The Three Sisters Part 59

"Soon?"

"Yes; soon."

At the last gap he stopped again.

"Mary," he said, "I suppose you knew about Gwenda?"

"I knew there was something. What was it?"

He had said to himself, "I shall have to tell her. I shall have to say I cared for her."

What he did say was, "There was nothing in it. It's all over. It was all over long ago."

"I knew," she said, "it was all over."

And the solemn white moon came up, the moon that Gwenda loved; it came up over Greffington Edge and looked at them.

XLV

It was Sunday afternoon, the last Sunday of August, the first since that evening (it was a Thursday) when Steven Rowcliffe had dined at the Vicarage. Mary had announced her engagement the next day.

The news had an extraordinary effect on Alice and the Vicar.

Mary had come to her father in his study on Friday evening after Prayers. She informed him of the bare fact in the curtest manner, without preface or apology or explanation. A terrible scene had followed; at least the Vicar's part in it had been terrible. Nothing he had ever said to Gwenda could compare with what he then said to Mary. Alice's behavior he had been prepared for. He had expected anything from Gwenda; but from Mary he had not expected this. It was her treachery he resented, the treachery of a creature he had depended on and trusted. He absolutely forbade the engagement. He said it was unheard of. He spoke of her "conduct" as if it had been disgraceful or improper. He declared that "that fellow" Rowcliffe should never come inside his house again. He bullied and threatened and bullied again.

And through it all Mary sat calm and quiet and submissive. The expression of the qualities he had relied on, her sweetness and goodness, never left her face. She replied to his violence, "Yes, Papa. Very well, Papa, I see." But, as Gwenda had warned him, bully as he would, Mary beat him in the end.

She looked meekly down at the hearth-rug and said, "I know how you feel about it, Papa dear. I understand all you've got to say and I'm sorry. But it isn't any good. You know it isn't just as well as I do."

It might have been Gwenda who spoke to him, only that Gwenda could never have looked meek.

The Vicar had not recovered from the shock. He was convinced that he never would recover from it. But on that Sunday he had found a temporary oblivion, dozing in his study between two services.

There had been no scene like that with Alice. But what had pa.s.sed between the sisters had been even worse.

Mary had gone straight from the study to Ally's room. Ally was undressing.

Ally received the news in a cruel silence. She looked coldly, sternly almost, and steadily at Mary.

"You needn't have told me that," she said at last. "I could see what you were doing the other night."

"What _I_ was doing?"

"Yes, you. I don't imagine Steven Rowcliffe did it"

"Really Ally--what do you suppose I did?"

"I don't know what it was. But I know you did something and I know that--whatever it was--_I_ wouldn't have done it."

And Mary answered quietly. "If I were you, Ally, I wouldn't show my feelings quite so plainly."

And Ally looked at her again.

"It's not _my_ feelings--" she said.

Mary reddened. "I don't know what you mean."

"You'll know, some day," Ally said and turned her back on her.

Mary went out, closing the door softly, as if she spared her sick sister's unreasonably irritated nerves. She felt rather miserable as she undressed alone in her bedroom. She was wounded in her sweetness and her goodness, and she was also a little afraid of what Ally might take it into her head to say or do. She didn't try to think what Ally had meant. Her sweetness and goodness, with their instinct of self-preservation, told her that it might be better not.

The August night was warm and tender, and, when Mary had got into bed and lay stretched out in contentment under the white sheet, she began to think of Rowcliffe to the exclusion of all other interests; and presently, between a dream and a dream, she fell asleep.

But Ally could not sleep.

She lay till dawn thinking and thinking, and turning from side to side between her thoughts. They were not concerned with Gwenda or with Rowcliffe. After her little spurt of indignation she had ceased to think about Gwenda or Rowcliffe either. Mary's news had made her think about herself, and her thoughts were miserable. Ally was so far like her father the Vicar, that the idea of Mary's marrying was intolerable to her and for precisely the same reason, because she saw no prospect of marrying herself. Her father had begun by forbidding Mary's engagement but he would end by sanctioning it. He would never sanction _her_ marriage to Jim Greatorex.

Even if she defied her father and married Jim Greatorex in spite of him there would be almost as much shame in it as if, like Essy, she had never married him at all.

And she couldn't live without him.

Ally had suffered profoundly from the shock that had struck her down under the arcades on the road to Upthorne. It had left her more than ever helpless, more than ever subject to infatuation, more than ever morally inert. Ally's social self had grown rigid in the traditions of her cla.s.s, and she was still aware of the unsuitability of her intimacy with Jim Greatorex; but disaster had numbed her once poignant sense of it. She had yielded to his fascination partly through weakness, partly in defiance, partly in the sheer, healthy self-a.s.sertion of her suffering will and her frustrated senses. But she had not will enough to defy her father. She credited him with an infinite capacity to crush and wound. And for a day and a half the sight of Mary's happiness--a spectacle which Mary did not spare her---had made Ally restless. Under the incessant sting of it her longing for Greatorex became insupportable.

On Sunday the Vicar was still too deeply afflicted by the same circ.u.mstance to notice Ally's movements, and Ally took advantage of his apathy to excuse herself from Sunday school that afternoon. And about three o'clock she was at Upthorne Farm. She and Greatorex had found a moment after morning service to arrange the hour.

And now they were standing together in the doorway of the Farmhouse.

In the house behind them, in the mistal and the orchard, in the long marshes of the uplands and on the brooding hills there was stillness and solitude.

Maggie had gone up to her aunt at Bar Hill. The farm servants were scattered in their villages.

Alice had just told Greatorex of Mary's engagement and the Vicar's opposition.

"Eh, I was lookin' for it," he said. "But I maade sure it was your oother sister."

"So did I, Jim. So it was. So it would have been, only--"

She stopped herself. She wasn't going to give Mary away to Jim.

He looked at her.