"That's what makes it difficult."
"My not knowing it?"
"No. Your being so fond of her."
"Isn't that just the reason why I ought to know?"
"Yes. I think it is. Only----"
She held him to it.
"Is she going to die?"
"I don't say she's _going_ to die. But--in the state she's in--she
_might_ get anything and die of it if something isn't done to make her
happy."
"Happy----"
"I mean of course--to get her married. After all, you know, you've got
to face the facts."
"You think she's dying now, and you're afraid to tell me."
"No--I'm afraid I think--she's not so likely to die as to go out of
her mind."
"Did you tell my father that?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He said she was out of her mind already."
"She isn't!"
"Of course she isn't. No more than you and I. He talks about putting
the poor child under restraint----"
"Oh----"
"It's preposterous. But he'll make it necessary if he continues his
present system. What I tried to impress on him is that she _will_
go out of her mind if she's kept shut up in that old Vicarage much
longer. And that she'd be all right--perfectly all right--if she was
married. As far as I can make out he seems to be doing his best to
prevent it. Well--in her case--that's simply criminal. The worse of it
is I can't make him see it. He's annoyed with me."
"He never will see anything he doesn't like."
"There's no reason why he should dislike it so much--I mean her
illness. There's nothing awful about it."
"There's nothing awful about Ally. She's as good as gold."
"I know she's as good as gold. And she'd be as strong as iron if she
was married and had children. I've seen no end of women like that, and
I'm not sure they don't make the best wives and mothers. I told your
father that. But it's no good trying to tell him the truth."
"No. It's the one thing he can't stand."
"He seems," said Rowcliffe, "to have such an extraordinary distaste
for the subject. He approaches it from an impossible point of view--as
if it was sin or crime or something. He talks about her controlling
herself, as if she could help it. Why, she's no more responsible for
being like that than I am for the shape of my nose. I'm afraid I told
him that if anybody was responsible _he_ was, for bringing her to the
worst place imaginable."
"He did that on purpose."
"I know. And I told him he might as well have put her in a lunatic
asylum at once."
He meditated.
"It's not as if he hadn't anybody but himself to think of."
"That's no good. He never does think of anybody but himself. And yet
he'd be awfully sorry, you know, if Ally died."
They sat silent, not looking at each other, until Gwenda spoke again.
"Dr. Rowcliffe--"
He smiled as if it amused him to be addressed so formally.
"Do you _really_ mean it, or are you frightening us? Will Ally really
die--or go mad--if she isn't--happy?"
He was grave again.
"I really mean it. It's a rather serious case. But it's only 'if.' As
I told you, there are scores of women--"
But she waived them all away.
"I only wanted to know."
Her voice stopped suddenly, and he thought that she was going to break
down.
"You mustn't take it so hard," he said. "It's not as if it wasn't
absolutely curable. You must take her away."
Suddenly he remembered that he didn't particularly want Gwenda to go
away. He couldn't, in fact, bear the thought of it.
"Better still," he said, "send her away. Is there anybody you could
send her to?"
"Only Mummy--my stepmother." She smiled through her tears. "Papa would
never let Ally go to _her_."
"Why not?"
"Because she ran away from him."
He tried not to laugh.
"She's really quite decent, though you mightn't think it." Rowcliffe
smiled. "And she's fond of Ally. She's fond of all of us--except Papa.
And," she added, "she knows a lot of people."
He smiled again. He pictured the third Mrs. Cartaret as a woman of
affectionate gaiety and a pleasing worldliness, so well surrounded by
adorers of his own sex that she could probably furnish forth her three
stepdaughters from the numbers of those she had no use for. He was
more than ever disgusted with the Vicar who had driven from him a
woman so admirably fitted to play a mother's part.
"She sounds," he said, "as if she'd be the very one."
"She would be. It's an awful pity."
"Well," he said, "we won't talk any more about it now. We'll think of
something. We simply _must_ get her away."
He was thinking that he knew of somebody--a doctor's widow--who
also would be fitted. If they could afford to pay her. And if they
couldn't, he would very soon have the right----
That was what his "we" meant.
Presently he excused himself and went out to see, he said, about
getting her some tea. He judged that if she were left alone for a
moment she would pull herself together and be as ready as ever for
their walk back to Garthdale.
* * * * *
It was in that moment when he left her that she made her choice.
Not that when her idea had come to her she had known a second's
hesitation. She didn't know when it had come. It seemed to her that it
had been with her all through their awful interview.
It was she and not Ally who would have to go away.
She could see it now.
It had been approaching her, her idea, from the very instant that she
had come into the room and had begun to speak to him. And with every
word that _he_ had said it had come closer. But not until her final
appeal to him had she really faced it. Then it became clear. It
crystallised. There was no escaping from the facts.
Ally would die or go mad if she didn't marry.
Ally (though Rowcliffe didn't know it) was in love with him.
And, even if she hadn't been, as long as they stayed in Garthdale
there was nobody but Rowcliffe whom she could marry. It was her one
chance.
And there were three of them there. Three women to one man.
And since _she_ was the one--she knew it--who stood between him and
Ally, it was she who would have to go away.
It seemed to her that long ago--all the time, in fact, ever since she
had known Rowcliffe--she had known that this was what she would have
to face.
She faced it now with a strange courage and a sort of spiritual
exaltation, as she would have faced any terrible truth that Rowcliffe
had told her, if, for instance, he had told her that she was going to
die.
That, of course, was what it felt like. She had known that it would
feel like that.
And, as sometimes happens to people who are going to die and know
it, there came to her a peculiar vivid and poignant sense of her
surroundings. Of Rowcliffe's room and the things in it,--the chair he
had sat in, the pipe he had laid aside, the book he had been reading
and that he had flung away. Outside the open window the trees of the
little orchard, whitened by the moonlight, stood as if fixed in a
tender, pure and supernatural beauty. She could see the flags on the
path and the stones in the gray walls. They stood out with a strange
significance and importance. As if near and yet horribly far away, she
could hear Rowcliffe's footsteps in the passage.
It came over her that she was sitting in Rowcliffe's room--like
this--for the last time.
Then her heart dragged and tore at her, as if it fought against her
will to die. But it never occurred to her that this dying of hers was
willed by her. It seemed foredoomed, inevitable.
* * * * *
And now she was looking up in Rowcliffe's face and smiling at him as
he brought her her tea.
"That's right," he said.
He was entirely reassured by her appearance.
"Look here, shall I drive you back or do you feel like another
four-mile walk?"
She hesitated.
"It's late," he said. "But no matter. Let's be reckless."
"There's no need. I've got my bicycle."
"Then I'll get mine."