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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id01758" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXII</h2> 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." <h2 id="id01788" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXIII</h2> 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. <h2 id="id01831" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXIV</h2> "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." <h2 id="id01872" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXV</h2> 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." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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