XVIII
The next day, which was a Tuesday, Alice was up and about again. Rowcliffe saw her on Wednesday and on Saturday, when he declared himself satisfied with her progress and a little surprised.
So surprised was he that he said he would not come again unless he was sent for.
And then in three days Alice slid back.
But they were not to worry about her, she said. There was nothing the matter with her except that she was tired. She was so tired that she lay all Tuesday on the drawing-room sofa and on Wednesday morning she was too tired to get up and dress.
And on Wednesday afternoon Dr. Rowcliffe found a note waiting at the blacksmith's cottage in Garth village, where he had a room with a brown gauze blind in the window and the legend in gilt letters:
SURGERY
Dr. S. Rowcliffe, M.D., F.R.C.S.
Hours of Attendance
Wednesday, 2.30-4.30.
The note ran:
"DEAR DR. ROWCLIFFE: Can you come and see me this afternoon? I think I'm rather worse. But I don't want to frighten my people—so perhaps, if you just looked in about teatime, as if you'd called?
"Yours truly,
"ALICE CARTARET."
Essy Gale had left the note that morning.
Rowcliffe looked at it dubiously. He was honest and he had the large views of a man used to a large practice. His patients couldn't complain that he lengthened his bills by paying unnecessary visits. If he wanted to add to his income in that way, he wasn't going to begin with a poor parson's hysterical daughter. But as the Vicar of Garth had called on him and left his card on Monday, there was no reason why he shouldn't look in on Wednesday about teatime. Especially as he knew that the Vicar was in the habit of visiting Upthorne and the outlying portions of his parish on Wednesday afternoons.
* * * * *
All day Alice lay in her little bed like a happy child and waited. Propped on her pillows, with her slender arms stretched out before her on the counterpane, she waited.
Her sullenness was gone. She had nothing but sweetness for Mary and for Essy. Even to her father she was sweet. She could afford it. Her instinct was now sure. From time to time a smile flickered on her small face like a light almost of triumph.
* * * * *
The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the
Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her.
He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the
Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him.
He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in the village that she was not so well.
"I'm afraid she isn't."
"May I see her? I don't mean professionally—just for a talk."
The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom bills were nightmares.
She took him upstairs.
On the landing she turned to him.
"She doesn't look worse. She looks better."
"All right. She won't deceive me."
She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a faint opaline dawn of color in her face.
Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a quarter of an hour he kept it up.
And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better. You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste all this glorious air?"
"If I could live on air!" said Alice.
"You can—you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live without it."
Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him.
"But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may."
"At teatime?"
"Very well—at teatime."
* * * * *
"How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.
"She's better."
"Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?"
"He called—on you, I think."
(Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving plainly that his visit was not professional.)
"And you made him see her?" he insisted.
"He saw her."
"Well?"
"He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the open air."
"It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."
He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.
"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."
But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it meant—that air of wisdom and of patience.
Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.
"I won't have him sent for—do you hear?"
And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give young Rowcliffe a hint. It was to give him a hint that he had called on Monday.
* * * * *
But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe. For before he could brace himself to the effort Alice was well again.
Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime the next Wednesday and the next after that.
Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him.