XLVII
The train from Durlingham rolled slowly into Reyburn station.
Gwenda Cartaret leaned from the window of a third class carriage and looked up and down the platform. She got out, handing her suit-case to a friendly porter. Nobody had come to meet her. They were much too busy up at the Vicarage.
From the next compartment there alighted a group of six persons, a lady in widow's weeds, an elderly lady and gentleman who addressed her affectionately as "Fanny, dear," and (obviously belonging to the pair) a very young man and a still younger woman.
There was also a much older man, closely attached to them, but not quite so obviously related.
These six people also looked up and down the platform, expecting to be met. They were interested in Gwenda Cartaret. They gazed at her as they had already glanced, surreptitiously and kindly, on the platform at Durlingham. Now they seemed to be saying to themselves that they were sure it must be she.
Gwenda walked quickly away from them and disappeared through the booking-office into the station yard.
And then Rowcliffe, who had apparently been hiding in the general waiting-room, came out on to the platform.
The six fell upon him with cries of joy and affection.
They were his mother, his paternal uncle and aunt, his two youngest cousins, and Dr. Harker, his best friend and colleague who had taken his place in January when he had been ill.
They had all come down from Leeds for Rowcliffe's wedding.
* * * * *
Rowcliffe's trap and Peacock's from Garthdale stood side by side in the station-yard.
Gwenda in Peacock's trap had left the town before she heard behind her the clanking hoofs of Rowcliffe's little brown horse.
She thought, "He will pass in another minute. I shall see him."
But she did not see him. All the way up Rathdale to Morfe the sound of the wheels and of the clanking hoofs pursued her, and Rowcliffe still hung back. He did not want to pass her.
"Well," said Peacock, "thot beats mae. I sud navver a thought thot t' owd maare could a got away from t' doctor's horse. Nat ef e'd a mind t' paass 'er."
"No," said Gwenda. She was thinking, "It's Mary. It's Mary. How could she, when she knew, when she was on her honor not to think of him?"
And she remembered a conversation she had had with her stepmother two months ago, when the news came. (Robina had seized the situation at a glance and she had probed it to its core.)
"You wanted him to marry Ally, did you? It wasn't much good you're going away if you left him with Mary."
"But," she had said, "Mary knew."
And Robina had answered, marvelously. "You should never have let her.
It was her knowing that did it. You were three women to one man, and
Mary was the one without a scruple. Do you suppose she'd think of Ally
or of you, either?"
And she had tried to be loyal to Mary and to Rowcliffe. She had said,
"If we were three, we all had our innings, and he made his choice."
And Robina, "It was Mary did the choosing."
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.)
She smiled. "You didn't stop me going, you know."
"If you'd only told me—"
She smiled again, a smile as of infinite wisdom. "Dear Steven, there was nothing to tell."
They had come to the door in the wall. It led into the garden. He opened to let her pass through.
The wedding-party was gathered together on the flagged path before the house. It greeted them with laughter and cries, cheerfully ironic.
The bride in her traveling dress stood on the threshold. Outside the carriage waited at the open gate.
Rowcliffe took Mary's hand in his and they ran down the path.
"He can sprint fast enough now," said Rowcliffe's uncle.
* * * * *
But his youngest cousin and Harker, his best friend, had gone faster. They were waiting together on the bridge, and the girl had a slipper in her hand.
"Were you ever," she said, "at such an awful wedding?"
Harker saw nothing wrong about the wedding but he admitted that his experience was small.
The youngest cousin was not appeased by his confession. She went on.
"Why on earth didn't Steven try to marry Gwenda?"
"Not much good trying," said the doctor, "if she wouldn't have him."
"You believe that silly story? I don't. Did you see her face?"
Harker admitted that he had seen her face.
And then, as the carriage passed, Rowcliffe's youngest cousin did an odd thing. She tossed the slipper over the bridge into the beck.
Harker had not time to comment on her action. They were coming for him from the house.
Rowcliffe's youngest sister-in-law had fainted away on the top landing.
Everybody remembered then that it was she who had been in love with him.