But Greatorex was already looking for his cap.

“I’ll navver coom into et again,” he assented placably.

* * * * *

There were no prayers at the Vicarage that night.

* * * * *

It was nearly eleven o’clock.  Greatorex was gone.  Gwenda was upstairs helping Alice to undress.  Mary sat alone in the dining-room, crying steadily.  The Vicar and Rowcliffe were in the study.

In all this terrible business of Alice, the Vicar felt that his son-in-law had been a comfort to him.

“Rowcliffe,” he said suddenly, “I feel very queer.”

“I don’t wonder, sir.  I should go to bed if I were you.”

“I shall.  Presently.”

The one-sided flush deepened and darkened as he brooded.  It fascinated Rowcliffe.

“I think it would be better,” said the Vicar slowly, “if I left the parish.  It’s the only solution I can see.”

He meant to the problem of his respectability.

Rowcliffe said yes, perhaps it would be better.

He was thinking that it would solve his problem too.

For he knew that there would be a problem if Gwenda came back to her father.

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.  He rode her up to the smithy and called for Blenkiron, shouting his need.