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For her mother was wanted by Mrs. Greatorex at Upthorne and what Mrs. Greatorex wanted she got. There were two more children now at the Farm and work enough for three women in the house. And Essy, with all her pride, had not been too proud to come back. She had no feeling but pity for the old man, her master, who had bullied her and put her to shame.
Three months had gone by since her sister's wedding, and all her fears were gathered together in the fear of her father and of what was about to happen to her. And before Gwenda could come to her, Rowcliffe and Mary had come to the Vicar in his study. They had been a long time with him, and then Rowcliffe had gone out. They had sent him to Upthorne.
And he smiled and said to himself, "She's doing it for fun, pure fun." The third time he came upon her at dawn with the dew on her skirts and on her hair. She darted away at the clank of his horse's hoofs, half-savage, divinely shy. And he said to himself that time, "I'm getting on. She's aware of me all right." She had come down from Karva, and he was on his way to Morfe from Upthorne.
Did you or did you not go into the barn?" At that she cried out with a voice of anguish. "No No No!" But Mary had her knife ready and she drove it home. "Ally Ned Langstaff saw you." When Rowcliffe came back from Upthorne he found Alice cowering in a corner of the couch and crying out to her tormentors. "You brutes you brutes if Gwenda was here she wouldn't let you bully me!"
Her questing youth conceived no more rapturous adventure than to follow the sheep over Karva, to set out at twilight and see the immense night come down on the high moors above Upthorne; to get up when Alice was asleep and slip out and watch the dawn turning from gray to rose, and from rose to gold above Greffington Edge.
No wonder that he didn't care to look at them. But one night in September, when the moon was high in the south, as he was driving toward Garth on his way to Upthorne, the eyes of young Rowcliffe were startled out of their aversion by the sudden and incredible appearance of a girl.
But Mary didn't want to talk about Gwenda either now. So that her face showed the faintest flicker of dismay when Rowcliffe suddenly began to talk about her. "Have you any idea," he said, "when your sister's coming back?" "She won't be long," said Mary. "She's only gone to Upthorne village." "I meant your other sister." "Oh, Gwenda " Mary brooded.
He passed the bridge, the church, the Vicarage, the schoolhouse with its beckoning tree, and by the mercy of heaven he was unaware of them. At the turn of the road, On Upthorne hill, the mare, utterly sobered by the gradient, bowed her head and went with slow, wise feet, taking care of the trap and of her master. As for Greatorex, he had ceased to struggle.
"I shall think of it. I shall think of noothing else," said Greatorex. The choir came in, aggrieved, and explaining that it wasn't six yet, not by the church clock. As Rowcliffe went back to his surgery he recalled two things he had forgotten. One was a little gray figure he had seen once or twice lately wandering through the fields about Upthorne Farm.
Even Ally couldn't wonder. There was influenza in every other house in the Dale. Then, one day, Gwenda, walking past Upthorne, heard wheels behind her and the clanking hoofs of the doctor's horse. She knew what would happen. Rowcliffe would pull up a yard or two in front of her. He would ask her where she was going and he would make her drive with him over the moor.
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