It was May, five weeks since Gwenda had left Garthdale.
Five Wednesdays came and went and Rowcliffe had not been seen or heard
of at the Vicarage. It struck even the Vicar that considerably more
had passed between his daughter and the doctor than Gwenda had been
willing to admit. Whatever had passed, it had been something that had
made Rowcliffe desire not to be seen or heard of.
All the same, the Vicar and his daughter Alice were both so profoundly
aware of Rowcliffe that for five weeks they had not mentioned his name
to each other. When Mary mentioned it on Friday, in the evening of
that disgraceful day, he said that he had had enough of Rowcliffe and
he didn't want to hear any more about the fellow.
Mr. Cartaret had signified that his second daughter's name was not to
be mentioned, either. But, becoming as his attitude was, he had not
been able to keep it up. In the sixth week after Gwenda's departure,
he was obliged to hear (it was Alice, amazed out of all reticence, who
told him) that Gwenda had got a berth as companion secretary to Lady
Frances Gilbey, at a salary of a hundred a year.
Mummy had got it for her.
"You may well stare, Molly, but it's what she says."
The Vicar, as if he had believed Ally capable of fabricating this
intelligence, observed that he would like to see that letter.
His face darkened as he read it. He handed it back without a word.
The thing was not so incredible to the Vicar as it was to Mary.
He had always known that Robina could pull wires. It was, in fact,
through her ability to pull wires that Robina had so successfully
held him up. She had her hands on the connections of an entire social
system. Her superior ramifications were among those whom Mr. Cartaret
habitually spoke and thought of as "the best people." And when it came
to connections, Robina's were of the very best. Lady Frances was her
second cousin. In the days when he was trying to find excuses for
marrying Robina, it was in considering her connections that he found
his finest. The Vicar had informed his conscience that he was
marrying Robina because of what she could do for his three motherless
daughters--and himself.
Preferment even lay (through the Gilbeys) within Robina's scope.
But to have planted Gwenda on Lady Frances Robina must have pulled all
the wires she knew. Lady Frances was a distinguished philanthropist
and a rigid Evangelical, so rigid and so distinguished that, in the
eyes of poor parsons waiting for preferment, she constituted a pillar
of the Church.
To the Vicar, as he brooded over it, Robina's act was more than mere
protection of his daughter Gwenda. Not only was it carrying the war
into the enemy's camp with a vengeance, it was an act of hostility
subtler and more malignant than overt defiance.
Ever since she left him, Robina had been trying to get hold of the
girls, regarding them as the finest instruments in her relentless
game. For it never occurred to Mr. Cartaret that his third wife's
movements could by any possibility refer to anybody but himself.
Robina, according to Mr. Cartaret, was perpetually thinking of him
and of how she could annoy him. She had shown a fiendish cleverness in
placing Gwenda with Lady Frances. She couldn't have done anything that
could have annoyed him more. More than anything that Robina had yet
done, it put him in the wrong. It put him in the wrong not only with
Lady Frances and the best people, but it put him in the wrong with
Gwenda and kept him there. Against Gwenda, with Lady Frances and a
salary of a hundred a year at her back, he hadn't the appearance of a
leg to stand on. The thing had the air of justifying Gwenda's behavior
by its consequences.
That was what Robina had been reckoning on. For, if it had been Gwenda
she had been thinking of, she would have kept her instead of
handing her over to Lady Frances. The companion secretaries of that
distinguished philanthropist had no sinecure even at a hundred a year.
As for Gwenda's accepting such a post, that proved nothing as against
his view of her. It only proved, what he had always known, that you
could never tell what Gwenda would do next.
And because nothing could be said with any dignity, the Vicar had said
nothing as he rose and went into his study.
It was there, hidden from his daughters' scrutiny, that he pondered
these things.
* * * * *
They waited till the door had closed on him before they spoke.
"Well, after all, that'll be very jolly for her," said Mary.
"It isn't half as jolly as it looks," said Ally. "It means that she'll
have to live at Tunbridge Wells."
"Oh," said Mary, "it won't be all Tunbridge Wells." She couldn't bear
to think that it would be all Tunbridge Wells. Not that she did think
it for a moment. It couldn't be all Tunbridge Wells for a girl like
Gwenda. Mummy could never have contemplated that. Gwenda couldn't
have contemplated it. And Mary refused to contemplate it either. She
persuaded herself that what had happened to her sister was simply
a piece of the most amazing luck. She even judged it probable that
Gwenda had known very well what she was doing when she went away.
Besides she had always wanted to do something. She had learned
shorthand and typewriting at Westbourne, as if, long ago, she had
decided that, if home became insupportable, she would leave it. And
there had always been that agreement between her and Mummy.
When Mary put these things together, she saw that nothing could be
more certain than that, sooner or later, Ally or no Ally, Gwenda would
have gone away.
But this was after it had occurred to her that Rowcliffe ought to know
what had happened and that she had got to tell him. And that was on
the day after Gwenda's letter came, when Mrs. Gale, having brought
in the tea-things, paused in her going to say, "'Ave yo' seen Dr.
Rawcliffe, Miss Mary? Ey--but 'e's lookin' baad."
"Everybody," said Mary, "is looking bad this muggy weather. That
reminds me, how's the baby?"
"'E's woorse again, Miss. I tall Assy she'll navver rear 'im."
"Has the doctor seen him to-day?"
"Naw, naw, nat yat. But 'e'll look in, 'e saays, afore 'e goas."
Mary looked at the clock. Rowcliffe left the surgery at four-thirty.
It was now five minutes past.
She wondered: Did he know, then, or did he not know? Would Gwenda have
written to him? Was it because she had not written that he was looking
bad, or was it because she had written and he knew?
She thought and thought it over; and under all her thinking there
lurked the desire to know whether Rowcliffe knew and how he was taking
it, and under her desire the longing, imperious and irresistible, to
see him.
She would have to ask him to the house. She had not forgotten that she
had to ask him, that she was pledged to ask him on Ally's account if,
as Gwenda had put it, she was to play the game.
But she had had more than one motive for her delay. It would look
better if she were not in too great a hurry. (She said to herself it
would look better on Ally's account.) The longer he was kept away (she
said to herself, that he was kept away from Ally) the more he would
be likely to want to come. Sufficient time must elapse to allow of his
forgetting Gwenda. It was not well that he should be thinking all the
time of Gwenda when he came. (She said to herself it was not well on
Ally's account.)
And it was well that their father should have forgotten Rowcliffe.
(This on Ally's account, too.)
For of course it was only on Ally's account that she was asking
Rowcliffe, really.
Not that there seemed to be any such awful need.
For Ally, in those five weeks, had got gradually better. And now, in
the first week of May, which had always been one of her bad months,
she was marvelously well. It looked as if Gwenda had known what she
was talking about when she said Ally would be all right when she was
gone.
And of course it was just as well (on Ally's account) that Rowcliffe
should not have seen her until she was absolutely well.
Nobody could say that she, Mary, was not doing it beautifully. Nobody
could say she was not discreet, since she had let five weeks pass
before she asked him.
And in order that her asking him should have the air of happy chance,
she must somehow contrive to see him first.
Her seeing him could be managed any Wednesday in the village. It was
bound, in fact, to occur. The wonder was that it had not occurred
before.
Well, that showed how hard, all these weeks, she had been trying not
to see him. If she had had an uneasy conscience in the matter (and
she said to herself that there was no occasion for one), it would have
acquitted her.
Nobody could say she wasn't playing the game.
And then it struck her that she had better go down at once and see
Essy's baby.
It was only five and twenty past four.