The Three Sisters Part 92

On an unearned thousand a year you can live like a rich man in Rathdale.

Not that Rowcliffe had any idea of giving up. He was well under forty and as soon as old Hyslop at Reyburn died or retired he would step into his practice. He hadn't half enough to do in Morfe and he wanted more.

Meanwhile he had bought the house that joined on to his own and thrown the two and their gardens into one. They had been one twenty years ago, when the wide-fronted building, with its long rows of windows, was the dominating house in Morfe village. Rowcliffe was now the dominating man in it. He had given the old place back its own.

And he had spent any amount of money on it. He had had all the woodwork painted white, and the whole house repapered and redecorated.

He had laid down parquet flooring in the big square hall that he had made and in the new drawing-room upstairs; and he had bought a great deal of beautiful and expensive furniture.

And now he was building a garage and laying out a croquet ground and tennis lawns at the back.

He and Mary had been superintending these works all afternoon till a shower sent them indoors. And now they were sitting together in the drawing-room, in the breathing-s.p.a.ce that came between the children's hour and dinner.

Mary had sent the children back to the nursery a little earlier than usual. Rowcliffe had complained of headache.

He was always complaining of headaches. They dated from his marriage, and more particularly from one night in June eight years ago.

But Rowcliffe ignored the evidence of dates. He ignored everything that made him feel uncomfortable. He had put Gwenda from him. He had said plainly to Mary (in one poignant moment not long before the birth of their third child), "If you're worrying about me and Gwenda, you needn't. She was never anything to me."

That was not saying there had never been anything between them, but Mary knew what he had meant.

He said to himself, and Mary said that he had got over it. But he hadn't got over it. He might say to himself and Mary, "She was never anything to me"; he might put her and the thought of her away from him, but she had left her mark on him. He hadn't put her away. She was there, in his heavy eyes and in the irritable gestures of his hands, in his nerves and in his wounded memory. She had knitted herself into his secret being.

Mary was unaware of the cause of his malady. If it had been suggested to her that he had got into this state because of Gwenda she would have dismissed the idea with contempt. She didn't worry about Rowcliffe's state. On the contrary, Rowcliffe's state was a consolation and a satisfaction to her for all that she had endured through Gwenda. She would have thought you mad if you had told her so, for she was sorry for Steven and tender to him when he was nervous or depressed. But to Mary her sorrow and her tenderness were a voluptuous joy. She even encouraged Rowcliffe in his state. She liked to make it out worse than it really was, so that he might be more dependent on her.

And she had found that it could be induced in him by suggestion. She had only to say to him, "Steven, you're thoroughly worn out," and he _was_ thoroughly worn out. She had more pleasure, because she had more confidence, in this lethargic, middle-aged Rowcliffe than in Rowcliffe young and energetic. His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself, secretly, insidiously, to destroy them.

It had taken her seven years.

For the first five years it had been hard work for Mary. It had meant, for her body, an ignominious waiting and watching for the moment when its appeal would be irresistible, for her soul a complete subservience to her husband's moods, and for her mind perpetual attention to his comfort, a thousand cares that had seemed to go unnoticed. But in the sixth year they had begun to tell. Once Rowcliffe had made up his mind that Gwenda couldn't be anything to him he had let go and through sheer exhaustion had fallen more and more into his wife's hands, and for the last two years her labor had been easy and its end sure.

She had him, bound to her bed and to her fireside.

He said and thought that he was happy. He meant that he was extremely comfortable.

"Is your head very bad, Steven?"

He shook his head. It wasn't very bad, but he was worried. He was worried about himself.

From time to time his old self rose against this new self that was the slave of comfort. It made desperate efforts to shake off the strangling lethargy. When he went about saying that he was getting rusty, that he ought never to have left Leeds, and that it would do him all the good in the world to go back there, he was saying what he knew to be the truth. The life he was leading was playing the devil with his nerves and brain. His brain had nothing to do. Hard work might not be the cure for every kind of nervous trouble, but it was the one cure for the kind that he had got.

He ought to have gone away seven years ago. It was Gwenda's fault that he hadn't gone. He felt a dull anger against her as against a woman who had wrecked his chance.

He had a chance of going now if he cared to take it.

He had had a letter that morning from Dr. Harker asking if he had meant what he had said a year ago, and if he'd care to exchange his Rathdale practice for his old practice in Leeds. Harker's wife was threatened with lung trouble, and they would have to live in the country somewhere, and Harker himself wouldn't be sorry for the exchange. His present practice was worth twice what it had been ten years ago and it was growing. There were all sorts of interesting things to be done in Leeds by a man of Rowcliffe's keenness and energy.

"Do you know, Steven, you're getting quite stout?"

"I do know," he said almost with bitterness.

"I don't mean horridly stout, dear, just nicely and comfortably stout."

"I'm _too_ comfortable," he said. "I don't do enough work to keep me fit."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

He frowned. It was Harker's letter that was bothering him. He said so.

For one instant Mary looked impatient.

"I thought we'd settled that," she said.

Rowcliffe sighed.

"What on earth makes you want to go and leave this place when you've spent hundreds on it?"

"I should make pots of money in Leeds."

"But we couldn't live there."

"Why not?"

"It would be too awful. My dear, if it were a big London practice I shouldn't say no. That might be worth while. But whatever should we have in Leeds?"

"We haven't much here."

"We've got the county. You might think of the children."

"I do," he said mournfully. "I do. I think of nothing else but the children--and you. If you wouldn't like it there's an end of it."

"You might think of yourself, dear. You really are not strong enough for it."

He felt that he really was not.

He changed the subject.

"I saw Gwenda the other day."

"Looking as young as ever, I suppose?"

"No. Not quite so young. I thought she was looking rather ill."

He meditated.

"I wonder why she never comes."