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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id00771" style="margin-top: 4em">XVIII</h2> The next day, which was a Tuesday, Alice was up and about again. Rowcliffe saw her on Wednesday and on Saturday, when he declared himself satisfied with her progress and a little surprised. So surprised was he that he said he would not come again unless he was sent for. And then in three days Alice slid back. But they were not to worry about her, she said. There was nothing the matter with her except that she was tired. She was so tired that she lay all Tuesday on the drawing-room sofa and on Wednesday morning she was too tired to get up and dress. And on Wednesday afternoon Dr. Rowcliffe found a note waiting at the blacksmith's cottage in Garth village, where he had a room with a brown gauze blind in the window and the legend in gilt letters: <h5 id="id00777"> SURGERY</h5> Dr. S. Rowcliffe, M.D., F.R.C.S. Hours of Attendance Wednesday, 2.30-4.30. The note ran: "DEAR DR. ROWCLIFFE: Can you come and see me this afternoon? I think I'm rather worse. But I don't want to frighten my people—so perhaps, if you just looked in about teatime, as if you'd called? "Yours truly, <h5 id="id00783"> "ALICE CARTARET."</h5> Essy Gale had left the note that morning. Rowcliffe looked at it dubiously. He was honest and he had the large views of a man used to a large practice. His patients couldn't complain that he lengthened his bills by paying unnecessary visits. If he wanted to add to his income in that way, he wasn't going to begin with a poor parson's hysterical daughter. But as the Vicar of Garth had called on him and left his card on Monday, there was no reason why he shouldn't look in on Wednesday about teatime. Especially as he knew that the Vicar was in the habit of visiting Upthorne and the outlying portions of his parish on Wednesday afternoons. * * * * * All day Alice lay in her little bed like a happy child and waited. Propped on her pillows, with her slender arms stretched out before her on the counterpane, she waited. Her sullenness was gone. She had nothing but sweetness for Mary and for Essy. Even to her father she was sweet. She could afford it. Her instinct was now sure. From time to time a smile flickered on her small face like a light almost of triumph. * * * * * The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her. He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him. He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in the village that she was not so well. "I'm afraid she isn't." "May I see her? I don't mean professionally—just for a talk." The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom bills were nightmares. She took him upstairs. On the landing she turned to him. "She doesn't look worse. She looks better." "All right. She won't deceive me." She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a faint opaline dawn of color in her face. Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a quarter of an hour he kept it up. And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better. You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste all this glorious air?" "If I could live on air!" said Alice. "You can—you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live without it." Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him. "But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may." "At teatime?" "Very well—at teatime." * * * * * "How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne. "She's better." "Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?" "He called—on you, I think." (Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving plainly that his visit was not professional.) "And you made him see her?" he insisted. "He saw her." "Well?" "He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the open air." "It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She doesn't want a doctor to tell her that." He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience. "Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe." But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it meant—that air of wisdom and of patience. Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper. "I won't have him sent for—do you hear?" And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give young Rowcliffe a hint. It was to give him a hint that he had called on Monday. * * * * * But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe. For before he could brace himself to the effort Alice was well again. Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime the next Wednesday and the next after that. Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him. <h2 id="id00830" style="margin-top: 4em">XIX</h2> "'Oh Gawd, our halp in a-ages paasst, Our 'awp in yeears ter coom, Our shal-ter from ther storm-ee blaasst, And our ee-tarnal 'oam!'" "'Ark at 'im! That's Jimmy arl over. T' think that 'is poor feyther's not in 'is graave aboove a moonth, an' 'e singin' fit t' eave barn roof off! They should tak' an' shoot 'im oop in t' owd powder magazine," said Mrs. Gale. "Well—but it's a wonderful voice," said Gwenda Cartaret. "I've never heard another like it, and I know something about voices," Alice said. They had gone up to Upthorne to ask Mrs. Gale to look in at the Vicarage on her way home, for Essy wasn't very well. But Mrs. Gale had shied off from the subject of Essy. She had done it with the laughter of deep wisdom and a shake of her head. You couldn't teach Mrs. Gale anything about illness, nor about Essy. "I knaw Assy," she had said. "There's nowt amiss with her. Doan't you woorry." And then Jim Greatorex, though unseen, had burst out at them with his big voice. It came booming from the mistal at the back. Alice told the truth when she said she had never heard anything like it; and even in the dale, so critical of strangers, it was admitted that she knew. The village had a new schoolmaster who was no musician, and hopeless with the choir. Alice, as the musical one of the family, had been trained to play the organ, and she played it, not with passion, for it was her duty, but with mechanical and perfunctory correctness, as she had been taught. She was also fairly successful with the village choir. "Mebbe yo 'aven't 'eard anoother," said Mrs. Gale. "It's rackoned there isn't anoother woon like it in t' daale." "But it's just what we want for our choir—a big barytone voice. Do you think he'd sing for us, Mrs. Gale?" Alice said it light-heartedly, for she did not know what she was asking. She knew nothing of the story of Jim Greatorex and his big voice. It had been carefully kept from her. "I doan knaw," said Mrs. Gale. "Jim, look yo, 'e useter sing in t' Choorch choir." "Why ever did he leave it?" Mrs. Gale looked dark and tightened up her face. She knew perfectly well why Jim Greatorex had left. It was because he wasn't going to have that little milk-faced lass learning him to sing. His pride wouldn't stomach it. But not for worlds would Mrs. Gale have been the one to let Miss Alice know that. Her eyes sought for inspiration in a crack on the stone floor. "I can't rightly tall yo', Miss Olice. 'E sang fer t' owd schoolmaaster, look yo, an' wann schoolmaaster gaave it oop, Jimmy, 'e said 'e'd give it oop too." "But don't you think he'd sing for me, if I were to ask him?" "Yo' may aask 'im, Miss Olice, but I doan' knaw. Wann Jim Greatorex is sat, 'e's sat." "There's no harm in asking him." "Naw. Naw 'aarm there isn't," said Mrs. Gale doubtfully. "I think I'll ask him now," said Alice. "I wouldn', look yo, nat ef I wuss yo, Miss Olice. I wouldn' gaw to 'im in t' mistal all amoong t' doong. Yo'll sha-ame 'im, and yo'll do nowt wi' Jimmy ef 'e's sha-amed." "Leave it, Ally. We can come another day," said Gwenda. "Thot's it," said Mrs. Gale. "Coom another daay." And as they turned away Jim's voice thundered after them from his stronghold in the mistal. "From av-ver-lasstin'—THOU ART GAWD! To andless ye-ears ther sa-ame!" The sisters stood listening. They looked at each other. "I say!" said Gwenda. "Isn't he gorgeous? We'll have to come again. It would be a sin to waste him." "It would." "When shall we come?" "There's heaps of time. That voice won't run away." "No. But he might get pneumonia. He might die." "Not he." But Alice couldn't leave it alone. "How about Sunday? Just after dinner? He'll be clean then." "All right. Sunday." But it was not till they had passed the schoolhouse outside Garth village that Alice's great idea came to her. "Gwenda! The Concert! Wouldn't he be ripping for the Concert!" <h2 id="id00871" style="margin-top: 4em">XX</h2> But the concert was not till the first week in December; and it was in November that Rowcliffe began to form the habit that made him remarkable in Garth, of looking in at the Vicarage toward teatime every Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Gale, informed by Essy, was the first to condole with Mrs. Blenkiron, the blacksmith's wife, who had arranged to provide tea for Rowcliffe every Wednesday in the Surgery. "Wall, Mrs. Blenkiron," she said, "yo' 'aven't got to mak' tae for yore doctor now?" "Naw. I 'aven't," said Mrs. Blenkiron. "And it's sexpence clane gone out o' me packet av'ry week." Mrs. Blenkiron was a distant cousin of the Greatorexes. She had what was called a superior manner and was handsome, in the slender, high-nosed, florid fashion of the Dale. "But there," she went on. "I doan't groodge it. 'E's yoong and you caann't blaame him. They's coompany for him oop at Vicarage." "'E's coompany fer they, I rackon. And well yo' med saay yo' doan't groodge it ef yo knawed arl we knaw, Mrs. Blenkiron. It's no life fer yoong things oop there, long o' t' Vicar. Mind yo"—Mrs. Gale lowered her voice and looked up and down the street for possible eavesdroppers—"ef 'e was to 'ear on it, thot yoong Rawcliffe wouldn't be 'lowed t' putt 's nawse in at door agen. But theer—there's nawbody'd be thot crool an' spittiful fer to goa an' tall 'im. Our Assy wouldn't. She'd coot 'er toong out foorst, Assy would." "Nawbody'll get it out of mae, Mrs. Gale, though it's wae as 'as to sooffer for 't." "Eh, but Dr. Rawcliffe's a good maan, and 'e'll mak' it oop to yo', naw feear, Mrs. Blenkiron." "And which of 'em will it bae, Mrs. Gaale, think you?" "I caann't saay. But it woonna bae t' eldest. Nor t' yoongest—joodgin'." "Well—the lil' laass isn' breaaking 'er 'eart fer him, t' joodge by the looks of 'er. I naver saw sech a chaange in anybody in a moonth." "'T assn' takken mooch to maake 'er 'appy," said Mrs. Gale. For Essy, who had informed her, was not subtle. * * * * * But of Ally's happiness there could be no doubt. It lapped her, soaked into her like water and air. Her small head flowered under it and put out its secret colors; the dull gold of her hair began to shine again, her face showed a shallow flush under its pallor; her gray eyes were clear as if they had been dipped in water. Two slender golden arches shone above them. They hadn't been seen there for five years. "Who would have believed," said Mary, "that Ally could have looked so pretty?" Ally's prettiness (when she gazed at it in the glass) was delicious, intoxicating joy to Ally. She was never tired of looking at it, of turning round and round to get new views of it, of dressing her hair in new ways to set it off. "Whatever have you done your hair like that for?" said Mary on a Wednesday when Ally came down in the afternoon with her gold spread out above her ears and twisted in a shining coil on the top of her head. "To make it grow better," said Ally. "Don't let Papa catch you at it," said Gwenda, "if you want it to grow any more." Gwenda was going out. She had her hat on, and was taking her walking-stick from the stand. Ally stared. "You're not going out?" "I am," said Gwenda. And she laughed as she went. She wasn't going to stay at home for Rowcliffe every Wednesday. * * * * * As for Ally, the Vicar did catch her at it. He caught her the very next Wednesday afternoon. She thought he had started for Upthorne when he hadn't. He was bound to catch her. For the best looking-glass in the house was in the Vicar's bedroom. It went the whole length and width of the wardrobe door, and Ally could see herself in it from head to foot. And on the Vicar's dressing-table there lay a large and perfect hand-glass that had belonged to Ally's mother. Only by opening the wardrobe door and with the aid of the hand-glass could Ally obtain a satisfactory three-quarters view of her face and figure. Now, by the Vicar's magnanimity, his daughters were allowed to use his bedroom twice in every two years, in the spring and in the autumn, for the purpose of trying on their new gowns; but this year they were wearing out last winter's gowns, and Ally had no business in the Vicar's bedroom at four o'clock in the afternoon. She was turning slowly round and round, with her head tilted back over her left shoulder; she had just caught sight of her little white nose as it appeared in a vanishing profile and was adjusting her head at another and still more interesting angle when the Vicar caught her. He was well in the middle of the room, and staring at her, before she was aware of him. The wardrobe door, flung wide open, had concealed his entrance, but if Ally had not been blinded and intoxicated with her own beauty she would have seen him before she began smiling, full-face first, then three-quarters, then sideways, a little tilted. Then she shut to the door of the wardrobe (for the back view that was to reassure her as to the utter prettiness of her shoulders and the nape of her neck), and it was at that moment that she saw him, reflected behind her in the long looking-glass. She screamed and dropped the hand-glass. She heard it break itself at her feet. "Papa," she cried, "how you frightened me!" It was not so much that he had caught her smiling at her own face, it was that his face, seen in the looking-glass, was awful. And besides being awful it was evil. Even to Ally's innocence it was evil. If it had been any other man Ally's instinct would have said that he looked horrid without Ally knowing or caring to know what her instinct meant. But the look on her father's face was awful because it was mysterious. Neither she nor her instinct had a word for it. There was cruelty in it, and, besides cruelty, some quality nameless and unrecognisable, subtle and secret, and yet crude somehow and vivid. The horror of it made her forget that he had caught her in one of the most deplorably humiliating situations in which a young girl can be caught—deliberately manufacturing smiles for her own amusement. "You've no business to be here," said the Vicar. He picked up the broken hand-glass, and as he looked at it the cruelty and the nameless quality passed out of his face as if a hand had smoothed it, and it became suddenly weak and pathetic, the face of a child whose precious magic thing another child has played with and broken. Then Alice remembered that the hand-glass had been her mother's. "I'm sorry I've broken it, Papa, if you liked it." Her voice recalled him to himself. "Ally," he said, "what am I to think of you? Are you a fool—or what?" The sting of it lashed Ally's brain to a retort. (All that she had needed hitherto to be effective was a little red blood in her veins, and she had got it now.) "I'd be a fool," she said, "if I cared two straws what you think of me, since you can't see what I am. I'm sorry if I've broken your old hand-glass, though I didn't break it. You broke it yourself." Carrying her golden top-knot like a crown, she left the room. The Vicar took the broken hand-glass and hid it in a drawer. He was sorry for himself. The only impression left on his mind was that his daughter Ally had been cruel to him. * * * * * But Ally didn't care a rap what he thought of her, or what impression she had left on his mind. She was much too happy. Besides, if you once began caring what Papa thought there would be no peace for anybody. He was so impossible that he didn't count. He wasn't even an effective serpent in her Paradise. He might crawl all over it (as indeed he did crawl), but he left no trail. The thought of how he had caught her at the looking-glass might be disagreeable, but it couldn't slime those holy lawns. Neither could it break the ecstasy of Wednesday, that heavenly day. Nothing could break it as long as Dr. Rowcliffe continued to look in at tea-time and her father to explore the furthest borders of his parish. The peace of Paradise came down on the Vicarage every Wednesday the very minute the garden gate had swung back behind the Vicar. He started so early and he was back so late that there was never any chance of his encountering young Rowcliffe. * * * * * To be sure, young Rowcliffe hardly ever said a word to her. He always talked to Mary or to Gwenda. But there was nothing in his reticence to disturb Ally's ecstasy. It was bliss to sit and look at Rowcliffe and to hear him talk. When she tried to talk to him herself her brain swam and she became unhappy and confused. Intellectual effort was destructive to the blessed state, which was pure passivity, untroubled contemplation in its early stages, before the oncoming of rapture. The fact that Mary and Gwenda could talk to him and talk intelligently showed how little they cared for him or were likely to care, and how immeasurably far they were from the supreme act of adoration. Similarly, the fact that Rowcliffe could talk to Mary and to Gwenda showed how little he cared. If he had cared, if he were ever going to care as Ally understood caring, his brain would have swum like hers and his intellect would have abandoned him. Whereas, it was when he turned to Ally that he hadn't a word to say, any more than she had, and that he became entangled in his talk, and that the intellect he tried to summon to him tottered and vanished at his call. Another thing—when he caught her looking at him (and though Ally was careful he did catch her now and then) he always either lowered his eyelids or looked away. He was afraid to look at her; and that, as everybody knew, was an infallible sign. Why, Ally was afraid to look at him, only she couldn't help it. Her eyes were dragged to the terror and the danger. So Ally reasoned in her Paradise. For when Rowcliffe was once gone her brain was frantically busy. It never gave her any rest. From the one stuff of its dreams it span an endless shining thread; from the one thread it wove an endless web of visions. From nothing at all it built up drama after drama. It was all beautiful what Ally's brain did, all noble, all marvelously pure. (The Vicar would have been astonished if he had known how pure.) There was no sullen and selfish Ally in Ally's dreams. They were all of sacrifice, of self-immolation, of beautiful and noble things done for Rowcliffe, of suffering for Rowcliffe, of dying for him. All without Rowcliffe being very palpably and positively there. It was only at night, when Ally's brain slept among its dreams, that Rowcliffe's face leaned near to hers without ever touching it, and his arms made as if they clasped her and never met. Even then, always at the first intangible approach of him, she woke, terrified because dreams go by contraries. "Is your sister always so silent?" Rowcliffe asked that Wednesday (the Wednesday when Ally had been caught). He was alone with Mary. "Who? Ally? No. She isn't silent at all. What do you think of her?" "I think," said Rowcliffe, "she looks extraordinarily well." "That's owing to you," said Mary. "I never saw her pull round so fast before." "No? I assure you," said Rowcliffe, "I haven't anything to do with it." He was very stiff and cold and stern. Rowcliffe was annoyed because it was two Wednesdays running that he had found himself alone with the eldest and the youngest Miss Cartaret. The second one had gone off heaven knew where. <h2 id="id00934" style="margin-top: 4em">XXI</h2> The Vicar of Garth considered himself unhappy (to say the least of it) in his three children, but he had never asked himself what, after all, would he have done without them? After all (as they had frequently reminded themselves), without them he could never have lived comfortably on his income. They did the work and saved him the expenses of a second servant, a housekeeper, an under-gardener, an organist and two curates. The three divided the work of the Vicarage and parish, according to the tastes and abilities of each. At home Mary kept the house and did the sewing. Gwenda looked after the gray and barren garden, she trimmed the narrow paths and the one flower-bed and mowed the small square of grass between. Alice trailed through the lower rooms, dusting furniture feebly; she gathered and arranged the flowers when there were any in the bed. Outside, Mary, being sweet and good, taught in the boys' Sunday-school; Alice, because she was fond of children, had the infants. For the rest, Mary, who was lazy, had taken over that small portion of the village that was not Baptist or Wesleyan or Congregational. Gwenda, for her own amusement, and regardless of sect and creed, the hopelessly distant hamlets and the farms scattered on the long, raking hillsides and the moors. Alice declared herself satisfied with her dominion over the organ and the village choir. Alice was behaving like an angel in her Paradise. No longer listless and sullen, she swept through the house with an angel's energy. A benign, untiring angel sat at the organ and controlled the violent voices of the choir. The choir looked upon Ally's innocent art with pride and admiration and amusement. It tickled them to see those little milk-white hands grappling with organ pieces that had beaten the old schoolmaster. Ally enjoyed the pride and admiration of the choir and was unaware of its amusement. She enjoyed the importance of her office. She enjoyed the massive, voluptuous vibrations that made her body a vehicle for the organ's surging and tremendous soul. Ally's body had become a more and more tremulous, a more sensitive and perfect medium for vibrations. She would not have missed one choir practice or one service. And she said to herself, "I may be a fool, but Papa or the parish would have to pay an organist at least forty pounds a year. It costs less to keep me. So he needn't talk." * * * * * Then in November came the preparations for the village concert. They were stupendous. All morning the little Erad piano shook with the Grande Valse and the Grande Polonaise of Chopin. The diabolic thing raged through the shut house, knowing that it went unchallenged, that its utmost violence was licensed until the day after the concert. Rowcliffe heard it whenever he drove past the Vicarage on his way over the moors. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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