The Three Sisters
May Sinclair
The Three Sisters XVI
She waited in the little cold and formal dining-room that looked through two windows on to the Green. So formal and so cold, so utterly impersonal was the air of the doctor's mahogany furniture that her fear left her. It was as if the furniture assured her that she would not really _see_ Rowcliffe; as for knowing him, she needn't worry.
She had sent in her card, printed for convenience with the names of the three sisters:
Miss Cartaret. Miss Gwendolen Cartaret. Miss Alice Cartaret.
Rowcliffe was washing his hands in the surgery when the card was brought to him. He frowned at the card.
"But--You've brought this before," he said. "I've seen the lady."
"No, sir. It's another lady."
"Yes, sir. Quite certain."
"Did she come on a bicycle?"
"No, sir, that was the lady you've seen. I think this'll be her sister."
"She's different, sir. Taller like."
"Taller?"
"Yes, sir."
Rowcliffe turned to the table and picked up a probe and a lancet and dropped them into a sterilising solution.
The maid waited. Rowcliffe's absorption was complete.
"Shall I ask her to call again, sir?"
"No. I'll see her. Where is she?"
"Show her into the study."
Nothing could have been more distant and reserved than Rowcliffe's dining-room. But, to a young woman who had made up her mind that she didn't want to know anything about him, Rowcliffe's study said too much. It told her that he was a ferocious and solitary reader; for in the long rows of book shelves the books leaned slantwise across the gaps where his hands had rummaged and ransacked. It told her that his gods were masculine and many--Darwin and Spencer and Haeckel, Pasteur, Curie and Lord Lister, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman and Bernard Shaw. Their photogravure portraits hung above the bookcase. He was indifferent to mere visible luxury, or how could he have endured the shabby drugget, the cheap, country wall-paper with its design of dreadful roses on a white watered ground? But the fire in the grate and the deep arm-chair drawn close to it showed that he loved warmth and comfort. That his tastes made him solitary she gathered from the chair's comparatively unused and unworn companion, lurking and sulking in the corner where it had been thrust aside.
The one window of this room looked to the west upon a little orchard, gray trunks of apple trees and plum trees against green grass, green branches against gray stone, gray that was softened in the liquid autumn air, green that was subtle, exquisite, charmingly austere.
He could see his little orchard as he sat by his fire. She thought she rather liked him for keeping his window so wide open.
She was standing by it looking at the orchard as he came in.
* * * * *
He was so quiet in his coming that she did not see or hear him till he stood before her.
And in his eyes, intensely quiet, there was a look of wonder and of incredulity, almost of concern.
"I'm sorry you should have had to come to me," he said, "your sister was here a minute or two ago."
"I think it _must_ have been your sister. She said it was _her_ sister I was to go and see."
"I didn't know she was coming. She never told me."
"Then you know? She told you?"
"She told me something." He smiled. "She must have been a little overanxious. You don't look as if there was very much the matter with you."
"But there isn't. It isn't me."
"Who is it then?"
"My otsister."
"Oh. I seem to have got a little mixed."
"You see, there are three of us."
He laughed.
"Three! Let me get it right. I've seen Miss Cartaret. You are Miss Gwendolen Cartaret. And the lady I am to see is--?
"My youngest sister, Alice."
"Now I understand. I wondered how you managed those four miles. Tell me about her."
She began. She was vivid and terse. He saw that she made short cuts to the root of the matter. He showed himself keen and shrewd. Once or twice he said "I know, I know," and she checked herself.
"My sister has told you all that."
"No, she hasn't. Nothing like it. Please go on."
She went on till he interrupted her. "How old is she?"
"Just twenty-three."
"I see. Yes." He looked so keen now that she was frightened.
"Does that make it more dangerous?" she said.
He laughed. "No. It makes it less so. I don't suppose it's dangerous at all. But I can't tell till I've seen her. I say, you must be tired after that long walk."
"I'm never tired."
"That's good."
He rang the bell. The maid appeared.
"Tell Acroyd I want the trap. And bring tea--at once."
"For two, sir?"
"For two."
"Please stay. It won't take five minutes. Then I can drive you back."
"I can walk."
"I know you can. But--you see--" His keenness and shrewdness went from him. He was almost embarrassed. "I _was_ going round to see your sister in the morning. But--I think I'd rather see her to-night. And--" He was improvising freely now--"I ought, perhaps, to see you after, as you understand the case. So, if you don't _mind_ coming back with me--"
She didn't mind. Why should she?
She stayed. She sat in Rowcliffe's chair before his fire and drank his tea and ate his hot griddle-cakes (she had a healthy appetite, being young and strong). She talked to him as if she had known him a long time. All these things he made her do, and when he talked to her he made her forget what had brought her there; he made her forget Alice and Mary and father.
he left her for a moment she got up, restless and eager to be gone. And when he came back to her she was standing by the open window again, looking at the orchard.
Rowcliffe looked at _her_, taking in her tallness, her slenderness, the lithe and beautiful line of her body, curved slightly backward as she leaned against the window wall.
Never before and never again, afterwards, never, that was to say, for any other woman, did Rowcliffe feel what he felt then. Looking back on it (afterward) he could only describe it as a sense of certainty. It lacked, surprisingly, the element of surprise.
She turned, smiling. "I like it very much."
They had been a long time over tea. It was half-past five before they started. He brought an overcoat and put it on her. He wrapped a rug round her knees and feet and tucked it well in.
They were soon out on the moor.
Rowcliffe's youth rose in him and put words into his mouth.
"Ripping country, this."
She said it was ripping.
For the life of them they couldn't have said more about it. were no words for the inscrutable ecstasy it gave them.
As they passed Karva Rowcliffe smiled.
"It's all right," he said, "my driving you. Of course you don't remember, but we've met--several times before."
"Where?"
"I'll show you where. Anyhow, that's your hill, isn't it?"
"How did you know it was?"
They came.
"Just here," he said.
And now they were in sight of Garthdale.
"Funny I should have thought it was you who were ill."
"I'm never ill."
"You won't be as long as you can walk like that. And run. And jump--"
A horrid pause.
Another pause, not quite so horrid.
And then--"Do you _always_ walk after dark and before sunrise?"
And it was as if he had said, "Why am I always meeting you? What do you do it for? It's queer, isn't it?"
But he had given her her chance. She rose to it.
("Counting me," he thought, "as nobody.")
He knew he would not really have liked it. But his romantic youth persuaded him in that moment that he would.