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Updated: May 28, 2025
And I told him he might as well have put her in a lunatic asylum at once." He meditated. "It's not as if he hadn't anybody but himself to think of." "That's no good. He never does think of anybody but himself. And yet he'd be awfully sorry, you know, if Ally died." They sat silent, not looking at each other, until Gwenda spoke again. "Dr. Rowcliffe "
Every now and then he would recognise a snippet as belonging to some suit his father had worn years ago, and then Jim's brain would receive a shock and would stagger and have to begin its counting all over again. The door opened to let Rowcliffe in. And at the sound of the door, as if a spring had been suddenly released in his spine, Jim Greatorex shot up and started to his feet.
She might have known it. For she remembered things, now; how he had nursed old Greatorex like a woman; how he had sat up half the night with Jim Greatorex's mare Daisy; how he kept Jim Greatorex from drinking; and how he had been kind to poor Essy when she had the face ache; and gentle to little Ally. And now Ned Alderson's ridiculous baby would live and Rowcliffe would die.
After they had drunk Mary's coffee the Vicar strolled away to his study so as to leave Rowcliffe alone with Mary, and Alice strolled away heaven knew where so as to leave Mary alone with Rowcliffe. And the Vicar said to himself, "Mary is really doing it very well. Ally ought to be grateful to her." But Ally wasn't a bit grateful.
Rowcliffe said: "She's got it into her head he's going to die, and she thinks she's killed him. You'd better let me take her to see him." The Vicar had solved his problem by his stroke, but not quite as he had anticipated. Nothing had ever turned out as he had planned or thought or willed. He had planned to leave the parish.
And since she was the one she knew it who stood between him and Ally, it was she who would have to go away. It seemed to her that long ago all the time, in fact, ever since she had known Rowcliffe she had known that this was what she would have to face.
But Rowcliffe ignored the evidence of dates. He ignored everything that made him feel uncomfortable. He had put Gwenda from him. She was never anything to me." That was not saying there had never been anything between them, but Mary knew what he had meant. He said to himself, and Mary said that he had got over it. But he hadn't got over it.
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.
"All this," said Rowcliffe, "is awfully bad for her." "You don't seem to consider what it is for us." Rowcliffe took no notice of the Vicar. "Look here, Mary you'd better take her upstairs before he comes. Put her to bed. Try and get her to sleep." "Very well. Come, Ally." Mary was gentler now. Then Ally became wonderful. She stood up and faced them all. "I won't go," she said.
He had seen Alice and Greatorex on the moors at night as he had driven home from Upthorne. And he had told Rowcliffe what he had seen. And Rowcliffe had told Mary and the Vicar. And at the cottage down by the beck Essy Gale and her mother had spoken together, but what they had spoken and what they had heard they had kept secret. "I haven't been with him," said Alice for the third time.
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