Rowcliffe had ten minutes on his hands while they were bringing his
trap round from the Red Lion.
He was warming his hands at the surgery fire when he heard voices in
the parlor on the other side of the narrow passage. One voice pleaded,
the other reserved judgment.
"Do you think he'd do it if I were to go up and ask him?" It was Alice
Cartaret's voice.
"I caann't say, Miss Cartaret, I'm sure."
"Could you persuade him yourself, Mrs. Blenkiron?"
"It wouldn't be a bit of good me persuadin' him. Jim Greatorex wouldn'
boodge _that_ mooch for me."
A pause. Alice was wavering, aware, no doubt, of the folly of her
errand. Rowcliffe had only to lie low and she would go.
"Could Mr. Blenkiron?"
No. Rowcliffe in the surgery smiled all to himself as he warmed his
hands. Alice was holding her ground. She was spinning out the time.
"Not he. Mr. Blenkiron's got soomat alse to do without trapseing after
Jim Greatorex."
"Oh."
Alice's voice was distant and defensive. He was sorry for Alice. She
was not yet broken in to the north country manner, and her softness
winced under these blows. There was nobody to tell her that Mrs.
Blenkiron's manner was a criticism of her young kinsman, Jim
Greatorex.
Mrs. Blenkiron presently made this apparent.
"Jim's sat oop enoof as it is. You'd think there was nawbody in this
village good enoof to kape coompany wi' Jimmy, the road he goas. Ef I
was you, Miss Olice, I should let him be."
"I would, but it's his voice we want. I'm thinking of the concert,
Mrs. Blenkiron. It's the only voice we've got that'll fill the room."
Mrs. Blenkiron laughed.
"Eh--he'll fill it fer you, right enoof. You'll have all the yoong
laads and laasses in the Daale toomblin' in to hear Jimmy."
"We want them. We want everybody. You Wesleyans and all."
Another pause. Rowcliffe was interested. Alice was really displaying
considerable intelligence. Almost she persuaded him that her errand
was genuine.
"Do you think Essy Gale could get him to come?"
In the surgery Rowcliffe whistled inaudibly. _That_ was indeed a
desperate shift.
Rowcliffe had turned and was now standing with his back to the fire.
He was intensely interested.
"Assy Gaale? He would n' coom for Assy's asskin', a man like
Greatorex."
Mrs. Blenkiron's blood, the blood of the Greatorexes, was up.
"Naw," said Jim Greatorex's kinswoman, "if you want Greatorex to sing
for you as bad as all that, Miss Cartaret, you'd better speak to the
doctor."
Rowcliffe became suddenly grave. He watched the door.
"He'd mebbe do it for him. He sats soom store by Dr. Rawcliffe."
"But"--Ally's voice sounded nearer--"he's gone, hasn't he?"
(The minx, the little, little minx!)
"Naw. But he's joost goin'. Shall I catch him?"
"You might."
Mrs. Blenkiron caught him on the threshold of the surgery.
"Will you speak to Miss Cartaret a minute, Dr. Rawcliffe?"
"Certainly."
Mrs. Blenkiron withdrew. The kitchen door closed on her flight. For
the first time in their acquaintance Rowcliffe was alone with Alice
Cartaret, and though he was interested he didn't like it.
"I thought I heard your voice," said he with reckless geniality.
They stood on their thresholds looking at each other across the narrow
passage. It was as if Alice Cartaret's feet were fixed there by an
invisible force that held her fascinated and yet frightened.
Rowcliffe had paused too, as at a post of vantage, the better to
observe her.
A moment ago, warming his hands in the surgery, he could have sworn
that she, the little maneuvering minx, had laid a trap for him. She
had come on her fool's errand, knowing that it was a fool's errand,
for nothing on earth but that she might catch him, alone and
defenseless, in the surgery. It was the sort of thing she did, the
sort of thing she always would do. She didn't want to know (not she!)
whether Jim Greatorex would sing or not, she wanted to know, and
she meant to know, why he, Steven Rowcliffe, hadn't turned up that
afternoon, and where he had gone, and what he had been doing, and the
rest of it. There were windows at the back of the Vicarage. Possibly
she had seen him charging up the hill in pursuit of her sister, and
she was desperate. All this he had believed and did still believe.
But, as he looked across at the little hesitating figure and the
scared face framed in the doorway, he had compassion on her. Poor
little trapper, so pitifully trapped; so ignorant of the first rules
and principles of trapping that she had run hot-foot after her prey
when she should have lain low and lured it silently into her snare.
She was no more than a poor little frightened minx, caught in his
trap, peering at him from it in terror. God knew he hadn't meant to
set it for her, and God only knew how he was going to get her out of
it.
"Poor things," he thought, "if they only knew how horribly they
embarrass me!"
For of course she wasn't the first. The situation had repeated itself,
monotonously, scores of times in his experience. It would have been
a nuisance even if Alice Cartaret had not been Gwendolen Cartaret's
sister. That made it intolerable.
All this complex pity and repugnance was latent in his one sense of
horrible embarrassment.
Then their hands met.
"You want to see me?"
"I _did_--" She was writhing piteously in the trap.
"You'd better come into the surgery. There's a fire there."
He wasn't going to keep her out there in the cold; and he wasn't going
to walk back with her to the Vicarage. He didn't want to meet the
Vicar and have the door shut in his face. Rowcliffe, informed by Mrs.
Blenkiron, was aware, long before Gwenda had warned him, that he ran
this risk. The Vicar's funniness was a byword in the parish.
But he left the door ajar.
"Well," he said gently, "what is it?"
"Shall you be seeing Jim Greatorex soon?"
"I might. Why?"
She told her tale again; she told it in little bursts of excitement
punctuated with shy hesitations. She told it with all sorts of twists
and turns, winding and entangling herself in it and coming out again
breathless and frightened, like a lost creature that has been dragged
through the brake. And there were long pauses when Alice put her head
on one side, considering, as if she held her tale in her hands and
were looking at it and wondering whether she really could go on.
"And what is it you want me to do?" said Rowcliffe finally.
"To ask him."
"Hadn't you better ask him yourself?"
"Would he do it for me?"
"Of course he would."
"I wonder. Perhaps--if I asked him prettily--"
"Oh, then--he couldn't help himself."
There was a pause. Rowcliffe, a little ashamed of himself, looked at
the floor, and Alice looked at Rowcliffe and tried to fathom the full
depth of his meaning from his face. That there was a depth and that
there was a meaning she never doubted. This time Rowcliffe missed the
pathos of her gray eyes.
An idea had come to him.
"Look here--Miss Cartaret--if you can get Jim Greatorex to sing for
you, if you can get him to take an interest in the concert or in any
mortal thing besides beer and whisky, you'll be doing the best day's
work you ever did in your life."
"Do you think I _could_?" she said.
"I think you could probably do anything with him if you gave your mind
to it."
He meant it. He meant it. That was really his opinion of her. Her
lifted face was radiant as she drank bliss at one draught from the cup
he held to her. But she was not yet satisfied.
"You'd _like_ me to do it?"
"I should very much."
His voice was firm, but his eyes looked uneasy and ashamed.
"Would you like me to get him back in the choir?"
"I'd like you to get him back into anything that'll keep him out of
mischief."
She raised her chin. There was a more determined look on her small,
her rather insignificant face than he would have thought to see there.
She rose.
"Very well," she said superbly. "I'll do it."
He held out his hand.
"I don't say, Miss Cartaret, that you'll reclaim him."
"Nor I. But--if you want me to, I'll try."
They parted on it.
Rowcliffe smiled as he closed the surgery door behind him.
"That'll give her something else to think about," he said to himself.
"And it'll take her all her time."