affection–therefore, she must be merciless for Louis! She perceived the inconsistency; she perceived it with painful clearness. She had the impartial logic of the self-accuser. At intervals the self-accuser was flagellated and put to flight by passionate reaction, but only to return stealthily and irresistibly….
She had been wrong to take the four hundred and fifty pounds without a word. True, Louis had somewhat casually authorized her to return half of the sum to Julian, but the half was not the whole. And in any case she ought to have told Louis of her project. There could be no doubt that, immediately upon Mrs. Tams’s going out, Louis had looked for the four hundred and fifty pounds, and, in swift resentment at its disappearance, had determined to disappear also. He had been stung and stung again, past bearing (she argued) daily and hourly throughout the week, and the disappearance of the money had put an end to his patience. Such was the upshot, and she had brought it about!
She had imagined that she was waiting for destiny, but in fact she had been making destiny all the time, with her steely glances at Louis and her acrid, uncompromising tongue!… And did those other men really admire her? How, for instance, could Thomas Batchgrew admire her, seeing that he had suspected her of lies and concealment about the robbery? If it was on account of supposed lies and concealment that he admired her, then she rejected Thomas Batchgrew’s admiration….
The self-accuser and the self-depreciator in her grew so strong that Louis’ conduct soon became unexceptionable–save for a minor point concerning a theft of some five hundred pounds odd from an old lady. And as for herself, she, Rachel, was an over-righteous prig, an interfering person, a blundering fool of a woman, a cruel-hearted creature. And Louis was just a poor, polite martyr who had had the misfortune to pick up certain bank-notes that were not his.
Then the tide of judgment would sweep back, and Rachel was the innocent, righteous martyr again, and Louis the villain. But not for long.
She cried passionately within her brain: “I must have him. I must get hold of him. I _must_!”
But when the brief fury of longing was exhausted she would ask: “How can I get hold of him? Where is he?” Then more forcibly: “What am I to do first? Yes, what ought I to do? What is wisest? He little guesses that he is killing me. If he had guessed, he wouldn’t have done it. But nothing will kill me! I am as strong as a horse. I shall live for ages. There’s the worst of it all!… And it’s no use asking what I ought to do, either, because nothing, nothing, nothing would induce me to run after him, even if I knew where to run to! I would die first. I would live for a hundred years in torture first. That’s positive.”
The hands of the clock, instead of moving slowly, seemed to progress at a prodigious rate. Mrs. Tams came in–
“Shall I lay mester’s supper, ma’am?”
The idea of laying supper for the master had naturally not occurred to Rachel.
“Yes, please.”
When the supper was laid upon one half of the table, the sight of it almost persuaded Rachel that Louis would be bound to come–as though the waiting supper must mysteriously magnetize him out of the world beyond into the intimacy of the parlour.
And she thought, as she strove for the hundredth time to recall the phrases of the letter–
“‘Perfectly satisfactory explanation!’ suppose he _has_ got a perfectly satisfactory explanation! He must have. He must have. If only he has, everything would be all right. I’d apologize. I’d almost go on my knees to him…. And he was so ill all the time, too!… But he’s gone. It’s too late now for the explanation. Still, as soon as I hear from him, I shall write and ask him for it.”
And in her mind she began to compose a wondrous letter to him–a letter that should preserve her own dignity while salving his, a letter that should overwhelm him with esteem for her.
She rang the bell. “Don’t sit up, Mrs. Tams.”
And when she had satisfied herself that Mrs. Tams with unwilling obedience had retired upstairs, she began to walk madly about the parlour (which had an appearance at once very strange and distressingly familiar), and to whisper plaintively, and raging, and plaintively again: “I must get him back. I cannot bear this. It is too much for me. I _must_ get him back. It’s all my fault!” and then dropped on the Chesterfield in a collapse, moaning: “No. It’s no use now.”
And then she fancied that she heard the gate creak, and a latch-key fumbling into the keyhole of the front door. And one part of her brain said on behalf of the rest: “I am mad. I am delirious.”
It was a fact that Louis had caused to be manufactured for his own use a new latch-key. But it was impossible that this latch-key should now be in the keyhole. She was delirious. And then she unmistakably heard the front door open. Her heart jumped with the most afflicting violence. She was ready to fall on to the carpet, but seemed to be suspended in the air. When she recognized Louis’ footsteps in the lobby tears burst from her eyes in an impetuous torrent.
CHAPTER XVII
IN THE MONASTERY
I
When Mrs. Tams brought in his early cup of tea that Easter Saturday afternoon, Louis had no project whatever in his head, and he was excessively, exasperatingly bored. A quarter of an hour earlier he had finished reading the novel which had been mitigating the worst tedium of his shamed convalescence, and the state of his mind was not improved by the fact that in his opinion the author of the novel had failed to fulfil clear promises–had, in fact, abused his trust. On the other hand, he felt very appreciably stronger, and his self-esteem was heightened by the complete correctness of his toilet. On that morning he had dressed himself with art and care for the first time since the accident. He enjoyed a little dandyism; dandified, he was a better man; the “fall” of a pair of trousers over the knee, the gloss of white wristbands, just showing beneath the new cloth of a well-cut sleeve–these phenomena not only pleased him but gave him confidence. And herein was the sole bright spot of his universe when Mrs. Tams entered.
He was rather curt with Mrs. Tams because she was two minutes late; for two endless minutes he had been cultivating the resentment of a man neglected and forgotten by every one of those whose business in life it is to succour, humour, and soothe him.
Mrs. Tams comprehended his mood with precision, and instantly. She hovered round him like a hen, indeed like a whole flock of hens, and when he savagely rebuffed her she developed from a flock of hens into a flight of angels.
“Missis said as I was to tell you as she’d gone to see Mr. Julian Maldon, sir,” said Mrs. Tams, in the way of general gossip.
Louis made no sign.
“Her didna say how soon her’d be back. I was for going out, sir, but I’ll stop in, sir, and willing–“
“What time are you supposed to go out?” Louis demanded, in a tone less inimical than his countenance.
“By rights, now, sir,” said Mrs. Tams, looking backward through the open door at the lobby clock.
“Well,” Louis remarked with liveliness, “if you aren’t outside this house in one minute, in sixty seconds, I shall put you out, neck and crop.”
Mrs. Tams smiled. His amiability was returning, he had done her the honour to tease her. She departed, all her “things” being ready in the kitchen. Even before she had gone Louis went quickly upstairs, having drunk less than half a cup of tea, and with extraordinary eagerness plunged into the bedroom and unlocked his private drawer. He both hoped and feared that the money which he had bestowed there after Julian’s historic visit would have vanished. It had vanished.
The shock was unpleasant, but the discovery itself had a pleasant side, because it justified the theory which had sprung complete into his mind when he learnt where Rachel had gone, and also because it denuded Rachel of all reasonable claim to consideration. He had said to himself: “She has gone off to return half of that money to Julian–that’s what it is. And she’s capable of returning all of it to him!” … And she had done so. And she had not consulted him, Louis. He, then, was a nobody–zero in the house! She had deliberately filched the money from him, and to accomplish her purpose she had abstracted his keys, which he had left in his pocket. She must have stolen the notes several days before, perhaps a week before, when he was really seriously ill. She had used the keys and restored them to his pocket. Astounding baseness!
He murmured: “This finishes it. This really does finish it.”
He was immensely righteous as he stood alone in the bedroom in front of the rifled drawer. He was more than righteous–he was a martyr. He had done absolutely nothing that was wrong. He had not stolen money; he had not meant to steal; the more he examined his conduct, the more he was convinced that it had been throughout unexceptionable, whereas the conduct of Rachel …! At every point she had sinned. It was she, not he, who had burnt Mrs. Maldon’s hoard. Was it not monstrous that a woman should be so careless as to light a fire without noticing that a bundle of notes lay on the top of the coal? Besides, what affair was it of hers, anyway? It concerned himself, Mrs. Maldon, and Julian, alone. But she must needs interfere. She had not a penny to bless herself with, but he had magnanimously married her; and his reward was her inexcusable interference in his private business.
His accident was due solely to his benevolence for her. If he had not been wheeling a bicycle procured for her, and on his way to buy her a new bicycle, the accident would never have occurred. But had she shown any gratitude? None. It was true that he had vaguely authorized her to return half of the money replaced by the contrite Julian; but no date for doing so had been fixed, and assuredly she had no pretext whatever for dealing with all of it. That she should go to Julian Maldon with either the half or the whole of the money without previously informing him and obtaining the ratification of his permission was simply scandalous. And that she should sneakingly search his pockets for keys, commit a burglary in his drawer, and sneakingly put the keys back was outrageous, infamous, utterly intolerable.
He said, “I’ll teach you a lesson, my lady, once for all.”
Then he went downstairs. The kitchen was empty; Mrs. Tams had gone. But between the kitchen and the parlour he changed his course, and ran upstairs again to the drawer, which he pulled wide open. At the back of it there ought to have been an envelope containing twenty pounds in notes, balance of an advance payment from old Batchgrew. The envelope was there with its contents. Rachel had left the envelope. “Good of her!” he ejaculated with sarcasm. He put the money in his pocket-book, and descended to finish his tea, which he drank up excitedly.
A dubious scheme was hypnotizing him. He was a man well acquainted with the hypnotism of dubious schemes. He knew all the symptoms. He fought against the magic influence, and then, as always, yielded himself deliberately and voluptuously to it. He would go away. He would not wait; he would go at once, in a moment. She deserved as much, if not more. He knew not where he should go; a thousand reasons against going assailed him; but he would go. He must go. He could no longer stand, even for a single hour, her harshness, her air of moral superiority, her adamantine obstinacy. He missed terribly her candid worship of him, to which he had grown accustomed and which had become nearly a necessity of his existence. He could not live with an eternal critic; the prospect was totally inconceivable. He wanted love, and he wanted admiring love, and without it marriage was meaningless to him, a mere imprisonment.
So he would go. He could not and would not pack; to pack would distress him and bore him; he would go as he was. He could buy what he needed. The shops–his kind of shops–were closed, and would remain closed until Tuesday. Nevertheless, he would go. He could buy the indispensable at Faulkner’s establishment on the platform at Knype railway-station, conveniently opposite the Five Towns Hotel. He had determined to go to the Five Towns Hotel that night. He had no immediate resources beyond the twenty pounds, but he would telegraph to Batchgrew, who ad not yet transferred to him the inheritance, to pay money into his bank early on Tuesday; if he were compelled to draw a cheque he would cross it, and then it could not possibly be presented before Wednesday morning.
At all costs he would go. His face was still plastered; but he would go, and he would go far, no matter where! The chief thing was to go. The world was calling him. The magic of the dubious scheme held him fast. And in all other respects he was free–free as impulse. He would go. He was not yet quite recovered, not quite strong…. Yes, he was all right; he was very strong! And he would go.
He put on his hat and his spring overcoat. Then he thought of the propriety of leaving a letter behind him–not for Rachel’s sake, but to insist on his own dignity and to spoil hers. He wrote the letter, read it through with satisfaction, and quitted the house, shutting the door cheerfully, but with a trembling hand. Lest he might meet Rachel on her way home he went up the lane instead of down, and, finding himself near the station, took a train to Knype–travelling first class. The glorious estate of a bachelor was his once more.
II
The Five Towns Hotel stood theoretically in the borough of Hanbridge, but in fact it was in neither Hanbridge nor Knype, but “opposite Knype station,” on the quiet side of Knype station, far away from any urban traffic; the gross roar of the electric trams running between Knype and Hanbridge could not be heard from the great portico of the hotel. It is true that the hotel primarily existed on its proximity to the railway centre of the Five Towns. But it had outgrown its historic origin, and would have moderately flourished even had the North Staffordshire railway been annihilated. By its sober grandeur and its excellent cooking it had taken its place as the first hotel in the district. It had actually no rival. Heroic, sublime efforts had been made in the centre of Hanbridge to overthrow the pre-eminence of the Five Towns Hotel. The forlorn result of one of these efforts–so immense was it!–had been bought by the municipality and turned into a Town Hall–supreme instance of the Five Towns’ habit of “making things do!” No effort succeeded. Men would still travel from the ends of the Five Towns to the bar, the billiard-rooms, the banqueting-halls of the Five Towns Hotel, where every public or semi-public ceremonial that included conviviality was obliged to happen if it truly respected itself.
The Five Towns Hotel had made fortunes, and still made them. It was large and imposing and sombre. The architect, who knew his business, had designed staircases, corridors, and accidental alcoves on the scale of a palace; so that privacy amid publicity could always be found within its walls. It was superficially old-fashioned, and in reality modern. It had a genuine chef, with sub-chefs, good waiters whose sole weakness was linguistic, and an apartment of carven oak with a vast counterfeit eye that looked down on you from the ceiling. It was ready for anything–a reception to celebrate the nuptials of a maid, a lunch to a Cabinet Minister with an axe to grind in the district, or a sale by auction of house-property with wine _ad libitum_ to encourage bids.
But its chief social use was perhaps as a retreat for men who were tired of a world inhabited by two sexes. Sundry of the great hotels of Britain have forgotten this ancient function, and are as full of frills, laces, colour, and soft giggles as a London restaurant, so that in Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow a man in these days has no safe retreat except the gloominess of a provincial club. The Five Towns Hotel has held fast to old tradition in this respect. Ladies were certainly now and then to be seen there, for it was a hotel and as such enjoyed much custom. But in the main it resembled a monastery. Men breathed with a new freedom as they entered it. Commandments reigned there, and their authority was enforced; but they were not precisely the tables of Moses. The enormous pretence which men practise for the true benefit of women was abandoned in the Five Towns Hotel. Domestic sultans who never joked in the drawing-room would crack with laughter in the Five Towns Hotel, and make others crack, too. Old men would meet young men on equal terms, and feel rather pleased at their own ability to do so. And young men shed their youth there, displaying the huge stock of wisdom and sharp cynicism which by hard work they had acquired in an incredibly short time. Indeed, the hotel was a wonderful institution, and a source of satisfaction to half a county.
III
It was almost as one returned from the dead that Louis Fores entered the Five Towns Hotel on Easter Saturday afternoon, for in his celibate prime he had been a habitue of the place. He had a thrill; and he knew that he would be noticed, were it only as the hero and victim of a street accident; a few remaining plasters still drew attention to his recent history. At the same time, the thrill which affected him was not entirely pleasurable, for he was frightened by what he had done: by the letter written to Rachel, by his abandonment of her, and also by the prospect of what he meant to do. The resulting situation would certainly be scandalous in a high degree, and tongues would dwell on the extreme brevity of the period of marriage. The scandal would resound mightily. And Louis hated scandal, and had always had a genuine desire for respectability…. Then he reassured himself. “Pooh! What do I care?” Besides, it was not his fault. He was utterly blameless; Rachel alone was the sinner. She had brought disaster upon herself. On the previous Saturday he had given her fair warning by getting up out of bed in his weakness and leaving the house–more from instinct than from any set plan. But she would not take a hint. She would not learn. Very good! The thought of his inheritance and of his freedom uplifted him till he became nearly a god.
Owing to the Easter holidays the hotel was less bright and worldly than usual. Moreover, Saturday was never one of its brilliant days of the week. In the twilight of a subsidiary lounge, illuminated by one early electric spark, a waiter stood alone amid great basket-chairs and wicker-tables. Louis knew the waiter, as did every man-about-town; but Louis imagined that he knew him better than most; the waiter gave a similar impression to all impressionable young men.
“How do you do, Krupp!” Louis greeted him, with kind familiarity.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
It was perhaps the hazard of his name that had given the waiter a singular prestige in the district. Krupp is a great and an unforgettable name, wherever you go. And also it offers people a chance to be jocose with facility. A hundred habitue’s had made the same joke to Krupp about Krupp’s name, and each had supposed himself to be humorous in an original manner. Krupp received the jocularities with the enigmatic good-fellow air with which he received everything. None knew whether Krupp admired or disdained, loved or hated, the Five Towns and the English character. He was a foreigner from some vague frontier of Switzerland, possessing no language of his own but a patois, and speaking other languages less than perfectly. He had been a figure in the Five Towns Hotel for over twenty years. He was an efficient waiter; yet he had never risen on the staff, and was still just the lounge or billiard-room waiter that he had always been–and apparently content with Destiny.
Louis asked brusquely, as one who had no time to waste, “Will Faulkner’s be open?”
Krupp bent down and glanced through an interstice of a partition at a clock in the corridor.
“Yes, sir,” said Krupp with calm certainty.
Louis, pleased, thought, “This man is a fine waiter.” Somehow Krupp made it seem as if by the force of his will he had forced Faulkner’s to be open–in order to oblige Mr. Fores.
“Because,” said Louis casually, “I’ve no luggage, not a rag, and I want to buy a few things, and no other place’ll be open.”
“Yes, sir,” said Krupp, mysterious and quite incurious. He did not even ask, “Do you wish a room, sir?”
“Heard about my accident, I suppose?” Louis went on, a little surprised that Krupp should make no sympathetic reference to his plasters.
Krupp became instantly sympathetic, yet keeping his customary reserve.
“Yes, sir. And I am pleased to see you are recovered,” he said, with the faint, indefinable foreign accent and the lack of idiom which combined to deprive his remarks of any human quality.
“Well,” said Louis, not quite prepared to admit that the affair had gone so smoothly as Krupp appeared to imply, “I can tell you I’ve had a pretty bad time. I really ought not to be here now, but–” He stopped.
“Strange it should happen to you, sir. A gentleman who was in here the other day said that in his opinion you were one of the cleverest cyclists in the Five Towns.”
Louis naturally inquired, “Who was that?”
“I could not say, sir. Not one of our regular customers, sir,” with a touch of mild depreciation. “A dark gentleman, with a beard, a little lame, I fancy.” As Krupp had invented the gentleman and his opinion to meet the occasion, he was right in depriving him of the rank of a regular customer.
“Oh!” murmured Louis. “By the way, has Mr. Gibbs come yet?”
“Mr. Gibbs, sir?”
“Yes, an American. I have an appointment with him this afternoon. If he comes in while I am over at Faulkner’s just tell him, will you? I think he’s stopping at the Majestic.”
The Majestic being the latest rival hotel at Hanbridge, Krupp raised his eyebrows in a peculiar way and nodded his head.
Just as Krupp had invented a gentleman, so now Louis was inventing one. Neither Krupp nor Louis guessed the inventive act of the other. Krupp’s act was a caprice, a piece of embroidery, charming and unnecessary. But Louis was inventing with serious intent, for he had to make his presence at the Five Towns Hotel on Easter Saturday seem natural and inevitable.
“And also I want the Cunard list of sailings, and the White Star, too. There’s a Cunard boat from Liverpool on Monday, isn’t there?”
“I don’t _think_ so, sir,” said Krupp, “but I’ll see.”
“I understood from Mr. Gibbs there was. And I’m going to Liverpool by that early train to-morrow.”
“Sunday, sir?”
“Yes, I must be in Liverpool to-morrow night.”
Louis went across to the station to Faulkner’s. He considered that he was doing very well. And after all, why not go to America–not on Monday, for he was quite aware that no boat left on Monday–but in a few days, after he had received the whole sum that Thomas Batchgrew held for him. He could quite plausibly depart on urgent business connected with new capitalistic projects. He could quite plausibly remain in America as long as convenient. America beckoned to him. He remembered all the appetizing accounts that he had ever heard from American commercial travellers of Broadway and Fifth Avenue–incredible streets. In America he might treble, quadruple, his already vast capital. The romance of the idea intoxicated him.
IV
When he got back from Faulkner’s with a parcel (which he threw to the cloak-room attendant to keep) he felt startlingly hungry, and, despite the early hour, he ordered a steak in the grill-room; and not a steak merely, but all the accoutrements of a steak, with beverages to match. And to be on the safe side he paid for the meal at once, with a cheque for ten pounds, receiving the change in gold and silver, and thus increasing his available cash to about thirty pounds. Then in the lounge, with Cuban cigar-smoke in his eyes, and Krupp discoursing to him of all conceivable Atlantic liners, he wrote a letter to Thomas Batchgrew and marked it “Very urgent”–which was simple prudence on his part, for he had drawn a cheque for ten pounds on a non-existent bank-balance. At last, as Mr. Gibbs had not arrived, he said he should stroll up to the Majestic. He had not yet engaged a room; he seemed to hesitate before that decisive act….
Then it was that, in the corridor immediately outside the lounge, he encountered Jim Horrocleave. The look in Jim Horrocleave’s ferocious eye shocked him. Louis had almost forgotten his employer, and the sudden spectacle of him was disconcerting.
“Hello, Fores!” said Horrocleave very sardonically, with no other greeting. “I thought ye were too ill to move.” No word of sympathy in the matter of the accident! Simply the tone of an employer somehow aggrieved!
“I’m out to-day for the first time. Had to come down here on a matter–“
Horrocleave spoke lower, and even more sardonically. “I hear ye’re off to America.”
Louis looked through the fretted partition at the figure of Krupp alone in the lounge. And Horrocleave also looked at Krupp. And Krupp looked back with his enigmatic gaze, perhaps scornful, perhaps indifferent, perhaps secretly appreciative–but in any case profoundly foreign and aloof and sinister.
“Well–” Louis began at a disadvantage. “Who says I’m off to America?”
Horrocleave advanced his chin and clenched a fist.
“Don’t you go!” said he. “If ye did, ye might be brought back by the scruff o’ the neck. You mark my words and come down to the works to-morrow morning–_to-morrow_, ye understand!” He was breathing quickly. Then a malicious grin seemed to pass over his face as his glance rested for an instant on Louis’ plasters. The next instant he walked away, and Louis heard him at the cloak-room counter barking the one word, “Mackintosh.”
Louis understood, only too completely. During his absence from the works Horrocleave had amused himself by critically examining the old petty-cash book. That was all, and it was enough. Good-bye to romance, to adventure, to the freedom of the larger world! The one course to pursue was to return home, to deny (as was easy) that the notion of going to America had ever occurred to him, or even the notion of putting up at the hotel, and with such dignity as he could assume to restore to Horrocleave the total sum abstracted. With care and luck he might yet save his reputation. It was impossible that Horrocleave should prosecute. And what was seventy odd pounds, after all? He was master of thousands.
If he could but have walked straight out of the hotel! But he could not. His dignity, the most precious of all his possessions, had to be maintained. Possibly Krupp had overheard the conversation, or divined its nature. He strolled back into the lounge.
“A benedictine,” he ordered casually, and, neatly pulling up his trousers at the knee, sank into a basket-chair and crossed his legs, while blowing forth much smoke.
“Yes, sir.”
When Krupp brought the tiny glass, Louis paid for it without looking at him, and gave a good tip. Ah! He would have liked to peer into Krupp’s inmost mind and know exactly how Krupp had been discussing him with Jim Horrocleave. He would have liked to tell Krupp in cutting tones that waiters had no right to chatter to one customer about another. And then he would have liked to destroy Krupp. But he could not. His godlike dignity would not permit him to show by even the slightest gesture that he had been inconvenienced. The next moment he perceived that Providence had been watching over him. If he had gone to America unknown to Horrocleave, Horrocleave might indeed have proved seriously awkward…. Extradition–was there such a word, and such a thing? He finished the benedictine, went to the cloak-room and obtained his hat, coat, stick, and parcel; and the hovering Krupp helped him with his overcoat; and as Destiny cast him out of the dear retreat which a little earlier he had entered with such pleasurable anticipations, he was followed down the corridor by the aloof, disinterested gaze of the Swiss whose enigma no Staffordshire man had ever penetrated.
CHAPTER XVIII
MRS. TAMS’S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR
I
In the house at Bycars, where he arrived tardily after circuitous wanderings, Louis first of all dropped the parcel from Faulkner’s into the oak chest, raising and lowering the lid without any noise. Once, in the train in Bleakridge tunnel, he had almost thrown the parcel out of the carriage on to the line, as though it were in some subtle way a piece of evidence against him; but, aided by his vanity, he had resisted the impulse. Why, indeed, should he be afraid of a parcel of linen? Had he not the right to buy linen when and how he chose? Then he removed his hat and coat, hung them carefully in their proper place, smoothed his hair, and walked straight into the parlour. He had a considerable gift of behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened when the contrary was the case. Nobody could have guessed from his features that he was calculating and recalculating the chances of immediate imprisonment, and that each successive calculation disagreed with the previous one; at one moment the chances were less than one in a hundred, less than one in a million; at another they increased and multiplied themselves into tragic certainty.
When Rachel heard him in the lobby her sudden tears were tears of joy and deliverance. She did not try to restrain them. As she stole back to her chair she ignored all her reasonings against him, and lived only in the fact that he had returned. And she was triumphant. She thought: “Now that he is in the house, he is mine. I have him. He cannot escape me. In a caress I shall cancel all the past since his accident. So long as I can hold him I don’t care.” Her soul dissolved in softness towards him; even the body seemed to melt also, till, instead of being a strong, sturdy girl, she was a living tentacular endearment and naught else.
But when, with disconcerting quickness, he came into the room, she hardened again in spite of herself. She simply could not display her feelings. Upbringing, habit, environment were too much for her, and spontaneity was checked. Had she been alone with a dog she would have spent herself passionately on the dog, imaginatively transforming the dog into Louis; but the sight of Louis in person congealed her, so that she became a hard mass with just a tiny core of fire somewhere within.
“Why cannot I jump up and fall on his neck?” she asked herself angrily. But she could not.
She controlled her tears, and began to argue mentally whether Louis had come home because he could not keep away from her, or for base purposes of his own. She was conscious of a desire to greet him sarcastically with the remark, “So you’ve come back, after all!” It was a wilful, insensate desire; but there it was. She shut her lips on it, not without difficulty.
“I’ve kept some supper for you,” she said, with averted head. She wanted to make her voice kind, but it would not obey her. It was neither kind nor unkind. There were tears in it, however.
They did not look at each other.
“Why did you keep supper for me?” he mumbled.
“I thought you might find you weren’t well enough to travel,” she answered thoughtfully, with her face still bent over the work which she was spoiling with every clumsy, feverish stitch.
This surprising and ingenious untruth came from her without the slightest effort. It seemed to invent itself.
“Well,” said Louis, “I don’t happen to want any supper.” His accent was slightly but definitely inimical. He perceived that he had an advantage, and he decided to press it.
Rachel also perceived this, and she thought resentfully: “How cruel he is! How mean he is!” She hated and loved him simultaneously. She foresaw that peace must be preceded by the horrors of war, and she was discouraged. Though determined that he should not escape from the room unreconciled, she was ready to inflict dreadful injuries on him, as he on her. They now regarded each other askance, furtively, as dire enemies.
Louis, being deficient in common sense, thought of nothing but immediate victory. He well knew that, in case of trouble with Jim Horrocleave, he might be forced to humble himself before his wife, and that present arrogance would only intensify future difficulties. Also, he had easily divined that the woman opposite to him was a softer Rachel than the one he had left, and very ready for pacific compromise. Nevertheless, in his polite, patient way, he would persist in keeping the attitude of an ill-used saint with a most clear grievance. And more than this, he wanted to appear absolutely consistent, even in coming home again. Could he have recalled the precise terms of his letter, he would have contrived to interpret them so as to include the possibility of his return that night. He fully intended to be the perfect male.
Drawing his cigarette-case and match-box from his hip pocket, by means of the silver cable which attached them to his person, he carefully lit a cigarette and rose to put the spent match in the fire. While at the hearth he looked at his plastered face in the glass, critically and dispassionately, as though he had nothing else in the world to do. Then his eye caught some bits of paper in the fender–fragments of his letter which Rachel had cast into the fire and on to the hearth. He stooped, picked up one white piece, gazed at it, dropped it, picked up another, gazed at it, dropped it fastidiously.
“Hm!” he said faintly.
Then he stood again at his full height and blew smoke profusely about the mantelpiece. He was very close to Rachel, and above her. He could see the top of her bent, mysterious head; he could see all the changing curves of her breast as she breathed. He knew intimately her frock, the rings on her hand, the buckle on her shoe. He knew the whole feel of the room–the buzz of the gas, the peculiarities of the wall-paper, the thick curtain over the door to his right, the folds of the table-cloth. And in his infelicity and in his resentment against Rachel he savoured it all not without pleasure. The mere inviolable solitude with this young, strange, provocative woman in the night beyond the town stimulated him into a sort of zest of living.
There was a small sound from the young woman; her breathing was checked; she had choked down a dry sob. This signal, so faint and so dramatic in the stillness of the parlour, at once intimidated and encouraged him.
“What have you done with that money?” he asked, in a cold voice.
“What money?” Rachel replied, low, without raising her head. Her hand had ceased to move the needle.
“You know what money.”
“I took it to Julian, of course.”
“Why did you take it to Julian?”
“We agreed I should, last week–you yourself said so–don’t you remember?” Her tones acquired some confidence.
“No, I don’t remember. I remember something was said about letting him have half of it. Did you give him half or all of it?”
“I gave him all of it.”
“I like that! I like that!” Louis remarked sarcastically. “I like your nerve. You do it on the sly. You don’t say a word to me; and not content with that, you give him all of it. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask me for the money?”
Rachel offered no answer.
Louis proceeded with more vivacity. “And did he take it?”
“I made him.”
“What? All of it? What reason did you give? How did you explain things?”
“I told him you’d had the rest of the money, of course, so it was all right. It wouldn’t have been fair to him if some one hadn’t told him.”
Louis now seriously convinced himself that his grievance was tremendous, absolutely unexampled in the whole history of marriage.
“Well,” said he, with high, gloomy dignity, “it may interest you to know that I didn’t have the rest of the money…. If I’d had it, what do you suppose I’ve done with it?… Over five hundred pounds, indeed!”
“Then what–?”
“I don’t think I want any of your ‘Then what’s.’ You wouldn’t listen before, so why should you be told now? However, I expect I must teach you a lesson–though it’s too late.”
Rachel did not move. She heard him say that he had discovered the bank-notes at night, under the chair on the landing. “I took charge of them. I collared them, for the time being,” he said. “I happened to be counting them when you knocked at my bedroom door. I admit I was rather taken aback. I didn’t want you to see the notes. I didn’t see any reason why you should know anything about my aunt’s carelessness. You must remember you were only a paid employee then. I was close to the fireplace. I just scrunched them up in my hand and dropped them behind the fire-screen. Of course I meant to pick them up again instantly you’d gone. Well, you didn’t go. You seemed as if you wouldn’t go. I had to run for the doctor. There was no help for it. Even then I never dreamt you intended to light the fire in that room. It never occurred to me for a second…. And I should have thought anybody lighting a fire couldn’t have helped seeing a thing like a ball of bank-notes on the top of the grate. I should have thought so. But it seems I was wrong. When I got back of course the whole blooming thing was up the chimney. Well, there you are! What was I to do? I ask you that.”
He paused. Rachel sobbed.
“Of course,” he continued, with savage quietude, “you may say I might have forced you to listen to me this last week. I might. But why should I? Why should I beg and pray? If you didn’t know the whole story a week ago, is it my fault? I’m not one to ask twice. I can’t go on my knees and beg to be listened to. Some fellows could perhaps, but not me!”
Rachel was overwhelmed. The discovery that it was she herself, Pharisaical and unyielding, who had been immediately responsible for the disappearance of the bank-notes almost dazed her. And simultaneously the rehabilitation of her idol drowned her in bliss. She was so glad to be at fault, so ravished at being able to respect him again, that the very ecstasy of existing seemed likely to put an end to her existence. Her physical sensations were such as she might have experienced if her heart had swiftly sunk away out of her bosom and left an empty space there that gasped. She glanced up at Louis.
“I’m so sorry!” she breathed.
Louis did not move, nor did his features relax in the slightest.
With one hand raised in appeal, surrender, abandonment and the other on the arm of her chair, and her work slipping to the floor, she half rose towards him.
“You can’t tell how sorry I am!” she murmured. Her eyes were liquid. “Louis!”
“And well you may be, if you’ll excuse me saying so!” answered Louis frigidly.
He was confirmed in his illusory but tremendous grievance. The fundamental lack of generosity in him was exposed. Inexperienced though he was in women, he saw in Rachel then, just as if he had been twenty years older, the woman who lightly imagines that the past can be wiped out with a soft tone, an endearment, a tear, a touching appeal. He would not let her off so easily. She had horribly lacerated his dignity for a week–he could recall every single hurt–and he was not going to allow himself to recover in a minute. His dignity required a gradual convalescence. He was utterly unaffected by her wistful charm.
Rachel moved her head somewhat towards his, and then hesitated. The set hardness of his face was incredible to her. Her head began to swim. She thought, “I shall really die if this continues.”
“Louis–don’t!” she besought him plaintively.
He walked deliberately away and nervously played with an “ornament” on the sideboard.
“And let me tell you another thing,” said he slowly. “If you think I came back to-night because I couldn’t do without you, you’re mistaken. I’m going out again at once.”
She said to herself, “He has killed me!” The room circled round her, gathering speed, and Louis with it. The emptiness in her bosom was intolerable.
II
Louis saw her face turning paler and paler, till it was, really, almost as white as the table-cloth. She fell back into the chair, her arms limp and lifeless.
“Confound the girl!” he thought. “She’s going to faint now! What an infernal nuisance!”
Compunction, instead of softening him, made him angry with himself. He felt awkward, at a loss, furious.
“Mrs. Tams!” he called out, and hurried from the room. “Mrs. Tams!” As he went out he was rather startled to find that the door had not been quite closed.
In the lobby he called again, “Mrs. Tams!”
The kitchen gas showed a speck of blue. He had not noticed it when he came into the house: the kitchen door must have been shut, then. He looked up the stairs. He could discern that the door of Mrs. Tams’s bedroom, at the top, was open, and that there was no light in the room. Puzzled, he rushed to the kitchen, and snatched at his hat as he went, sticking it anyhow on his head.
“Eh, mester, what ever’s amiss?”
With these alarmed words Mrs. Tams appeared suddenly from behind the kitchen door; she seemed a little out of breath, as far as Louis could hear; he could not see her very well. The thought flashed through his mind. “She’s been listening at doors.”
“Oh! There you are,” he said, with an effort at ordinariness of demeanour. “Just go in to Mrs. Fores, will you? Something’s the matter with her. It’s nothing, but I have to go out.”
Mrs. Tams answered, trembling: “Nay, mester, I’m none going to interfere. I go into no parlour.”
“But I tell you she’s fainting.”
“Ye’d happen better look after her yerself, Mr. Louis,” said Mrs. Tams in a queer voice.
“But don’t you understand I’ve got to go out?”
He was astounded and most seriously disconcerted by Mrs. Tams’s very singular behaviour.
“If ye’ll excuse me being so bold, sir,” said Mrs. Tams, “ye ought for be right well ashamed o’ yeself. And that I’ll say with my dying breath.”
She dropped on to the hard Windsor chair, and, lifting her apron, began to whimper.
Louis could feel himself blushing.
“It seems to me you’d better look out for a fresh situation,” he remarked curtly, as he turned to leave the kitchen.
“Happen I had, mester,” Mrs. Tams agreed sadly; and then with fire: “But I go into no parlour. You get back to her, mester. Going out again at this time o’ night, and missis as her is! If you stop where a husband ought for be, her’ll soon mend, I warrant.”
He went back, cursing all women, because he had no alternative but to go back. He dared not do otherwise…. It was only a swoon. But was it only a swoon? Suppose …! He was afraid of public opinion; he was afraid of Mrs. Tams’s opinion. Mrs. Tams had pierced him. He went back, dashing his hat on to the oak chest.
III
Rachel was lying on the hearth-rug, one arm stretched nonchalantly over the fender and the hand close to the fire. Her face was whiter than any face he had ever seen, living or dead. He shook; the inanimate figure with the disarranged clothes and hair, prone and deserted there in the solitude of the warm, familiar room, struck terror into him. He bent down; he knelt down and drew the arm away from the fire. He knew not in the least what was the proper thing to do; and naturally the first impulse of his ignorance was to raise her body from the ground. But she was so heavy, so appallingly inert, that, fortunately, he could not do so, and he let her head subside again.
Then he remembered that the proper thing to do in these cases was to loosen the clothes round the neck; but he could not loosen her bodice because it was fastened behind and the hooks were so difficult. He jumped to the window and opened it. The blind curved inward like a sail under the cold entering breeze. When he returned to Rachel he thought he noticed the faintest pinky flush in her cheeks. And suddenly she gave a deep sigh. He knelt again. There was something about the line of her waist that, without any warning, seemed to him ineffably tender, wistful, girlish, seductive. Her whole figure began to exert the same charm over him. Even her frock, which nevertheless was not even her second best, took on a quality that in its simplicity bewitched him. He recalled her wonderful gesture as she lighted his cigarette on the night when he first saw her in her kitchen; and his memory of it thrilled him…. Rachel opened her eyes and sighed deeply once more. He fanned her with a handkerchief drawn from his sleeve.
“Louis!” she murmured in a tired baby’s voice, after a few moments.
He thought: “It’s a good thing I didn’t go out, and I’m glad Mrs. Tarns isn’t here blundering about.”
“You’re better?” he said mildly.
She raised her arms and clasped him, dragging him to her with a force that was amazing under the circumstances. They kissed; their faces were merged for a long time. Then she pushed him a little away, and, guarding his shoulders with her hands, examined his face, and smiled pathetically.
“Call me Louise,” she whispered.
“Silly little thing! Shall I get you some water?”
“Call me Louise!”
“Louise!”
CHAPTER XIX
RACHEL AND MR. HORROCLEAVE
I
The next morning, Sunday, Rachel had a fancy to superintend in person the boiling of Louis’ breakfast egg. For a week past Louis had not been having his usual breakfast, but on this morning the ideal life was recommencing in loveliest perfection for Rachel. The usual breakfast was to be resumed; and she remembered that in the past the sacred egg had seldom, if ever, been done to a turn by Mrs. Tams. Mrs. Tams, indeed, could not divide a minute into halves, and was apt to regard a preference for a certain consistency in a boiled egg as merely finicking and negligible. To Mrs. Tams a fresh egg was a fresh egg, and there was no more to be said.
Rachel entered the kitchen like a radiance. She was dressed with special care, rather too obviously so, in order that she might be worthy to walk by Louis’ side to church. She was going with him to church gladly, because he had rented the pew and she desired to please him by an alert gladness in subscribing to his wishes; it was not enough for her just to do what he wanted. Her eyes glittered above the darkened lower lids; her gaze was self-conscious and yet bold; a faint languor showed beneath her happy energy. But there was no sign that on the previous evening she had been indisposed.
Mrs. Tams was respectfully maternal, but preoccupied. She fetched the egg for Rachel, and Rachel, having deposited it in a cooking-spoon, held it over the small black saucepan of incontestably boiling water until the hand of the clock precisely covered a minute mark, whereupon she deftly slipped the egg into the saucepan; the water ceased to boil for a few seconds and then bubbled up again. And amid the heavenly frizzling of bacon and the odour of her own special coffee Rachel stood sternly watching the clock while Mrs. Tams rattled plates and did the last deeds before serving the meal. Then Mrs. Tarns paused and said–
“I don’t hardly like to tell ye, ma’m–I didn’t hardly like to tell ye last night when ye were worried like–no, and I dunna like now like, but its like as if what must be–I must give ye notice to leave. I canna stop here no longer.”
Rachel turned to her, protesting–
“Now, Mrs. Tams, what _are_ you talking about? I thought you were perfectly happy here.”
“So I am, mum. Nobody could wish for a better place. I’m sure I’ve no fault to find. But it’s like as if what must be.”
“But what’s the matter?”
“Well, ma’am, it’s Emmy.” (Emmy was Mrs. Tams’s daughter and the mother of her favourite grandchild.) “Emmy and all on’ em seem to think it’ll be better all round if I don’t take a regular situation, so as I can be more free for ’em, and they’ll all look after me i’ my old age. I s’ll get my old house back, and be among ’em all. There’s so many on ’em.”
Every sentence contained a lie. And the aged creature went on lying to the same pattern until she had created quite a web of convincing detail–more than enough to persuade her mistress that she was in earnest, foolishly in earnest, that she didn’t know on which side her bread was buttered, and that the poorer classes in general had no common sense.
“You’re all alike,” said the wise Rachel.
“I’m very sorry, ma’m.”
“And what am I to do? It’s very annoying for me, you know. I thought you were a permanency.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I should like to give your daughters and daughters-in-law a piece of my mind…. Good heavens! Give me that cooking-spoon, quick!”
She nipped the egg out of the saucepan; it was already several seconds overdone.
“It isn’t as if I could keep you on as a charwoman,” said Rachel. “I must have some one all the time, and I couldn’t do with a charwoman as well.”
“No, ma’am! It’s like as if what must be.”
“Well, I hope you’ll think it over. I must say I didn’t expect this from you, Mrs. Tams.”
Mrs. Tams put her lips together and bent obstinately over a tray.
Rachel said to herself: “Oh, she really means to leave! I can see that. She’s made up her mind…. I shall never trust any servant again–never!”
She was perhaps a little hurt (for she considered that she had much benefited Mrs. Tams), and a little perturbed for the future. But in her heart she did not care. She would not have cared if the house had fallen in, or if her native land had been invaded and enslaved by a foreign army. She was at peace with Louis. He was hers. She felt that her lien on him was strengthened.
II
The breakfast steaming and odorous on the table, and Rachel all tingling in front of her tray, awaited the descent of the master of the house. The Sunday morning post, placed in its proper position by Mrs. Tams, consisted of a letter and a post-card. Rachel stretched her arm across the table to examine them. The former had a legal aspect. It was a foolscap envelope addressed to Mrs. Maldon. Rachel opened it. A typewritten circular within respectfully pointed out to Mrs. Maldon that if she had only followed the writers’ advice, given gratis a few weeks earlier, she would have made one hundred and twenty-five pounds net profit by spending thirty-five pounds in the purchase of an option on Canadian Pacific Railway shares. The statement was supported by the official figures of the Stock Exchange, which none could question. “Can you afford to neglect such advice in future?” the writers asked Mrs. Maldon, and went on to suggest that she should send them forty-five pounds to buy an option on “Shells,” which were guaranteed to rise nine points in less than a month.
Mystified, half sceptical, and half credulous, Rachel reflected casually that the world was full of strange phenomena. She wondered what “Shells” were, and why the writers should keep on writing to a woman who had been dead for ages. She carefully burnt both the circular and the envelope.
And then she looked at the post-card, which was addressed to “Louis Fores, Esq.” As it was a post-card, she was entitled to read it. She read: “Shall expect you at the works in the morning at ten. Jas. Horrocleave.” She thought it rather harsh and oppressive on the part of Mr. Horrocleave to expect Louis to attend at the works on Bank Holiday–and so soon after his illness, too! How did Mr. Horrocleave know that Louis was sufficiently recovered to be able to go to the works at all?
Louis came, rubbing his hands, which for an instant he warmed at the fire. He was elegantly dressed. The mere sight of him somehow thrilled Rachel. His deportment, his politeness, his charming good-nature were as striking as ever. The one or two stripes (flesh-coloured now, not whitish) on his face were not too obvious, and, indeed, rather increased the interest of his features. The horrible week was forgotten, erased from history, though Rachel would recollect that even at the worst crisis of it Louis had scarcely once failed in politeness of speech. It was she who had been impolite–not once, but often. Louis had never raged. She was contrite, and her penitence intensified her desire to please, to solace, to obey. When she realized that it was she who had burnt that enormous sum in bank-notes, she went cold in the spine.
Not that she cared twopence for the enormous sum, really, now that concord was established! No, her little flutters of honest remorse were constantly disappearing in the immense exultant joy of being alive and of contemplating her idol. Louis sat down. She smiled at him. He smiled back. But in his exquisite demeanour there was a faint reserve of melancholy which persisted. She had not yet that morning been able to put it to flight; she counted, however, on doing so very soon, and in the meantime it did not daunt her. After all, was it not natural?
She began–
“I say, what do you think? Mrs. Tams has given me notice.”
She pretended to be aggrieved and to be worried, but essential joy shone through these absurd masks. Moreover, she found a certain naive satisfaction in being a mistress with cares, a mistress to whom “notice” had to be given, and who would have to make serious inquiry into the character of future candidates for her employment.
Louis raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t you think it’s a shame?”
“Oh,” said he cautiously, “you’ll get somebody else as good, _and_ better. What’s she leaving for?”
Rachel repeated Mrs. Tams’s rigmarole.
“Ah!” murmured Louis.
He was rather sorry for Mrs. Tams. His good-nature was active enough this morning. But he was glad that she had taken the initiative. And he was content that she should go. After the scene of the previous night, their relations could not again have been exactly what the relations between master and servant ought to be. And further, “you never knew what women wouldn’t tell one another,” even mistress and maid, maid and mistress. Yes, he preferred that she should leave. He admired her and regretted the hardship on the old woman–and that was an end of it! What could he do to ease her? The only thing to do would be to tell her privately that so far as he was concerned she might stay. But he had no intention of doing aught so foolish. It was strange, but he was entirely unconscious of any obligation to her for the immense service she had rendered him. His conclusion was that some people have to be martyrs. And in this he was deeply right.
Rachel, misreading his expression, thought that he did not wish to be bothered with household details. She recalled some gratuitous advice half humorously offered to her by a middle-aged lady at her reception, “Never talk servants to your men.” She had thought, at the time, “I shall talk everything with _my_ husband.” But she considered that she was wiser now.
“By the way,” she said in a new tone, “there’s a post-card for you. I’ve read it. Couldn’t help.”
Louis read the post-card. He paled, and Rachel noticed his pallor. The fact was that in his mind he had simply shelved, and shelved again, the threat of James Horrocleave. He had sincerely desired to tell a large portion of the truth to Rachel, taking advantage of her soft mood; but he could not; he could not force his mouth to open on the subject. In some hours he had quite forgotten the danger–he was capable of such feats–then it reasserted itself and he gazed on it fascinated and helpless. When Rachel, to please him and prove her subjugation, had suggested that they should go to church–“for the Easter morning service”–he had concurred, knowing, nevertheless, that he dared not fail to meet Horrocleave at the works. On the whole, though it gave him a shock, he was relieved that Horrocleave had sent the post-card and that Rachel had seen it. But he still was quite unable to decide what to do.
“It’s a nice thing, him asking you to go to the works on a Bank Holiday like that!” Rachel remarked.
Louis answered: “It’s not to-morrow he wants me. It’s to-day.”
“Sunday!” she exclaimed.
“Yes. I met him for a second yesterday afternoon, and he told me then. This was just a reminder. He must have sent it off last night. A good thing he did send it, though. I’d quite forgotten.”
“But what is it? What does he want you to go on Sunday for?”
Louis shrugged his shoulders, as if to intimate that nothing that Horrocleave did ought to surprise anybody.
“Then what about church?”
Louis replied on the spur of the moment–
“You go there by yourself. I’ll meet you there. I can easily be there by eleven.”
“But I don’t know the pew.”
“They’ll show you your pew all right, never fear.”
“I shall wait for you in the churchyard.”
“Very well. So long as it isn’t raining.”
She kissed him fervently when he departed.
Long before it was time to leave for church she had a practical and beautiful idea–one of those ideas that occur to young women in love. Instead of waiting for Louis in the churchyard she would call for him at the works, which was not fifty yards off the direct route to St. Luke’s. By this means she would save herself from the possibility of inconvenience within the precincts of the church, and she would also prevent the conscienceless Mr. Horrocleave from keeping Louis in the office all the morning. She wondered that the idea had not occurred to Louis, who was very gifted in such matters as the arrangement of rendezvous.
She started in good time because she wanted to walk without hurry, and to ponder. The morning, though imperfect and sunless, had in it some quality of the spring, which the buoyant youth of Rachel instantly discovered and tasted in triumph. Moreover, the spirit of a festival was abroad, and visible in the costume and faces of passers-by; and it was the first festival of the year. Rachel responded to it eagerly, mingling her happiness with the general exultation. She was intensely, unreasonably happy. She knew that she was unreasonably happy; and she did not mind.
When she turned into Friendly Street the big black double gates of the works were shut, but in one of them a little door stood ajar. She pushed it, stooped, and entered the twilight of the archway. The office door was shut. She walked uncertain up the archway into the yard, and through a dirty window on her left she could dimly discern a man gesticulating. She decided that he must be Horrocleave. She hesitated, and then, slightly confused, thought, “Perhaps I’d better go back to the archway and knock at the office door.”
III
In the inner office, among art-lustre ware, ink-stained wood, dusty papers, and dirt, Jim Horrocleave banged down a petty-cash book on to Louis’ desk. His hat was at the back of his head, and his eyes blazed at Louis, who stood somewhat limply, with a hesitant, foolish, faint smile on his face.
“That’s enough!” said Horrocleave fiercely. “I haven’t had patience to go all through it. But that’s enough. I needn’t tell ye I suspected ye last year, but ye put me off. And I was too busy to take the trouble to go into it. However, I’ve had a fair chance while you’ve been away.” He gave a sneering laugh. “I’ll tell ye what put me on to ye again, if you’ve a mind to know. The weekly expenses went down as soon as ye thought I had suspicions. Ye weren’t clever enough to keep ’em up. Well, what have ye got to say for yeself, seeing ye are on yer way to America?”
“I never meant to go to America,” said Louis. “Why should I go to America?”
“Ask me another. Then ye confess?”
“I don’t,” said Louis.
“Oh! Ye don’t!” Horrocleave sat down and put his hands on his outstretched knees.
“There may be mistakes in the petty-cash book. I don’t say there aren’t. Any one who keeps a petty-cash book stands to lose. If he’s too busy at the moment to enter up a payment, he may forget it–and there you are! He’s out of pocket. Of course,” Louis added, with a certain loftiness, “as you’re making a fuss about it I’ll pay up for anything that’s wrong … whatever the sum is. If you make it out to be a hundred pounds I’ll pay up.”
Horrocleave growled: “Oh, so ye’ll pay up, will ye? And suppose I won’t let ye pay up? What shall ye do then?”
Louis, now quite convinced that Horrocleave was only bullying retorted, calmly:
“It’s I that ought to ask you that question.”
The accuser was exasperated.
“A couple o’ years in quod will be about your mark, I’m thinking,” he said.
Whereupon Louis was suddenly inspired to answer:
“Yes. And supposing I was to begin to talk about illicit commissions?”
Horrocleave jumped up with such ferocious violence that Louis drew back, startled. The recent Act of Parliament, making a crime of secret commissions to customers’ employees, had been a blow to the trade in art-lustre ware, and it was no secret in the inner office that Horrocleave, resenting its interference with the natural course of business, had more than once discreetly flouted it, and thus technically transgressed the criminal law. Horrocleave used to defend and justify himself by the use of that word “technical.” Louis’ polite and unpremeditated threat enraged him to an extreme degree. He was the savage infuriate. He cared for no consequences, even consequences to himself. He hated Louis because Louis was spick and span, and quiet, and because Louis had been palmed off on him by Louis’ unscrupulous respectable relatives as an honest man.
“Now thou’st done for thyself!” he cried, in the dialect. “Thou’st done for thyself! And I’ll have thee by the heels for embezzlement, and blackmail as well.” He waved his arms. “May God strike me if I give thee any quarter after that! I’ll–“
He stopped with open mouth, disturbed by the perception of a highly strange phenomenon beyond the window. He looked and saw Rachel in the yard. For a moment he thought that Louis had planned to use his wife as a shield in the affair if the worst should come to the worst. But Rachel’s appearance simultaneously showed him that he was wrong. She was the very mirror of happy confidence. And she seemed so young, and so obviously just married; and so girlish and so womanish at the same time; and her frock was so fresh, and her hat so pert against the heavy disorder of the yard, and her eyes were unconsciously so wistful–that Horrocleave caught his breath. He contrasted Rachel with Mrs. Horrocleave, her complete antithesis, and at once felt very sorry for himself and very scornful of Mrs. Horrocleave, and melting with worshipful sympathy for Rachel.
“Yer wife’s in the yard,” he whispered in a different tone.
“My wife!” Louis was gravely alarmed; all his manner altered.
“Hast told her anything of this?”
“I should think I hadn’t.”
“Ye must pay me, and I’ll give ye notice to leave,” said Horrocleave, quickly, in a queer, quiet voice. The wrath was driven out of him. The mere apparition of Rachel had saved her husband.
A silence.
Rachel had disappeared. Then there was a distant tapping. Neither of the men spoke nor moved. They could hear the outer door open and light footfalls in the outer office.
“Anybody here?” It was Rachel’s voice, timid.
“Come in, come in!” Horrocleave roared.
She entered, blushing, excusing herself, glancing from one to the other, and by her spotless Easter finery emphasizing the squalor of the den.
In a few minutes Horrocleave was saying to Rachel, rather apologetically–
“Louis and I are going to part company, Mrs. Fores. I can’t keep him on. His wages are too high for me. It won’t run to it. Th’ truth is, I’m going to chuck this art business. It doesn’t pay. Art, as they call it, ‘s no good in th’ pottery trade.”
Rachel said, “So that’s what you wanted to see him about on a Sunday morning, is it, Mr. Horrocleave?”
She was a little hurt at the slight on her husband, but the wife in her was persuaded that the loss would be Mr. Horrocleave’s. She foresaw that Louis would now want to use his capital in some commercial undertaking of his own; and she was afraid of the prospect. Still, it had to be faced, and she would face it. He would probably do well as his own master. During a whole horrible week her judgment on him had been unjustly severe, and she did not mean to fall into the same sin again. She thought with respect of his artistic gifts, which she was too inartistic to appreciate. Yes, the chances were that he would succeed admirably.
She walked him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory good-bye. And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St. Luke’s, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her passion stealthily with the sight. True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left to think of others besides.
She hoped that John’s Ernest would find a suitable mate. She remembered that she had Julian’s curtains to attend to. She continued to think kindly of Thomas Batchgrew, and she chid herself for having thought of him in her distant inexperienced youth, of six months earlier, as _that man_. And, regretting that Mrs. Tams–at her age, too!–could be so foolish, she determined to look after Mrs. Tams also, if need should arise. But these solicitudes were mere downy trifles floating on the surface of her profound absorption in Louis. And in the depths of that absorption she felt secure, and her courage laughed at the menace of life (though the notion of braving a church full of people did intimidate the bride). Yet she judged Louis realistically and not sentimentally. She was not conspicuously blind to any aspect of his character; nor had the tremendous revulsion of the previous night transformed him into another and a more heavenly being for her. She admitted frankly to herself that he was not blameless in the dark affair of the bank-notes. She would not deny that in some ways he was untrustworthy, and might be capable of acts of which the consequences were usually terrible. His irresponsibility was notorious. And, being impulsive herself, she had no mercy for his impulsiveness. As for his commonsense, was not her burning of the circular addressed to Mrs. Maldon a sufficient commentary on it?
She was well aware that Louis’ sins of omission and commission might violently shock people of a certain temperament–people of her own temperament in particular. These people, however, would fail to see the other side of Louis. If she herself had merely heard of Louis, instead of knowing him, she would probably have set him down as undesirable. But she knew him. His good qualities seemed to her to overwhelm the others. His charm, his elegance, his affectionateness, his nice speech, his courtesy, his quick wit, his worldliness–she really considered it extraordinary that a plain, blunt girl, such as she, should have had the luck to please him. It was indeed almost miraculous.
If he had faults–and he had–she preferred them (proudly and passionately) to the faults of scores of other women’s husbands. He was not a brute, nor even a boor nor a savage–thousands of savages ranged free and terror-striking in the Five Towns. Even when vexed and furious he could control himself. It was possible to share his daily life and see him in all his social moods without being humiliated. He was not a clodhopper; watch him from the bow-window of a morning as he walked down the street! He did not drink; he was not a beast. He was not mean. He might scatter money, but he was not mean. In fact, except that one sinister streak in his nature, she could detect no fault. There was danger in that streak…. Well, there was danger in every man. She would accept it; she would watch it. Had she not long since reconciled herself to the prospect of an everlasting vigil?
She did not care what any one said, and she did not care! He was the man she wanted; the whole rest of the world was nothing in comparison to him. He was irresistible. She had wanted him, and she would always want him, as he was. She had won him and she would keep him, as he was, whatever the future might hold. The past was the past; the opening chapter of her marriage was definitely finished and its drama done. She was ready for the future. One tragedy alone could overthrow her–Louis’ death. She simply could not and would not conceive existence without him. She would face anything but that…. Besides, he was not _really_ untrustworthy–only weak! She faltered and recovered. “He’s mine and I wouldn’t have him altered for the world. I don’t want him perfect. If anything goes wrong, well, let it go wrong! I’m his wife. I’m his!” And as, slightly raising her confident chin in the street, she thus undertook to pay the price of love, there was something divine about Rachel’s face.