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Three Sisters

<h2 id="id01903" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXVI</h2> 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, "État mental des hystériques;" 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. Presently he excused himself and went out to see, he said, about getting her some tea. He judged that if she were left alone for a moment she would pull herself together and be as ready as ever for their walk back to Garthdale. * * * * * It was in that moment when he left her that she made her choice. Not that when her idea had come to her she had known a second's hesitation. She didn't know when it had come. It seemed to her that it had been with her all through their awful interview. It was she and not Ally who would have to go away. She could see it now. It had been approaching her, her idea, from the very instant that she had come into the room and had begun to speak to him. And with every word that he had said it had come closer. But not until her final appeal to him had she really faced it. Then it became clear. It crystallised. There was no escaping from the facts. Ally would die or go mad if she didn't marry. Ally (though Rowcliffe didn't know it) was in love with him. And, even if she hadn't been, as long as they stayed in Garthdale there was nobody but Rowcliffe whom she could marry. It was her one chance. And there were three of them there. Three women to one man. And since she was the one—she knew it—who stood between him and Ally, it was she who would have to go away. It seemed to her that long ago—all the time, in fact, ever since she had known Rowcliffe—she had known that this was what she would have to face. She faced it now with a strange courage and a sort of spiritual exaltation, as she would have faced any terrible truth that Rowcliffe had told her, if, for instance, he had told her that she was going to die. That, of course, was what it felt like. She had known that it would feel like that. And, as sometimes happens to people who are going to die and know it, there came to her a peculiar vivid and poignant sense of her surroundings. Of Rowcliffe's room and the things in it,—the chair he had sat in, the pipe he had laid aside, the book he had been reading and that he had flung away. Outside the open window the trees of the little orchard, whitened by the moonlight, stood as if fixed in a tender, pure and supernatural beauty. She could see the flags on the path and the stones in the gray walls. They stood out with a strange significance and importance. As if near and yet horribly far away, she could hear Rowcliffe's footsteps in the passage. It came over her that she was sitting in Rowcliffe's room—like this—for the last time. Then her heart dragged and tore at her, as if it fought against her will to die. But it never occurred to her that this dying of hers was willed by her. It seemed foredoomed, inevitable. * * * * * And now she was looking up in Rowcliffe's face and smiling at him as he brought her her tea. "That's right," he said. He was entirely reassured by her appearance. "Look here, shall I drive you back or do you feel like another four-mile walk?" She hesitated. "It's late," he said. "But no matter. Let's be reckless." "There's no need. I've got my bicycle." "Then I'll get mine." She rose. "Don't. I'm going back alone." "You're not. I'm coming with you. I want to come." "If you don't mind, I'd rather you didn't—to-night." "I'll drive you, then. I can't let you go alone." "But I want," she said, "to be alone." He stood looking at her with a sort of sullen tenderness. "You're not going to worry about what I told you?" "You didn't tell me. I knew." "Then——" But she persisted. "No. I shall be all right," she said. "There's a moon." In the end he let her have her way. Moon or no moon he saw that it was not his moment. <h2 id="id02036" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXVII</h2> What Gwenda had to do she did quickly. She wrote to the third Mrs. Cartaret that night. She told her nothing except that she wanted to get something to do in London and to get it as soon as possible, and she asked her stepmother if she could put her up for a week or two until she got it. And would Mummy mind wiring Yes or No on Saturday morning? It was then Thursday night. She slipped out into the village about midnight to post the letter, though she knew that it couldn't go one minute before three o'clock on Friday afternoon. She had no conscious fear that her will would fail her, but her instinct was appeased by action. On Saturday morning Mrs. Cartaret wired: "Delighted. Expect you Friday. Mummy." Five intolerable days. They were not more intolerable than the days that would come after, when the thing she was doing would be every bit as hard. Only her instinct was afraid of something happening within those five days that would make the hard thing harder. On Sunday Mrs. Cartaret's letter came. Her house, she said, was crammed with fiends till Friday. There was a beast of a woman in Gwenda's room who simply wouldn't go. But on Friday Gwenda's room would be ready. It had been waiting for her all the time. Hadn't they settled it that Gwenda was to come and live with her if things became impossible at home? Robina supposed they were impossible? She sent her love to Alice and Mary, and she was always Gwenda's loving Mummy. And she enclosed a five-pound note; for she was a generous soul. On Monday Gwenda told Peacock the carrier to bring her a Bradshaw from Reyburn. * * * * * She then considered how she was to account to her family for her departure. She decided that she would tell Mary first. And she might as well tell her the truth while she was about it, since, if she didn't, Mary would be sure to find it out. She was sweet and good. Not so sweet and good that she couldn't hold her own against Papa if she was driven to it, but sweet enough and good enough to stand by Ally and to see her through. It would be easy for Mary. It wasn't as if she had ever even begun to care for Rowcliffe. It wasn't as if Rowcliffe had ever cared for her. And she could be trusted. A secret was always safe with Mary. She was positively uncanny in her silence, and quite superhumanly discreet. Mary, then, should be told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Her father should be told as much of it as he was likely to believe. Ally, of course, mustn't have an inkling. Mary herself had an inkling already when she appeared that evening in the attic where Gwenda was packing a trunk. She had a new Bradshaw in her hand. "Peacock gave me this," said Mary. "He said you ordered it." "So I did," said Gwenda. "What on earth for?" "To look up trains in." "Why—is anybody coming?" "Does anybody ever come?" Mary's face admitted her absurdity. "Then"—she made it out almost with difficulty—"somebody must be going away." "How clever you are. Somebody is going away." Mary twisted her brows in her perplexity. She was evidently thinking things. "Do you mean—Steven Rowcliffe?" "No, dear lamb." (What on earth had put Steven Rowcliffe into Mary's head?) "It's not as bad as all that. It's only a woman. In fact, it's only me." Mary's face emptied itself of all expression; it became a blank screen suddenly put up before the disarray of hurrying, eager things, unclothed and unexpressed. "I'm going to stay with Mummy." Gwenda closed the lid of the trunk and sat on it. (Perturbation was now in Mary's face.) "You can't, Gwenda. Papa'll never let you go." "He can't stop me." "What on earth are you going for?" "Not for my own amusement, though it sounds amusing." "Does Mummy want you?" "Whether she wants me or not, she's got to have me." "For how long?" (Mary's face was heavy with thought now.) "I don't know. I'm going to get something to do." "To do?" (Mary said to herself, then certainly it was not amusing. She pondered it.) "Is it," she brought out, "because of Steven Rowcliffe?" "No. It's because of Ally." "Ally?" "Yes. Didn't Papa tell you about her?" "Not he. Did he tell you?" "No. It was Steven Rowcliffe." And she told Mary what Rowcliffe had said to her. She had made room for her on her trunk and they sat there, their bodies touching, their heads drawn back, each sister staring with eyes that gave and took the other's horror. * * * * * "Don't, Molly, don't——" Mary was crying now. "Does Papa know—that she'll die—or go mad?" "Yes." "But"—Mary lifted her stained face—"that's what they said about Mother." "If she had children. It's if Ally hasn't any." "And Papa knew it then. And he knows it now—how awful." "It isn't as awful as Steven Rowcliffe thinks. He doesn't really know what's wrong with her. He doesn't know she's in love with him." "Poor Ally. What's the good? He isn't in love with her." "He isn't now," said Gwenda. "But he will be." "Not he. It's you he cares for—if he cares for anybody." "I know. That's why I'm going." "Oh, Gwenda——" Mary's face was somber as she took it in. "That won't do Ally any good. If you know he cares." "I don't absolutely know it. And if I did it wouldn't make any difference." "And if—you care for him?" "That doesn't make any difference either. I've got to clear out. It's her one chance, Molly. I've got to give it her. How can I let her die, poor darling, or go mad? She'll be all right if he marries her." "And if he doesn't?" "He may, Molly, he may, if I clear out in time. Anyhow, there isn't anybody else." "If only," Mary said, "Papa had kept a curate." "But he hasn't kept a curate. He never will keep a curate. And if he does he'll choose a man with a wife and seven children—no, he'll choose no children. The wife mustn't have a chance of dying." "Gwenda—do you think anybody knows? They did, you know—before, and it was awful." "Nobody knows this time, except Papa and Steven Rowcliffe and you and me." "I wish I didn't. I wish you hadn't told me." "You had to know or I wouldn't have told you. Do you think Steven Rowcliffe would have told me——" "How could he? It was awful of him." "He could because he isn't a coward or a fool and he knew that I'm not a coward or a fool either. He thought Ally had nobody but me. She'll have nobody but you when I'm gone. You mustn't let her see you think her awful. You mustn't think it. She isn't. She's as good as gold. Steven Rowcliffe said so. If she wasn't, Molly, I wouldn't ask you to help her—with him." "Gwenda, you mustn't put it all on me. I'd do anything for poor Ally, but I can't make him marry her if he doesn't want to." "I think Ally can make him want to, if she gets a chance. You've only got to stick to her and see her through. You'll have to ask him here, you know. She can't. And you'll have to keep Papa off her. If you're not very careful, he'll go and put her under restraint or something." "Oh—would it come to that?" "Yes. Papa'd do it like a shot. I believe he'd do it just to stop her marrying him. You mustn't tell Papa what I've told you. You mustn't tell Ally. And you mustn't tell him. Do you hear, Molly? You must never tell him." "Of course I won't tell him. But it's no use thinking we can do things." Gwenda stood up. "We haven't got to do things. That's his business. We've only got to sit tight and play the game." * * * * * Gwenda went on with her packing. "It will be time enough," she thought, "to tell Ally tomorrow." Ally was in her room. She never came downstairs now; and this week she was worse and had stayed all day in bed. They couldn't rouse her. But something had roused her this evening. A sort of scratching on the door made Gwenda look up from her packing. Ally stood on the threshold. She had dressed herself completely in her tweed skirt, white blouse and knitted tie. Her strength had failed her only in the struggle with her hair. The coil had fallen, and hung in a loose pigtail down her back. Slowly, in the weakness of her apathy, she trailed across the floor. "Ally, what is it? Why didn't you send for me?" "It's all right. I wanted to get up. I'm coming down to supper. You can leave off packing that old trunk. You haven't got to go." "Who told you I was going?" "Nobody. I knew it." She answered Gwenda's eyes. "I don't know how I knew it, but I did. And I know why you're going and it's all rot. You're going because you know that if you stay Steven Rowcliffe'll marry you, and you think that if you go he'll marry me." "Whatever put that idea into your head?" "Nothing put it. It came. It shows how awful you must think me if you think I'd go and do a beastly thing like that." "Like what?" "Why—sneaking him away from you behind your back when I know you like him. You needn't lie about it. You do like him. "I may be awful," she went on. "In fact I know I'm awful. But I'm decent. I couldn't do a caddish thing like that—I couldn't really. And, if I couldn't, there's no need for you to go." She was sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They ceased and she looked up. And in her look, a look that for the moment was divinely lucid, Gwenda saw Ally's secret and hidden kinship with herself. She saw it as if through some medium, once troubled and now made suddenly transparent. It was because of that queer kinship that Ally had divined her. However awful she was, however tragically foredoomed and driven, Ally was decent. She knew what Gwenda was doing because it was what, if any sustained lucidity were ever given her, she might have done herself. But in Ally no idea but the one idea was very deeply rooted. Sustained lucidity never had been hers. It would be easy to delude her. "I'm going," Gwenda said, "because I want to. If I stayed I wouldn't marry Steven Rowcliffe, and Steven Rowcliffe wouldn't marry me." "But—I thought—I thought——" "What did you think?" "That there was something between you. Papa said so." "If Papa said so you might have known there was nothing in it." "And isn't there?" "Of course there isn't. You can put that idea out of your head forever." "All the same I believe that's why you're going." "I'm going because I can't stand this place any longer. You said I'd be sick of it in three months." "You're not sick of it. You love it. It's me you can't stand." "No, Ally—no." She plunged for another argument and found it. "What I can't stand is living with Papa." Ally agreed that this was rather more than plausible. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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