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Updated: June 19, 2025
For hours, night after night, of the week before the concert, Jim Greatorex had been down at Garth, in the schoolhouse, practicing with Alice Cartaret until she assured him he was perfect. Night after night the schoolhouse, gray in its still yard, had a door kept open for them and a light in the solemn lancet windows.
Mary Cartaret sat in the door of the cottage by the beck. And in her lap she held Essy's baby. Essy had run in to the last cottage in the row to look after her great aunt, the Widow Gale, who had fallen out of bed in the night. The Widow Gale, in her solitude, had formed the habit of falling out of bed.
Northwards from Cartaret, a road follows the coast-line two or three miles from the cliffs to Les Pieux. Then one can go on to Flamanville by the cape which takes its name from the village, and there see the seventeenth century moated manor house.
The Vicar was silent with the shock of it. "I'm sorry, Papa," said Gwenda; "but there's nowhere else to go to." "If you go there," said Mr. Cartaret, "you will certainly not come back here." All that had passed till now had been mere skirmishing. The real battle had begun. Gwenda set her face to it. "I shall not be coming back in any case," she said.
"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?" "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.
Her social value, obscured by the terrible two years in Garthdale, had come to her as a discovery and an acquisition. For all her complacency, she could not regard it as a secure thing. She was sensitive to every breath that threatened it; she was unable to forget that, if she was Steven Rowcliffe's wife, she was Alice Greatorex's sister. Even as Mary Cartaret she had been sensitive to Alice.
Lady Frances Gilbey's large wing had further protected Gwenda. Then, suddenly, the tale of Alice Cartaret and Greatorex went round, and it was as if the Vicarage had opened and given up its secret. At first, the sheer extremity of his disaster had sheltered the Vicar from his own scandal.
He had sighted Mary Cartaret two or three times in the village, and once, on the moor below Upthorne, a figure that he recognised as Alice; he had also overtaken Mary on her bicycle, and once he had seen her at a shop door on Morfe Green. He was grateful to her for her absorption while he saw through it. He had always known that Mary was a person of tact.
"No," she said gently. "Not now." "Yo navver were," said Greatorex; and he laughed. That laugh was more than Mr. Cartaret could bear. He thrust out his face toward Greatorex. Rowcliffe, watching them, saw that he trembled and that the thrust-out, furious face was flushed deeply on the left side. The Vicar boomed. "You will leave my house this instant, Mr. Greatorex.
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