Dr. S. Rowcliffe, M.D., F.R.C.S.
Hours of Attendance
Wednesday, 2.30-4.30.
The note ran:
"DEAR DR. ROWCLIFFE: Can you come and see me this afternoon? I think
I'm rather worse. But I don't want to frighten my people--so perhaps,
if you just looked in about teatime, as if you'd called?
"Yours truly,
"ALICE CARTARET."
Essy Gale had left the note that morning.
Rowcliffe looked at it dubiously. He was honest and he had the
large views of a man used to a large practice. His patients couldn't
complain that he lengthened his bills by paying unnecessary visits. If
he wanted to add to his income in that way, he wasn't going to begin
with a poor parson's hysterical daughter. But as the Vicar of Garth
had called on him and left his card on Monday, there was no reason why
he shouldn't look in on Wednesday about teatime. Especially as he knew
that the Vicar was in the habit of visiting Upthorne and the outlying
portions of his parish on Wednesday afternoons.
* * * * *
All day Alice lay in her little bed like a happy child and waited.
Propped on her pillows, with her slender arms stretched out before her
on the counterpane, she waited.
Her sullenness was gone. She had nothing but sweetness for Mary and
for Essy. Even to her father she was sweet. She could afford it. Her
instinct was now sure. From time to time a smile flickered on her
small face like a light almost of triumph.
* * * * *
The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the
Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her.
He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the
Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him.
He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in
the village that she was not so well.
"I'm afraid she isn't."
"May I see her? I don't mean professionally--just for a talk."
The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the
houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom
bills were nightmares.
She took him upstairs.
On the landing she turned to him.
"She doesn't _look_ worse. She looks better."
"All right. She won't deceive me."
She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a
faint opaline dawn of color in her face.
Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a
quarter of an hour he kept it up.
And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better.
You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste
all this glorious air?"
"If I could live on air!" said Alice.
"You can--you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live
without it."
Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered
him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him.
"But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may."
"At teatime?"
"Very well--at teatime."
* * * * *
"How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.
"She's better."
"Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?"
"He called--on you, I think."
(Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving
plainly that his visit was not professional.)
"And you made him see her?" he insisted.
"He saw her."
"Well?"
"He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the
open air."
"It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She
doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."
He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He
had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.
"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's
nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as
long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."
But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it
meant--that air of wisdom and of patience.
Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.
"I won't have him sent for--do you hear?"
And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give
young Rowcliffe a hint. It was to give him a hint that he had called
on Monday.
* * * * *
But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe. For before he could brace
himself to the effort Alice was well again.
Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime
the next Wednesday and the next after that.
Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him.