The Three Sisters Part 71

"I know. Still--I think you'll have to leave it."

"Leave it?"

"Yes, Papa."

"We can't leave it," said Rowcliffe. "Something's got to be done."

The Vicar groaned and Rowcliffe had pity on him.

"If you'd like me to do it--I can interview him."

"I wish you would."

"Very well." He moved uneasily. "I'd better see him here, hadn't I?"

"You'd better not see him anywhere," said Gwenda. "He can't marry her."

She held them all three by the sheer shock of it.

The Vicar spoke first. "What do you mean, 'he can't'? He _must_."

"He must not. Ally doesn't want to marry him. He asked her long ago and she wouldn't have him."

"Do you mean," said Rowcliffe, surprised out of his reticence, "before this happened?"

"Yes."

"And she wouldn't have him?"

"No. She was afraid of him."

"She was afraid of him--and yet----" It was Mary who spoke now.

"Yes, Mary. And yet--she cared for him."

The Vicar turned on her.

"You're as bad as she is. How can you bring yourself to speak of it, if you're a modest girl? You've just told us that your sister's shameless. Are we to suppose that you're defending her?"

"I am defending her. There's n.o.body else to do it. You've all set on her and tortured her----"

"Not all, Gwenda," said Rowcliffe. But she did not heed him.

"She'd have told you everything if you hadn't frightened her. You haven't had an atom of pity for her. You've never thought of _her_ for a minute. You've been thinking of yourselves. You might have killed her. And you didn't care."

The Vicar looked at her.

"It's you, Gwenda, who don't care."

"About what she's done, you mean? I don't. You ought to be gentle with her, Papa. You drove her to it."

Rowcliffe answered.

"We'll not say what drove her, Gwenda."

"She was driven," she said.

"'Let no man say he is tempted of G.o.d when he is driven by his own l.u.s.ts and enticed,'" said the Vicar.

He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda.

And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the first time the profound unspirituality of her father's face. She knew from what source his eyes drew their darkness. She understood the meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache. And she conceived a horror of his fatherhood.

"No man ought to say that of his own daughter. How does he know what's her own and what's his?" she said.

Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration. She was terrible; she was fierce; she was mad. But it was the fierceness and the madness of pity and of compa.s.sion.

She went on.

"You've no business to be hard on her. You must have known."

"I knew nothing," said the Vicar.

He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.

"You did know. You were warned. You were told not to shut her up. And you did shut her up. You can't blame her if she got away. You flung her to Jim Greatorex. There wasn't anybody who cared for her but him."

"Cared for her!" He snarled his disgust.

"Yes. Cared for her. You think that's horrible of her--that she should have gone to him--and yet you want to tie her to him when she's afraid of him. And I think it's horrible of you."

"She must marry him." Mary spoke again. "She's brought it on herself, Gwenda."

"She hasn't brought it on herself. And she shan't marry him."

"I'm afraid she'll have to," Rowcliffe said.

"She won't have to if I take her away somewhere and look after her. I mean to do it. I'll work for her. I'll take care of the child."

"Oh, you--_you----!_" The Vicar waved her away with a frantic flapping of his hands.

He turned to his son-in-law.

"Rowcliffe--I beg you--will you use your influence?"

"I have none."

That drew her. "Steven--help me--can't you see how terrible it is if she's afraid of him?"