"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 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.