She had added that Gwenda was a little fool, and that she ought to
have known that though Mary was as meek as Moses she was that sort.
She went on, thinking, to the steady clanking of the hoofs.
"I suppose," she said to herself, "she couldn't help it."
The lights of Morfe shone through the November darkness. The little
slow mare crawled up the winding hill to the top of the Green;
Rowcliffe's horse was slower. But no sooner had Peacock's trap passed
the doctor's house on its way out of the village square, than the
clanking hoofs went fast.
Rowcliffe was free to go his own pace now.
* * * * *
"Which of you two is going to hook me up?" said Mary.
She was in the Vicar's room, putting on her wedding-gown before the
wardrobe glass. Her two sisters were dressing her.
"I will," said Gwenda.
"You'd better let me," said Alice. "I know where the eyes are."
Gwenda lifted up the wedding-veil and held it ready. And while Alice
pulled and fumbled Mary gazed at her own reflection and at Alice's.
"You should have done as Mummy said and had your frock made in London,
like Gwenda. They'd have given you a decent cut. You look as if you
couldn't breathe."
"My frock's all right," said Alice.
Her fingers trembled as she strained at the hooks and eyes.
And in the end it was Gwenda who hooked Mary up while Alice held the
veil. She held it in front of her. The long streaming net shivered
with the trembling of her hands.
* * * * *
The wedding was at two o'clock. The church was crowded, so were the
churchyard and the road beside the Vicarage and the bridge over the
beck. Morfe and Greffington had emptied themselves into Garthdale.
(Greffington had lent its organist.)
It was only when it was all over that somebody noticed that Jim
Greatorex was not there with the village choir. "Celebrating a bit too
early," somebody said.
And it was only when it was all over that Rowcliffe found Gwenda.
He found her in the long, flat pause, the half-hour of profoundest
realisation that comes when the bride disappears to put off her
wedding-gown for the gown she will go away in. She had come out to the
wedding-party gathered at the door, to tell them that the bride would
soon be ready. Rowcliffe and Harker were standing apart, at the end of
the path, by the door that led from the garden to the orchard.
He came toward her. Harker drew back into the orchard. They followed
him and found themselves alone.
For ten minutes they paced the narrow flagged path under the orchard
wall. And they talked, quickly, like two who have but a short time.
"Well--so you've come back at last?"
"At last? I haven't been gone six months."
"You see, time feels longer to us down here."
"That's odd. It goes faster."
"Anyhow, you're not tired of London?"
She stared at him for a second and then looked away.
"Oh no, I'm not tired of it yet."
They turned.
"Shall you stop long here?"
"I'm going back to-morrow."
"To-morrow? You're so glad to get back then?"
"So glad to get back. I only came down for Mary's wedding."
He smiled.
"You won't come for anything but a wedding?"
"A funeral might fetch me."
"Well, Gwenda, I can't say you look as if London agreed with you
particularly."
"I can't say you look as if Garthdale agreed very well with you."
"I'm only tired--tired to death."
"I'm sorry."
"I want a holiday. And I'm going to get one--for a month. _You_ look
as if you'd been burning the candle at both ends, if you'll forgive my
saying so."
"Oh--for all the candles I burn! It isn't such awfully hard work, you
know."
"What isn't?"
"What I'm doing."
He stopped straight in the narrow path and looked at her.
"I say, what _are_ you doing?"
She told him.
His face expressed surprise and resentment and a curious wonder and
bewilderment.
"But I thought--I thought----They told me you were having no end of a
time."
"Tunbridge Wells isn't very amusing. No more is Lady Frances."
Again he stopped dead and stared at her.
"But they told me--I mean I thought you were in London with Mrs.
Cartaret, all the time."
She laughed.
"Did Papa tell you that?"
"No. I don't know who told me. I--I got the impression." He almost
stammered. "I must have misunderstood."
She meditated.
"It sounds awfully like Papa. He simply can't believe, poor thing,
that I'd stick to anything so respectable."
"Hah!" He laughed out his contempt for the Vicar. He had forgotten
that he too had wondered.
"Chuck it, Gwenda," he said, "chuck it."
"I can't," she said. "Not yet. It's too lucrative."
"But if it makes you seedy?"
"It doesn't. It won't. It isn't hard work. Only----" She broke off.
"It's time for you to go."
"Steve! Steve!"
Rowcliffe's youngest cousin was calling from the study window.
"Come along. Mary's ready."
"All right," he shouted. "I'm coming."
But he stood still there at the end of the orchard under the gray
wall.
"Good-bye, Steven."
Gwenda put out her hand.
He held her with his troubled eyes. He did not see her hand. He saw
her eyes only that troubled his.
"I say, is it very beastly?"
"No. Not a bit. You must go, Steven, you must go."
"If I'd only known," he persisted.
They were going down the path now toward the house.
"I wouldn't have let you----"
"You couldn't have stopped me."
(It was what she had always said to all of them.)