The Three Sisters

by May Sinclair

XXXVIII

The next person to be told was Rowcliffe.

It was known in the village through the telegrams that Gwenda was going away. The postmistress told Mrs. Gale, who told Mrs. Blenkiron. These two persons and four or five others had known ever since Sunday that the Vicar's daughter was going away; and the Vicar did not know it yet.

And Mrs. Blenkiron told Rowcliffe on the Wednesday before Alice told him.

For it was Alice who told him, and not Gwenda. Gwenda was not at home when he called at the Vicarage at three o'clock. But he heard from Alice that she would be back at four.

And it was Alice who told Mrs. Gale that when the doctor called again he was to be shown into the study.

He had waited there thirteen minutes before Gwenda came to him.

He looked at her and was struck by a difference he found in her, a difference that recalled some look in her face that he had seen before. It was dead white, and in its whiteness her blue eyes, dark and dilated, quivered with defiance and a sort of fear. She looked older and at the same time younger, as young as Alice and as helpless in her fear. Then he remembered that she had looked like that the night she had passed him in the doorway of the house at Upthorne.

"How cold your hands are," he said.

She hid them behind her back as if they had betrayed her.

"Do you want to see me about Ally?"

"No, I don't want to see you about Ally. I want to see you about yourself."

Her eyes quivered again.

"Won't you come into the drawing-room, then?"

"I'd rather stay here if you don't mind. I say, how much time have I?"

"Till when?"

"Well—till your father comes back?"

"He won't be back for another hour. But—"

"I hear you're going away on Friday; and that you're going for good."

"Did Mary tell you?"

"No. It was Alice. She said I was to try and stop you."

"You can't stop me if I want to go."

"I'll do my best."

They stood, as they talked, in rigid attitudes that suggested that neither was going to yield an inch.

"Why didn't you tell me yourself, Gwenda?"

She closed her eyes. It was as if she had forgotten why.

"Was it because you knew I wouldn't let you? Did you want to go as much as all that?"

"It looks like it, doesn't it?"

"Yes. But you don't want to go a bit."

"Would I go if I didn't?"

"Yes. It's just the sort of thing you would do, if you thought it would annoy me. It's only what you've been doing for the last three months—getting away from me."

"Three months—?"

"Oh, I cared for you before that. It's only the last three months I've been trying to tell you."

"You never told me anything."

"Because you never gave me a chance. You kept on putting me off."

"And if I did, didn't that show that I didn't want you to tell me? I don't want you to tell me now."

He made an impatient movement.

"But you knew without telling. You knew then."

"I didn't. I didn't."

"Well, then, you know now. Will you marry me or will you not? I want it straight."

"No. No."

"And—why not?"

He was horribly cool and calm.

"Because I don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody."

"Good God! What do you want, then?"

"I want to go away and earn my own living as other women do."

The absurdity of it melted him. He could have gone down on his knees at her feet and kissed her cold hands. He wondered afterward why on earth he hadn't. Then he remembered that all the time she had kept her hands locked behind her.

"You poor child, you don't want to earn your own living. I'll tell you what you do want. You want to get away from home."

"And what if I do? You've seen what it's like. Would you stay in it a day longer than you could help if you were me?"

"Of course I wouldn't. Of course I've seen what it's like. I saw it the first time I saw you here in this detestable house. I want to take you away out of it. I think I wanted to take you away then."

"Oh, no. Not then. Not so long ago as that."

It was as if she had said, "Not that. That makes it too hard. Any cruelty you like but that, or I can't go through with it."

"Yes," he said, "as long ago as that."

"You can't take me away."

"Can't I? I can take you anywhere. And I will. Anywhere you like.
You've only got to say. I know I can make you happy."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know you."

"That's what you're always saying. And you know nothing about me.
Nothing. Nothing."

She said to herself: "He doesn't. He doesn't even know why I'm going."

"I know a lot more than you think. And a lot more than you know yourself. I know that you're not happy as you are, and I know that you can't live without happiness. If you're not happy you'll be ill; more horribly ill, perhaps, than Alice. Look at Alice."

"I'm not like Alice."

"Not now. Not next year. Not for ten years, perhaps, or twenty. But you don't know what you may be."

She raised her head.

"I shall never be like that. Never."

Rowcliffe laughed.

It struck her then that that was what she ought never to have said if she wanted to carry out her purpose.

"When I say I'm not like Ally I mean that I'm not so dependent on people. I'm not gentle like Ally. I'm not as loving and I'm not as womanly. In fact, I'm not womanly at all."

"My dear child, do you suppose it matters to me what you're not, as long as I love you as you are?"

"No," she said, "you don't love me really. You only think you do."

She clung to that.

"Why do you say that, Gwenda?"

"Because, if you did, I should have known it before now."

"Well, considering that you do know it now—"

"I mean, you'd have said so before."

"I say! I like that. I'd have said so about five times if you'd ever given me a chance."

"Oh, no. You had your chance."

"When did I have it? When?"

"The other day. Up at Bar Hill."

"You thought so then?"

"I didn't say I thought so then. I think so now."

"That's rather clever of you. Because, you see, if you thought so then that shows—"

"What does it show?"

"Why, that you knew all the time—and that you were thinking of me.
You did know. You did think—"

"No. No. It's only that I've got to—that you're making me think of you now. But I'm not thinking of you the way you want."

"If you're not—if you haven't thought of me—the way I want—then I can't make you out. You're beyond me."

They sat down, tired out with the struggle, as if they had reached the same point of exhaustion at the same instant.

"Why not leave it at that?" she said.

He rallied.

"Because I can't leave it at that. You knew I cared. You must have seen. I could have sworn you saw. I could have sworn—"

She knew what he was going to swear and she stopped him.

"I did see that you thought you cared for me. If you'd been quite sure you'd have told me. You wouldn't have waited. You're not quite sure now. You're only telling me now because I'm going away. If I hadn't said I was going away you'd never have told me. You'd just have gone on waiting till you were quite sure."

She had irritated him now beyond endurance.

"Gwenda," he said savagely, "you're enough to drive a man mad."

"You've told me that before, anyhow. Don't you see that I should go on driving you mad? Don't you see how unhappy you'd be with me, how impossible it all is?"

She laughed. It was marvelous to her how she achieved that laugh. It was as if she had just thought of it and it came.

"I can see," he said, "that you don't care for me."

He had given himself into her hands—hands that seemed to him diabolic in their play.

"Did I ever say I cared?"

"Well—of all the women—you are——! No, you didn't say it."

"Did I ever show it?"

"Good God, how do I know what you showed? If it had been any other woman—yes, I could have sworn."

"You can't swear to any woman—I'm afraid—till you've married her.
Perhaps—not then."

"You shouldn't say things like that; they sound——"

"How do they sound?"

"As if you knew too much."

She smiled.

"Well, then—there's another reason."

He softened suddenly.

"I didn't mean that, Gwenda. You don't know what you're saying. You don't know anything. It's only that you're so beastly clever."

"That's a better reason still. You don't want to marry a beastly clever woman. You really don't."

"I'd risk it. That sort of cleverness doesn't last long."

"It would last your time," she said.

She rose. It was as much as giving him his dismissal.

He stood a moment watching her. She and all her movements still seemed to him incredible.

"Do you mind telling me where you're going to?"

"I'm going to Mummy." She explained to his blankness: "My stepmother."

He remembered. Mummy was the lady who was "the very one," the lady of remarkable resources.

It seemed to him then that he saw it all. He knew what she was going for.

"I see. Instead of your sister," he sneered.

"Papa wouldn't let Ally go to her. But he can't stop me."

"Oh, no. Nobody could stop you."

She smiled softly. She had missed the brutality of his emphasis.

* * * * *

He said to himself that Gwenda was impossible. She was obstinate and conceited and wrong-headed. She was utterly selfish, a cold mass of egoism.

"Cold?" He was not so sure. She might be. But she was capable, he suspected, of adventures. Instead of taking her sister away to have her chance, she was rushing off to secure it herself. And the irony of the thing was that it was he who had put it into her head.

Well—she was no worse, and no better—than the rest of them. Only unlike them in the queerness of her fascination. He wondered how long it would have lasted?

You couldn't go on caring for a woman like that, who had never cared a rap about you.

And yet—he could have sworn—Oh, that was nothing. She had only thought of him because he had been her only chance.

He made himself think these things of her because they gave him unspeakable consolation.

All the way back to Morfe he thought them, while on his right hand Karva rose and receded and rose again, and changed at every turn its aspect and its form. He thought them to an accompaniment of an interior, persistent voice, the voice of his romantic youth, that said to him, "That is her hill, her hill—do you remember? That's where you met her first. That's where you saw her jumping. That's her hill—her hill—her hill."