The Vicar rose heavily and went to his roll-top desk. He opened it and
began fumbling about in it, looking for things.
He was doing this, it seemed to his son-in-law, for quite a long time.
But it was only eleven o'clock when Mary heard sounds in the study
that terrified her, of a chair overturned and of a heavy body falling
to the floor. And then Steven called to her.
She found him kneeling on the floor beside her father, loosening his
clothes. The Vicar's face, which she discerned half hidden between
the bending head of Rowcliffe and his arms, was purple and horribly
distorted.
Rowcliffe did not look at her.
"He's in a fit," he said. "Go upstairs and fetch Gwenda. And for God's
sake don't let Ally see him."
XLIX
The village knew all about Jim Greatorex and Alice Cartaret now. Where
their names had been whispered by two or three in the bar of the Red
Lion, over the post office counter, in the schoolhouse, in the smithy,
and on the open road, the loud scandal of them burst with horror.
For the first time in his life Jim Greatorex was made aware that
public opinion was against him. Wherever he showed himself the men
slunk from him and the women stared. He set his teeth and held his
chin up and passed them as if he had not seen them. He was determined
to defy public opinion.
Standing in the door of his kinsman's smithy, he defied it.
It was the day before his wedding. He had been riding home from Morfe
Market and his mare Daisy had cast a shoe coming down the hill.
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