LXI
That year, when spring warmed into summer, Gwenda's strength went from her.
She was always tired. She fought with her fatigue and got the better of it, but in a week or two it returned. Rowcliffe told her to rest and she rested, for a day or two, lying on the couch in the dining-room where Ally used to lie, and when she felt better she crawled out on to the moor and lay there.
One day she said to herself, "There's Ally. I'll go and see how she's getting on."
She dragged herself up the hill to Upthorne.
It was a day of heat and hidden sunlight. The moor and the marshes were drenched in the gray June mist. The hillside wore soft vapor like a cloak hiding its nakedness.
At the top of the Three Fields the nave of the old barn showed as if lifted up and withdrawn into the distance. But it was no longer solitary. The thorn-tree beside it had burst into white flower; it shimmered far-off under the mist in the dim green field, like a magic thing, half-hidden and about to disappear, remaining only for the hour of its enchantment.
It gave her the same subtle and mysterious joy that she had had on the night she and Rowcliffe walked together and saw the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge white under the hidden moon.
The gray Farm-house was changed, for Jim Greatorex had got on. He had built himself another granary on the north side of the mistal. He built it long and low, of hewn stone, with a corrugated iron roof. And he had made himself two fine new rooms, a dining-room and a nursery, one above the other, within the blind walls of the house where the old granary had been. The walls were blind no longer, for he had knocked four large windows out of them. And it was as if one-half of the house were awake and staring while the other half, in its old and alien beauty, dozed and dreamed under its scowling mullions.
As Gwenda came to it she wondered how the Farm could ever have seemed sinister and ghost-haunted; it had become so entirely the place of happy life.
Loud noises came from the open windows of the dining-room where the family were at tea; the barking of dogs, the competitive laughter of small children, a gurgling and crowing and spluttering; with now and then the sudden delicate laughter of Ally and the bellowing of Jim.
"Oh—there's Gwenda!" said Ally.
Jim stopped between a bellowing and a choking, for his mouth was full.
"Ay—it's 'er."
He washed down his mouthful. "Coom, Ally, and open door t' 'er."
But Ally did not come. She had her year-old baby on her knees and was feeding him.
At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the hand.
"Thot's right," he said. "Yo've joost coom in time for a cup o' tae.
T' misses is in there wi' t' lil uns."
He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.
Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been. He had lost his savage grace. But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.
Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed. "I can't get up," she said, "I'm feeding Baby. He'd howl if I left off."
"I'd let 'im howl. I'd spank him ef 'twas me," said Jim.
"He wouldn't, Gwenda."
"Ay, thot I would. An' 'e knows it, doos Johnny, t' yoong rascal."
Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and little Steven and the baby John. They lifted little sticky faces and wiped them on Gwenda's face, and the happy din went on.
Ally didn't seem to mind it. She had grown plump and pink and rather like Mary without her subtlety. She sat smiling, tranquil among the cries of her offspring.
Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline. He and Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained. Now and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.
"And Baby's got another tooth," said Ally.
"I'm breaakin' in t' yoong chestnut," said Jim. "Poor Daasy's gettin' paasst 'er work."
All these happenings were exciting and wonderful to Ally.
"But you're not interested, Gwenda."
"I am, darling, I am."
She was. Ally knew it but she wanted perpetual reassurance.
"But you never tell us anything."
"There's nothing to tell. Nothing happens."
"Oh, come," said Ally, "how's Papa?"
"Much the same except that he drove into Morfe yesterday to see
Molly."
"Yes, darling, of course you may."
Ally was abstracted, for Gwenny had slipped from her chair and was whispering in her ear.
It never occurred to Ally to ask what Gwenda had been doing, or what she had been thinking of, or what she felt, or to listen to anything she had to say.
Her sister might just as well not have existed for all the interest Ally showed in her. She hadn't really forgotten what Gwenda had done for her, but she couldn't go on thinking about it forever. It was the sort of thing that wasn't easy or agreeable to think about and Ally's instinct of self-preservation urged her to turn from it. She tended to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as her own terrors and her father's illness and the noises Greatorex made when he was eating.
Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally's and it had never hurt her till to-day. To-day she wanted something from Ally. She didn't know what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn't got.
She only said, "Have you seen the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge?"
And Ally never answered. She was heading off a stream of jam that was creeping down Stevey's chin to plunge into his neck.
"Gwenda's aasskin' yo 'ave yo seen t' thorn-trees on Greffington
Edge," said Greatorex. He spoke to Ally as if she were deaf.
She made a desperate effort to detach herself from Stevey.
"The thorn-trees? Has anybody set fire to them?"
"Tha silly laass!——"
"What about the thorn-trees, Gwenda?"
"Only that they're all in flower," Gwenda said.
She didn't know where it had come from, the sudden impulse to tell
Ally about the beauty of the thorn-trees.
But the impulse had gone. She thought sadly, "They want me. But they don't want me for myself. They don't want to talk to me. They don't know what to say. They don't know anything about me. They don't care—really. Jim likes me because I've stuck to Ally. Ally loves me because I would have given Steven to her. They love what I was, not what I am now, nor what I shall be.
"They have nothing for me."
It was Jim who answered her. "I knaw," he said, "I knaw."
"Oh! You little, little—lamb!"
Baby John had his fingers in his mother's hair.
* * * * *
Greatorex rose. "You'll not get mooch out o' Ally as long as t' kids are about. Yo'd best coom wi' mae into t' garden and see t' loopins."
She went with him.
He was silent as they threaded the garden path together. She thought,
"I know why I like him."
They came to a standstill at the south wall where the tall blue lupins rose between them, vivid in the tender air and very still.
Greatorex also was still. His eyes looked away over the blue spires of the lupins to the naked hillside. They saw neither the hillside nor anything between.
When he spoke his voice was thick, almost as though he were in love or intoxicated.
"I knaw what yo mane about those thorn-trees. 'Tisn' no earthly beauty what yo see in 'em."
"Jim," she said, "shall I always see it?"
"I dawn—knaw. It cooms and it goas, doos sech-like."
"What makes it come?"
"What maakes it coom? Yo knaw better than I can tall yo."
"If I only did know. I'm afraid it's going."
"I can tell yo this for your coomfort. Ef yo soofer enoof mebbe it'll coom t' yo again. Ef yo're snoog and 'appy sure's death it'll goa."
He paused.
"It 'assn't coom t' mae sence I married Ally."
She was wrong about Jim. He had not forgotten her. He was not saying these things for himself; he was saying them for her, getting them out of himself with pain and difficulty. It was odd to think that nobody but she understood Jim, and that nobody but Jim had ever really understood her. Steven didn't understand her, any more than Ally understood her husband. And it made no difference to her, and it made no difference to Jim.
"I'll tell yo anoother quare thing. 'T' assn't got mooch t' do wi' good and baad. T' drink 'll nat drive it from yo, an' sin'll nat drive it from yo. Saw I raakon 't is mooch t' saame thing as t' graace o' Gawd."
"Did the grace of God go away from you when you married, Jim?"
"Mebbe t' would 'aave ef I'd roon aaffter it. 'Tis a tricky thing is
Gawd's graace."
"But it's gone," she said. "You gave your soul for Ally when you married her."
He smiled. "I toald 'er I'd give my sawl t' marry 'er," he said.