XXXV
Ally was ill; so ill this time that even the Vicar softened to her. He led her upstairs himself and made her go to bed and stay there. He would have sent for Rowcliffe but that Ally refused to see him.
Her mortal apathy passed for submission. She took her milk from her father's hand without a murmur. "There's a good girl," he said, as she drank it down.
But it didn't do her any good. Nothing did. The illness itself was no good to her, considering that she didn't want to be ill this time. She wanted to die. And of course she couldn't die. It would have been too much happiness and they wouldn't let her have it.
At first she resented what she called their interference. She declared, as she had declared before, that there was nothing the matter with her. She was only tired. Couldn't they see that she was tired? That they tired her?
"Why can't you leave me alone? If only you'd go away," she moaned, "—all of you—and leave me alone."
But very soon she was too tired even to be irritable. She lay quiet, sunk in the hollow of her bed, and kept her eyes shut, so that she never knew, she said, whether they were there or not. And it didn't matter. Nothing mattered so long as she could just lie there.
It was only when they talked of sending for Rowcliffe that they roused her. Then she sat up and became, first vehement, then violent.
"You shan't send for him," she cried. "I won't see him. If he comes into the house I'll crawl out of it."
* * * * *
One day (it was the last Wednesday in April) Gwenda came to her and told her that Rowcliffe was there and had asked to see her.
Ally's pale eyes lightened and grew large. They were transparent as glass in her white face.
"Did you send for him?"
"No."
"Who did then?"
"Papa."
She closed her eyes. The old sense of ecstasy came over her, of triumph too, of solemn triumph, as if she, whom they thought so insignificant, had vindicated her tragic dignity at last.
For if her father had sent for Rowcliffe it could only mean that she was really dying. Nothing else—nothing short of that—would have made him send.
And of course that was what she wanted, that Rowcliffe should see her die. He wouldn't forget her then. He would be compelled to think of her.
"You will see him, won't you, Ally?"
Ally smiled her little triumphant and mysterious smile.
"Oh yes, I'll see him."
* * * * *
The Vicar did not go on his rounds that afternoon. He stayed at home to talk to Rowcliffe. The two were shut up together in his study for more than half an hour.
As they entered the drawing-room at tea-time it could be seen from their manner and their faces that something had gone wrong. The Vicar bore himself like a man profoundly aggrieved, not to say outraged, in his own house, who nevertheless was observing a punctilious courtesy towards the offending guest. Rowcliffe's shoulders and his jaw were still squared in the antagonism that had closed their interview. He too observed the most perfect courtesy. Only by the consummate restraint of his manner did he show how impossible he had found the Vicar, while his face betrayed a grave preoccupation in which the Vicar counted not at all.
Mary began to talk to him about the weather. Neither she nor Gwenda dared ask him what he thought of Alice.
And in ten minutes he was gone. The Vicar went with him to the gate.
Still standing as they had stood to take leave of Rowcliffe, the sisters looked at each other. Mary spoke first.
"Whatever can Papa have said to him?"
This time Gwenda knew what Mary was thinking.
"It isn't that," she said. "It's something he's said to Papa."