And Ally, passing through the village, had seen the strange man too.
"Dr. Rowcliffe must be away," she said at tea-time. "I wonder if he'll
be back by Wednesday."
Wednesday, the last day in January, came, but Rowcliffe did not come.
The strange man took his place in the surgery.
Mrs. Gale brought the news into the Vicarage dining-room at four
o'clock.
She had taken her daughter's place for the time being. She was a just
woman and she bore no grudge against the Vicar on Essy's account. He
had done no more than he was obliged to do. Essy had given trouble
enough in the Vicarage, and she had received a month's wages that she
hadn't worked for. Mrs. Gale was working double to make up for it.
And the innocence of her face being gone, she went lowly and humbly,
paying for Essy, Essy's debt of shame. That was her view.
"Sall I set the tae here, Miss Gwanda," she enquired. "Sence doctor
isn't coomin'?"
"How do you know he isn't coming?" Alice asked.
Mrs. Gale's face was solemn and oppressed. She turned to Gwenda,
ignoring Alice. (Mary was upstairs in her room.)
"'Aven't yo 'eerd, Miss Gwanda?"
Gwenda looked up from her book.
"No," she said. "He's away, isn't he?"
"Away? 'El'll nat get away fer long enoof. 'E's too ill."
"Ill?" Alice sent the word out on a terrified breath. Nobody took any
notice of her.
"T' poastman tell mae," said Mrs. Gale. "From what 'e's 'eerd, 'twas
all along o' Nad Alderson's lil baaby up to Morfe. It was took wi'
the diptheery a while back. An' doctor, 'e sat oop wi' 't tree nights
roonin', 'e did. 'E didn' so mooch as taak 's cleathes off. Nad
Alderson, 'e said, 'e'd navver seen anything like what doctor 'e doon
for t' lil' thing."
Mrs. Gale's face reddened and she sniffed.
"'E's saaved Nad's baaby for 'm, right enoof, Dr. Rawcliffe 'as. But
'e's down wi't hissel, t' poastman says."
It was at Gwenda that she gazed. And as Gwenda made no sign, Mrs.
Gale, still more oppressed by that extraordinary silence, gave her own
feelings way.
"Mebbe wae sall navver see 'im in t' Daale again. It'll goa 'ard, look
yo, wi' a girt man like 'im, what's navver saaved 'isself. Naw, 'e's
navver saaved 'issel."
She ceased. She gazed upon both the sisters now. Alice, her face white
and averted, shrank back in the corner of the sofa. Gwenda's face was
still. Neither of them had spoken.
* * * * *
Mary had tea alone that afternoon.
Alice had dragged herself upstairs to her bedroom and locked herself
in. She had flung herself face downward on her bed. She lay there
while the room grew gray and darkened. Suddenly she passed from a
violent fit of writhing and of weeping into blank and motionless
collapses. From time to time she hiccoughed helplessly.
But in the moment before Mary came downstairs Gwenda had slipped on
the rough coat that hung on its peg in the passage. Her hat was lying
about somewhere in the room where Alice had locked herself in. She
went out bareheaded.
There was a movement in the little group of villagers gathered on the
bridge before the surgery door. They slunk together and turned their
backs on her as she passed. They knew where she was going as well as
she did. And she didn't care.
She was doing the sort of thing that Alice had done, and had suffered
for doing. She knew it and she didn't care. It didn't matter what
Alice had done or ever would do. It didn't matter what she did
herself. It was quite simple. Nothing mattered to her so long as
Rowcliffe lived. And if he died nothing would ever matter to her
again.
* * * * *
For she knew now what it was that had happened to her. She could no
longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The
thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been
secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it,
not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful
instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid. She had
been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe. He might see in it
something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally. She
went in terror of the taint. Where it should have held its head up
defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and
skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.
And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly
defenseless, her terror of it ceased.
It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.
Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something
lacking in her feeling. Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got
more "out of" Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did. Gwenda had known
nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or
Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths,
the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools. In Rowcliffe's presence
she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy. But, if she
stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she _stood_ there, firm on the
solid earth. She could balance herself; she could even lean forward
a little and look over, without losing her head, thrilled with the
uncertainty and peril of the adventure. And of course it wasn't as if
Rowcliffe had left her standing. He hadn't. He had held out his hand
to her, as it were, and said, "Let's get on--get on!" which was as
good as saying that, as long as it lasted, it was _their_ adventure,
not hers. He had drawn her after him at an exciting pace, along the
edge of the abyss, never losing _his_ head for a minute, so that she
ought to have felt safe with him. Only she hadn't. She had said to
herself, "If I knew him better, if I saw what was in him, perhaps I
should feel safe."
There was something she wanted to see in him; something that her
innermost secret self, fastidious and exacting, demanded from him
before it would loosen the grip that held her back.
And now she knew that it _was_ there. It had been told her in four
words: "He never saved himself."
She might have known it. For she remembered things, now; how he had
nursed old Greatorex like a woman; how he had sat up half the night
with Jim Greatorex's mare Daisy; how he kept Jim Greatorex from
drinking; and how he had been kind to poor Essy when she had the face
ache; and gentle to little Ally.
And now Ned Alderson's ridiculous baby would live and Rowcliffe would
die. Was _that_ what she had required of him? She felt as if somehow
_she_ had done it; as if her innermost secret self, iniquitously
exacting, had thrown down the gage into the arena and that he had
picked it up.
"He saved others. Himself he"--never saved.
He had become god-like to her.
And the passion she had trampled on lifted itself and passed into
the phase of adoration. It had received the dangerous sanction of the
soul.
* * * * *
She turned off the high road at the point where, three months ago,
she had seen Mary cycling up the hill from Morfe. Now, as then, she
descended upon Morfe by the stony lane from the moor below Karva.
It came over her that she was too late, that she would see rows of
yellow blinds drawn down in the long front of Rowcliffe's house.
The blinds were up. The windows looked open-eyed upon the Green. She
noticed that one of them on the first floor was half open, and she
said to herself, "He is up there, in that room, dying of diphtheria."
The sound of the bell, muffled funereally, at the back of the house,
fulfilled her premonition.
The door opened wide. The maid stood back from it to let her pass in.
"How is Dr. Rowcliffe?"
Her voice sounded abrupt and brutal, as it tore its way from her tense
throat.
The maid raised her eyebrows. She held the door wider.
"Would you like to see him, miss?"
"Yes."
Her throat closed on the word and choked it.
Down at the end of the passage, where it was dark, a door opened, the
door of the surgery, and a man came out, went in as if to look for
something, and came out again.
As he moved there in the darkness she thought it was the strange
doctor and that he had come out to forbid her seeing Rowcliffe. He
would say that she mustn't risk the infection. As if she cared about
the risk.
Perhaps he wouldn't see her. He, too, might say she mustn't risk it.
While the surgery door opened and shut, opened and shut again, she saw
that her seems him was of all things the most unlikely. She remembered
the house at Upthorne, and she knew that Rowcliffe was lying dead in
the room upstairs.
And the man there was coming out to stop her.
* * * * *
Only--in that case--why hadn't they drawn the blinds down?