It assumed, more and more, its aspect of
half-sinister, half-sordid tragedy. The Vicar's calamity no longer
sheltered him. It took its place in the order of accepted and
irremediable events.
* * * * *
Only the village preserved its sympathy alive. The village, that
obscure congregated soul, long-suffering to calamity, welded together
by saner instincts and profound in memory, the soul that inhabited
the small huddled, humble houses, divided from the Vicarage by no more
than the graveyard of its dead, the village remembered and it knew.
It remembered how the Vicar had come and gone over its thresholds,
how no rain nor snow nor storm had stayed him in his obstinate and
punctual visiting. And whereas it had once looked grimly on its Vicar,
it looked kindly on him now. It endured him for his daughter Gwenda's
sake, in spite of what it knew.
For it knew why the Vicar's third wife had left him. It knew why Alice
Cartaret had gone wrong with Greatorex. It knew what Gwenda Cartaret
had gone for when she went away. It knew why and how Dr. Rowcliffe had
married Mary Cartaret. And it knew why, night after night, he was to
be seen coming and going on the Garthdale road.
* * * * *
The village knew more about Rowcliffe and Gwenda Cartaret than
Rowcliffe's wife knew.
For Rowcliffe's wife's mind was closed to this knowledge by a certain
sensual assurance.
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