XXXVII
What Gwenda had to do she did quickly.
She wrote to the third Mrs. Cartaret that night. She told her nothing except that she wanted to get something to do in London and to get it as soon as possible, and she asked her stepmother if she could put her up for a week or two until she got it. And would Mummy mind wiring Yes or No on Saturday morning?
It was then Thursday night.
She slipped out into the village about midnight to post the letter, though she knew that it couldn't go one minute before three o'clock on Friday afternoon.
She had no conscious fear that her will would fail her, but her instinct was appeased by action.
On Saturday morning Mrs. Cartaret wired: "Delighted. Expect you
Friday. Mummy."
Five intolerable days. They were not more intolerable than the days that would come after, when the thing she was doing would be every bit as hard. Only her instinct was afraid of something happening within those five days that would make the hard thing harder.
On Sunday Mrs. Cartaret's letter came. Her house, she said, was crammed with fiends till Friday. There was a beast of a woman in Gwenda's room who simply wouldn't go. But on Friday Gwenda's room would be ready. It had been waiting for her all the time. Hadn't they settled it that Gwenda was to come and live with her if things became impossible at home? Robina supposed they were impossible? She sent her love to Alice and Mary, and she was always Gwenda's loving Mummy. And she enclosed a five-pound note; for she was a generous soul.
On Monday Gwenda told Peacock the carrier to bring her a Bradshaw from
Reyburn.
* * * * *
She then considered how she was to account to her family for her departure.
She decided that she would tell Mary first. And she might as well tell her the truth while she was about it, since, if she didn't, Mary would be sure to find it out. She was sweet and good. Not so sweet and good that she couldn't hold her own against Papa if she was driven to it, but sweet enough and good enough to stand by Ally and to see her through.
It would be easy for Mary. It wasn't as if she had ever even begun to care for Rowcliffe. It wasn't as if Rowcliffe had ever cared for her.
And she could be trusted. A secret was always safe with Mary. She was positively uncanny in her silence, and quite superhumanly discreet.
Mary, then, should be told the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Her father should be told as much of it as he was likely to believe.
Ally, of course, mustn't have an inkling.
Mary herself had an inkling already when she appeared that evening in the attic where Gwenda was packing a trunk. She had a new Bradshaw in her hand.
"Peacock gave me this," said Mary. "He said you ordered it."
"So I did," said Gwenda.
"What on earth for?"
"To look up trains in."
"Why—is anybody coming?"
"Does anybody ever come?"
Mary's face admitted her absurdity.
"Then"—she made it out almost with difficulty—"somebody must be going away."
"How clever you are. Somebody is going away."
Mary twisted her brows in her perplexity. She was evidently thinking things.
"Do you mean—Steven Rowcliffe?"
"No, dear lamb." (What on earth had put Steven Rowcliffe into Mary's head?) "It's not as bad as all that. It's only a woman. In fact, it's only me."
Mary's face emptied itself of all expression; it became a blank screen suddenly put up before the disarray of hurrying, eager things, unclothed and unexpressed.
"I'm going to stay with Mummy."
Gwenda closed the lid of the trunk and sat on it.
(Perturbation was now in Mary's face.)
"You can't, Gwenda. Papa'll never let you go."
"He can't stop me."
"What on earth are you going for?"
"Not for my own amusement, though it sounds amusing."
"Does Mummy want you?"
"Whether she wants me or not, she's got to have me."
"For how long?"
(Mary's face was heavy with thought now.)
"I don't know. I'm going to get something to do."
"To do?"
(Mary said to herself, then certainly it was not amusing. She pondered it.)
"Is it," she brought out, "because of Steven Rowcliffe?"
"No. It's because of Ally."
"Ally?"
"Yes. Didn't Papa tell you about her?"
"Not he. Did he tell you?"
"No. It was Steven Rowcliffe."
And she told Mary what Rowcliffe had said to her.
She had made room for her on her trunk and they sat there, their bodies touching, their heads drawn back, each sister staring with eyes that gave and took the other's horror.
* * * * *
"Don't, Molly, don't——"
Mary was crying now.
"Does Papa know—that she'll die—or go mad?"
"Yes."
"But"—Mary lifted her stained face—"that's what they said about
Mother."
"If she had children. It's if Ally hasn't any."
"And Papa knew it then. And he knows it now—how awful."
"It isn't as awful as Steven Rowcliffe thinks. He doesn't really know what's wrong with her. He doesn't know she's in love with him."
"Poor Ally. What's the good? He isn't in love with her."
"He isn't now," said Gwenda. "But he will be."
"Not he. It's you he cares for—if he cares for anybody."
"I know. That's why I'm going."
"Oh, Gwenda——"
Mary's face was somber as she took it in.
"That won't do Ally any good. If you know he cares."
"I don't absolutely know it. And if I did it wouldn't make any difference."
"And if—you care for him?"
"That doesn't make any difference either. I've got to clear out. It's her one chance, Molly. I've got to give it her. How can I let her die, poor darling, or go mad? She'll be all right if he marries her."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He may, Molly, he may, if I clear out in time. Anyhow, there isn't anybody else."
"If only," Mary said, "Papa had kept a curate."
"But he hasn't kept a curate. He never will keep a curate. And if he does he'll choose a man with a wife and seven children—no, he'll choose no children. The wife mustn't have a chance of dying."
"Gwenda—do you think anybody knows? They did, you know—before, and it was awful."
"Nobody knows this time, except Papa and Steven Rowcliffe and you and me."
"I wish I didn't. I wish you hadn't told me."
"You had to know or I wouldn't have told you. Do you think Steven
Rowcliffe would have told me——"
"How could he? It was awful of him."
"He could because he isn't a coward or a fool and he knew that I'm not a coward or a fool either. He thought Ally had nobody but me. She'll have nobody but you when I'm gone. You mustn't let her see you think her awful. You mustn't think it. She isn't. She's as good as gold. Steven Rowcliffe said so. If she wasn't, Molly, I wouldn't ask you to help her—with him."
"Gwenda, you mustn't put it all on me. I'd do anything for poor Ally, but I can't make him marry her if he doesn't want to."
"I think Ally can make him want to, if she gets a chance. You've only got to stick to her and see her through. You'll have to ask him here, you know. She can't. And you'll have to keep Papa off her. If you're not very careful, he'll go and put her under restraint or something."
"Oh—would it come to that?"
"Yes. Papa'd do it like a shot. I believe he'd do it just to stop her marrying him. You mustn't tell Papa what I've told you. You mustn't tell Ally. And you mustn't tell him. Do you hear, Molly? You must never tell him."
"Of course I won't tell him. But it's no use thinking we can do things."
Gwenda stood up.
"We haven't got to do things. That's his business. We've only got to sit tight and play the game."
* * * * *
Gwenda went on with her packing.
"It will be time enough," she thought, "to tell Ally tomorrow."
Ally was in her room. She never came downstairs now; and this week she was worse and had stayed all day in bed. They couldn't rouse her.
But something had roused her this evening.
A sort of scratching on the door made Gwenda look up from her packing.
Ally stood on the threshold. She had dressed herself completely in her tweed skirt, white blouse and knitted tie. Her strength had failed her only in the struggle with her hair. The coil had fallen, and hung in a loose pigtail down her back. Slowly, in the weakness of her apathy, she trailed across the floor.
"Ally, what is it? Why didn't you send for me?"
"It's all right. I wanted to get up. I'm coming down to supper. You can leave off packing that old trunk. You haven't got to go."
"Who told you I was going?"
"Nobody. I knew it." She answered Gwenda's eyes. "I don't know how
I knew it, but I did. And I know why you're going and it's all rot.
You're going because you know that if you stay Steven Rowcliffe'll
marry you, and you think that if you go he'll marry me."
"Whatever put that idea into your head?"
"Nothing put it. It came. It shows how awful you must think me if you think I'd go and do a beastly thing like that."
"Like what?"
"Why—sneaking him away from you behind your back when I know you like him. You needn't lie about it. You do like him.
"I may be awful," she went on. "In fact I know I'm awful. But I'm decent. I couldn't do a caddish thing like that—I couldn't really. And, if I couldn't, there's no need for you to go."
She was sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They ceased and she looked up.
And in her look, a look that for the moment was divinely lucid, Gwenda saw Ally's secret and hidden kinship with herself. She saw it as if through some medium, once troubled and now made suddenly transparent. It was because of that queer kinship that Ally had divined her. However awful she was, however tragically foredoomed and driven, Ally was decent. She knew what Gwenda was doing because it was what, if any sustained lucidity were ever given her, she might have done herself.
But in Ally no idea but the one idea was very deeply rooted. Sustained lucidity never had been hers. It would be easy to delude her.
"I'm going," Gwenda said, "because I want to. If I stayed I wouldn't marry Steven Rowcliffe, and Steven Rowcliffe wouldn't marry me."
"But—I thought—I thought——"
"What did you think?"
"That there was something between you. Papa said so."
"If Papa said so you might have known there was nothing in it."
"And isn't there?"
"Of course there isn't. You can put that idea out of your head forever."
"All the same I believe that's why you're going."
"I'm going because I can't stand this place any longer. You said I'd be sick of it in three months."
"You're not sick of it. You love it. It's me you can't stand."
"No, Ally—no."
She plunged for another argument and found it.
"What I can't stand is living with Papa."
Ally agreed that this was rather more than plausible.