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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id00946" style="margin-top: 4em">XXII</h2> Rowcliffe was now beginning to form that other habit (which was to make him even more remarkable than he was already), the hunting down of Gwendolen Cartaret in the open. He was annoyed with Gwendolen Cartaret. When she had all the rest of the week to walk in she would set out on Wednesdays before teatime and continue until long after dark. He had missed her twice now. And on the third Wednesday he saw her swinging up the hill toward Upthorne as he, leaving his surgery, came round the corner of the village by the bridge. "I believe," he thought, "she's doing it on purpose. To avoid me." He was determined not to be avoided. * * * * * "The doctor's very late this afternoon," said Mary. "I suppose he's been sent for somewhere." Alice said nothing. She couldn't trust herself to speak. She lived in sickening fear that on some Wednesday afternoon he would be sent for. It had never happened yet, but that made it all the more likely that it had happened now. They waited till five; till a quarter-past. "I really can't wait any longer," said Mary, "for a man who doesn't come." * * * * * By that time Rowcliffe and Gwenda were far on the road to Upthorne. He had overtaken her about a hundred yards above the schoolhouse, before the road turned to Upthorne Moor. "I say, how you do sprint up these hills!" She turned. "Is that you, Dr. Rowcliffe?" "Of course it's me. Where are you off to?" "Upthorne. Anywhere." "May I come too?" "If you want to." "Of course I want to." "Have you had any tea?" "No." "Weren't they in?" "I didn't stop to ask." "Why not?" "Because I saw you stampeding on in front of me, and I swore I'd overtake you before you got round that corner. And I have overtaken you." "Shall we go back? We've time." He frowned. "No. I never turn back. Let's get on. Get on." They went on at a terrific pace. And as she persisted in walking about half a foot in front of him he saw the movement of her fine long limbs and the little ripple of her shoulders under the gray tweed. Presently he spoke. "It wasn't you I heard playing the other night?" "No. It must have been my youngest sister." "I knew it wasn't you." "It might have been for all you knew." "It couldn't possibly. If you played you wouldn't play that way." "What way?" "Your sister's way. Whatever you wanted to do you'd do it beautifully or not at all." She made no response. She did not even seem to have heard him. "I don't mean to say," he said, "that your sister doesn't play beautifully." She turned malignly. He liked her when she turned. "You mean that she plays abominably." "I didn't mean to say it." "Why shouldn't you say it?" "Because you don't say those things. It isn't polite." "But I know Alice doesn't play well—not those big things. The wonder is she can play them at all." "Why does she attempt—the big things?" "Why does anybody? Because she loves them. She's never heard them properly played. So she doesn't know. She just trusts to her feeling." "Is there anything else, after all, you can trust?" "I don't know. You see, Alice's feeling tells her it's all right to play like that, and my feeling tells me it's all wrong." "You can trust your feelings." "Why mine more than hers?" "Because your feelings are the feelings of a beautifully sane and perfectly balanced person." "How can you possibly tell? You don't know me." "I know your type." "My type isn't me. You can't tell by that." "You can if you're a physiologist." "Being a physiologist won't tell you anything about me." "Oh, won't it?" "It can't." "Why not?" "How can it?" "You think it can't tell me anything about your soul?" "Oh—my soul——" Her shoulders expressed disdain for it. "Do you dislike my mentioning it? Would you rather we didn't talk about it? Perhaps you're tired of having it talked about?" "No; my poor soul has never done anything to get itself talked about." "I only thought that as your father, perhaps, specialises in souls—" "He doesn't specialise in mine. He knows nothing about it." "The specialist never does. To know anything—the least little thing—about the soul, you must know everything—everything you can know—about the body. So that you're wrong even about your soul. Being a physiologist tells me that your sort of body—a transparently clean and strong and utterly unconscious body—goes with a transparently clean and strong and utterly unconscious soul." "Utterly unconscious?" He was silent a moment and then answered: "Utterly unconscious." They walked on in silence till they came in sight of the marshes and the long gray line of Upthorne Farm. "That's where I met you once," he said. "Do you remember? You were coming out of the door as I went in." "You seem to have been always meeting me." "Always meeting you. And then—-always missing you. Just when I expected most to find you." "If we go much farther in this direction," said Gwenda, "we shall meet Papa." "Well—I suppose some day I shall have to meet him. Do you realise that I've never met him yet?" "Haven't you?" "No. Always I've been on the point of meeting him, and always some malignant fate has interfered." She smiled. He loved her smile. "Why are you smiling?" "I was only wondering whether the fate was really so malignant." "You mean that if he met me he'd dislike me?" "He always has disliked anybody we like. You see, he's a very funny father." "All fathers," said Rowcliffe, "are more or less funny." She laughed. Her laughter enchanted him. "Yes. But my father doesn't mean to be as funny as he is." "I see. He wouldn't really mean to dislike me. Then, perhaps, if I regularly laid myself out for it, by years of tender and untiring devotion I might win him over?" She laughed again; she laughed as youth laughs, for the pure joy of laughter. She looked on her father as a persistent, delightful jest. He adored her laughter. It proved how strong and sane she was—if she could take him like that. Rowcliffe had seen women made bitter, made morbid, driven into lunatic asylums by fathers who were as funny as Mr. Cartaret. "You wouldn't, you wouldn't," she said. "He's funnier than you've any idea of." "Is he ever ill?" "Never." "That of course makes it difficult." "Except colds in his head. But he wouldn't have you for a cold in his head. He wouldn't have you for anything if he could help it." "Well—perhaps—if he's as funny as all that, we'd better turn." They turned. They were walking so fast now that they couldn't talk. Presently they slackened and he spoke. "I say, shall you ever get away from this place?" "Never, I think." "Do you never want to get away?" "No. Never. You see, I love it." "I know you do." He said it savagely, as if he were jealous of the place. "So do you," she answered. "If I didn't I suppose I should have to." "Yes, it's better, if you've got to live in it." "That wasn't what I meant." After that they were silent for a long time. She was wondering what he did mean. When they reached the Vicarage gate he sheered off the path and held out his hand. "Oh—aren't you coming in for tea?" she said. "Thanks. No. It's a little late. I don't think I want any." He paused. "I've got what I wanted." He stepped backward, facing her, raising his cap, then he turned and hurried down the hill. Gwenda walked slowly up the flagged path to the house door. She stood there, thinking. "He's got what he wanted. He only wanted to see what I was like." <h2 id="id01063" style="margin-top: 4em">XXIII</h2> Rowcliffe had ten minutes on his hands while they were bringing his trap round from the Red Lion. He was warming his hands at the surgery fire when he heard voices in the parlor on the other side of the narrow passage. One voice pleaded, the other reserved judgment. "Do you think he'd do it if I were to go up and ask him?" It was Alice Cartaret's voice. "I caann't say, Miss Cartaret, I'm sure." "Could you persuade him yourself, Mrs. Blenkiron?" "It wouldn't be a bit of good me persuadin' him. Jim Greatorex wouldn' boodge that mooch for me." A pause. Alice was wavering, aware, no doubt, of the folly of her errand. Rowcliffe had only to lie low and she would go. "Could Mr. Blenkiron?" No. Rowcliffe in the surgery smiled all to himself as he warmed his hands. Alice was holding her ground. She was spinning out the time. "Not he. Mr. Blenkiron's got soomat alse to do without trapseing after Jim Greatorex." "Oh." Alice's voice was distant and defensive. He was sorry for Alice. She was not yet broken in to the north country manner, and her softness winced under these blows. There was nobody to tell her that Mrs. Blenkiron's manner was a criticism of her young kinsman, Jim Greatorex. Mrs. Blenkiron presently made this apparent. "Jim's sat oop enoof as it is. You'd think there was nawbody in this village good enoof to kape coompany wi' Jimmy, the road he goas. Ef I was you, Miss Olice, I should let him be." "I would, but it's his voice we want. I'm thinking of the concert, Mrs. Blenkiron. It's the only voice we've got that'll fill the room." Mrs. Blenkiron laughed. "Eh—he'll fill it fer you, right enoof. You'll have all the yoong laads and laasses in the Daale toomblin' in to hear Jimmy." "We want them. We want everybody. You Wesleyans and all." Another pause. Rowcliffe was interested. Alice was really displaying considerable intelligence. Almost she persuaded him that her errand was genuine. "Do you think Essy Gale could get him to come?" In the surgery Rowcliffe whistled inaudibly. That was indeed a desperate shift. Rowcliffe had turned and was now standing with his back to the fire. He was intensely interested. "Assy Gaale? He would n' coom for Assy's asskin', a man like Greatorex." Mrs. Blenkiron's blood, the blood of the Greatorexes, was up. "Naw," said Jim Greatorex's kinswoman, "if you want Greatorex to sing for you as bad as all that, Miss Cartaret, you'd better speak to the doctor." Rowcliffe became suddenly grave. He watched the door. "He'd mebbe do it for him. He sats soom store by Dr. Rawcliffe." "But"—Ally's voice sounded nearer—"he's gone, hasn't he?" (The minx, the little, little minx!) "Naw. But he's joost goin'. Shall I catch him?" "You might." Mrs. Blenkiron caught him on the threshold of the surgery. "Will you speak to Miss Cartaret a minute, Dr. Rawcliffe?" "Certainly." Mrs. Blenkiron withdrew. The kitchen door closed on her flight. For the first time in their acquaintance Rowcliffe was alone with Alice Cartaret, and though he was interested he didn't like it. "I thought I heard your voice," said he with reckless geniality. They stood on their thresholds looking at each other across the narrow passage. It was as if Alice Cartaret's feet were fixed there by an invisible force that held her fascinated and yet frightened. Rowcliffe had paused too, as at a post of vantage, the better to observe her. A moment ago, warming his hands in the surgery, he could have sworn that she, the little maneuvering minx, had laid a trap for him. She had come on her fool's errand, knowing that it was a fool's errand, for nothing on earth but that she might catch him, alone and defenseless, in the surgery. It was the sort of thing she did, the sort of thing she always would do. She didn't want to know (not she!) whether Jim Greatorex would sing or not, she wanted to know, and she meant to know, why he, Steven Rowcliffe, hadn't turned up that afternoon, and where he had gone, and what he had been doing, and the rest of it. There were windows at the back of the Vicarage. Possibly she had seen him charging up the hill in pursuit of her sister, and she was desperate. All this he had believed and did still believe. But, as he looked across at the little hesitating figure and the scared face framed in the doorway, he had compassion on her. Poor little trapper, so pitifully trapped; so ignorant of the first rules and principles of trapping that she had run hot-foot after her prey when she should have lain low and lured it silently into her snare. She was no more than a poor little frightened minx, caught in his trap, peering at him from it in terror. God knew he hadn't meant to set it for her, and God only knew how he was going to get her out of it. "Poor things," he thought, "if they only knew how horribly they embarrass me!" For of course she wasn't the first. The situation had repeated itself, monotonously, scores of times in his experience. It would have been a nuisance even if Alice Cartaret had not been Gwendolen Cartaret's sister. That made it intolerable. All this complex pity and repugnance was latent in his one sense of horrible embarrassment. Then their hands met. "You want to see me?" "I did—" She was writhing piteously in the trap. "You'd better come into the surgery. There's a fire there." He wasn't going to keep her out there in the cold; and he wasn't going to walk back with her to the Vicarage. He didn't want to meet the Vicar and have the door shut in his face. Rowcliffe, informed by Mrs. Blenkiron, was aware, long before Gwenda had warned him, that he ran this risk. The Vicar's funniness was a byword in the parish. But he left the door ajar. "Well," he said gently, "what is it?" "Shall you be seeing Jim Greatorex soon?" "I might. Why?" She told her tale again; she told it in little bursts of excitement punctuated with shy hesitations. She told it with all sorts of twists and turns, winding and entangling herself in it and coming out again breathless and frightened, like a lost creature that has been dragged through the brake. And there were long pauses when Alice put her head on one side, considering, as if she held her tale in her hands and were looking at it and wondering whether she really could go on. "And what is it you want me to do?" said Rowcliffe finally. "To ask him." "Hadn't you better ask him yourself?" "Would he do it for me?" "Of course he would." "I wonder. Perhaps—if I asked him prettily—" "Oh, then—he couldn't help himself." There was a pause. Rowcliffe, a little ashamed of himself, looked at the floor, and Alice looked at Rowcliffe and tried to fathom the full depth of his meaning from his face. That there was a depth and that there was a meaning she never doubted. This time Rowcliffe missed the pathos of her gray eyes. An idea had come to him. "Look here—Miss Cartaret—if you can get Jim Greatorex to sing for you, if you can get him to take an interest in the concert or in any mortal thing besides beer and whisky, you'll be doing the best day's work you ever did in your life." "Do you think I could?" she said. "I think you could probably do anything with him if you gave your mind to it." He meant it. He meant it. That was really his opinion of her. Her lifted face was radiant as she drank bliss at one draught from the cup he held to her. But she was not yet satisfied. "You'd like me to do it?" "I should very much." His voice was firm, but his eyes looked uneasy and ashamed. "Would you like me to get him back in the choir?" "I'd like you to get him back into anything that'll keep him out of mischief." She raised her chin. There was a more determined look on her small, her rather insignificant face than he would have thought to see there. She rose. "Very well," she said superbly. "I'll do it." He held out his hand. "I don't say, Miss Cartaret, that you'll reclaim him." "Nor I. But—if you want me to, I'll try." They parted on it. Rowcliffe smiled as he closed the surgery door behind him. "That'll give her something else to think about," he said to himself. "And it'll take her all her time." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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