She fell into one of her gentle silences. A silence not of her own
brooding, he judged. It had no dreams behind it and no imagination
that carried her away. A silence, rather, that brought her nearer to
him, that waited on his mood.
His eyes watched under half-closed lids the movements of her hands and
the pretty droop of her head. And he said to himself, "How sweet she
is. And how innocent. And good."
Their chairs were set near together in the small plot of grass. The
little trees of the orchard shut them in. He began to notice things
about her that he had not noticed before, the shape and color of her
finger nails, the modeling of her supple wrists, the way her ears were
curved and laid close to her rather broad head. He saw that her
skin was milk-white at the throat, and honey-white at her ears, and
green-white, the white of an elder flower, at the roots of her red
hair.
And as she unwound her ball of wool it rolled out of her lap and fell
between her feet.
She stooped suddenly, bringing under Rowcliffe's eyes the nape of her
neck, shining with golden down, and her shoulders, sun-warmed and rosy
under the thin muslin of her blouse.
They dived at the same moment, and as their heads came up again their
faces would have touched but that Rowcliffe suddenly drew back his
own.
"I say, I _do_ beg your pardon!"
It was odd, but in the moment of his recoil from that imminent contact
Rowcliffe remembered the little red-haired nurse. Not that there was
much resemblance; for, though the little nurse was sweet, she was
not altogether innocent, neither was she what good people like Mary
Cartaret would call good. And Mary, leaning back in her chair with
the recovered ball in her lap, was smiling at his confusion with an
innocence and goodness of which he could have no doubt.
When he tried to account to himself for the remembrance he supposed it
must have been the red hair that did it.
And up to the end and to the end of the end Rowcliffe never knew
that, though he had been made subject to a sequence of relentless
inhibitions and of suggestions overpowering in their nature and
persistently sustained, it was ultimately by aid of that one
incongruous and irresistible association that Mary Cartaret had cast
her spell.
He had never really come under it until that moment.
* * * * *
July passed. It was the end of August. To the west Karva and Morfe
High Moor were purple. To the east the bare hillsides with their
limestone ramparts smouldered in mist and sun, or shimmered, burning
like any hillside of the south. The light even soaked into the gray
walls of Garth in its pastures. The little plum-trees in the Vicarage
orchard might have been olive trees twinkling in the sun.
Mary was in the Vicar's bedroom, looking now at the door, and now
at her own image in the wardrobe glass. It was seven o'clock in the
evening and she had chosen a perilous moment for the glass. She wore
a childlike frock of rough green silk; it had no collar but was cut
square at the neck showing her white throat. The square was bordered
with an embroidered design of peacock's eyes. The parted waves of her
red hair were burnished with hard brushing; its coils lay close, and
smooth as a thick round cap. It needed neither comb nor any ornament.
Mary had dressed, for Rowcliffe was coming to dinner. Such a thing had
never been heard of at the Vicarage; but it had come to pass. And as
Mary thought of how she had accomplished it, she wondered what Alice
could possibly have meant when she said to her "There are moments when
I hate you," as she hooked her up the back.
For it never could have happened if she had not persuaded the Vicar
(and herself as well) that she was asking Rowcliffe on Alice's
account.
The Vicar had come gradually to see that if Alice must be married she
had better marry Rowcliffe and have done with it. He had got used to
Rowcliffe and he rather liked him; so he had only held out against
the idea for a fortnight or so. He had even found a certain austere
satisfaction in the thought that he, the doctor, who had tried to
terrify him about Ally's insanity, having thrown that bomb into
the peaceful Vicarage, should be blown up, as it were, with his own
explosion.
The Vicar never doubted that it was Ally that Rowcliffe wanted. For
the idea of his wanting Gwenda was so unpleasant to him that he had
dismissed it as preposterous; as for Mary, he had made up his mind
that Mary would never dream of marrying and leaving him, and that, if
she did, he would put his foot down.
There had been changes in the Vicarage in the last two months. The
shabby gray and amber drawing-room was not all shabbiness and not all
gray and amber now. There were new cretonne covers on the chairs and
sofa, and pure white muslin curtains at the windows, and the lamp had
a new frilled petticoat. Every afternoon Mrs. Gale was arrayed in a
tight black gown and irreproachable cap and apron.
All day long Mary and Mrs. Gale had worked like galley slaves over
the preparations for dinner, and between them they had achieved
perfection. What was more they had produced an effect of achieving it
every day, clear soup, mayonnaise salad and cheese straws and all.
And the black coffee made by Mary and served in the orchard afterward
was perfection too.
And the impression made on Rowcliffe by the Vicarage was that of
a house and a household rehabilitated after a long period of
devastation, by the untiring, selfless labor of a woman who was good
and sweet.
After they had drunk Mary's coffee the Vicar strolled away to his
study so as to leave Rowcliffe alone with Mary, and Alice strolled
away heaven knew where so as to leave Mary alone with Rowcliffe. And
the Vicar said to himself, "Mary is really doing it very well. Ally
ought to be grateful to her."
But Ally wasn't a bit grateful. She said to herself, "I've half a
mind to tell him; only Gwenda would hate me." And she called over her
shoulder as she strolled away, "You'd better not stay out too long,
you two. It's going to rain."
Morfe High Moor hangs over Garth and a hot and swollen cloud was
hanging over Morfe High Moor. Above the gray ramparts the very east
was sultry. In the orchard under the low plum-trees it was as airless
as in a tent.
Rowcliffe didn't want to stay out too long in the orchard. He knew
that the window of the Vicar's study raked it. So he asked Mary if she
would come with him for a stroll. (His only criticism of Mary was that
she didn't walk enough.)
Mary thought, "My nice frock will be ruined if the rain comes." But
she went.
"Shall it be the moor or the fields?" he said.