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Updated: June 19, 2025
And about three o'clock she was at Upthorne Farm. She and Greatorex had found a moment after morning service to arrange the hour. And now they were standing together in the doorway of the Farmhouse. In the house behind them, in the mistal and the orchard, in the long marshes of the uplands and on the brooding hills there was stillness and solitude. Maggie had gone up to her aunt at Bar Hill.
That was how the fight went on, with Steven Rowcliffe on John Greatorex's side and Mrs. Gale for the pneumonia. It was ten to one against John Greatorex and the doctor, for John Greatorex was most of the time unconscious and the doctor called but once or twice a day, while Mrs. Gale was always there to shut the windows as fast as he opened them.
She tended to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as her own terrors and her father's illness and the noises Greatorex made when he was eating. Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally's and it had never hurt her till to-day. To-day she wanted something from Ally. She didn't know what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn't got.
It had left her more than ever helpless, more than ever subject to infatuation, more than ever morally inert. Ally's social self had grown rigid in the traditions of her class, and she was still aware of the unsuitability of her intimacy with Jim Greatorex; but disaster had numbed her once poignant sense of it.
Jim Greatorex had glamour for her, less on his own account than as a man in whom Rowcliffe was interested. "You'd think it a bit loansoom, wouldn' yo', ef yo' staayed in it yeear in and yeear out?" "I don't know," said Alice doubtfully. "Perhaps a little," she ventured, encouraged by Greatorex's indulgent smile. "An' loansoom it is," said Greatorex dismally.
He had sat up all night with John Greatorex who had died at dawn. And in his eyes the unknown girl and her behavior became suddenly adorable. She was the darting joy and the poignant sweetness, and the sheer extravagant ardor and energy of life. His tempestuously romantic youth rose up and was troubled at the sight of her.
Even if she defied her father and married Jim Greatorex in spite of him there would be almost as much shame in it as if, like Essy, she had never married him at all. And she couldn't live without him. Ally had suffered profoundly from the shock that had struck her down under the arcades on the road to Upthorne.
Humbly, under her master's eye, yet with a sort of happy pride about her, she set out the tea-things and the glass dishes of jam and honey and tea-cakes. Greatorex waited, silent and awkward, till his servant had left the room. Then he came forward. "Theer's caake," he said. "Maaggie baaked un yesterda'. An' theer's hooney." He made no servile apologies for what he set before her.
A world where beauty exists for beauty's sake which is love's sake and not for tricking money or power out of men, even the possibility of such a world is beyond the imagining of many. Something was said about a deputation of women who had waited on Mr. Greatorex. 'Hm, yes, yes. He fiddled with his watch chain.
"There's an air of Alice about her" said John to himself, seeing her back only. But of course it couldn't be Alice; for her he must look in the carriages now! And what a fool he was: every young woman reminded him of the one he had lost! Perhaps if he was to call the next day Polly was a good-natured creature he might hear some news of her. It had been a troubled fortnight with Mrs. Greatorex.
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