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Gwenda had known nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths, the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools. In Rowcliffe's presence she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy. But, if she stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she stood there, firm on the solid earth.
Grierson's practices would wake them up in Garthdale. They needed waking. She had added that Mr. Grierson was well connected, well behaved and extremely good-looking. Even charity couldn't subdue the merry devil in Robina. "I can't see," said Mary reading Robina's letter, "what Mr. Grierson's good looks have got to do with it." Rowcliffe's face darkened. He thought he could see. But Mr.
And she had done even worse. By habituating Rowcliffe's senses to her way, she had produced in him, through sheer satisfaction, that sense of security which is the most dangerous sense of all. One week in June Rowcliffe went up to Garthdale two nights running. He had never done this before and he had had to lie badly about it both to himself and Mary.
"'And with the morn tho-ose angel fa-a-ce-es smile Which I-i a-ave looved long since and lo-ost awhi-ile." Again Rowcliffe turned; but not before he had seen that Greatorex had his hand on Alice's shoulder a second time, and that Alice's hand had gone up and found it there. The latch of the west door jerked under Rowcliffe's hand with a loud clashing.
He was the sort of man you could like. They were soon out on the moor. Rowcliffe's youth rose in him and put words into his mouth. "Ripping country, this." She said it was ripping. For the life of them they couldn't have said more about it. There were no words for the inscrutable ecstasy it gave them. As they passed Karva Rowcliffe smiled. "It's all right," he said, "my driving you.
Rowcliffe had calculated that to have him in her pocket would increase prodigiously her social value. And it did. And Mrs. Rowcliffe's social value, when observed by Grierson, increased his adoration. And when Rowcliffe told her that young Grierson's Platonic friendship wasn't good for him, she made wide eyes at him and said, "Poor boy! He must have some amusement."
Rowcliffe's motor car tearing up the Dale. The woman in the other room heard it too. She had heard its horn hooting on the moor road nearly a mile away. She raised her hand and listened. It hooted again, once, twice, placably, at the turning of the road, under Karva. She shivered at the sound. It hooted irritably, furiously, as the car tore through the village.
For Rowcliffe's wife's mind was closed to this knowledge by a certain sensual assurance. When all was said and done, it was she and not Gwenda who was Rowcliffe's wife. And she had other grounds for complacency. Her sister, a solitary Miss Cartaret, stowed away in Garth Vicarage, was of no account. She didn't matter. And as Mary Cartaret Mary would have mattered even less.
It sprang from Mary's taking it for granted that he would be likely to hear from her sister. "We only heard really," said Mary, "the other day." "Is that so?" "Of course she wrote; but she didn't say much, because, at first, I'm afraid, there wasn't very much to say." "And is there?" Rowcliffe's hands were trembling slightly. Mary looked down at them and away. "Well, yes."
There were moments when Mary saw it too. But she left God out of it and called it Nature's cruelty. If it was not really Gwenda. For in flashes of extreme lucidity Mary put it down to Rowcliffe's coldness. And she had come to know that Gwenda was responsible for that. But one day in April, in the fourth year of her marriage, Mary sent for Gwenda. Rowcliffe was out on his rounds.
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