gwenda had put it, she was to play the game. But she had had more than one motive for her delay. It would look better if she were not in too great a hurry. (She said to herself it would look better on Ally's account.) The longer he was kept away (she said to herself, that he was kept away from Ally) the more he would be likely to want to come. Sufficient time must elapse to allow of his forgetting Gwenda. It was not well that he should be thinking all the time of Gwenda when he came. (She said to herself it was not well on Ally's account.) And it was well that their father should have forgotten Rowcliffe. (This on Ally's account, too.) For of course it was only on Ally's account that she was asking Rowcliffe, really. Not that there seemed to be any such awful need. For Ally, in those five weeks, had got gradually better. And now, in the first week of May, which had always been one of her bad months, she was marvelously well. It looked as if Gwenda had known what she was talking about when she said Ally would be all right when she was gone. And of course it was just as well (on Ally's account) that Rowcliffe should not have seen her until she was absolutely well. Nobody could say that she, Mary, was not doing it beautifully. Nobody could say she was not discreet, since she had let five weeks pass before she asked him. And in order that her asking him should have the air of happy chance, she must somehow contrive to see him first. Her seeing him could be managed any Wednesday in the village. It was bound, in fact, to occur. The wonder was that it had not occurred before. Well, that showed how hard, all these weeks, she had been trying not to see him. If she had had an uneasy conscience in the matter (and she said to herself that there was no occasion for one), it would have acquitted her. Nobody could say she wasn't playing the game. And then it struck her that she had better go down at once and see Essy's baby. It was only five and twenty past four. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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