He was indeed doing it beautifully all through. He watched her little
fingers, and the very instant they had disposed of a morsel he offered
her another. It was a deep and exquisite pleasure to him to observe
her in that act of eating and drinking. He had never seen anything
like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it. He
had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray
tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so
distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and
collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of
blue peacock's breast laid on one side of it like a folded wing.
As he watched her he thought, "If I was to touch her I should break
her."
* * * * *
Then the conversation began.
"I was sorry," he said, "to hear yo was so poorly, Miss Cartaret."
"I'm all right now. You can see I'm all right."
He shook his head. "I saw yo' a moonth ago, and I didn't think then I
sud aver see yo' at Oopthorne again."
He paused.
"'E's a woonderful maan, Dr. Rawcliffe."
"He is," said Alice.
Her voice was very soft, inaudible as a breath. All the blood in
her body seemed to rush into her face and flood it and spread up her
forehead to the roots of the gold hair that the east wind had crisped
round the edges of her hat. She thought, "It'll be awful if he
guesses, and if he talks." But when she looked at Greatorex his face
reassured her, it was so utterly innocent of divination. And the next
moment he went straight to the matter in hand.
"An' what's this thing you've coom to aassk me, Miss Cartaret?"
"Well"--she looked at him and her gray eyes were soft and charmingly
candid--"it _was_ if you'd be kind enough to sing at our concert.
You've heard about it?"
"Ay, I've heard about it, right enoof."
"Well--_won't_ you? You _have_ sung, you know."
"Yes. I've soong. But thot was in t' owd schoolmaaster's time. Yo'
wouldn't care to hear my singin' now. I've got out of the way of it,
like."
"You haven't, Mr. Greatorex. I've heard you. You've got a magnificent
voice. There isn't one like it in the choir."
"Ay, there's not mooch wrong with my voice, I rackon. But it's like
this, look yo. I joost soong fer t' schoolmaaster. He was a friend--a
personal friend of mine. And he's gone. And I'm sure I doan' knaw--"
"I know, Mr. Greatorex. I know exactly how you feel about it. You
sang to please your friend. He's gone and you don't like the idea of
singing for anybody else--for a set of people you don't know."
She had said it. It was the naked truth and he wasn't going to deny
it.
She went on. "We're strangers and perhaps you don't like us very much,
and you feel that singing for us would be like singing the Lord's song
in a strange country; you feel as if it would be profanation--a kind
of disloyalty."
"Thot's it. Thot's it." Never had he been so well interpreted.
"It's that--and it's because you miss him so awfully."
"Wall--" He seemed inclined, in sheer honesty, to deprecate the
extreme and passionate emotion she suggested. I would n' saay--O'
course, I sort o' miss him. I caann't afford to lose a friend--I
'aven't so many of 'em."
"I know. It's the waters of Babylon, and you're hanging up your
voice in the willow tree." She could be gay and fluent enough with
Greatorex, who was nothing to her. "But it's an awful pity. A willow
tree can't do anything with a big barytone voice hung up in it."
He laughed then. And afterward, whenever he thought of it, he laughed.
She saw that he had adopted his attitude first of all in resentment,
that he had continued it as a passionate, melancholy pose, and that he
was only keeping it up through sheer obstinacy. He would be glad of a
decent excuse to abandon it, if he could find one.
"And your friend must have been proud of your voice, wasn't he?"
"He sat more store by it than what I do. It was he, look yo, who
trained me so as I could sing proper."
"Well, then, he must have taken some trouble over it. Do you think
he'd like you to go and hang it up in a willow tree?"
Greatorex looked up, showing a shamefaced smile. The little lass had
beaten him.
"Coom to think of it, I doan' knaw as he would like it mooch."
"Of course he wouldn't like it. It would be wasting what he'd done."
"So 't would. I naver thought of it like thot."
She rose. She knew the moment of surrender, and she knew, woman-like,
that it must not be overpassed. She stood before him, drawing on her
gloves, fastening her squirrel collar and settling her chin in the
warm fur with the movement of a small burrowing animal, a movement
that captivated Greatorex. Then, deliberately and finally, she held
out her hand.
"Good-bye, Mr. Greatorex. It's all right, isn't it? You're coming to
sing for _him,_ you know, not for _us_."
"I'm coomin'," said Greatorex.
She settled her chin again, tucked her hands away in the squirrel muff
and went quickly toward the door. He followed.
"Let me putt Daasy in t' trap, Miss Cartaret, and drive yo' home."
"I wouldn't think of it. Thank you all the same."
She was in the kitchen now, on the outer threshold. He followed her
there.
"Miss Cartaret--"