The Vicar was right. Rowcliffe did not want to be seen or heard of
at the Vicarage. He did not want to see or hear of the Vicarage or of
Gwenda Cartaret again. Twice a week or more in those five weeks he had
to pass the little gray house above the churchyard; twice a week or
more the small shy window in its gable end looked sidelong at him as
he went by. But he always pretended not to see it. And if anybody in
the village spoke to him of Gwenda Cartaret he pretended not to hear,
so that presently they left off speaking.
He had sighted Mary Cartaret two or three times in the village, and
once, on the moor below Upthorne, a figure that he recognised as
Alice; he had also overtaken Mary on her bicycle, and once he had seen
her at a shop door on Morfe Green. And each time Mary (absorbed in
what she was doing) had made it possible for him not to see her. He
was grateful to her for her absorption while he saw through it. He had
always known that Mary was a person of tact.
He also knew that this preposterous avoidance could not go on forever.
It was only that Mary gave him a blessed respite week by week.
Presently one or other of the two would have to end it, and he didn't
yet know which of them it would be. He rather thought it would be
Mary.
And it _was_ Mary.
He met her that first Wednesday in May, as he was leaving Mrs. Gale's
cottage.
She was coming along the narrow path by the beck and there was no
avoiding her.
She came toward him smiling. He had always rather liked her smile. It
was quiet. It never broke up, as it were, her brooding face. He had
noticed that it didn't even part her lips or make them thinner. If
anything it made them thicker, it curved still more the crushed bow of
the upper lip and the pensive sweep of the lower. But it opened doors;
it lit lights. It broadened quite curiously the rather too broad
nostrils; it set the wide eyes wider; it brought a sudden blue
into their thick gray. In her cheeks it caused a sudden leaping
and spreading of their flame. Her rather high and rather prominent
cheek-bones gave character and a curious charm to Mary's face; they
had the effect of lifting her bloom directly under the pure and candid
gray of her eyes, leaving her red mouth alone in its dominion. That
mouth with its rather too long upper lip and its almost perpetual
brooding was saved from immobility by its alliance with her nostrils.
Such was Mary's face. Rowcliffe had often watched it, acknowledging
its charm, while he said to himself that for him it could never have
any meaning or fascination, any more than Mary could. There wasn't
much in Mary's face, and there wasn't much in Mary. She was too
ruminant, too tranquil. He sometimes wondered how much it would take
to trouble her.
And yet there were times when that tranquillity was soothing. She had
always, even when Ally was at her worst, smiled at him as if nothing
had happened or could happen, and she smiled at him as if nothing had
happened now. And it struck Rowcliffe, as it had frequently struck him
before, how good her face was.
She held out her hand to him and looked at him.
And as if only then she had seen in his face the signs of a suffering
she had been unaware of, her eyes rounded in a sudden wonder of
distress. They said in their goodness and their candor, "Oh, I see how
horribly you've suffered. I didn't know and I'm so sorry." Then they
looked away, and it was like the quiet withdrawal of a hand that
feared lest in touching it should hurt him.
Mary began to talk of the weather and of Essy and of Essy's baby, as
if her eyes had never seen anything at all. Then, just as they parted,
she said, "When are you coming to see us again?" as if he had been to
see them only the other day.
He said he _would_ come as soon as he was asked.
And Mary reflected, as one arranging a multitude of engagements.
"Well, then--let me see--can you come to tea on Friday? Or Monday?
Father'll be at home both days."
And Rowcliffe said thanks, he'd come on Friday.
Mary went on to the cottage and Rowcliffe to his surgery.
He wondered why she hadn't said a word about Gwenda. He supposed it
was because she knew that there was nothing she could say that would
not hurt him.
And he said to himself, "What a nice girl she is. What a thoroughly
nice girl."
* * * * *
But what he wanted, though he dreaded it, was news of Gwenda. He
didn't know whether he could bring himself to ask for it, but he
rather thought that Mary would know what he wanted and give it him
without his asking.
That was precisely what Mary knew and did.
She was ready for him, alone in the gray and amber drawing-room, and
she did it almost at once, before Alice or her father could come in.
Alice was out walking, she said, and her father was in the study.
They would be in soon. She thus made Rowcliffe realise that if she was
going to be abrupt it was because she had to be; they had both of them
such a short time.
With admirable tact she assumed Rowcliffe's interest in Ally and the
Vicar. It made it easier to begin about Gwenda. And before she began
it seemed to her that she had better first find out if he knew. So she
asked him point-blank if he had heard from Gwenda?
"No," he said.
At her name he had winced visibly. But there was hope even in his hurt
eyes. It sprang from Mary's taking it for granted that he would be
likely to hear from her sister.
"We only heard--really," said Mary, "the other day."
"Is that so?"
"Of course she wrote; but she didn't say much, because, at first, I'm
afraid, there wasn't very much to say."
"And is there?"
Rowcliffe's hands were trembling slightly. Mary looked down at them
and away.
"Well, yes."
And she told him that Gwenda had got a secretaryship to Lady Frances
Gilbey.
It would have been too gross to have told him about Gwenda's salary.
But it might have been the salary she was thinking of when she added
that it was of course an awfully good thing for Gwenda.
"And who," said Rowcliffe, "is Lady Frances Gilbey?"
"She's a cousin of my stepmother's."
He considered it.
"And Mrs.--er--Cartaret lives in London, doesn't she?"
"Oh, yes."
Mary's tone implied that you couldn't expect that brilliant lady to
live anywhere else.
There was a moment in which Rowcliffe again evoked the image of the
third Mrs. Cartaret who was "the very one." If anything could have
depressed him more, that did.
But he pulled himself together. There were things he had to know.
"And does your sister like living in London?"