Wednesday was still the Vicar's day for visiting his parish. It was
also Rowcliffe's day for visiting his daughter. But the Vicar was not
going to change it on that account. On Wednesday, if it was a fine
afternoon, she was always sure of having Rowcliffe to herself.
Rowcliffe himself had become the creature of unalterable habit.
She was conscious now of the normal pulse of time, a steady pulse that
beat with a large rhythm, a measure of seven days, from Wednesday to
Wednesday.
She filled the days between with reading and walking and parish work.
There had been changes in Garthdale. Mr. Grierson had got married in
one of his bursts of enthusiasm and had gone away. His place had been
taken by Mr. Macey, the strenuous son of a Durlingham grocer. Mr.
Macey had got into the Church by sheer strenuousness and had married,
strenuously, a sharp and sallow wife. Between them they left very
little parish work for Gwenda.
She had become a furious reader. She liked hard stuff that her brain
could bite on. It fell on a book and gutted it, throwing away the
trash. She read all the modern poets and novelists she cared about,
English and foreign. They left her stimulated but unsatisfied. There
were not enough good ones to keep her going. She worked through the
Elizabethan dramatists and all the Vicar's Tudor Classics, and came
on Jowett's Translations of the Platonic Dialogues by the way, and
was lured on the quest of Ultimate Reality, and found that there
was nothing like Thought to keep you from thinking. She took to
metaphysics as you take to dram-drinking. She must have strong, heavy
stuff that drugged her brain. And when she found that she could trust
her intellect she set it deliberately to fight her passion.
At first it was an even match, for Gwenda's intellect, like her body,
was robust. It generally held its ground from Thursday morning till
Tuesday night. But the night that followed Wednesday afternoon would
see its overthrow.
This Wednesday it fought gallantly till the very moment of Steven's
arrival. She was still reading Bergson, and her brain struggled to
make out the sense and rhythm of the sentences across the beating of
her heart.
After seven years her heart still beat at Steven's coming.
It remained an excitement and adventure, for she never knew how
he would be. Sometimes he hadn't a word to say to her and left her
miserable. Sometimes, after a hard day's work, he would be tired
and heavy; she saw him middle-aged and her heart would ache for him.
Sometimes he would be young almost as he used to be. She knew that
he was only young for her. He was young because he loved her. She had
never seen him so with Mary. Sometimes he would be formal and frigid.
He talked to her as a man talks to a woman he is determined to keep
at a distance. She hated Steven then, as passion hates. He had come
before now in a downright bad temper and was the old, irritable Steven
who found fault with everything she said and did. And she had loved
him for it as she had loved the old Steven. It was his queer way of
showing that he loved her.
But he had not been like that for a very long time. He had grown
gentler as he had grown older.
To-day he showed her more than one of his familiar moods. She took
them gladly as so many signs of his unchanging nature.
He still kept up his way of coming in, the careful closing of the
door, the slight pause there by the threshold, the look that sought
her and that held her for an instant before their hands met.
She saw it still as the look that pleaded with her while it caressed
her, that said, "I know we oughtn't to be so pleased to see each
other, but we can't help it, can we?"
It was the look of his romantic youth.
As long as she saw it there it was nothing to her that Rowcliffe had
changed physically, that he moved more heavily, that his keenness and
his slenderness were going, that she saw also a slight thickening of
his fine nose, a perceptible slackening of the taut muscles of his
mouth, and a decided fulness about his jaw and chin. She saw all these
things; but she did not see that his romantic youth lay dying in the
pathos of his eyes and that if it pleaded still it pleaded forgiveness
for the sin of dying.
His hand fell slackly from hers as she took it.
It was as if they were still on their guard, still afraid of each
other's touch.
As he sat in the chair that faced hers he held his hands clasped
loosely in front of him, and looked at them with a curious attention,
as if he wondered what kind of hands they were that could resist
holding her.
When he saw that she was looking at him they fell apart with a nervous
gesture.
They picked up the book she had laid down and turned it. His eyes
examined the title page. Their pathos lightened and softened; it
became compassion; they smiled at her with a little pitiful smile,
half tender, half ironic, as if they said, "Poor Gwenda, is that what
you're driven to?"
He opened the book and turned the pages, reading a little here and
there.
He scowled. His look changed. It darkened. It was angry, resentful,
inimical. The dying youth in it came a little nearer to death.
Rowcliffe had found that he could not understand what he had read.
"Huh! What do you addle your brains with that stuff for?" he said.
"It amuses me."
"Oh--so long as you're amused."
He pushed away the book that had offended him.
They talked--about the Vicar, about Alice, about Rowcliffe's children,
about the changes in the Dale, the coming of the Maceys and the going
of young Grierson.
"He wasn't a bad chap, Grierson."
He softened, remembering Grierson.
"I can't think why you didn't care about him."
And at the thought of how Gwenda might have cared for Grierson and
hadn't cared his youth revived; it came back into his eyes and lit
them; it passed into his scowling face and caressed and smoothed it to
the perfect look of reminiscent satisfaction. Rowcliffe did not know,
neither did she, how his egoism hung upon her passion, how it drew
from it food and fire.
He raised his head and squared his shoulders with the unconscious
gesture of his male pride.
* * * * *
It was then that she saw for the first time that he wore the black tie
and had the black band of mourning on his sleeve.
"Oh Steven--what do you wear that for?"
"This? My poor old uncle died last week."
"Not the one I saw?"
"When?"
"At Mary's wedding."
"No. Another one. My father's brother."
He paused.
"It's made a great difference to me and Mary."
He said it gravely, mournfully almost. She looked at him with tender
eyes.
"I'm sorry, Steven."
He smiled faintly.
"Sorry, are you?"
"Yes. If you cared for him."
"I'm afraid I didn't very much. It's not as if I'd seen a lot of him."
"You said it's made a difference."
"So it has. He's left me a good four hundred a year."
"Oh--_that_ sort of difference."
"My dear girl, four hundred a year makes all the difference; it's no
use pretending that it doesn't."
"I'm not pretending. You sounded sorry and I was sorry for you. That
was all."
At that his egoism winced. It was as if she had accused him of
pretending to be sorry.
He looked at her sharply. His romantic youth died in that look.
* * * * *
Silence fell between them. But she was used to that. She even welcomed
it. Steven's silences brought him nearer to her than his speech.
Essy came in with the tea-tray.
He lingered uneasily after the meal, glancing now and then at the
clock. She was used to that, too. She also had her eyes on the clock,
measuring the priceless moments.
* * * * *
"Is anything worrying you, Steven?" she said presently.
"Why? Do I look worried?"
"Not exactly, but you don't look well."
"I'm getting a bit rusty. That's what's the matter with me. I want
some hard work to rub me up and put a polish on me and I can't get
it here. I've never had enough to do since I left Leeds. Harker was a
wise chap to stick to it. It would do me all the good in the world if
I went back."
"Then," she said, "you'll _have_ to go, Steven."
She did not know, in her isolation, that Rowcliffe had been going
about saying that sort of thing for the last seven years. She thought
it was the formidable discovery of time.
"You ought to go if you feel like that about it. Why don't you?"
"I don't know."
"You _do_ know."
She did not look at him as she spoke, so she missed his bewilderment.
"You know why you stayed, Steven."
He understood. He remembered. The dull red of his face flushed with
the shock of the memory.
"Do I?" he said.
"I made you."
His flush darkened. But he gave no other sign of having heard her.
"I don't know why I'm staying now."
He rose and looked at his watch.
"I must be going home," he said.
He turned at the threshold.
"I forgot to give you Mary's message. She sent her love and she wants
to know when you're coming again to see the babies."
"Oh--some day soon."
"You must make it very soon or they won't be babies any more. She's
dying to show them to you."
"She showed them to me the other day."
"She says it's ages since you've been. And if she says it is she
thinks it is."
Gwenda was silent.
"I'm coming all right, tell her."
"Well, but what day? We'd better fix it. Don't come on a Tuesday or a
Friday, I'll be out."
"I must come when I can."