On an unearned thousand a year you can live like a rich man in
Rathdale.

Not that Rowcliffe had any idea of giving up.  He was well under forty and as soon as old Hyslop at Reyburn died or retired he would step into his practice.  He hadn’t half enough to do in Morfe and he wanted more.

Meanwhile he had bought the house that joined on to his own and thrown the two and their gardens into one.  They had been one twenty years ago, when the wide-fronted building, with its long rows of windows, was the dominating house in Morfe village.  Rowcliffe was now the dominating man in it.  He had given the old place back its own.

And he had spent any amount of money on it.  He had had all the woodwork painted white, and the whole house repapered and redecorated.  He had laid down parquet flooring in the big square hall that he had made and in the new drawing-room upstairs; and he had bought a great deal of beautiful and expensive furniture.

And now he was building a garage and laying out a croquet ground and tennis lawns at the back.

He and Mary had been superintending these works all afternoon till a shower sent them indoors.  And now they were sitting together in the drawing-room, in the breathing-space that came between the children’s hour and dinner.

Mary had sent the children back to the nursery a little earlier than usual.  Rowcliffe had complained of headache.

He was always complaining of headaches.  They dated from his marriage, and more particularly from one night in June eight years ago.

But Rowcliffe ignored the evidence of dates.  He ignored everything that made him feel uncomfortable.  He had put Gwenda from him.  He had said plainly to Mary (in one poignant moment not long before the birth of their third child), “If you’re worrying about me and Gwenda, you needn’t.  She was never anything to me.”

That was not saying there had never been anything between them, but Mary knew what he had meant.

He said to himself, and Mary said that he had got over it.  But he hadn’t got over it.  He might say to himself and Mary, “She was never anything to me”; he might put her and the thought of her away from him, but she had left her mark on him.  He hadn’t put her away.  She was there, in his heavy eyes and in the irritable gestures of his hands, in his nerves and in his wounded memory.  She had knitted herself into his secret being.

Mary was unaware of the cause of his malady.  If it had been suggested to her that he had got into this state because of Gwenda she would have dismissed the idea with contempt.  She didn’t worry about Rowcliffe’s state.  On the contrary, Rowcliffe’s state was a consolation and a satisfaction to her for all that she had endured through Gwenda.  She would have thought you mad if you had told her so, for she was sorry for Steven and tender to him when he was nervous or depressed.  But to Mary her sorrow and her tenderness were a voluptuous joy.  She even encouraged Rowcliffe in his state.  She liked to make it out worse than it really was, so that he might be more dependent on her.