The Three Sisters
May Sinclair
The Three Sisters XLVIII Page 2
"They shan't make you. I won't let them. It'll be all right, darling. I'll take you away with me to-morrow, and look after you, and keep you safe."
"But--they'll have to know."
"Yes. They'll have to know. I'll tell them."
She rose.
"Stay here," she said. "And keep quiet. I'm going to tell them now."
* * * * *
She went in to where they waited for her.
Her father and her sister lifted their eyes to her as she came in. Rowcliffe had turned away.
(Mary spoke.)
"Yes."
The Vicar looked sternly at his second daughter.
"She denies it?"
"No, Papa. She doesn't deny it."
He drove it home. "Has--she--confessed?"
"She's told me it's true--what you think."
In the silence that fell on the four Rowcliffe stayed he stood, downcast and averted. It was as if he felt that Gwenda could have charged him with betrayal of a trust.
The Vicar looked at his watch. He turned to Rowcliffe.
"Is that fellow coming, or is he not?"
"He won't funk it," said Rowcliffe.
He turned. His eyes met Gwenda's. "I think I can answer for his coming."
"Do you mean Jim Greatorex?" she said.
"Yes."
"What is it that he won't funk?"
She looked from one to the other. Nobody answered her. It was as if they were, all three, afraid of her.
"I see," she said. "If you ask me I think he'd much better not come."
"My dear Gwenda----" The Vicar was deferent to the power that had dragged Ally's confession from her.
"We _must_ get through with this. The sooner the better. It's what we're all here for."
"I know. Still--I think you'll have to leave it."
"Leave it?"
"Yes, Papa."
"We can't leave it," said Rowcliffe. "Something's got to be done."
The Vicar groaned and Rowcliffe had pity on him.
"If you'd like me to do it--I can interview him."
"I wish you would."
"Very well." He moved uneasily. "I'd better see him here, hadn't I?"
"You'd better not see him anywhere," said Gwenda. "He can't marry her."
She held them all three by the sheer shock of it.
The Vicar spoke first. "What do you mean, 'he can't'? He _must_."
"Do you mean," said Rowcliffe, surprised out of his reticence, "before this happened?"
"Yes."
"And she wouldn't have him?"
"No. She was afraid of him."
"She was afraid of him--and yet----" It was Mary who spoke now.
"Yes, Mary. And yet--she cared for him."
The Vicar turned on her.
"You're as bad as she is. How can you bring yourself to speak of it, if you're a modest girl? You've just told us that your sister's shameless. Are we to suppose that you're defending her?"
"I am defending her. There's nobody else to do it. You've all set on her and tortured her----"
"Not all, Gwenda," said Rowcliffe. But she did not heed him.
"She'd have told you everything if you hadn't frightened her. You haven't had an atom of pity for her. You've never thought of _her_ for a minute. You've been thinking of yourselves. You might have killed her. And you didn't care."
The Vicar looked at her.
"It's you, Gwenda, who don't care."
"About what she's done, you mean? I don't. You ought to be gentle with her, Papa. You drove her to it."
"We'll not say what drove her, Gwenda."
"She was driven," she said.
"'Let no man say he is tempted of God when he is driven by his own lusts and enticed,'" said the Vicar.
He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda. And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the first time the profound unspirituality of her father's face. She knew from what source his eyes drew their darkness. She understood the meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache. And she conceived a horror of his fatherhood.
"No man ought to say that of his own daughter. How does he know what's her own and what's his?" she said.
Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration. She was terrible; she was fierce; she was mad. But it was the fierceness and the madness of pity and of compassion.
She went on.
"You've no business to be hard on her. You must have known."
"I knew nothing," said the Vicar.
He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.
"You did know. You were warned. You were told not to shut her up. And you did shut her up. You can't blame her if she got away. You flung her to Jim Greatorex. There wasn't anybody who cared for her but him."
"Cared for her!" He snarled his disgust.
"Yes. Cared for her. You think that's horrible of her--that she should have gone to him--and yet you want to tie her to him when she's afraid of him. And I think it's horrible of you."
"She must marry him." Mary spoke again. "She's brought it on herself, Gwenda."
"She hasn't brought it on herself. And she shan't marry him."
"I'm afraid she'll have to," Rowcliffe said.
"She won't have to if I take her away somewhere and look after her. I mean to do it. I'll work for her. I'll take care of the child."
"Oh, you--_you----!_" The Vicar waved her away with a frantic flapping of his hands.
He turned to his son-in-law.
"Rowcliffe--I beg you--will you use your influence?"
"I have none."
That drew her. "Steven--help me--can't you see how terrible it is if she's afraid of him?"
"But _is_ she?"
He looked at her with his miserable eyes, then turned them from her, considering gravely she had said. It was then, while Rowcliffe was considering it, that the garden gate opened violently and fell to.
They waited for the sound of the front door bell.
Instead of it they heard two doors open and Ally's voice calling to Greatorex in the hall.
As the Vicar flung himself from his study into the other room he saw Alice standing close to Greatorex by the shut door. Her lover's arms were round her.
He laid his hands on them as if to tear them apart.
"You shall not touch my daughter--until you've married her."
The young man's right arm threw him off; his left arm remained round Alice.
"It's yo' s'all nat tooch her, Mr. Cartaret," he said. "Ef yo' coom between her an' mae I s'all 'ave t' kill yo'. I'd think nowt of it. Dawn't yo' bae freetened, my laass," he murmured tenderly.
The next instant he was fierce again.
"An' look yo' 'ere, Mr. Cartaret. It was yo' who aassked mae t' marry Assy. Do yo' aassk mae t' marry Assy now? Naw! Assy may rot for all yo' care. (It's all right, my sweet'eart. It's all right.) I'd a married Assy right enoof ef I'd 'a' looved her. But do yo' suppawss I'd 'a' doon it fer yore meddlin'? Naw! An' yo' need n' aassk mae t' marry yore daughter--(There--there--my awn laass)--"
"You are not going to be asked," said Gwenda. "You are not going to marry her."
"Gwenda," said the Vicar, "you will be good enough to leave this to me."
"It can't be left to anybody but Ally."
"It s'all be laft to her," said Greatorex.
He had loosened his hold of Alice, but he still stood between her and her father.
"It's for her t' saay ef she'll 'aave mae."
"She has said she won't, Mr. Greatorex."
"Ay, she's said it to mae, woonce. But I rackon she'll 'ave mae now."
"Not even now."
"She's toald yo'?"
He did not meet her eyes.
"Yes."
"She's toald yo' she's afraid o' mae?"
"Yes. And you know why."
"Ay. I knaw. Yo're afraid o' mae, Ally, because yo've 'eard I haven't always been as sober as I might bae; but yo're nat 'aalf as afraid o' mae, droonk or sober, as yo' are of yore awn faather. Yo' dawn't think I s'all bae 'aalf as 'ard an' crooil to yo' as yore faather is. She doosn't, Mr. Cartaret, an' thot's Gawd's truth."
"Yo' stond baack, sir. It's for 'er t' saay."
He turned to her, infinitely reverent, infinitely tender.
"Will yo' staay with 'im? Or will yo' coom with mae?"
"I'll come with you."
one shoulder turned to father, she cowered to her lover's breast.
"Ay, an' yo' need n' be afraaid I'll not bae sober. I'll bae sober enoof now. D'ye 'ear, Mr. Cartaret? Yo' need n' bae afraaid, either. I'll kape sober. I'd kape sober all my life ef it was awnly t' spite yo'. An' I'll maake 'er 'appy. For I rackon theer's noothin' I could think on would spite yo' moor. Yo' want mae t' marry 'er t' poonish 'er. _I_ knaw."
"That'll do, Greatorex," said Rowcliffe.
"Ay. It'll do," said Greatorex with a grin of satisfaction.
He turned to Alice, the triumph still flaming in his face. "Yo're _nat_ afraaid of mae?"
"Yo navver were," said Greatorex; and he laughed.
That laugh was more than Mr. Cartaret could bear. He thrust out his face toward Greatorex.
Rowcliffe, watching them, saw that he trembled and that the thrust-out, furious face was flushed deeply on the left side.
The Vicar boomed.
"You will leave my house this instant, Mr. Greatorex. And you will never come into it again."
But Greatorex was already looking for his cap.
"I'll navver coom into et again," he assented placably.
* * * * *
There were no prayers at the Vicarage that night.
* * * * *
It was nearly eleven o'clock. Greatorex was gone. Gwenda was upstairs helping Alice to undress. Mary sat alone in the dining-room, crying steadily. The Vicar and Rowcliffe were in the study.
"Rowcliffe," he said suddenly, "I feel very queer."
"I don't wonder, sir. I should go to bed if I were you."
"I shall. Presently."
"I think it would be better," said the Vicar slowly, "if I left the parish. It's the only solution I can see."
He meant to the problem of his respectability.
For he knew that there would be a problem if Gwenda came back to her father.
The Vicar rose heavily and went to his roll-top desk. He opened it and began fumbling about in it, looking for things.
He was doing this, it seemed to his son-in-law, for quite a long time.
But it was only eleven o'clock when Mary heard sounds in the study that terrified her, of a chair overturned and of a heavy body falling to the floor. And then Steven called to her.
She found him kneeling on the floor beside father, loosening his clothes. The Vicar's face, which she discerned half hidden between the bending head of Rowcliffe and his arms, was purple and horribly distorted.
"He's in a fit," he said. "Go upstairs and fetch Gwenda. And for God's sake don't let Ally see him."