The Price of Love by Arnold Bennett (page 6)

But he continued in the same tone–

“You made up that tale about the scullery door because you guessed I’d collared the money and you wanted to save me from being suspected. Well, I did collar the money! Now I’ve told you!”

She burst into a sob, and her head dropped on to his body.

“Louis!” she cried passionately, amid her sobs. “Why ever did you tell me? You’ve ruined everything now. Everything!”

“I can’t help that,” said Louis, with a sort of obstinate and defiant weariness. “It was on my mind, and I just had to tell you. You don’t seem to understand that I’m dying.”

Rachel jumped up and sprang away from the bed.

“Of course you’re not dying!” she reproached him. “How can you imagine such things?”

Her heart suddenly hardened against him–against his white-bandaged head and face, against his feeble voice of a beaten martyr. It seemed to her disgraceful that he, a strong male creature, should be lying there damaged, helpless, and under the foolish delusion that he was dying. She recalled with bitter gusto the tone in which the doctor had said, “He’s no more dying than I am!” All her fears that the doctor might be wrong had vanished away. She now resented her husband’s illness; as a nurse, when danger is over, will resent a patient’s long convalescence, somehow charging it to him as a sin.

“I found the other half of the notes under the chair on the–” Louis began again.

“Please!” she objected with quick resounding violence, and raised a hand.

He said–

“You must listen.”

She answered, passionately–

“I won’t listen! I won’t listen! And if you don’t stop I shall leave the room! I shall leave you all alone!… Yes, I shall!” She moved a little towards the door.

His gloomy and shifty glance followed her, and there was a short silence.

“You needn’t work yourself up into such a state,” murmured Louis at length. “But I _should_ like to know whether the scullery door was open or not, when you came downstairs that night?”

Rachel’s glance fell. She blushed. The tears had ceased to drop from her eyes. She made no answer.

“You see,” said Louis, with a half-sneering triumph, “I knew jolly well it wasn’t open. So did old Batchgrew know, too.”

She shut her lips together, went decisively to the mantelpiece, struck a match, and lit the stove. Like the patent gas-burner downstairs, the stove often had to be extinguished after the first lighting and lighted again with a second and different kind of explosion. And so it was now. She flung down the match pettishly into the hearth. Throughout the whole operation she sniffed convulsively, to prevent a new fit of sobbing. Her peignoir being very near to the purple-green flames that folded themselves round the asbestos of the stove, she reflected that the material was probably inflammable, and that a careless movement might cause it to be ignited. “And not a bad thing, either!” she said to herself. Then, without looking at all towards the bed, she lit the spirit-lamp in order to make tea. The sniffing continued, as she went through the familiar procedure.

The water would not boil, demonstrating the cruel truth of proverbs. She sat down and, gazing into the stove, now a rich red, ignored the saucepan. The dry heat from the stove burnt her ankles and face. Not a sound from the small saucepan, balanced on its tripod over the wavering blue flame of the spirit-lamp! At last, uncontrollably impatient, she lifted the teapot off the inverted lid of the saucepan, where she had placed it to warm, and peered into the saucepan. The water was cheerfully boiling! She made the tea, and sat down again to wait until it should be infused. She had to judge the minutes as well as she could, for she would not go across to the night-table to look at Louis’ watch; her own was out of order, and so was the clock. She counted two hundred and fifty, and then, anticipating feverishly the tonic glow of the tea in her breast, she poured out a cup. Only colourless steaming water came forth from the pot. She had forgotten to put in the tea! Misfortune not unfamiliar to dazed makers of tea in the night! But to Rachel now the consequences of the omission seemed to amount to a tragedy. Had she the courage to begin the interminable weary process afresh? She was bound to begin it afresh. With her eyes obscured by tears, she put the water back into the saucepan and searched for the match-box. The water boiled almost immediately, and by so doing comforted her.

While waiting for the infusion, she realized little by little that for a few moments she must have been nearly hysterical, and she partially resumed possession of herself. The sniffing ceased, her vision cleared; she grew sardonic. All her chest was filled with cold lead. “This truly is the end,” she thought. She had thought that Julian’s confession must be the end of the violent experiences which had befallen her in Mrs. Malden’s house. Then she had thought that Louis’ accident must be the end. Each time she had been mistaken. But she could not be mistaken now. No conceivable event, however awful, could cap Louis’ confession that he had thieved–and under such circumstances!

She did not drink the first cup of tea. No! She must needs carry it, spilling it, to Louis in bed. He was asleep, or he was in a condition that resembled sleep. Assuredly he was ill. He made a dreadful object in his bandages amid the disorder of the bed, upon which strong shadows fell from the gas and from the stove. No matter! If he was ill, he was ill. So much the worse for him! He was not dangerously ill. He was merely passing through a stress which had to be passed through. It would soon be over, and he would be the same eternal Louis that he had always been.

“Here!” she said.

He stirred, opened his eyes.

“Here’s some tea!” she said coldly. “Drink it.”

He gave a gesture of dissent. But it was useless. She had brewed the tea and had determined that he should drink a cup. Whether he desired it or loathed it was a question irrelevant. He was appointed to drink some tea, and she would not taste until he had drunk. This self-sacrifice was her perverse pleasure.

“Come!… Please don’t make it any more awkward for me.”

With her right arm she raised the pillow and his head on it. He drank, his sick lips curling awkwardly upon the rim of the cup, which she held for him. When he had drunk, she put the cup down on the night-table, and tidied his bed, as though he had been a naughty child. And then she left him, and drank tea slowly, savouringly, by herself in a chair near the dressing-table, out of the same cup.

VI

She had lied about the scullery door being open when she went downstairs on the night of the disappearance of the bank-notes. The scullery door had not been open. The lie was clumsy, futile, ill-considered. It had burst out of the impulsiveness and generosity of her nature. She had perceived that suspicion was falling, or might fall, upon Louis Fores, and the sudden lie had flashed forth to defend him. That she could ultimately be charged with having told the lie in order to screen herself from suspicion had never once occurred to her. And it did not even occur to her now as she sat perched uncomfortably on the chair in the night of desolation. She was now deeply ashamed of the lie–and she ought not to have been ashamed, for it was a lie magnanimous and fine; she might rather have taken pride in it. She was especially ashamed of her repetition of the lie on the following day to Thomas Batchgrew, and of her ingenious embroidery upon it. She hated to remember that she had wept violently in front of Thomas Batchgrew when he had charged her with having a secret about the loss of the notes. He must have well known that she was lying; he must have suspected her of some complicity; and if later he had affected to ignore all the awkward aspects of the episode it was only because he wished to remain on good terms with Louis for his own ends.

Had she herself all the time suspected Louis? In the harsh realism of the night hours she was not able positively to assert that she had never suspected him until after Julian’s confession had made her think; but, on the other hand, she would not directly accuse herself of having previously suspected him. The worst that she could say was that she had been determined to believe him guiltless. She loved him; she had wanted his love; she would permit nothing to prevent their coming together; and so in her mind she had established his innocence apparently beyond any overthrowing. She might have allowed herself to surmise that in the early past he had been naughty, untrustworthy, even wicked–but that was different, that did not concern her. His innocence with regard to the bank-notes alone mattered. And she had been genuinely convinced of it. A few moments before he kissed her for the first time, she had been genuinely convinced of it. And after the betrothal her conviction became permanent. She tried to scorn now the passion which had blinded her. Mrs. Maldon, at any rate, must have known that he was connected with the disappearance of the notes. In the light of Louis’ confession Rachel could see all that Mrs. Maldon was implying in that last conversation between them.

So that she might win him she had been ready to throttle every doubt of his honesty. But now the indubitable fact that he was a thief seemed utterly monstrous and insupportable. And, moreover, his crime was exceptionally cruel. Was it conceivable that he could so lightly cause so much distress of spirit to a woman so aged, defenceless, and kind? According to the doctor, the shock of the robbery had not been the originating cause of Mrs. Maldon’s death; but it might have been; quite possibly it had hastened death…. Louis was not merely a thief; he was a dastardly thief.

But even that in her eyes did not touch the full height of his offence. The vilest quality in him was his capacity to seem innocent. She could recall the exact tone in which he had exclaimed: “Would you believe that old Batch practically accused me of stealing the old lady’s money?… Don’t you think it’s a shame?” The recollection filled her with frigid anger. Her resentment of the long lie which he had lived in her presence since their betrothal was tremendous in its calm acrimony. A man who could behave as he had behaved would stop at nothing, would be capable of all.

She contrasted his conduct with the grim candour of Julian Maldon, whom she now admired. It was strange and dreadful that both the cousins should be thieves; the prevalence of thieves in that family gave her a shudder. But she could not judge Julian Maldon severely. He did not appear to her as a real thief. He had committed merely an indiscretion. It was his atonement that made her admire him. Though she hated confessions, though she had burnt his exasperating document, she nevertheless liked the manner of his atonement. Whereas she contemned Louis for having confessed.

“He thought he was dying and so he confessed!” she reflected with asperity. “He hadn’t even the pluck to go through with what he had begun…. Ah! If I had committed a crime and once denied it, I would deny it with my last breath, and no torture should drag it out of me!”

And she thought: “I am punished. This is my punishment for letting myself be engaged while Mrs. Maldon was dying.”

Often she had dismissed as childish the notion that she was to blame for accepting Louis just when she did. But now it returned full of power and overwhelmed her. And like a whipped child she remembered Mrs. Maldon’s warning: “My nephew is not to be trusted. The woman who married him would suffer horribly.” And she was the woman who had married him. It seemed to her that the warnings of the dying must of necessity prove to be valid.

Some mysterious phenomenon on the window-blind at her right hand attracted her attention, and she looked round, half startled. It was the dawn, furtive and inexorable. She had watched dawns, and she had watched them in that very bedroom. Only on the previous morning the dawn had met her smarting and wakeful eyes, and she had imagined that no dawn could be more profoundly sad!… And a little earlier still she had been desolating herself for hours because Louis was going to be careless about his investments, because he was unreliable and she would have to watch ceaselessly over his folly. She had imagined then that no greater catastrophe could overtake her than some material result of his folly!… What a trivial apprehension! What a child she had been!

In the excitement and alarm of his accident she had honestly forgotten her suspicions of him. That disconcerted her.

She rose from the chair, stiff. The stove, with its steady faint roar of imperfectly consumed gas, had thoroughly heated the room. In careful silence she put the tea-things together. Then she ventured to glance at Louis. He was asleep. He had been restlessly asleep for a long time. She eyed him bitterly in his bandages. Only last night she had been tormented by that fear that his face might be marked for life. Again the trivial! What did it matter whether his face was marked for life or not?…

It did not occur to her to attempt to realize how intense must have been the spiritual tribulation which had forced him to confess. She knew that he was not dying, that he was in no danger whatever, and she was perfectly indifferent to the genuineness of his own conviction that he was dying. She simply thought: “He had to go through all that. If he fancied he was dying, can I help it?” … Then she looked at her own empty bed. He reposed; he slept. But she did not repose nor sleep.

She drew aside one of the blinds, and as she did so she could feel the steady slight current of cold air entering the room from the window open at the top. The street seemed to be full of daylight. The dawn had been proceeding in its vast secrecy and was now accomplished. She drew up the blind slowly, and then the gas-flame over the dressing-table seemed so pale and futile that she extinguished it, from a sort of pity. In silence she pulled out the iron bolts in the window-sash that had been Mrs. Maldon’s device for preventing burglars from opening further a window already open a little, thus combining security with good hygiene. Louis had laughed at these bolts, but Mrs. Maldon had so instilled their use into both Rachel and Mrs. Tams that to insert them at night was part of the unchangeable routine of the house. Rachel gently pushed up the lower sash and looked forth.

Bycars Lane, though free from mud, was everywhere heavily bedewed. The narrow pavement glistened. The roofs glistened. Drops of water hung on all the edges of the great gas-lamp beneath her, which was still defying the dawn. The few miserable trees and bushes on the vague lands beyond the lane were dripping with water. The sky was low and heavy, in scarcely distinguishable shades of purplish grey, and Bycars Pool, of which she had a glimpse, appeared in its smooth blackness to be not more wet than the rest of the scene. Nothing stirred. Not the tiniest branch stirred on the leafless trees, nor a leaf on a grey rhododendron-bush in a front garden below. Every window within sight had its blind drawn. No smoke rose from any house-chimney, and the distant industrial smoke on the horizon hung in the lower air, just under the clouds, undecided and torpid. The wet air was moveless, and yet she could feel it impinging with its cool, sharp humidity on her cheek.

The sensation of this contact was delicious. She was surrounded, not by the slatternly Five Towns landscape and by the wretchedness of the familiar bedroom, but by the unanswerable, intimidating, inspiring mystery of life itself. A man came hurrying with a pole out of the western vista of the lane, and stopped in front of the gas-lamp, and in an instant the flame was reduced to a little fat worm of blue, and the man passed swiftly up the lane, looking straight ahead with bent shoulders, and was gone. Never before had Rachel actually seen the lamp put out. Never before had she noticed, as she noticed now, that the lamp had a number, an identity–1054. The meek acquiescence of the lamp, and the man’s preoccupied haste, seemed to bear some deep significance, which, however, she could not seize. But the aspect of the man afflicted her, she did not know why.

Then a number of other figures, in a long spasmodic procession, passed up the lane after the man, and were gone out of sight. Their heavy boots clacked on the pavement. They wore thick, dirty greyish-black clothes, but no overcoats; small tight caps in their hands, and dark kerchiefs round their necks: about thirty of them in all, colliers on their way to one of the pits on the Moorthorne ridge. They walked quickly, but they did not hurry as their forerunner hurried. Several of them smoked pipes. Though some walked in pairs, none spoke; none looked up or aside. With one man walked stolidly a young woman, her overskirt raised and pulled round her head from the back for a shawl; but even these two did not converse. The procession closed with one or two stragglers. Rachel had never seen these pilgrims before, but she had heard them; and Mrs. Maldon had been acquainted with all their footfalls. They were tragic to Rachel; they infected her with the most recondite horror of existence; they left tragedy floating behind them in the lane like an invisible but oppressive cloud. Their utterly incurious indifference to Rachel in her peignoir at the window was somehow harrowing.

The dank lane and vaporous, stagnant landscape were once more dead and silent, and would for a long time remain so, for though potters begin work early, colliers begin work much earlier, living in a world of customs of their own. At last a thin column of smoke issued magically from a chimney down to the left. Some woman was about; some woman’s day had opened within that house. At the thought of that unseen woman in that unknown house Rachel could have cried. She could not remain at the window. She was unhappy; but it was not her woe that overcame her, for if she was unhappy, her unhappiness was nevertheless exquisite. It was the mere realization that men and women lived that rendered her emotions almost insupportable. She felt her youth. She thought, “I am only a girl, and yet my life is ruined already.” And even that thought she hugged amorously as though it were beautiful. Amid the full disaster and regret, she was glad to be alive. She could not help exulting in the dreadful moment.

She closed the sash and began to dress, seldom glancing at Louis, who slept and dreamed and muttered. When she was dressed she looked carefully in the drawer where he deposited certain articles from his pockets, in order to find the bundle of notes left by Julian. In vain! Then she searched for his bunch of keys (which ultimately she found in one of his pockets) and unlocked his private drawer. The bundle of notes lay there. She removed it, and hid it away in one of her own secret places. After she had made preparations to get ready some invalid’s food at short notice, she went downstairs.

VII

She went downstairs without any definite purpose–merely because activity of some kind was absolutely necessary to her. The clock in the lobby showed dimly a quarter past five. In the chilly twilit kitchen the green-lined silver-basket lay on the table in front of the window, placed there by a thoughtful and conscientious Mrs. Tams. On the previous morning Rachel had given very precise orders about the silver (as the workaday electro-plate was called), but owing to the astounding events of the day the orders had not been executed. Mrs. Tams had evidently determined to carry them out at an early hour.

Rachel opened a cupboard and drew forth the apparatus for cleaning. She was intensely fatigued, weary, and seemingly spiritless, but she began to clean the silver–at first with energy and then with serious application. She stood at the table, cleaning, as she had stood there when Louis came into her kitchen on the night of the robbery; and she thought of his visit and of her lost bliss, and the tears fell from her eyes on the newspaper which protected the whiteness of the scrubbed table. She would not think of the future; could not. She went on cleaning, and that silver had never been cleaned as she cleaned it then. She cleaned it with every attribute of herself, forgetting her fatigue. The tears dried on her cheek. The faithful, scrupulous work either drugged or solaced her. Just as she was finishing, Mrs. Tarns, with her immense bodice unfastened, came downstairs, apronless. The lobby clock struck six.

“Eh, missis!” breathed Mrs. Tams. “What’s this?”

Rachel gave a nervous laugh.

“I was up. Mr. Fores was asleep, and I had to do something, so I thought–“

“Has he had a good night, ma’am?”

“Fair. Yes, pretty good. I must run up and see if he is awake.”

Mrs. Tams saw the stains on Rachel’s cheeks, but she could not mention them. Rachel had an impulse to fall on Mrs. Tams’ enormous breast and weep. But the conventions of domesticity were far too strong for her also. Mrs. Tams was the general servant; what Louis occasionally called “the esteemed skivvy.” Once Mrs. Tams had been wife, mother, grandmother, victim, slave, diplomatist, serpent, heroine. Once she had bent from morn till night under the terrific weight of a million perils and responsibilities. Once she could never be sure of her next meal, or the roof over her head, or her skin, or even her bones. Once she had been the last resource and refuge not merely of a house, but of half a street, and she had had a remedy for every ill, a balm for every wound. But now she was safe, out of harm’s way. She had no responsibilities worth a rap. She had everything an old woman ought to desire. And yet the silly old woman felt a lack, as she impotently watched Rachel leave the kitchen. Perhaps she wanted her eye blacked, or the menace of a policeman, or a child down with diphtheria, to remind her that the world revolved.

CHAPTER XIII

DEAD-LOCK

I

Louis had wakened up a few minutes before Rachel returned to the bedroom from that most wonderfully conscientious spell of silver-cleaning. He was relieved to find himself alone. He was ill, perhaps very ill, but he felt unquestionably better than in the night. He was delivered from the appalling fear of death which had tortured and frightened him, and his thankfulness was intense; and yet at the same time he was aware of a sort of heroical sentimental regret that he was not, after all, dead; he would almost have preferred to die with grandeur, young, unfortunate, wept for by an inconsolable wife doomed to everlasting widowhood. He was ashamed of his bodily improvement, which rendered him uncomfortably self-conscious, for he had behaved as though dying when, as the event proved, he was not dying.

When Rachel came in, this self-consciousness grew terrible. And in his weakness, his constraint, his febrile perturbation which completely destroyed presence of mind, he feebly remarked–

“Did any one call yesterday to ask how I was?”

As soon as he had said it he knew that it was inept, and quite unsuitable to the role which he ought to play.

Rachel had gone straight to the dressing-table, apparently ignoring him, though she could not possibly have failed to notice that he was awake. She turned sharply and gazed at him with a look of inimical contempt that aggrieved and scarified him very acutely. Making no answer to his query, content solely to condemn it with her eyes as egotistic and vain, she said–

“I’m going to make you some food.”

And then she curtly showed him her bent back, and over the foot of the bed he could see her preparations–preliminary stirring with a spoon, the placing of the bright tin saucepan on the lamp, the opening of the wick, seizing of the match-box.

As soon as the cooking was in train, she threw up the window wide and then came to the bed.

“I’ll just put your bed to rights again,” she remarked, and seized the pillow, waiting implacably for him to raise his head. He had to raise his head.

“I’m very ill,” he moaned.

She replied in a tone of calm indifference–

“I know you are. But you’ll soon be better. You’re getting a little better every hour.” And she finished arranging the bed, which was presently in a state of smooth geometrical correctness. He could find no fault with her efficiency, nor with her careful handling of his sensitive body. But the hard, the marmoreal cruelty of his wife’s spirit exquisitely wounded his soul, which, after all, was at least as much in need of consolation as his body. He was positively daunted.

II

He had passed through dreadful moments in the early part of the night while Rachel slept. When he had realized that he was doomed–for the conviction that death was upon him had been absolutely sincere and final for a long time–he was panic-stricken, impressed, and strangely proud, all at once. But the panic was paramount. He was afraid, horribly afraid. His cowardice was ghastly, even to himself, shot through though it was by a peculiar appreciation of the grandiosity of his fate as a martyr to clumsy chance. He was reduced by it to the trembling repentant sinner, as the proud prisoner is reduced to abjection by prolonged and secret torture in Oriental prisons. He ranged in fright over the whole of his career, and was obliged to admit, and to admit with craven obsequiousness, that he had been a wicked man, obstinate in wickedness.

He remembered matters which had utterly vanished from his memory. He remembered, for example, the excellence of his moral aspirations when he had first thought of Rachel as a wife, and the firm, high resolves which were to be carried out if he married her. Forgotten! Forgotten! As soon as he had won her he had thought of nothing but self-indulgence, pleasure, capricious delights. His tailor still languished for money long justly due. He had not even restored the defalcations in Horrocleave’s petty cash. Of course it would have been difficult to restore a sum comparatively so large without causing suspicion. To restore it would have involved a long series of minute acts, alterations of alterations in the cash entries, and constant ingenuity in a hundred ways. But it ought to have been done, and might have been done. It might have been done. He admitted that candidly, fully, with despicable tremblings….

And the worst of all, naturally, was the theft from his aunt. Theft? Was it a theft? He had never before consented to define the affair as a theft; it had been a misfortune, an indiscretion. But now he was ready to call it a theft, in order to be on the safe side. For the sake of placating Omnipotence let it be deemed a theft, and even a mean theft, entailing dire consequences on a weak old woman! Let it be as bad as the severest judge chose to make it! He would not complain. He would accept the arraignment (though really he had not been so blameworthy, etc….). He knew that with all his sins he, possessed the virtues of good nature, kindness, and politeness. He was not wholly vile. In some ways he honestly considered himself a model to mankind.

And then he had recalled certain information received in childhood from authoritative persons about the merciful goodness of God. His childhood had been rather ceremoniously religious, for his step-uncle, the Lieutenant-General, was a great defender of Christianity as well as of the British Empire. The Lieutenant-General had even written a pamphlet against a ribald iconoclastic book published by the Rationalist Press Association, in which pamphlet he had made a sorry mess of Herbert Spencer. All the Lieutenant-General’s relatives and near admirers went to church, and they all went to precisely the same kind of church, for no other kind would have served. Louis, however, had really liked going to church. There had once even been a mad suggestion that he should become a choir-boy, but the Lieutenant-General had naturally decided that it was not meet for a child of breeding to associate with plebeians in order to chant the praises of the Almighty.

Louis at his worst had never quite ceased to attend church, though he was under the impression that his religious views had broadened, if not entirely changed. Beneath the sudden heavy menace of death he discovered that his original views were, after all, the most authentic and the strongest. And he had much longed for converse with a clergyman, who would repeat to him the beautiful reassurances of his infancy. Even late in the afternoon, hours before the supreme crisis, he would have welcomed a clergyman, for he was already beginning to be afraid. He would have liked a clergyman to drop in by accident; he would have liked the first advances to come from the clergyman.

But he could not bring himself to suggest that the rector of St. Luke’s, of whose flock he now formed part, should be sent for. He had demanded a lawyer, and that was as near to a clergyman as he could get. He had been balked of the lawyer. Further on in the evening, when his need was more acute and his mind full of frightful secret apprehensions, he was as far as ever from obtaining a clergyman. And he knew that, though his eternal welfare might somehow depend on the priest, he could never articulate to Rachel the words, “I should like to see a clergyman.” It would seem too absurd to ask for a clergyman…. Strangeness of the human heart!

It was after Rachel had fallen asleep that the idea of confession had occurred to him as a means towards safety in the future life. The example of Julian had inspired him. He had despised Julian; he had patronized Julian; but in his extremity he had been ready to imitate him. He seemed to conceive that confession before death must be excellent for the soul. At any rate, it prevented one from going down to the tomb with a lie tacit on the lips. He was very ill, very weak, very intimidated. And he was very solitary and driven in on himself–not so much because Rachel had gone to sleep as because neither Rachel nor anybody else would believe that he was really dying. His spirit was absorbed in the gravest preoccupations that can trouble a man. His need of sympathy and succour was desperate. Thus he had wakened Rachel. At first she had been as sympathetic and consoling as he could desire. She had held his hand and sat on the bed. The momentary relief was wonderful. And he had been encouraged to confess.

He had prodded himself on to confession by the thought that Rachel must have known of his guilt all along–otherwise she would never have told that senseless lie about the scullery door being open. Hence his confession could not surprise her. She would receive it in the right, loving, wifely attitude, telling him that he was making too much of a little, that it was splendid of him to confess, and generally exonerating and rehabilitating him.

Then he had begun to confess. The horrible change in her tone as he came to the point had unnerved him. Her wild sobs when the confession was made completed his dismay. And then, afterwards, her incredible harshness and cruelty, her renewed refusal, flat and disdainful, to believe that he was dying–these things were the most wounding experience of his entire existence. As for her refusal to listen to the rest of his story, the important part, the exculpatory part–it was monstrously unjust. He had had an instant’s satisfaction on beholding her confusion at being charged with the lie about the scullery door, but it was a transient advantage. He was so ill…. She had bullied him with the lacerating emphasis of her taciturn remarks…. And at last she had requested him not to make it any more awkward for _her_!…

III

When he had obediently taken the food and thanked her for it very nicely, he felt much better. The desire for a clergyman, or even for a lawyer, passed away from his mind; he forgot the majority of his sins and his aspirations, and the need for restoring the defalcations to Jim Horrocleave seemed considerably less urgent. Rachel stayed by him while he ate, but she would not meet his glance, and looked carefully at the window.

“As soon as I’ve tidied up the room, I’ll just sponge your hands,” said she. “The doctor will be here early. I suppose I mustn’t touch your face.”

Louis inquired–

“How do you know he’ll be here early?”

“He said he should–because of the dressings, you know.”

She went to work on the room, producing a duster from somewhere, and ringing for Mrs. Tams, who, however, was not permitted to enter. Louis hated these preparations for the doctor. He had never in his life been able to understand why women were always so absurdly afraid of the doctor’s eye. As if the doctor would care! Moreover, the room was being tidied for the doctor, not for the invalid! The invalid didn’t matter! When she came to him with a bowl of water, soap, and a towel, he loathed the womanish scheme of being washed in bed.

“I’ll get up,” he said. “I’m lots better.” He had previously intended to feign extreme illness, but he forgot.

“Oh no, you won’t,” she replied coldly. “First you think you’re dying, and then you think you’re all right. You won’t stir out of that bed till the doctor’s been, at any rate.”

And she lodged the bowl dangerously between his knees. He pretended to be contemptuous of her refusal to let him get up, but in fact he was glad of an excuse for not making good his boast. His previous statement that he was very ill was much nearer to the truth than the fine talking about being “lots better.” If not very ill, he was, at any rate, more ill than he now thought he was, and eating had fatigued him. Nevertheless, he would wash his own hands. Rachel yielded to him in this detail with cynical indifference. She put the towel by the bowl, and left him to balance the bowl and keep the soap off the counterpane as best he could, while she rummaged in one of the drawers of the wardrobe–obviously for the simple sake of rummaging.

Her unwifeliness was astounding; it was so astounding that Louis did not all at once quite realize how dangerously he was wounded by it. He had seen that hard, contumelious mask on her face several times before; he had seen it, for instance, when she had been expressing her views on Councillor Batchgrew; but he had not conceived, in his absurd male confidence, that it would ever be directed against himself. He could not snatch the mask from her face, but he wondered how he might pierce it, and incidentally hurt her and make her cry softly. Ah! He had seen her in moods of softness which were celestial to him–surpassing all dreams of felicity!

The conviction of his own innocence and victimhood strengthened in him. Amid the morbid excitations of the fear of death, he had forgotten that in strict truth he had not stolen a penny from his great-aunt, that he was utterly innocent. He now vividly remembered that his sole intention in taking possession of the bank-notes had been to teach his great-aunt a valuable lesson about care in the guarding of money. Afterwards he had meant to put the notes back where he had found them; chance had prevented; he had consistently acted for the best in very sudden difficulties, and after all, in the result, it was not he who was responsible for the destruction of the notes, but Rachel…. True, that in the night his vision of the affair had been less favourable to himself, but in the night illness had vitiated his judgment, which was not strange, seeing the dreadful accident he had experienced…. He _might_ have died, and where would Rachel have been then?… Was it not amazing that a young wife who had just escaped widowhood so narrowly could behave to a husband, a seriously sick husband, as Rachel was behaving to him?

He wished that he had not used the word “collar” in confessing to Rachel. It was equal to “steal.” Its significance was undebatable. Yes, “collar” was a grave error of phrasing.

“I’m about done with this basin thing,” he said, with all possible dignity, and asked for brushes of various sorts for the completion of his toilet. She served him slowly, coolly. Her intention was clear to act as a capable but frigid nurse–not as a wife. He saw that she thought herself the wife of a thief, and that she was determined not to be the wife of a thief. He could not bear it. The situation must be changed immediately, because his pride was bleeding to death.

“I say,” he began, when she had taken away the towel and his tooth-powder.

“What?” Her tone challenged him.

“You wouldn’t let me finish last night. I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t–“

“I’ve no wish to hear another word.” She stopped him, precisely as she had stopped him in the night. She was at the washstand.

“I should be obliged if you’d look at me when you speak to me,” he reproached her manners. “It’s only polite.”

She turned to him with face flaming. They were both aware that his deportment was better than hers; and he perceived that the correction had abraded her susceptibility.

“I’ll look at you all right,” she answered, curtly and rather loudly.

He adopted a superior attitude.

“Of course I’m ill and weak,” he said, “but even if I am I suppose I’m entitled to some consideration.” He lay back on the pillow.

“I can’t help your being ill,” she answered. “It’s not my fault. And if you’re so ill and weak as all that, it seems to me the best thing you can do is to be quiet and not to talk, especially about–about that!”

“Well, perhaps you’ll let me be the best judge of what I ought to talk about. Anyhow, I’m going to talk about it, and you’re going to listen.”

“I’m not.”

“I say you’re going to listen,” he insisted, turning on his side towards her. “And why not? Why, what on earth did I say last night, after all, I should like to know?”

“You said you’d taken the other part of the money of Mrs. Maldon’s–that’s what you said. You thought you were dying, and so you told me.”

“That’s just what I want to explain. I’m going to explain it to you.”

“No explanations for me, thanks!” she sneered, walking in the direction of the hearth. “I’d sooner hear anything, anything, than your explanations.” She seemed to shudder.

He nerved himself.

“I tell you I _found_ that money,” he cried, recommencing.

“Well, good-bye,” she said, moving to the door. “You don’t seem to understand.”

At the same moment there was a knock at the door.

“Come in, Mrs. Tarns,” said Rachel calmly.

“She mustn’t come in now,” Louis protested.

“Come in, Mrs. Tams,” Rachel repeated decisively.

And Mrs. Tams entered, curtsying towards the bed.

“What is it?” Rachel asked her.

“It’s the greengrocer’s cart, ma’am.” The greengrocer usually did send round on Saturday mornings.

“I’ll go down. Just clear up that washstand, will you?”

It was remarkable to Louis how chance would favour a woman in an altercation. But he had decided, even if somewhat hysterically, to submit to no more delay, and to end the altercation–and moreover, to end it in his own way.

“Rachel!” he called. Several times he called her name, more and more loudly. He ignored what was due to servants, to greengrocers, and to the dignity of employers. He kept on calling.

“Shall I fetch missis, sir?” Mrs. Tams suggested at length.

He nodded. Mrs. Tams departed, laden. Certainly the fat creature, from whom nothing could be hid by a younger generation, had divined that strife had supervened on illness, and that great destinies hung upon the issue. Neither Mrs. Tams nor Rachel returned to the bedroom. Louis began again to call for Rachel, and then to yell for her. He could feel that the effort was exhausting him, but he was determined to vanquish her.

IV

Without a sound she startlingly appeared in the room.

“What’s the matter?” she inquired, with her irritating assumption of tranquillity.

“You know what’s the matter.”

“I wish you wouldn’t scream like a baby,” she said.

“You know I want to speak to you, and you’re keeping out of the way on purpose.”

Rachel said–

“Look here, Louis! Do you want me to leave the house altogether?”

He thought–

“What is she saying? We’ve only been married a few weeks. This is getting serious.”

Aloud he answered–

“Of course I don’t want you to leave the house.”

“Well, then, don’t say any more. Because if you do, I shall. I’ve heard all I want to hear. There are some things I can bear, and some I can’t bear.”

“If you don’t listen–!” he exclaimed. “I’m warning you!”

She glanced at the thief in him, and at the coward penitent of the night, with the most desolating disdain, and left the room. That was her answer to his warning.

“All right, my girl! All right!” he said to himself, when she had gone, pulling together his self-esteem, his self-pity, and his masculinity. “You’ll regret this. You see if you don’t. As to leaving the house, we shall see who’ll leave the house. Wait till I’m on my legs again. If there is to be a scandal, there shall be a scandal.”

One thing was absolutely sure–he could not and would not endure her contumely, nor even her indifferent scorn. For him to live with it would be ridiculous as well as impossible. He was weak, but two facts gave him enormous strength. First, he loved her less than she loved him, and hence she was at a disadvantage. But supposing her passion for him was destroyed? Then the second fact came into play. He had money. He had thousands of pounds, loose, available! To such a nature as his the control of money gives a sense of everlasting security. Already he dreamt of freedom, of roaming the wide world, subject to no yoke but a bachelor’s whim.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MARKET

I

Rachel thought she understood all Louis’ mental processes. With the tragic self-confidence of the inexperienced wife, she was convinced that she had nothing to learn about the secret soul of the stranger to whom she had utterly surrendered herself, reserving from him naught of the maiden. Each fresh revelation of him she imagined to be final, completing her studies. In fact, it would have taken at least ten years of marriage to prove to her that a perception of ignorance is the summit of knowledge. She had not even realized that human nature is chiefly made up of illogical and absurd contradictions. Thus she left the house that Saturday morning gloomy, perhaps hopeless, certainly quite undecided as to the future, but serene, sure of her immediate position, and sure that Louis would act like Louis. She knew that she had the upper hand, both physically and morally. The doctor had called and done his work, and given a very reassuring report. She left Louis to Mrs. Tams, as was entirely justifiable, merely informing him that she had necessary errands, and even this information she gave through her veil, a demure contrivance which she had adapted for the first time on her honeymoon. It was his role to accept her august decisions.

The forenoon was better than the dawn. The sun had emerged; the moisture had nearly disappeared, except in the road; and the impulse of spring was moving in the trees and in the bodies of young women; the sky showed a virginal blue; the wandering clouds were milky and rounded, the breeze infinitely soft. It seemed to be in an earlier age that the dark colliers had silently climbed the steep of Bycars Lane amid the dankness and that the first column of smoke had risen forlornly from the chimney.

In spite of her desolated heart, and of her primness, Rachel stepped forward airily. She was going forth to an enormous event, namely, her first apparition in the shopping streets of the town on a Saturday morning as Mrs. Louis Fores, married woman. She might have postponed it, but into what future? Moreover, she was ashamed of being diffident about it. And, in the peculiar condition of her mind, she would have been ashamed to let a spiritual crisis, however appalling, interfere with the natural, obvious course of her duties. So far as the world was concerned, she was a happy married woman, who had to make her debut as a shopping housewife, and hence she was determined that her debut should be made…. And yet, possibly she might not have ventured away from the house at all, had she not felt that if she did not escape for a time from its unbreathable atmosphere into the liberty of the streets, she would stifle and expire. Wherever she put herself in the house she could not feel alone. In the streets she felt alone, even when saluting new acquaintances and being examined and probed by their critical stare. The sight of these acquaintances reminded her that she had a long list of calls to repay. And then the system of paying calls and repaying, and the whole system of society, seemed monstrously fanciful and unreal to her. There was only one reality. The solid bricks of the pavement suddenly trembled under her feet as though she were passing over a suspension-bridge. The enterprise of shopping became idiotic, humorous, incredibly silly in the face of that reality.

Nevertheless, the social system of Bursley, as exemplified in Wedgwood Street and the market-place, its principal shopping thoroughfares, was extremely alluring, bright, and invigorating that morning. It almost intoxicated, and had, indeed, a similar effect to that of a sparkling drink. Rachel had never shopped at large with her own money before. She had executed commissions for Mrs. Maldon. She had been an unpaid housekeeper to her father and brother. Now she was shopping as mistress of a house and of money. She owed an account of her outlay to nobody, not even to Louis. She recalled the humble and fantastic Saturday night when she had shopped with Louis as reticule-carrier … centuries since. The swiftness and unforeseeableness of events frightened the girl masquerading as a wise, perfected woman. Her heart lay like a weight in her corsage for an instant, and the next instant she was in the bright system again, because she was so young.

Here and there in the streets, and in small groups in the chief shops, you saw prim ladies of every age, each with a gloved hand clasped over a purse. (But sometimes the purse lay safe under the coverlet of a perambulator.) These purses made all the ladies equal, for their contents were absolutely secret from all save the owners. All the ladies were spending, and the delight of spending was theirs. And in theory every purse was inexhaustible. At any rate, it was impossible to conceive a purse empty. The system wore the face of the ideal. Manners were proper to the utmost degree; they neatly marked the equality of the shoppers and the profound difference between the shoppers and the shopkeepers. All ladies were agreeable, all babies in perambulators were darlings. The homes thus represented by ladies and babies were clearly polite homes, where reigned suavity, tranquillity, affection, and plenty. Civilization was justified in Wedgwood Street and the market-place–and also, to some extent, in St. Luke’s Square…. And Rachel was one of these ladies. Her gloved hand closed over a purse exactly in the style of the others. And her purse, regard being had to the inheritance of her husband, was supposed to hide vast sums; so much so that ladies who had descended from distant heights in pony-carts gazed upon her with the respect due to a rival. All welcomed her into the exclusive, correct little world–not only the shopkeepers but the buyers therein. She represented youthful love. Her life must be, and was, an idyll! True, she had no perambulator, but middle-aged ladies greeted her with wistfulness in their voices and in their eyes.

She smiled often as she told and retold the story of Louis’ accident, and gave positive assurances that he was in no danger, and would not bear a scar. She blushed often. She was shyly happy in her unhappiness. The experience alternated between the unreal and the real. The extraordinary complexity of life was beginning to put its spell on her. She could not determine the relative values of the various facets of the experience.

When she had done the important parts of her business, she thought she would go into the covered market, which, having one entrance in the market-place and another in Wedgwood Street, connects the two thoroughfares. She had never been into the covered market because Mrs. Maldon had a prejudice against its wares. She went out of mere curiosity, just to enlarge her knowledge of her adopted town. The huge interior, with its glazed roof, was full of clatter, shouting, and the smell of innumerable varieties of cheese. She passed a second-hand bookstall without seeing it, and then discerned admirable potatoes at three-halfpence a peck less than she had been paying–and Mrs. Maldon was once more set down as an old lady with peculiarities. However, by the time Rachel had made a critical round of the entire place, with its birds in cages, popular songs at a penny, sweetstuffs, cheap cottons and woollens, bright tinware, colonial fleshmeat, sausage displays, and particularly its cheeses, Mrs. Maldon was already recovering her reputation as a woman whose death was an irreparable loss to the town.

As Rachel passed the negligible second-hand bookstall again, it was made visible to her by the fact that Councillor Thomas Batchgrew was just emerging from the shop behind it, with a large volume in his black-gloved hands. Thomas Batchgrew came out of the dark bookshop as a famous old actor, accustomed to decades of crude public worship, comes out of a fashionable restaurant into a fashionable thoroughfare. His satisfied and self-conscious countenance showed that he knew that nearly everybody in sight was or ought to be acquainted with his identity and his renown, and showed also that his pretence of being unaware of this tremendous and luscious fact was playful and not seriously meant to deceive a world of admirers. He was wearing a light tweed suit, with a fancy waistcoat and a hard, pale-grey hat. As he aged, his tendency to striking pale attire was becoming accentuated; at any rate, it had the advantage of harmonizing with his unique whiskers–those whiskers which differentiated him from all the rest of the human race in the Five Towns.

Rachel blushed, partly because he was suddenly so close to her, partly because she disapproved of the cunning expression on his red, seamed face and was afraid he might divine her thoughts, and partly because she recalled the violent things she had said against him to Louis. But as soon as Thomas Batchgrew caught sight of her the expression of his faced changed in an instant to one of benevolence and artless joy; the change in it was indeed dramatic.

And Rachel, pleased and flattered, said to herself, almost startled–

“He really admires me. And I do believe he always did.”

And since admiration is a sweet drug, whether offered by a rascal or by the pure in heart, she forgot momentarily the horror of her domestic dilemma.

II

“Eh, lass!” Thomas Batchgrew was saying familiarly, after he had inquired about Louis, “I’m rare glad for thy sake it was no worse.” His frank implication that he was glad only for her sake gratified and did not wound her as a wife.

The next moment he had dismissed the case of Louis and was displaying to her the volume which he carried. It was a folio Bible, printed by the Cornishman Tregorthy in the town of Bursley, within two hundred yards of where they were standing, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century–a bibliographical curiosity, as Thomas Batchgrew vaguely knew, for he wet his gloved thumb and, resting the book on one raised knee, roughly turned over several pages till he came to the title-page containing the word “Bursley,” which he showed with pride to Rachel. Rachel, however, not being in the slightest degree a bibliophile, discerned no interest whatever in the title-page. She merely murmured with politeness, “Oh, yes! Bursley,” while animadverting privately on the old man’s odious trick of wetting his gloved thumb and leaving marks on the pages.

“The good old Book!” he said. “I’ve been after that volume for six months and more. I knew I should get it, but he’s a stiff un–yon is,” jerking his shoulder in the direction of the second-hand bookseller. Then he put the folio under his arm, delighted at the souvenir of having worsted somebody in a bargain, and repeated, “The good old Book!”

Rachel reflected–

“You unspeakable old sinner!”

Still, she liked his attitude towards herself. In addition to the book he insisted on carrying a small white parcel of hers which she had not put into the reticule. They climbed the steps out of the covered market and walked along the market-place together. And Rachel unmistakably did find pleasure in being seen thus with the great and powerful, if much criticized, Thomas Batchgrew, him to whom several times, less than a year earlier, she had scathingly referred as _that man_. His escort in the thoroughfare, and especially his demeanour towards herself, gave her a standing which she could otherwise scarcely have attained. Moreover, people might execrate him in private, but that he had conquered the esteem of their secret souls was well proved by their genuine eagerness to salute him as he walked sniffing along. He counted himself one of the seven prides of the district, and perhaps he was not far out.

“Come in a minute, lass,” he said in a low, confidential voice, as they reached his branch shop, just beyond Malkin’s. “I’ll–” He paused.

A motor, apparently enormous, was buzzing motion-less in the wide entry by the side of the shop. It very slowly moved forward, crossed the footpath and half the street opposite the Town Hall, impeding a tram-car, and then curved backward into a position by the kerbstone. John’s Ernest was at the steering-wheel. Councillor Batchgrew stood still with his mouth open to watch the manoeuvre.

“This is John’s Ernest–my son John’s eldest. Happen ye know him?” said Batchgrew to Rachel. “He’s a good lad.”

John’s Ernest, a pleasant-featured young man of twenty-five, blushed and raised his hat. And Rachel also blushed as she nodded. It was astonishing that old Batchgrew could have a grandson with so honest a look on his face, but she had heard that son John, too, was very different from his father.

“Dunna go till I’ve seen thee,” said Mr. Batchgrew to John’s Ernest, and to Rachel, “Come in, Mrs. Fores.”

John’s Ernest silenced the car, and extricated himself with practised rapidity from the driver’s seat.

“Where are ye going?” asked his grandfather.

“I’m going to lock the garage doors,” said John’s Ernest, with a humorous smile which seemed to add, “Unless you’d like them to be left open all Saturday afternoon.” Rachel vividly remembered the playful, boyish voice which she had heard one night when the motor-car had called to take Mr. Batchgrew to Red Cow.

The councillor nodded.

In the small, untidy, disagreeable, malodorous shop, which in about half a century had scarcely altered its aspect, Thomas Batchgrew directed Rachel to a corner behind the counter and behind a partition, with a view of a fragment of the window. As she passed she saw one of the Batchgrew women (the wife of another grandson) and three little girls of various sizes flash in succession across an open doorway at the back. The granddaughter-in-law, who had an abode full of costly wedding-presents over the shop, had been one of her callers, but when they flashed across that doorway the Batchgrew women made a point of ignoring all phenomena in the shop.

“Has Louis decided about them debentures?” Thomas Batchgrew asked, still in a very low and confidential tone, as the two stood together in the corner. He had put the Book and the parcel down on a very ragged blotting-pad that lay on a chipped and ink-stained deal desk, and began to finger a yellow penholder. There was nobody else in the shop.

Rachel had foreseen his question.

She answered calmly: “Yes. He’s quite decided that on the whole it’ll be better if he doesn’t put his money into debentures.”

There was no foundation whatever for this statement; yet, in uttering the lie, she was clearly conscious of a feeling of lofty righteousness. She faced Thomas Batchgrew, though not with a tranquillity perfectly maintained, and she still enjoyed his appreciation of her, but she did not seem to care whether he guessed that she was lying or not.

“I’m sorry, lass!” he said simply, sniffing. “The lad’s a fool. It isn’t as if I’ve got to go hawking seven per cent. debentures to get rid of ’em–and in a concern like that, too! They’d never ha’ been seven per cent if it hadna been for me. But it was you as I was thinking of when I offered ’em to Louis. I thought I should be doing ye a good turn.”

The old man smiled amid his loud sniffs. He was too old to have retained any save an artistic interest in women. But an artistic interest in them he certainly had; and at an earlier period he had acquainted himself with life, as his eye showed. Rachel blushed a third time that morning, and more deeply than before. He was seriously nattering her now. Endearing qualities that had expired in him long ago seemed to be resuscitated and to animate his ruined features. Rachel dimly understood how it was that some woman had once married him and borne him a lot of children, and how it was that he had been so intimate and valued a friend of the revered husband of such a woman as Mrs. Maldon. She was, in the Five Towns phrase, “flustered.” She almost believed what Thomas Batchgrew had said. She did believe it. She had misjudged him on the Thursday night when he spread the lure of the seven per cent. in front of Louis. At any rate, he assuredly did not care, personally, whether Louis accepted the debentures or not.

“However,” the councillor went on, “he’s got to know his own business best. And I don’t know as it’s any affair o’ mine. But I was just thinking of you. When the husband has a good investment, th’ wife generally comes in for something…. And what’s more, it ‘ud ha’ stopped him from doing anything silly with his brass! _You_ know.”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“I’m talking to ye because I’ve taken a fancy to ye,” said the councillor. “I knew what you were the first time I set eyes on ye. Oh, I don’t mind telling ye now–what harm is there in it? I’d a sort of a fancy as one day you and John’s Ernest might ha’ hit it off. I had it in my mind like.”

A crude compliment, possibly in bad taste, possibly offensive; but Rachel was singularly moved by the revelation thus made. Before she could find a reply John’s Ernest came into the shop, followed by an aproned assistant.

III

Then she was sitting by John’s Ernest’s side in the big motor-car, with her possessions at her feet. The enthronement had happened in a few moments. John’s Ernest was going to Hanbridge.

“Ye can run Mrs. Fores up home on yer way,” Thomas Batchgrew had suggested.

“But Bycars Lane is miles out of your way!” Rachel had cried.

Both men had smiled. “Won’t make a couple of minutes’ difference in the car,” John’s Ernest had modestly murmured.

She had been afraid to get into the automobile–afraid with a sort of stage-fright; afraid, as she might have been had she been called upon to sing at a concert in the Town Hall. She had imagined that all Bursley was gazing at her as she climbed into the car. Over the face of England automobiles are far more common than cuckoos, and yet for the majority, even of the proud and solvent middle class, they still remain as unattainable, as glitteringly wondrous, as a title. Rachel had never been in an automobile before; she had never hoped to be in an automobile. A few days earlier, and she had been regarding a bicycle as rather romantic! Louis had once mentioned a motor-cycle and side-carriage for herself, but she had rebuffed the idea with a shudder.

The whole town slid away behind her. The car was out of the market-place and crossing the top of Duck Bank, the scene of Louis’ accident, before she had settled her skirts. She understood why the men had smiled at her; it was no more trouble for the car to go to Bycars than it would be for her to run upstairs. The swift movement of the car, silent and arrogant, and the occasional deep bass mysterious menace of its horn, and the grace of John’s Ernest’s gestures on the wheel as he curved the huge vehicle like a phantom round lumbering obstacles–these things fascinated and exalted her.

In spite of the horrible secret she carried all the time in her heart, she was somehow filled with an instinctive joy. And she began to perceive changes in her own perspective. The fine Louis, whom she had regarded as the summit of mankind, could never offer her an automobile; he existed entirely in a humbler world; he was, after all, a young man in a very small way of affairs. Batchgrew’s automobile would swallow up, week by week, more than the whole of Louis’ income. And further, John’s Ernest by her side was invested with the mighty charm of one who easily and skilfully governs a vast and dangerous organism. All the glory of the inventors and perfecters of automobiles, and of manufacturing engineers, and of capitalists who could pay for their luxurious caprices, was centred in John’s Ernest, merely because he directed and subjugated the energy of the miraculous machine.

And John’s Ernest was so exquisitely modest and diffident, and yet had an almost permanent humorous smile. But the paramount expression on his face was honesty. She had never hitherto missed the expression of honesty on Louis’ face, but she realized now that it was not there…. And she had been adjudged worthy of John’s Ernest! The powerful of the world had had their eyes on her! Not Louis alone had noted her! Had Fate chosen, and had she herself chosen, that very motor-car might have been hers, and she at that instant riding in it as the mistress thereof! Strange thoughts, which intensely flattered and fostered her self-esteem. But she still had the horrible secret to carry with her.

When the car stopped in front of her gate, she forced open the door and jumped down with almost hysterical speed, said “Good-bye” and “Thank you” to John’s Ernest, who becomingly blushed, and ran round the back of the car with her purchases. The car went on up the lane, the intention of John’s Ernest being evident to proceed along Park Road and the Moorthorne ridge to Hanbridge rather than turn the car in the somewhat narrow lane. Rachel, instead of entering the house, thrust her parcels frantically on to the top step against the front door, and rushed down the steps again and down the lane. In a minute she was overtaking a man.

“Louis!” she cried.

From the car she had seen the incredible vision of Louis walking down the lane from the house. He and John’s Ernest had not noticed each other, nor had Louis noticed that his wife was in the car.

Louis stopped now and looked back, hesitant.

There he was, with his plastered, pale face all streaked with greyish-white lines! Really Rachel had difficulty in believing her eyes. She had left him in bed, weak, broken; and he was there in the road fully dressed for the town and making for the town–a dreadful sight, but indubitably moving unaided on his own legs. It was simply monstrous! Fury leaped up in her. She had never heard of anything more monstrous. The thing was an absolute outrage on her nursing of him.

“Are you stark, staring mad?” she demanded.

He stood weakly regarding her. It was clear that he was already very enfeebled by his fantastic exertions.

“I wonder how much farther you would have gone without falling!” she said. “I’ll thank you to come back this very instant!… This very instant!”

He had no strength to withstand her impetuous anger. His lower lip fell. He obeyed with some inarticulate words.

“And I should like to know what Mrs. Tams was doing!” said Rachel.

She neither guessed nor cared what was the intention of Louis’ shocking, impossible escapade. She grasped his arm firmly. In ten minutes he was in bed again, under control, and Rachel was venting herself on Mrs. Tams, who took oath that she had been utterly unaware of the master’s departure from the house.

CHAPTER XV

THE CHANGED MAN

I

Exactly a week passed, and Easter had come, before Rachel could set out upon an enterprise which she both longed and hated to perform. In the meantime the situation in the house remained stationary, except that after a relapse Louis’ condition had gradually improved. She nursed him; he permitted himself to be nursed; she slept near him every night; no scene of irritation passed between them. But nothing was explained; even the fact that Rachel on the Saturday morning had overtaken Louis instead of meeting him–a detail which in secret considerably puzzled Louis, since it implied that his wife had been in the house when he left it–even this was not explained; as for the motor-car, Louis, absorbed, had scarcely noticed it, and Rachel did not mention it. She went on from one day into the next, proud, self-satisfied, sure of her strength and her position, indifferently scornful of Louis, and yet fatally stricken; she knew not in the least what was to be done, and so she waited for Destiny. Louis had to stop in bed for five days. His relapse worried Dr. Yardley, who, however, like many doctors, was kept in complete ignorance of the truth; Rachel was ashamed to confess that her husband had monstrously taken advantage of her absence to rise up and dress and go out; and Louis had said no word. On the Friday he was permitted to sit in a chair in the bedroom, and on Saturday he had the freedom of the house. It surprised Rachel that on the Saturday he had not dashed for the street, for after the exploit of the previous Saturday she was ready to expect anything. Had he done so she would not have interfered; he was really convalescent, and also the number of white stripes over his face and hair had diminished. In the afternoon he reclined on the Chesterfield to read, and fell asleep. Then it was that Rachel set out upon her enterprise. She said not a word to Louis, but instructed Mrs. Tams to inform the master, if he inquired, that she had gone over to Knype to see Mr. Maldon.

“Are you a friend of Mester Maldon’s?” asked the grey-haired slattern who answered her summons at the door of Julian’s lodgings in Granville Street, Knype. There was a challenge in the woman’s voice. Rachel accepted it at once.

“Yes, I am,” she said, with decision.

“Well, I don’t know as I want any o’ Mester Maldon’s friends here,” said the landlady loudly. “Mester Maldon’s done a flit from here, Mester Maldon has; and,” coming out on to the pavement and pointing upward to a broken pane in the first-floor window, “that’s a bit o’ his fancy work afore he flitted!”

Rachel put her lips together.

“Can you give me his new address?”

“Can I give yer his new address? Pr’aps I can and pr’aps I canna, but I dunna see why I should waste my breath on Mester Maldon’s friends–that I dunna! And I wunna!”

Rachel walked away. Before she reached the end of the frowsy street, whose meanness and monotony of tiny-bow-windows exemplified intensely the most deplorable characteristics of a district where brutish licence is decreasing, she was overtaken by a lanky girl in a pinafore.

“If ye please, miss, Mester Maldon’s gone to live at 29 Birches Street, ‘anbridge.”

Having made this announcement, the girl ran off, with a short giggle.

Rachel, had to walk half a mile to reach the tram-route. This re-visiting of her native town, which she had quitted only a few weeks earlier, seemed to her like the sad resumption of an existence long forgotten. She was self-conscious and hoped that she would not encounter the curiosity of any of her Knype acquaintances. She felt easier when she was within the sheltering car and rumbling and jerking through the gloomy carnival of Easter Saturday afternoon in Knype and Cauldon on the way to Hanbridge.

After leaving the car in Crown Square, she had to climb through all the western quarter of Hanbridge to the very edge of the town, on the hummock that separates it from the Axe Moorlands. Birches Street, as she had guessed, was in the suburb known as Birches Pike. It ran right to the top of the hill, and the upper portion consisted of new cottage-houses in groups of two or three, with vacant lots between. Why should Julian have chosen Birches Street for residence, seeing that his business was in Knype? It was a repellent street; it was out even of the little world where sordidness is at any rate dignified by tradition and anaemic ideals can support each other in close companionship. It had neither a past nor a future. The steep end of it was an horizon of cloud. The April east wind blew the smoke of Hanbridge right across it.

In this east wind men in shirt-sleeves, and women with aprons over their heads, stood nonchalantly at cottage gates contemplating the vacuum of leisure. On two different parcels of land teams of shrieking boys were playing football, with piles of caps and jackets to serve as goal-posts. To the left, in a clough, was an enormous yellow marlpit, with pools of water in its depths, and gangways of planks along them, and a few overturned wheelbarrows lying here and there. A group of men drove at full speed up the street in a dogcart behind a sweating cob, stopped violently at the summit, and, taking watches from pockets, began to let pigeons out of baskets. The pigeons rose in wide circles and were lost in the vast dome of melancholy that hung over the district.

II

No. 29 was the second house from the top, new, and already in decay. It and its attached twin were named “Prospect Villas” in vermilion tiles on the yellowish-red bricks of the facade. Hot, and yet chilled by the wind, Rachel hesitated a moment at the gate, suddenly realizing the perils of her mission. And then she saw Julian Maldon standing in the bay-window of the ground floor; he was eating. Simultaneously he recognized her.

She thought, “I can’t go back now.”

He came sheepishly to the front door and asked her to walk in.

“Who’d have thought of seeing you?” he exclaimed. “You must take me as I am. I’ve only just moved in.”

“I’ve been to your old address,” she said, smiling, with an attempt at animation.

“A rare row I had there!” he murmured.

She understood, with a pang of compassion and yet with feminine disdain, the horrible thing that his daily existence was. No wonder he would never allow Mrs. Maldon to go and see him! The spectacle of his secret squalor would have desolated the old lady.

“Don’t take any notice of all this,” he said apologetically, as he preceded her into the room where she had seen him standing. “I’m not straight yet…. Not that it matters. By the way, take a seat, will you?”

Rachel courageously sat down.

Just as there were no curtains to the windows, so there was no carpet on the planked floor. A few pieces of new, cheap, ignoble furniture half filled the room. In one corner was a sofa-bedstead covered with an army blanket, in the middle a crimson-legged deal table, partly covered with a dirty cloth, and on the cloth were several apples, an orange, and a hunk of brown bread–his meal. Although he had only just “moved in,” dust had had time to settle thickly on all the furniture. No pictures of any kind hid the huge sunflower that made the pattern of the wall-paper. In the hearth, which lacked a fender, a small fire was expiring.

“Ye see,” said Julian, “I only eat when I’m hungry. It’s a good plan. So I’m eating now. I’ve turned vegetarian. There’s naught like it. I’ve chucked all that guzzling an swilling business. It’s no good. I never touch a drop of liquor, nor a morsel of fleshmeat. Nor smoke, either. When you come to think of it, smoking’s a disgusting habit.”

Rachel said, pleasantly, “But you were smoking last week, surely?”

“Ah! But it’s since then. I don’t mind telling you. In fact, I meant to tell you, anyhow. I’ve turned over a new leaf. And it wasn’t too soon. I’ve joined the Knype Ethical Society. So there you are!” His voice grew defiant and fierce, as in the past, and he proceeded with his meal.

Rachel knew nothing of the Knype Ethical Society, except that in spite of its name it was regarded with unfriendly suspicion by the respectable as an illicit rival of churches and chapels and a haunt of dubious characters who, under high-sounding mottoes, were engaged in the wicked scheme of setting class against class. She had accepted the general verdict on the Knype Ethical Society. And now she was confirmed in it. As she gazed at Julian Maldon in that dreadful interior, chewing apples and brown bread and sucking oranges, only when he felt hungry, she loathed the Knype Ethical Society. It was nothing to her that the Knype Ethical Society was responsible for a religious and majestic act in Julian Maldon–the act of turning over a new leaf.

“And why did you come up here?”

“Oh, various reasons!” said Julian, with a certain fictitious nonchalance, beneath which was all his old ferocious domination. “You see, I didn’t get enough exercise before. Lived too close to the works. In fact, a silly existence. I saw it all plain enough as soon as I got back from South Africa…. Exercise! What you want is for your skin to act at least once every day. Don’t you think so?” He seemed to be appealing to her for moral support in some revolutionary theory.

“Well–I’m sure I don’t know.”

Julian continued–

“If you ask me, I believe there are some people who never perspire from one year’s end to another. Never! How can they expect to be well? How can they expect even to be clean? The pores, you know. I’ve been reading a lot about it. Well, I walk up here from Knype full speed every day. Everybody ought to do it. Then I have a bath.”

“Oh! Is there a bathroom?”

“No, there isn’t,” he answered curtly. Then in a tone of apology: “But I manage. You see, I’m going to save. I was spending too much down there–furnished rooms. Here I took two rooms–this one and a kitchen–unfurnished; very much cheaper, of course. I’ve just fixed them up temporarily. Little by little they’ll be improved. The woman upstairs comes in for half an hour in the morning and just cleans up when I’m gone.”

“And does your cooking?”

“Not much!” said Julian bravely. “I do that myself. In the first place, I want very little cooking. Cooking’s not natural. And what bit I do want–well, I have my own ideas about it, I’ve got a little pamphlet about rational eating and cooking. You might read it. Everybody ought to read it.”

“I suppose all that sort of thing’s very interesting,” Rachel remarked at large, with politeness.

“It is,” Julian said emphatically.

Neither of them felt the necessity of defining what was meant by “all that sort of thing.” The phrase had been used with intention and was perfectly understood.

“But if you want to know what I really came up here for,” Julian resumed, “I’ll show you.”

“Where?”

“Outside.” And he repeated, “I’ll show you.”

III

She followed him as, bareheaded, he hurried out of the room into the street.

“Shan’t you take cold without anything on your head in this wind?” she suggested mildly.

He would have snapped off the entire head of any other person who had ventured to make the suggestion. But he treated Rachel more gently because he happened to think that she was the only truly sensible and kind woman he had ever met in his life.

“No fear!” he muttered.

At the front gate he stopped and looked back at his bay-window.

“Now–curtains!” he said. “I won’t have curtains. Blinds, at night, yes, if you like. But curtains! I never could see any use in curtains. Fallals! Keep the light out! Dust-traps!”

Rachel gazed at him. Despite his beard, he appeared to her as a big schoolboy, blundering about in the world, a sort of leviathan puppy in earnest. She liked him, on account of an occasional wistful expression in his eyes, and because she had been kind to him during his fearful visit to Bycars. She even admired him, for his cruel honesty and force. At the same time, he excited her compassion to an acute degree. As she gazed at him the tears were ready to start from her eyes. What she had seen, and what she had heard of the new existence which he was organizing for himself made her feel sick with pity. But mingled with her pity was a sharp disdain. The idea of Julian talking about cleanliness, dust-traps, and rationality gave her a desire to laugh and cry at once. All the stolid and yet wary conservatism of her character revolted against meals at odd hours, brown bread, apples, orange-sucking, action of the skin, male cooking, camp-beds, the frowsiness of casual charwomen, bare heads, and especially bare windows. If Rachel had been absolutely free to civilize Julian’s life, she would have begun by measuring the bay-window.

She said firmly–

“I must say I don’t agree with you about curtains.”

His gestures of impatience were almost violent; but she would not flinch.

“Don’t ye?”

“No.”

“Straight?”

She nodded.

He drew breath. “Well, I’ll get some–if it’ll satisfy you.”

His surrender was intensely dramatic to her. It filled her with happiness, with a consciousness of immense power. She thought: “I can influence him. I alone can influence him. Unless _I_ look after him his existence will be dreadful–dreadful.”

“You’d much better let me buy them for you.” She smiled persuasively.

“Have it your own way!” he said gloomily. “Just come along up here.”

He led her up to the top of the street.

“Ye’ll see what I live up here for,” he muttered as they approached the summit.

The other half of the world lay suddenly at their feet as they capped the brow, but it was obscured by mist and cloud. The ragged downward road was lost in the middle distance amid vaporous grey-greens and earthy browns.

“No go!” he exclaimed crossly. “Not clear enough! But on a fine day ye can see Axe and Axe Edge…. Finest view in the Five Towns.”

The shrill cries of the footballers reached them.

“What a pity!” she sympathized eagerly. “I’m sure it must be splendid.” His situation seemed extraordinarily tragic to her. His short hair, ruffled by the keen wind, was just like a boy’s hair and somehow the sight of it touched her deeply.

He put his hands far into his pockets and drummed one foot on the ground.

“What brought ye up here?” he demanded, with his eyes on an invisible town of Axe.

She opened her hand-bag.

“I came to bring you this,” she said, and offered him an envelope, which he took, wonderingly.

Then, when he had it in his hands, he said abruptly, angrily, “If it’s that money, I won’t take it.”

“Yes you will.”

“Has Louis sent ye?” This was the first mention of Louis, though he was well aware of the accident.

She shook her head.

“Well, let him keep his half, and you can keep mine.”

“It’s all there.”

“How–all there?”

“All that you left the other night.”

“But–but–” He seemed to be furious as he faced her.

Rachel went on–

“The other part of the missing money’s been found … Louis had it. So all this belongs to you. If some one hadn’t told you it wouldn’t have been fair.”

She flushed slowly, trembling, but looking at him.

“Well!” Julian burst out with savage solemnity, “there’s not many of your sort knocking about. By G—- there isn’t!”

She walked quickly away from his passionate homage to her.

“Here!” he shouted, fingering the envelope.

But she kept on at a swift pace towards Hanbridge. About a quarter of a mile down the road the pigeon-flyer’s dogcart stood empty outside a public-house.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LETTER

I

Rachel stood at her own front door and took off her glove in order more easily to manipulate the latch-key, which somehow, since coming into frequent use again, had never been the same manageable latch-key, but a cantankerous old thing, though still very bright. She opened the door quietly, and stepped inside quietly, lest by chance she might disturb Louis, the invalid–but also because she was a little afraid.

The most contradictory feelings can exist together in the mind. After the desolate discomfort of Julian Maldon’s lodging and the spectacle of his clumsiness in the important affair of mere living, Rachel was conscious of a deep and proud happiness as she re-entered the efficient, cosy, and gracious organism of her own home. But simultaneously with this feeling of happiness she had a dreadful general apprehension that the organism might soon be destroyed, and a particular apprehension concerning her next interview with Louis, for at the next interview she would be under the necessity of telling him about her transaction with Julian. She had been absolutely determined upon that transaction. She had said to herself, “Whatever happens, I shall take that money to Julian and insist on his keeping all of it.” She had, in fact, been very brave–indeed, audacious. Now the consequences were imminent, and they frightened her; she was less brave now. One awkward detail of the immediate future was that to tell Louis would be to reopen the entire question of the theft, which she had several times in the most abrupt and arrogant manner refused to discuss with him.

As soon as she had closed the front door she perceived that twilight was already obscuring the interior of the house. But she could plainly see that the parlour door was about two inches ajar, exactly as she had left it a couple of hours earlier. Probably Louis had not stirred. She listened vainly for a sign of life from him. Probably he was reading, for on rare occasions when he read a novel he would stick to the book with surprising pertinacity. At any rate, he would be too lofty to give any sign that he had heard her return. Under less sinister circumstances he might have yelled gaily: “I say, Rache!” for in a teasing mood he would sometimes prefer “Rache” to “Louise.”

Rachel from the lobby could see the fire bright in the kitchen, and a trayful of things on the kitchen table ready to be brought into the parlour for high tea.

Mrs. Tams was out. It was not among Mrs. Tams’s regular privileges to be out in the afternoon. But this was Easter Saturday–rather a special day–and, further, one of her daughters had gone away for Easter and left a child with one of her daughters-in-law, and Mrs. Tams had desired to witness some of the dealings of her daughter-in-law with her grandchild. Not without just pride had Mrs. Tams related the present circumstances to Rachel. In Mrs. Tams’s young maturity parents who managed a day excursion to Blackpool in the year did well, and those who went away for four or five days at Knype Wakes in August were princes and plutocrats. But nowadays even a daughter of Mrs. Tams, not satisfied with a week at Knype Wakes, could take a week-end at Easter just like great folk such as Louis. Which proved that the community at large, or Mrs. Tams’s family, had famously got up in the world. Rachel recalled Louis’ suggestion, more than a week earlier, of a trip to Llandudno. The very planet itself had aged since then.

She looked at the clock. In twenty minutes Mrs. Tams would be back. She and Louis were alone together in the house. She might go straight into the parlour, and say, in as indifferent and ordinary a voice as she could assume: “I’ve just been over to Julian Maldon’s to give him that money–all of it, you know,” and thus get the affair finished before Mrs. Tams’s reappearance. Louis was within a few feet of her, hidden only by the door which a push would cause to swing!… Yes, but she could not persuade herself to push the door! The door seemed to be protected from her hand by a mysterious spell which she dared not break. She was, indeed, overwhelmed by the simple but tremendous fact that Louis and herself were alone together in the darkening house. She decided, pretending to be quite calm: “I’ll just run upstairs and take my things off first. There’s no use in my seeming to be in a hurry.”

In the bedroom she arranged her toilet for the evening, and established order in every corner of the chamber. Under the washstand lay the long row of Louis’ boots and shoes, each pair in stretchers. She suddenly contrasted Julian’s heavy and arrogant dowdiness with the nice dandyism of Louis. She could not help thinking that Julian would be a terrible person to live with. This was the first thought favourable to Louis which had flitted through her mind for a long time. She dismissed it. Nothing in another man could be as terrible to live with as the defects of Louis. She set herself–she was obliged to set herself–high above Louis. The souvenir of the admiration of old Batchgrew and John’s Ernest, the touching humility before her of Julian Maldon, once more inflated her self-esteem–it could not possibly have failed to do so. She knew that she was an extraordinary woman, and a prize.

Invigorated and reassured by these reflections, she descended proudly to the ground floor. And then, hesitating at the entrance to the parlour, she went into the kitchen and poked the fire. As the fire was in excellent condition there was no reason for this act except her diffidence at the prospect of an encounter with Louis. At last, having examined the tea-tray and invented other delays, she tightened her nerves and passed into the parlour to meet the man who seemed to be waiting for her like the danger of a catastrophe. He was not there. The parlour was empty. His book was lying on the Chesterfield.

She felt relieved. It was perhaps not very wise for him to have gone out for a walk, but if he chose to run risks, he was free to do so, for all she cared. In the meantime the interview was postponed; hence her craven relief. She lit the gas, but not by the same device as in Mrs. Maldon’s day; and then she saw an envelope lying on the table. It was addressed in Louis’ handwriting to “Mrs. Louis Fores.” She was alone in the house. She felt sick. Why should he write a letter to her and leave it there on the table? She invented half a dozen harmless reasons for the letter, but none of them was the least convincing. The mere aspect of the letter frightened her horribly. There was no strength in her limbs. She tore the envelope in a daze.

The letter ran–

Dear Rachel,–I have decided to leave England. I do not know how long I shall be away. I cannot and will not stand the life I have been leading with you this last week. I had a perfectly satisfactory explanation to give you, but you have most rudely refused to listen to it. So now I shall not give it. I shall write you as to my plans. I shall send you whatever money is necessary for you. By the way, I put four hundred and fifty pounds away in my private drawer. On looking for it this afternoon I see that you have taken it, without saying a word to me. You must account to me for this money. When you have done so we will settle how much I am to send you. In the meantime you can draw from it for necessary expenses.

Yours,

L.F.

II

Rachel stared at the letter. It was the first letter she had seen written on the new note-paper, embossed with the address, “Bycars, Bursley.” Louis would not have “Bycars Lane” on the note-paper, because “Bycars” alone was more vague and impressive; distant strangers might take it to be the name of a magnificent property. Her lips curled. She violently ripped the paper to bits and stuck them in the fire; a few fragments escaped and fluttered like snow on to the fender. She screwed up the envelope and flung it after the letter. Her face smarted and tingled as the blood rushed passionately to her head.

She thought, aghast: “Everything is over! He will never come back. He will never have enough moral force to come back. We haven’t been married two months, and everything is over! And this is Easter Saturday! He wanted us to be at Llandudno or somewhere for Easter, and I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s gone there. Yes, he would be capable of that. And if it wasn’t for the plaster on his face, he’d be capable of gallivanting on Llandudno pier this very night!”

She had no illusion as to him. She saw him as objectively as a god might have seen him.

And then she thought with fury: “Oh, what a fool I’ve been! What a little fool! Why didn’t I listen to him? Why didn’t I foresee?… No, I’ve _not_ been a fool! I’ve not! I’ve not! What did I do wrong? Nothing! I couldn’t have borne his explanations!… Explanations, indeed! I can imagine his explanations! Did he expect me to smile and kiss him after he’d told me he was a thief?”

And then she thought, in reference to his desertion: “It’s not true! It can’t be true!”

She wanted to read the letter again, so that perhaps she might read something into it that was hopeful. But to read it again was impossible. She tried to recall its exact terms, and could not. She could only remember with certainty that the final words were “Yours, L.F.” Nevertheless, she knew that the thing was true; she knew by the weight within her breast and the horrible nausea that almost overcame her self-control.

She whispered, alone in the room–

“Yes, it’s true! And it’s happened to me!… He’s gone!”

And not the ruin of her life, but the scandal of the affair, was the first matter that occupied her mind. She was too shaken yet to feel the full disaster. Her mind ran on little things. And just as once she had pictured herself self-conscious in the streets of Bursley as a young widow, so now she pictured herself in the far more appalling role of deserted wife. The scandal would be enormous. Nothing–no carefully invented fiction–would suffice to stifle it. She would never dare to show her face. She would be compelled to leave the district. And supposing a child came! Fears stabbed her. She felt tragically helpless as she stood there, facing a vision of future terrors. She had legal rights, of course. Her common sense told her that. She remembered also that she possessed a father and a brother in America. But no legal rights and no relatives would avail against the mere simple, negligent irresponsibility of Louis. In the end, she would have to rely on herself. All at once she recollected that she had promised to see after Julian’s curtains.

She had almost no money. And how could the admiration of three men other than her husband (so enheartening a few minutes earlier) serve her in the crisis? No amount of masculine admiration could mitigate the crudity of the fact that she had almost no money. Louis’ illness had interrupted the normal course of domestic finance–if, indeed, a course could be called normal which had scarcely begun. Louis had not been to the works. Hence he had received no salary. And how much salary was due to him, and whether he was paid weekly or monthly, she knew not. Neither did she know whether his inheritance actually had been paid over to him by Thomas Batchgrew.

What she knew was that she had received no house-keeping allowance for more than a week, and that her recent payments to tradesmen had been made from a very small remaining supply of her own prenuptial money. Economically she was as dependent on Louis as a dog, and not more so; she had the dog’s right to go forth and pick up a living…. Of course Louis would send her money. Louis was a gentleman–he was not a cad. Yes, but he was a very careless gentleman. She was once again filled with the bitter realization of his extreme irresponsibility.

She heard a noise in the back lobby, and started. It was Mrs. Tams, returned. Mrs. Tams had a key of her own, of which she was proud–an affair of about four inches in length and weighing over a quarter of a pound. It fitted the scullery door, and was, indeed, the very key with which Rachel had embroidered her lie to Thomas Batchgrew on the day after the robbery. Mrs. Tams always took pleasure in entering the house from the rear, without a sound. She was now coming into the parlour with the tray for high tea. No wonder that Rachel started. Here was the first onset of the outer world.

Mrs. Tams came in, already perfectly transformed from a mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother into a parlour-maid with no human tie.

“Good-afternoon, Mrs. Tams.”

“So ye’ve got back, ma’am!”

While Mrs. Tams laid the table, with many grunts and creakings of the solid iron in her stays, Rachel sat on a chair by the fire, trying to seem in a casual, dreamy mood, cogitating upon what she must say.

“Will mester be down for tea, ma’am?” asked Mrs. Tams, who had excusably assumed that Louis was upstairs.

And Rachel, forced now to defend, instead of attacking, blurted out–

“Oh! By the way, I was forgetting; Mr. Fores will not be in for tea.”

Mrs. Tams, forgetting she was a parlour-maid, vociferated in amazement and protest–

“Not be in for tea, ma’am? And him as he is!” All her lately gathering suspicions were strengthened and multiplied.

Rachel had to continue as she had begun: “He’s been called away on very urgent business. He simply had to go.”

Mrs. Tams, intermitting her duties, stood still and gazed at Rachel.

“Was it far, ma’am, as he had for to go?”

A simple question, and yet how difficult to answer plausibly!

“Yes–rather.”

“I suppose he’ll be back to-night, ma’am?”

“Oh yes, of course!” replied Rachel, in absurd haste. “But if he isn’t, I’m not to worry, he said. But he fully expects to be. We scarcely had time to talk, you see. He was getting ready when I came in.”

“A telegram, ma’am, I suppose it was?”

“Yes…. That is, I don’t know whether there was a telegram first, or not. But he was called for, you see. A cab. I couldn’t have let him go off walking, not as he is.”

Mrs. Tarns gave a gesture.

“I suppose I mun alter this ‘ere table, then,” said she, putting a cup and saucer back on the tray.

“Idiot! Idiot!” Rachel described herself to herself, when Mrs. Tams, very much troubled, had left the room. “‘By the way, I was forgetting’–couldn’t I have told her better than that? She’s known for a week that there’s been something wrong, and now she’s certainly guessed there’s something dreadfully wrong…. Just look at all the silly lies I’ve told already! What will it be like to-morrow–and Monday? I wonder what my face looked like while I was telling her!”

She rushed upstairs to discover what luggage Louis had taken with him. But apparently he had taken nothing whatever. The trunk, the valise, and the various bags were all stacked in the empty attic, exactly as she had placed them. He must have gone off in a moment, without any reflection or preparation.

And when Mrs. Tams served the solitary tea, Rachel was just as idiotic as before.

“By the way, Mrs. Tams,” she began again, “did you happen to tell Mr. Fores where I’d gone this afternoon?… You see, we’d no opportunity to discuss anything,” she added, striving once more after verisimilitude.

“Yes’m. I told him when I took him his early cup o’ tea.”

“Did he ask you?”

“Now ye puzzle me, ma’am! I couldn’t swear to it to save my life. But I told him.”

“What did he say?” Rachel tried to smile.

“He didna say aught.”

Rachel remained alone, to objurgate Rachel. It was indeed only too obvious from Mrs. Tams’s constrained and fussy demeanour that the old woman had divined the existence of serious trouble in the Fores household.

III

Some time after the empty ceremony of tea, Rachel sat in state in the parlour, dignified, self-controlled, pretending to sew, as she had pretended to eat and drink and, afterwards, to have an important enterprise of classifying and rearranging her possessions in the wardrobe upstairs. Let Mrs. Tams enter ever so unexpectedly, Rachel was a fit spectacle for her, with a new work-basket by her side on the table, and her feet primly on a footstool, quite in the style of the late Mrs. Maldon, and a serious and sagacious look on her face that the fire and the gas combined to illuminate. She did not actually sew, but the threaded needle was ready in her hand to move convincingly at a second’s notice, for Mrs. Tams was of a restless and inquisitive disposition that night.

Apparently secure between the drawn blinds, the fire, the Chesterfield, and the sideboard, Rachel was nevertheless ranging wide among vast, desolate tracts of experience, and she was making singular discoveries. For example, it was not until she was alone in the parlour after tea that she discovered that during the whole of her interview with Julian Maldon in the afternoon she had never regarded him as a thief. And yet he was a thief–just as much as Louis! She had simply forgotten that he was a thief. He did not seem to be any the worse for being a thief. If he had shown the desire to explain to her by word of mouth the entire psychology of his theft, she would have listened with patience and sympathy; she would have encouraged him to rectitude. And yet Julian had no claim on her; he was not her husband; she did not love him. But because Louis was her husband, and had a claim on her, and had received all the proofs of her