But the concert was not till the first week in December; and it was
in November that Rowcliffe began to form the habit that made him
remarkable in Garth, of looking in at the Vicarage toward teatime
every Wednesday afternoon.
Mrs. Gale, informed by Essy, was the first to condole with Mrs.
Blenkiron, the blacksmith's wife, who had arranged to provide tea for
Rowcliffe every Wednesday in the Surgery.
"Wall, Mrs. Blenkiron," she said, "yo' 'aven't got to mak' tae for
yore doctor now?"
"Naw. I 'aven't," said Mrs. Blenkiron. "And it's sexpence clane gone
out o' me packet av'ry week."
Mrs. Blenkiron was a distant cousin of the Greatorexes. She had
what was called a superior manner and was handsome, in the slender,
high-nosed, florid fashion of the Dale.
"But there," she went on. "I doan't groodge it. 'E's yoong and you
caann't blaame him. They's coompany for him oop at Vicarage."
"'E's coompany fer they, I rackon. And well yo' med saay yo' doan't
groodge it ef yo knawed arl we knaw, Mrs. Blenkiron. It's no life fer
yoong things oop there, long o' t' Vicar. Mind yo"--Mrs. Gale
lowered her voice and looked up and down the street for possible
eavesdroppers--"ef 'e was to 'ear on it, thot yoong Rawcliffe wouldn't
be 'lowed t' putt 's nawse in at door agen. But theer--there's
nawbody'd be thot crool an' spittiful fer to goa an' tall 'im. Our
Assy wouldn't. She'd coot 'er toong out foorst, Assy would."
"Nawbody'll get it out of _mae_, Mrs. Gale, though it's wae as 'as to
sooffer for 't."
"Eh, but Dr. Rawcliffe's a good maan, and 'e'll mak' it oop to yo',
naw feear, Mrs. Blenkiron."
"And which of 'em will it bae, Mrs. Gaale, think you?"
"I caann't saay. But it woonna bae t' eldest. Nor t'
yoongest--joodgin'."
"Well--the lil' laass isn' breaaking 'er 'eart fer him, t' joodge by
the looks of 'er. I naver saw sech a chaange in anybody in a moonth."
"'T assn' takken mooch to maake 'er 'appy," said Mrs. Gale. For Essy,
who had informed her, was not subtle.
* * * * *
But of Ally's happiness there could be no doubt. It lapped her, soaked
into her like water and air. Her small head flowered under it and put
out its secret colors; the dull gold of her hair began to shine again,
her face showed a shallow flush under its pallor; her gray eyes were
clear as if they had been dipped in water. Two slender golden arches
shone above them. They hadn't been seen there for five years.
"Who would have believed," said Mary, "that Ally could have looked so
pretty?"
Ally's prettiness (when she gazed at it in the glass) was delicious,
intoxicating joy to Ally. She was never tired of looking at it, of
turning round and round to get new views of it, of dressing her hair
in new ways to set it off.
"Whatever have you done your hair like that for?" said Mary on a
Wednesday when Ally came down in the afternoon with her gold spread
out above her ears and twisted in a shining coil on the top of her
head.
"To make it grow better," said Ally.
"Don't let Papa catch you at it," said Gwenda, "if you want it to grow
any more."
Gwenda was going out. She had her hat on, and was taking her
walking-stick from the stand. Ally stared.
"You're _not_ going out?"
"I am," said Gwenda.
And she laughed as she went. She wasn't going to stay at home for
Rowcliffe every Wednesday.
* * * * *
As for Ally, the Vicar did catch her at it. He caught her the very
next Wednesday afternoon. She thought he had started for Upthorne when
he hadn't. He was bound to catch her.
For the best looking-glass in the house was in the Vicar's bedroom. It
went the whole length and width of the wardrobe door, and Ally could
see herself in it from head to foot. And on the Vicar's dressing-table
there lay a large and perfect hand-glass that had belonged to Ally's
mother. Only by opening the wardrobe door and with the aid of the
hand-glass could Ally obtain a satisfactory three-quarters view of her
face and figure.
Now, by the Vicar's magnanimity, his daughters were allowed to use his
bedroom twice in every two years, in the spring and in the autumn,
for the purpose of trying on their new gowns; but this year they
were wearing out last winter's gowns, and Ally had no business in the
Vicar's bedroom at four o'clock in the afternoon.
She was turning slowly round and round, with her head tilted back over
her left shoulder; she had just caught sight of her little white nose
as it appeared in a vanishing profile and was adjusting her head at
another and still more interesting angle when the Vicar caught her.
He was well in the middle of the room, and staring at her, before she
was aware of him. The wardrobe door, flung wide open, had concealed
his entrance, but if Ally had not been blinded and intoxicated with
her own beauty she would have seen him before she began smiling,
full-face first, then three-quarters, then sideways, a little tilted.
Then she shut to the door of the wardrobe (for the back view that was
to reassure her as to the utter prettiness of her shoulders and
the nape of her neck), and it was at that moment that she saw him,
reflected behind her in the long looking-glass.
She screamed and dropped the hand-glass. She heard it break itself at
her feet.
"Papa," she cried, "how you frightened me!"
It was not so much that he had caught her smiling at her own face, it
was that _his_ face, seen in the looking-glass, was awful. And besides
being awful it was evil. Even to Ally's innocence it was evil. If it
had been any other man Ally's instinct would have said that he looked
horrid without Ally knowing or caring to know what her instinct meant.
But the look on her father's face was awful because it was mysterious.
Neither she nor her instinct had a word for it. There was cruelty in
it, and, besides cruelty, some quality nameless and unrecognisable,
subtle and secret, and yet crude somehow and vivid. The horror of it
made her forget that he had caught her in one of the most
deplorably humiliating situations in which a young girl can be
caught--deliberately manufacturing smiles for her own amusement.
"You've no business to be here," said the Vicar.
He picked up the broken hand-glass, and as he looked at it the cruelty
and the nameless quality passed out of his face as if a hand had
smoothed it, and it became suddenly weak and pathetic, the face of
a child whose precious magic thing another child has played with and
broken.
Then Alice remembered that the hand-glass had been her mother's.
"I'm sorry I've broken it, Papa, if you liked it."
Her voice recalled him to himself.
"Ally," he said, "what am I to think of you? Are you a fool--or what?"
The sting of it lashed Ally's brain to a retort. (All that she had
needed hitherto to be effective was a little red blood in her veins,
and she had got it now.)
"I'd be a fool," she said, "if I cared two straws what you think of
me, since you can't see what I am. I'm sorry if I've broken your old
hand-glass, though I didn't break it. You broke it yourself."
Carrying her golden top-knot like a crown, she left the room.
The Vicar took the broken hand-glass and hid it in a drawer. He was
sorry for himself. The only impression left on his mind was that his
daughter Ally had been cruel to him.
* * * * *
But Ally didn't care a rap what he thought of her, or what impression
she had left on his mind. She was much too happy. Besides, if you once
began caring what Papa thought there would be no peace for anybody.
He was so impossible that he didn't count. He wasn't even an effective
serpent in her Paradise. He might crawl all over it (as indeed he did
crawl), but he left no trail. The thought of how he had caught her at
the looking-glass might be disagreeable, but it couldn't slime those
holy lawns. Neither could it break the ecstasy of Wednesday, that
heavenly day. Nothing could break it as long as Dr. Rowcliffe
continued to look in at tea-time and her father to explore the
furthest borders of his parish.
The peace of Paradise came down on the Vicarage every Wednesday
the very minute the garden gate had swung back behind the Vicar. He
started so early and he was back so late that there was never any
chance of his encountering young Rowcliffe.
* * * * *
To be sure, young Rowcliffe hardly ever said a word to her. He always
talked to Mary or to Gwenda. But there was nothing in his reticence to
disturb Ally's ecstasy. It was bliss to sit and look at Rowcliffe and
to hear him talk. When she tried to talk to him herself her brain
swam and she became unhappy and confused. Intellectual effort was
destructive to the blessed state, which was pure passivity, untroubled
contemplation in its early stages, before the oncoming of rapture.
The fact that Mary and Gwenda could talk to him and talk intelligently
showed how little they cared for him or were likely to care, and
how immeasurably far they were from the supreme act of adoration.
Similarly, the fact that Rowcliffe could talk to Mary and to Gwenda
showed how little _he_ cared. If he had cared, if he were ever going
to care as Ally understood caring, his brain would have swum like hers
and his intellect would have abandoned him.
Whereas, it was when he turned to Ally that he hadn't a word to say,
any more than she had, and that he became entangled in his talk, and
that the intellect he tried to summon to him tottered and vanished at
his call.
Another thing--when he caught her looking at him (and though Ally was
careful he did catch her now and then) he always either lowered his
eyelids or looked away. He was afraid to look at her; and _that_, as
everybody knew, was an infallible sign. Why, Ally was afraid to look
at _him_, only she couldn't help it. Her eyes were dragged to the
terror and the danger.
So Ally reasoned in her Paradise.
For when Rowcliffe was once gone her brain was frantically busy. It
never gave her any rest. From the one stuff of its dreams it span an
endless shining thread; from the one thread it wove an endless web of
visions. From nothing at all it built up drama after drama. It was all
beautiful what Ally's brain did, all noble, all marvelously pure. (The
Vicar would have been astonished if he had known how pure.) There
was no sullen and selfish Ally in Ally's dreams. They were all of
sacrifice, of self-immolation, of beautiful and noble things done for
Rowcliffe, of suffering for Rowcliffe, of dying for him. All without
Rowcliffe being very palpably and positively there.
It was only at night, when Ally's brain slept among its dreams, that
Rowcliffe's face leaned near to hers without ever touching it, and his
arms made as if they clasped her and never met. Even then, always
at the first intangible approach of him, she woke, terrified because
dreams go by contraries.
"Is your sister always so silent?" Rowcliffe asked that Wednesday (the
Wednesday when Ally had been caught).
He was alone with Mary.
"Who? Ally? No. She isn't silent at all. What do you think of her?"
"I think," said Rowcliffe, "she looks extraordinarily well."
"That's owing to you," said Mary. "I never saw her pull round so fast
before."
"No? I assure you," said Rowcliffe, "I haven't anything to do with
it." He was very stiff and cold and stern.
Rowcliffe was annoyed because it was two Wednesdays running that
he had found himself alone with the eldest and the youngest Miss
Cartaret. The second one had gone off heaven knew where.