The Three Sisters Part 9

"I give 'er they oats an hour ago," said Willie. "An' she 'a.s.sn't so mooch as nosed 'em."

"Nawbody but a donmed gawpie would have doon thot with 'er stoomach raw. Yo med 'ave killed t' mare."

Willie, appalled by his own deed and depressed, stooped down and fondled the mare's face, to show that it was not affection that he lacked.

"Heer--clear out o' thot and let doctor have a look in."

Willie slunk aside as Rowcliffe knelt with Greatorex in the straw and examined the sick mare.

"Can yo tell at all what's amiss, doctor?"

"Colic, I should say. Has the vet seen her?"

"Ye-es. He sent oop soomthing--"

"Well, have you given it her?"

Jim's voice thickened. "I sud have given it her yesterda."

"And why on earth didn't you?"

"The domned thing went clane out o' my head."

He turned to the window ledge by the stable door where, among a confusion of cobwebs and dusty bottles and tin cans, the drench of turpentine and linseed oil, the little phial of chlorodyne, and the clean tin pannikin with its wide protruding mouth, stood ready, all gleaming in the lantern light, forgotten since the day before.

"Thot's the stoof. Will yo halp me give it 'er, doctor?"

"All right. Can you hold her?"

"That I can. Coom oop, Daasy. Coom oop. There, my beauty. Gently, gently, owd laa.s.s."

Rowcliffe took off his coat and shook up the drench and poured it into the pannikin, while Greatorex got the struggling mare on to her feet.

Together, with gentleness and dexterity they cajoled her. Then Jim laid his hands upon her mouth and opened it, drawing up her head against his breast. Willie, suddenly competent, held the lantern while Rowcliffe poured the drench down her throat.

Daisy, coughing and dribbling, stood and gazed at them with sad and terrified eyes. And while the undertaker's men screwed down the lid upon John Greatorex in his coffin, Jim Greatorex, his son, watched with Daisy in her stall.

And Steven Rowcliffe watched with him, nursing the sick mare, making up a fresh, clean bed for her, rubbing and fomenting her swollen and tortured belly. When Daisy rolled in another agony, Rowcliffe gave her chlorodyne and waited till suddenly she lay still.

In Jim's face, as he looked down at her, there was an infinite tenderness and pity and compunction.

Rowcliffe, wriggling into his coat, regarded him with curiosity and wonder, till Jim drew himself up and fixed him with his queer, unhappy eyes.

"Shall I save her, doctor?"

"I can't tell you yet. I'd better send the vet up tomorrow hadn't I?"

"Ay----" Jim's voice was strangled in the spasm of his throat. But he took Rowcliffe's hand and wrung it, discharging many emotions in that one excruciating grip.

Rowcliffe pointed to the little phial of chlorodyne lying in the straw. "If I were you," he said, "I shouldn't leave that lying about."

Through his long last night in the gray house haunted by the moon, John Greatorex lay alone, screwed down under a coffin lid, and his son, Jim, wrapped in a horse-blanket and with his head on a hay sack, lay in the straw of the stable, beside Daisy his mare. From time to time, as his mood took him, he turned and laid his hand on her in a poignant caress. As if she had been his first-born, or his bride, he spoke to her in the thick, soft voice of pa.s.sion, with pitiful, broken words and mutterings.

"What is it, Daasy----what is it? There, did they, then, did they? My beauty--my lil laa.s.s. I--I wuss a domned brute to forget tha, a domned brute."

All that night and the next night he lay beside her. The funeral pa.s.sed like a fantastic interlude between the long acts of his pa.s.sion. His great sorrow made him humble to Mrs. Gale so that he allowed her to sustain him with food and drink. And on the third day it was known throughout Garthdale that young Greatorex, who had lost his father, had saved his mare.

Only Steven Rowcliffe knew that the mare had saved young Greatorex.

And the little phial of chlorodyne was put back among the cobwebs and forgotten.

XIV

Down at the Vicarage the Vicar was wrangling with his youngest daughter. For the third time Alice declared that she was not well and that she didn't want her milk.

"Whether you want it or not you've got to drink it," said the Vicar.

Alice took the gla.s.s in her lap and looked at it.

"Am I to stand over you till you drink it?"

Alice put the rim of the gla.s.s to her mouth and shuddered.

"I can't," she said. "It'll make me sick."

"Leave the poor child alone, Papa," said Gwenda.

But the Vicar ignored Gwenda.

"You'll drink it, if I stand here all night," he said.

Alice struggled with a spasm in her throat. He held the gla.s.s for her while she groped piteously.

"Oh, where's my hanky?"

With superhuman clemency he produced his own.

"It'll serve you right if I'm ill," said Alice.

"Come," said the Vicar in his wisdom and his patience. "Come."

He proffered the disgusting cup again.