Chapter 23
"a.s.sy Gaale? He would n' coom for a.s.sy's a.s.skin', a man like Greatorex."
Mrs. Blenkiron's blood, the blood of the Greatorexes, was up.
"Naw," said Jim Greatorex's kinswoman, "if you want Greatorex to sing for you as bad as all that, Miss Cartaret, you'd better speak to the doctor."
Rowcliffe became suddenly grave. He watched the door.
"He'd mebbe do it for him. He sats soom store by Dr. Rawcliffe."
"But"--Ally's voice sounded nearer--"he's gone, hasn't he?"
(The minx, the little, little minx!)
"Naw. But he's joost goin'. Shall I catch him?"
"You might."
Mrs. Blenkiron caught him on the threshold of the surgery.
"Will you speak to Miss Cartaret a minute, Dr. Rawcliffe?"
"Certainly."
Mrs. Blenkiron withdrew. The kitchen door closed on her flight. For the first time in their acquaintance Rowcliffe was alone with Alice Cartaret, and though he was interested he didn't like it.
"I thought I heard your voice," said he with reckless geniality.
They stood on their thresholds looking at each other across the narrow pa.s.sage. It was as if Alice Cartaret's feet were fixed there by an invisible force that held her fascinated and yet frightened.
Rowcliffe had paused too, as at a post of vantage, the better to observe her.
A moment ago, warming his hands in the surgery, he could have sworn that she, the little maneuvering minx, had laid a trap for him. She had come on her fool's errand, knowing that it was a fool's errand, for nothing on earth but that she might catch him, alone and defenseless, in the surgery. It was the sort of thing she did, the sort of thing she always would do. She didn't want to know (not she!) whether Jim Greatorex would sing or not, she wanted to know, and she meant to know, why he, Steven Rowcliffe, hadn't turned up that afternoon, and where he had gone, and what he had been doing, and the rest of it. There were windows at the back of the Vicarage. Possibly she had seen him charging up the hill in pursuit of her sister, and she was desperate. All this he had believed and did still believe.
But, as he looked across at the little hesitating figure and the scared face framed in the doorway, he had compa.s.sion on her. Poor little trapper, so
She was no more than a poor little frightened minx, caught in his trap, peering at him from it in terror. G.o.d knew he hadn't meant to set it for her, and G.o.d only knew how he was going to get her out of it.
"Poor things," he thought, "if they only knew how horribly they embarra.s.s me!"
For of course she wasn't the first. The situation had repeated itself, monotonously, scores of times in his experience. It would have been a nuisance even if Alice Cartaret had not been Gwendolen Cartaret's sister. That made it intolerable.
All this complex pity and repugnance was latent in his one sense of horrible embarra.s.sment.
Then their hands met.
"You want to see me?"
"I _did_--" She was writhing piteously in the trap.
"You'd better come into the surgery. There's a fire there."
He wasn't going to keep her out there in the cold; and he wasn't going to walk back with her to the Vicarage. He didn't want to meet the Vicar and have the door shut in his face. Rowcliffe, informed by Mrs.
Blenkiron, was aware, long before Gwenda had warned him, that he ran this risk. The Vicar's funniness was a byword in the parish.
But he left the door ajar.
"Well," he said gently, "what is it?"
"Shall you be seeing Jim Greatorex soon?"
"I might. Why?"
She told her tale again; she told it in little bursts of excitement punctuated with shy hesitations. She told it with all sorts of twists and turns, winding and entangling herself in it and coming out again breathless and frightened, like a lost creature that has been dragged through the brake. And there were long pauses when Alice put her head on one side, considering, as if she held her tale in her hands and were looking at it and wondering whether she really could go on.
"And what is it you want me to do?" said Rowcliffe finally.
"To ask him."
"Hadn't you better ask him yourself?"
"Would he do it for me?"
"Of course he would."
"I wonder. Perhaps--if I asked him prettily--"
"Oh, then--he couldn't help himself."
There was a pause. Rowcliffe, a little ashamed of himself, looked at the floor, and Alice looked at Rowcliffe and tried to fathom the full depth of his meaning from his face. That there was a depth and that there was a meaning she never doubted. This time Rowcliffe missed the pathos of her gray eyes.
An idea had come to him.
"Look here--Miss Cartaret--if you can get Jim Greatorex to sing for you, if you can get him to take an interest in the concert or in any mortal thing besides beer and whisky, you'll be doing the best day's work you ever did in your life."
"Do you think I _could_?" she said.
"I think you could probably do anything with him if you gave your mind to it."
He meant it. He meant it. That was really his opinion of her. Her lifted face was radiant as she drank bliss at one draught from the cup he held to her. But she was not yet satisfied.
"You'd _like_ me to do it?"
"I should very much."
His voice was firm, but his eyes looked uneasy and ashamed.
"Would you like me to get him back in the choir?"
"I'd like you to get him back into anything that'll keep him out of mischief."