And then at length Julian began to read—
"'Before I went to South Africa last autumn I found myself in considerable business difficulties. The causes of said difficulties were bad trade, unfair competition, and price-cutting at home and abroad, especially in Germany, and the modern spirit of unrest among the working-classes making it impossible for an employer to be master on his own works. I was not insolvent, but I needed capital, the life-blood of industry. In justice to myself I ought to explain that my visit to South Africa was very carefully planned and thought out. I had a good reason to believe that a lot of business in door-furniture could be done there, and that I could obtain some capital from a customer in Durban. I point this out merely because trade rivals have tried to throw ridicule upon me for going out to South Africa when I did. I must ask you to read carefully'—you see, this was a letter to you," he interjected—"read carefully all that I say. I will now proceed."
"'When I came to Aunt Maldon's the night before I left for South Africa I wanted a wash, and I went into the back room—I mean the room behind the parlour—and took off my coat preparatory to going into the scullery to perform my ablutions. While in the back room I noticed that the picture nearest the cupboard opposite the door was hung very crooked. When I came back to put my coat on again after washing, my eye again caught the picture. There was a chair almost beneath it. I got on the chair and put the picture into an horizontal position. While I was standing on the chair I could see on the top of the cupboard, where something white struck my attention. It was behind the cornice of the cupboard, but I could see it. I took it off the top of the cupboard and carefully scrutinized it by the gas, which, as you know, is at the corner of the fireplace, close to the cupboard. It was a roll consisting of Bank of England notes, to the value of four hundred and fifty pounds. I counted them at once, while I was standing on the chair. I then put them in the pocket of my coat which I had already put on. I wish to point out that if the chair had not been under the picture I should in all human probability not have attempted to straighten the picture. Also—'"
"But surely, Julian," Louis interrupted him, in a constrained voice, "you could have reached the picture without standing on the chair?" He interrupted solely from a tremendous desire for speech. It would have been impossible for him to remain silent. He had to speak or perish.
"I couldn't," Julian denied vehemently. "The picture's practically as high as the top of the cupboard—or was."
"And couldyousee on to the top of the cupboard from a chair?" Louis, with a peculiar gaze, was apparently estimating Julian's total height from the ground when raised on a chair.
Julian dashed down the papers.
"Here! Come and look for yourself!" he exclaimed with furious pugnacity. "Come and look." He jumped up and moved towards the door.
Rachel and Louis followed him obediently. In the back room it was he who struck a match and lighted the gas.
"You've shifted the picture!" he cried, as soon as the room was illuminated.
"Yes, we have," Louis admitted.
"But there's where it was!" Julian almost shouted, pointing. "You can't deny it! There's the marks. Are they as high as the top of the cupboard, or aren't they?" Then he dragged along a chair to the cupboard and stood on it, puffing at his pipe. "Can I see on to the top of the cupboard or can't I?" he demanded. Obviously he could see on to the top of the cupboard.
"I didn't think the top was so low," said Louis.
"Well, you shouldn't contradict," Julian chastised him.
"It's just as your great-aunt said," put in Rachel, in a meditative tone. "I remember she told us she pushed a chair forward with her knee. I dare say in getting on to the chair she knocked her elbow or something against the picture, and no doubt she left the chair more or less where she'd pushed it. That would be it."
"Did she say that to you?" Louis questioned Rachel.
"It doesn't matter much what she said," Julian growled. "That's how itwas, anyway. I'm telling you. I'm not here to listen to theories."
"Well," said Louis amiably, "you put the notes into your pocket. What then?"
Julian removed his pipe from his mouth.
"What then? I walked off with 'em."
"But you don't mean to tell us you meant—to appropriate them, Julian? You don't mean that!" Louis spoke reassuringly, good-naturedly, and with a slight superiority.
"No, I don't. I don't mean I appropriated 'em." Julian's voice rose defiantly. "I mean I stole them.... I stole them, and what's more, I meant to steal them. And so there ye are! But come back to the parlour. I must finish my reading."
He strode away into the parlour, and the other two had no alternative but to follow him. They followed him like guilty things; for the manner of his confession was such as apparently to put his hearers, more than himself, in the wrong. He confessed as one who accuses.
"Sit down," said he, in the parlour.
"But surely," Louis protested, "if you're serious—"
"If I'm serious, man! Do you take me for a bally mountebank? Do you suppose I'm doing this for fun?"
"Well," said Louis, "if youareserious, you needn't tell us any more. We know, and that's enough, isn't it?"
Julian replied curtly, "You've got to hear me out."
And picking up his document from the floor, he resumed the perusal.
"'Also, if the gas hadn't been where it is, I should not have noticed anything on the top of the cupboard. I took the notes because I was badly in need of money, and also because I was angry at money being left like that on the tops of cupboards. I had no idea Aunt Maldon was such a foolish woman.'"
Louis interjected soothingly: "But you only meant to teach the old lady a lesson and give the notes back."
"I didn't," said Julian, again extremely irritated. "Can't ye understand plain English? I say I stole the money, and I meant to steal it. Don't let me have to tell ye that any more. I'll go on: 'The sight of the notes was too sore a temptation for me, and I yielded to it. And all the more shame to me, for I had considered myself an honest man up to that very hour. I never thought about the consequences to my Aunt Maldon, nor how I was going to get rid of the notes. I wanted money bad, and I took it. As soon as I'd left the house I was stricken with remorse. I could not decide what to do. The fact is I had no time to reflect until I was on the steamer, and it was then too late. Upon arriving at Cape Town I found the cable stating that Aunt Maldon was dead. I draw a veil over my state of mind, which, however, does not concern you. I ought to have returned to England at once, but I could not. I might have sent to Batchgrew and told him to take half of four hundred and fifty pounds off my share of Aunt Maldon's estate and put it into yours. But that would not have helped my conscience. I had it on my conscience, as it might have been on my stomach. I tried religion, but it was no good to me. It was between a prayer-meeting and an experience-meeting at Durban that I used part of the ill-gotten money. I had not touched it till then. But two days later I got back the very note that I'd spent. A prey to remorse, I wandered from town to town, trying to do business.'"
Rachel stood up.
"Julian!"
It was the first time in her life that she had called him by his Christian name.
"What?"
"Give me that." As he hesitated, she added, "I want it."
He handed her the written confession.
"I simply can't bear to hear you reading it," said Rachel passionately. "All about a prey to remorse and so on and so on! Why do you want to confess? Why couldn't you have paid back the money and have done with it, instead of all this fuss?"
"I must finish it now I've begun," Julian insisted sullenly.
"You'll do no such thing—not in my house."
And, repeating pleasurably the phrase "not inmyhouse," Rachel stuck the confession into the fire, and feverishly forced it into the red coals with lunges of the poker. When she turned away from the fire she was flushing scarlet. Julian stood close by her on the hearth-rug.
"You don't understand," he said, with half-fearful resentment. "I had to punish myself. I doubt I'm not a religious man, but I had to punish myself. There's nobody in the world as I should hate confessing to as much as Louis here, and so I said to myself, I said, 'I'll confess to Louis.' I've been wandering about all the evening trying to bring myself to do it.... Well, I've done it."
His voice trembled, and though the vibration in it was almost imperceptible, it was sufficient to nullify the ridiculousness of Julian's demeanour as a wearer of sackcloth, and to bring a sudden lump into Rachel's throat. The comical absurdity of his bellicose pride because he had accomplished something which he had sworn to accomplish was extinguished by the absolutely painful sincerity of his final words, which seemed somehow to damage the reputation of Louis. Rachel could feel her emotion increasing, but she could not have defined what her emotion was. She knew not what to do. She was in the midst of a new and intense experience, which left her helpless. All she was clearly conscious of was an unrepentant voice in her heart repeating the phrase: "I don't care! I'm glad I stuck it in the fire! I don't care! I'm glad I stuck it in the fire." She waited for the next development. They were all waiting, aware that individual forces had been loosed, but unable to divine their resultant, and afraid of that resultant. Rachel glanced furtively at Louis. His face had an uneasy, stiff smile.
With an aggrieved air Julian knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
"Anyhow," said Louis at length, "this accounts for four hundred and fifty out of nine sixty-five. What we have to find out now, all of us, is what happened to the balance."
"I don't care a fig about the balance," said Julian impetuously. "I've said what I had to say and that's enough for me."
And he did not, in fact, care a fig about the balance. And if the balance had been five thousand odd instead of five hundred odd, he still probably would not have cared. Further, he privately considered that nobody else ought to care about the balance, either, having regard to the supreme moral importance to himself of the four hundred and fifty.
"Have you said anything to Mr. Batchgrew?" Louis asked, trying to adopt a casual tone, and to keep out of his voice the relief and joy which were gradually taking possession of his soul. The upshot of Julian's visit was so amazingly different from the apprehension of it that he could have danced in his glee.
"Not I!" Julian answered ferociously. "The old robber has been writing me, wanting me to put money into some cinema swindle or other. I gave him a bit of my mind."
"He was trying the same here," said Rachel. The words popped by themselves out of her mouth, and she instantly regretted them. However, Louis seemed to be unconscious of the implied reproach on a subject presumably still highly delicate.
"But you can tell him, if you've a mind," Julian went on challengingly.
"We shan't do any such thing," said Rachel, words again popping by themselves out of her mouth. But this time she put herself right by adding, "Shall we, Louis?"
"Of course not," Louis agreed very amiably.
Rachel began to feel sympathetic towards the thief. She thought: "How strange to have some one close to me, and talking quite naturally, who has stolen such a lot of money and might be in prison for it—a convict!" Nevertheless, the thief seemed to be remarkably like ordinary people.
"Oh!" Julian ejaculated. "Well, here's the notes." He drew a lot of notes from a pocket-book and banged them down on the table. "Four hundred and fifty. The identical notes. Count 'em." He glared afresh, and with even increased virulence.
"That's all right," said Louis. "That's all right. Besides, we only want half of them."
Sundry sheets of the confession, which had not previously caught fire, suddenly blazed up with a roar in the grate, and all looked momentarily at the flare.
"You'vegotto have it all!" said Julian, flushing.
"My dear fellow," Louis repeated, "we shall only take half. The other half's yours."
"As God sees me," Julian urged, "I'll never take a penny of that money! Here—"
He snatched up all the notes and dashed wrathfully out of the parlour. Rachel followed quickly. He went to the back room, where the gas had been left burning high, sprang on to a chair in front of the cupboard, and deposited the notes on the top of the cupboard, in the very place from which he had originally taken them.
"There!" he exclaimed, jumping down from the chair. The symbolism of the action appeared to tranquillize him.
For a moment Rachel, as a newly constituted housewife to whom every square foot of furniture surface had its own peculiar importance, was enraged to see Julian's heavy and dirty boots again on the seat of her unprotected chair. But the sense of hurt passed like a spasm as her eyes caught Julian's. They were alone together in the back room and not far from each other. And in the man's eyes she no longer saw the savage Julian, but an intensely suffering creature, a creature martyrized by destiny. She saw the real Julian glancing out in torment at the world through those eyes. The effect of the vibration in Julian's voice a few minutes earlier was redoubled. Her emotion nearly overcame her. She desired very much to succour Julian, and was aware of a more distinct feeling of impatience against Louis.
She thought Julian had been magnificently heroic, and all his faults of demeanour were counted to him for excellences. He had been a thief; but the significance of the word "thief" was indeed completely altered for her. She had hitherto envisaged thieves as rascals in handcuffs bandied along the streets by policemen at the head of a procession of urchins—dreadful rascals! But now a thief was just a young man like other young men—only he had happened to see some bank-notes lying about and had put them in his pocket and then had felt very sorry for what he had done. There was no crime in what he had done ... was there? She pictured Julian's pilgrimage through South Africa, all alone. She pictured his existence at Knype, all alone; and his very ferocity rendered him the more wistful and pathetic in her sight. She was sure that his mother and sisters had never understood him; and she did not think it quite proper on their part to have gone permanently to America, leaving him solitary in England, as they had done. She perceived that she herself was the one person in the world capable of understanding Julian, the one person who could look after him, influence him, keep him straight, civilize him, and impart some charm to his life. And she was glad that she had the status of a married woman, because without that she would have been helpless.
Julian sat down, or sank, on to the chair.
"I'm very sorry I spoke like that to you in the other room—I mean about what you'd written," she said. "I suppose I ought not to have burnt it."
She spoke in this manner because to apologize to him gave her a curious pleasure.
"That's nothing," he answered, with the quietness of fatigue. "I dare say you were right enough. Anyhow, ye'll never see me again."
She exclaimed, kindly protesting—
"Why not, I should like to know?"
"You won't want me here as a visitor, after all this." He faintly sneered.
"I shall," she insisted.
"Louis won't."
She replied: "You must come and see me. I shall expect you to. I must tell you," she added confidentially, in a lower tone, "I think you've been splendid to-night. I'm sure I respect you much more than I did before—and you can take it how you like!"
"Nay! Nay!" he murmured deprecatingly. All the harshness had melted out of his voice.
Then he stood up.
"I'd better hook it," he said briefly. "Will you get me my overcoat, missis."
She comprehended that he wished to avoid speaking to Louis again that night, and, nodding, went at once to the parlour and brought away the overcoat.
"He's going," she muttered hastily to Louis, who was standing near the fire. Leaving the parlour, she drew the door to behind her.
She helped Julian with his overcoat and preceded him to the front door. She held out her hand to be tortured afresh, and suffered the grip of the vice with a steady smile.
"Now don't forget," she whispered.
Julian seemed to try to speak and to fail.... He was gone. She carefully closed and bolted the door.
Louis had not followed Julian and Rachel into the back room because he felt the force of an instinct to be alone with his secret satisfaction. In those moments it irked him to be observed, and especially to be observed by Rachel, not to mention Julian. He was glad for several reasons—on account of his relief, on account of the windfall of money, and perhaps most of all on account of the discovery that he was not the only thief in the family. The bizarre coincidence which had divided the crime about equally between himself and Julian amused him. His case and Julian's were on a level. Nevertheless, he somewhat despised Julian, patronized him, condescended to him. He could not help thinking that Julian was, after all, a greater sinner than himself. Never again could Julian look him (Louis) in the face as if nothing had happened. The blundering Julian was marked for life, by his own violent, unreasonable hand. Julian was a fool.
Rachel entered rather solemnly.
"Has he really gone?" Louis asked. Rachel did not care for her husband's tone, which was too frivolous for her. She was shocked to find that Louis had not been profoundly impressed by the events of the night.
"Yes," she said.
"What's he done with the money?"
"He's left it in the other room." She would not disclose to Louis that Julian had restored the notes to the top of the cupboard, because she was afraid that he might treat the symbolic act with levity.
"All of it?"
"Yes. I'll bring it you."
She did so. Louis counted the notes and casually put them in his breast pocket.
"Oddest chap I ever came across!" he observed, smiling.
"But aren't you sorry for him?" Rachel demanded.
"Yes," said Louis airily. "I shall insist on his taking half, naturally."
"I'm going to bed," said Rachel. "You'll see all the lights out."
She offered her face and kissed him tepidly.
"What's come over the kid?" Louis asked himself, somewhat disconcerted, when she had gone.
He remained smoking, purposeless, in the parlour until all sounds had ceased overhead in the bedroom. Then he extinguished the gas in the parlour, in the back room, in the kitchen, and finally in the lobby, and went upstairs by the light of the street lamp. In the bedroom Rachel lay in bed, her eyes closed. She did not stir at his entrance. He locked the bank-notes in a drawer of the dressing-table, undressed with his usual elaborate care, approached Rachel's bed and gazed at her unresponsive form, turned down the gas to a pinpoint, and got into bed himself. Not the slightest sound could be heard anywhere, either in or out of the house, save the faint breathing of Rachel. And after a few moments Louis no longer heard even that. In the darkness the mystery of the human being next him began somehow to be disquieting. He was capable of imagining that he lay in the room with an utter stranger. Then he fell asleep.
Rachel, according to her own impression the next morning, had no sleep during that night. The striking of the hall clock could not be heard in the bedroom with the door closed, but it could be felt as a faint, distinct concussion; and she had thus noted every hour, except four o'clock, when daylight had come and the street lamp had been put out. She had deliberately feigned sleep as Louis entered the room, and had maintained the soft, regular breathing of a sleeper until long after he was in bed. She did not wish to talk; she could not have talked with any safety.
Her brain was occupied much by the strange and emotional episode of Julian's confession, but still more by the situation of her husband in the affair. Julian's story had precisely corroborated one part of Mrs. Maldon's account of her actions on the evening when the bank-notes had disappeared. Little by little that recital of Mrs. Maldon's had been discredited, and at length cast aside as no more important than the delirium of a dying creature; it was an inconvenient story, and would only fit in with the alternative theories that money had wings and could fly on its own account, or that there had been thieves in the house. Far easier to assume that Mrs. Maldon in some lapse had unwittingly done away with the notes! But Mrs. Maldon was now suddenly reinstated as a witness. And if one part of her evidence was true, why should not the other part be true? Her story was that she had put the remainder of the bank-notes on the chair on the landing, and then (she thought) in the wardrobe. Rachel recalled clearly all that she had seen and all that she had been told. She remembered once more the warnings that had been addressed to her. She lived the evening and the night of the theft over again, many times, monotonously, and with increasing woe and agitation.
Then with the greenish dawn, that the blinds let into the room, came some refreshment and new health to the brain, but the trend of her ideas was not modified. She lay on her side and watched the unconscious Louis for immense periods, and occasionally tears filled her eyes. The changes in her existence seemed so swift and so tremendous as to transcend belief. Was it conceivable that only twelve hours earlier she had been ecstatically happy? In twelve hours—in six hours—she had aged twenty years, and she now saw the Rachel of the reception and of the bicycle lesson as a young girl, touchingly ingenuous, with no more notion of danger than a baby.
At six o'clock she arose. Already she had formed the habit of arising before Louis, and had reconciled herself to the fact that Louis had to be forced out of bed. Happily, his feet once on the floor, he became immediately manageable. Already she was the conscience and time-keeper of the house. She could dress herself noiselessly; in a week she had perfected all her little devices for avoiding noise and saving time. She finally left the room neat, prim, with lips set to a thousand responsibilities. She had a peculiar sensation of tight elastic about her eyes, but she felt no fatigue, and she did not yawn. Mrs. Tams, who had just descended, found her taciturn and exacting. She would have every household task performed precisely in her own way, without compromise. And it appeared that the house, which had the air of being in perfect order, was not in order at all, that indeed the processes of organization had, in young Mrs. Fores' opinion, scarcely yet begun. It appeared that there was no smallest part or corner of the house as to which young Mrs. Fores had not got very definite ideas and plans. The individuality of Mrs. Tams was to have scope nowhere. But after all, this seemed quite natural to Mrs. Tams.
When Rachel went back to the bedroom, about 7.30, to get Louis by ruthlessness and guile out of bed, she was surprised to discover that he had already gone up to the bathroom. She guessed, with vague alarm, from this symptom that he had a new and very powerful interest in life. He came to breakfast at three minutes to eight, three minutes before it was served. When she entered the parlour in the wake of Mrs. Tams he kissed her with gay fervour. She permitted herself to be kissed. Her unresponsiveness, though not marked, disconcerted him and somewhat dashed his mood. Whereupon Rachel, by the reassurance of her voice, set about to convince him that he had been mistaken in deeming her unresponsive. So that he wavered between two moods.
As she sat behind the tray, amid the exquisite odours of fresh coffee and Ted Malkin's bacon (for she had forgiven Miss Malkin), behaving like a staid wife of old standing, she well knew that she was a mystery for Louis. She was the source of his physical comfort, the origin of the celestial change in his life which had caused him to admit fully that to live in digs was "a rotten game"; but she was also, that morning, a most sinister mystery. Her behaviour was faultless. He could seize on no definite detail that should properly disturb him; only she had woven a veil between herself and him. Still, his liveliness scarcely abated.
"Do you know what I'm going to do this very day as ever is?" he asked.
"What is it?"
"I'm going to buy you a bike. I've had enough of that old crock I borrowed for you. I shall return it and come back with a new 'un. And I know the precise bike that I shall come back with. It's at Bostock's at Hanbridge. They've just opened a new cycle department."
"Oh, Louis!" she protested.
His scheme for spending money on her flattered her. But nevertheless it was a scheme for spending money. Two hundred and twenty-five pounds had dropped into his lap, and he must needs begin instantly to dissipate it. He could not keep it. That was Louis! She refused to see that the purchase of a bicycle was the logical consequence of her lessons. She desired to believe that by some miracle at some future date she could possess a bicycle without a bicycle being bought—and in the meantime was there not the borrowed machine?
Suddenly she yawned.
"Didn't you sleep well?" he demanded.
"Not very."
"Oh!"
She could almost see into the interior of his brain, where he was persuading himself that fatigue alone was the explanation of her peculiar demeanour, and rejoicing that the mystery was, after all, neither a mystery nor sinister.
"I say," he began between two puffs of a cigarette after breakfast, "I shall send back half of that money to Julian. I'll send the notes by registered post."
"Shall you?"
"Yes. Don't you think he'll keep them?"
"Supposing I was to take them over to him myself—and insist?" she suggested.
"It's a notion. When?"
"Well, on Saturday afternoon. He'll be at home probably then."
"All right," Louis agreed. "I'll give you the money later on."
Nothing more was said as to the Julian episode. It seemed that husband and wife were equally determined not to discuss it merely for the sake of discussing it.
Shortly after half-past eight Louis was preparing the borrowed bicycle and his own in the back yard.
"I shall ride mine and tow the crock," said he, looking up at Rachel as he screwed a valve. She had come into the yard in order to show a polite curiosity in his doings.
"Isn't it dangerous?"
"Are you dangerous?" he laughed.
"But when shall you go?"
"Now."
"Shan't you be late at the works?"
"Well, if I'm late at the beautiful works I shall be late at the beautiful works. Those who don't like it will have to lump it."
Once more, it was the consciousness of a loose, entirely available two hundred and twenty-five pounds that was making him restive under the yoke of regular employment. For a row of pins, that morning, he would have given Jim Horrocleave a week's notice, or even the amount of a week's wages in lieu of notice! Rachel sighed, but within herself.
In another minute he was elegantly flying down Bycars Lane, guiding his own bicycle with his right hand and the crock with his left hand. The feat appeared miraculous to Rachel, who watched from the bow-window of the parlour. Beyond question he made a fine figure. And it was for her that he was flying to Hanbridge! She turned away to her domesticity.
It seemed to her that he had scarcely been gone ten minutes when one of the glorious taxicabs which had recently usurped the stand of the historic fly under the Town Hall porch drew up at the front door, and Louis got out of it. The sound of his voice was the first intimation to Rachel that it was Louis who was arriving. He shouted at the cabman as he paid the fare. The window of the parlour was open and the curtains pinned up. She ran to the window, and immediately saw that Louis' head was bandaged. Then she ran to the door. He was climbing rather stiffly up the steps.
"All right! All right!" he shouted at her. "A spill. Nothing of the least importance. But both the jiggers are pretty well converted into old iron. I tell you it's allright! Shut the door."
He bumped down on the oak chest, and took a long breath.
"But you are frightfully hurt!" she exclaimed. She could not properly see his face for the bandages.
Mrs. Tams appeared. Rachel murmured to her in a flash—
"Go out the back way and fetch Dr. Yardley at once."
She felt herself absolutely calm. What puzzled her was Louis' shouting. Then she understood he was shouting from mere excitement and did not realize that he shouted.
"No need for any doctor! Quite simple!" he called out.
But Rachel gave a word confirming the original order to Mrs. Tams, who disappeared.
"First thing I knew I was the centre of an admiring audience, and fat Mrs. Heath, in her white apron and the steel hanging by her side, was washing my face with a sponge and a basin of water, and Heath stood by with brandy. It was nearly opposite their shop. People in the tram had a rare view of me."
"But was it the tram-car you ran into?" Rachel asked eagerly.
He replied with momentary annoyance—
"Tram-car! Of course it wasn't the tram-car. Moreover, I didn't run into anything. Two horses ran into me. I was coming down past the Shambles into Duck Bank—very slowly, because I could hear a tram coming along from the market-place—and just as I got past the Shambles and could see along the market-place, I saw a lad on a cart-horse and leading another horse. No stirrups, no saddle. He'd no more control over either horse than a baby over an elephant. Not a bit more. Both horses were running away. The horse he was supposed to be leading was galloping first. They were passing the tram at a fine rate."
"But how far were they off you?"
"About ten yards. I said to myself, 'If that chap doesn't look out he'll be all over me in two seconds.' I turned as sharp as I could away to the left. I could have turned sharper if I'd had your bicycle in my right hand instead of my left. But it wouldn't have made any difference. The first horse simply made straight for me. There was about a mile of space for him between me and the tram, but he wouldn't look at it. He wanted me, and he had me. They both had me. I never felt the actual shock. Curious, that! I'm told one horse put his foot clean through the back wheel of my bike. Then he was stopped by the front palings of the Conservative Club. Oh! a pretty smash! The other horse and the boy thereon finished half-way up Moorthorne Road. He could stick on, no mistake, that kid could. Midland Railway horses. Whoppers. Either being taken to the vets' or brought from the vet's—Idon't know. I forget."
Rachel put her hand on his arm.
"Do come into the parlour and have the easy-chair."
"I'll come—I'll come," he said, with the same annoyance. "Give us a chance." His voice was now a little less noisy.
"But you might have been killed!"
"You bet I might! Eight hoofs all over me! One tap from any of the eight would have settled yours sincerely."
"Louis!" She spoke firmly. "You must come into the parlour. Now come along, do, and sit down and let me look at your face." She removed his hat, which was perched rather insecurely on the top of the bandages. "Who was it looked after you?"
"Well," he hesitated, following her into the parlour, "it seems to have been chiefly Mrs. Heath."
"But didn't they take you to a chemist's? Isn't there a chemist's handy?"
"The great Greene had one of his bilious attacks and was in bed, it appears. And the great Greene's assistant is only just out of petticoats, I believe. However, everybody acted for the best, and here I am. And if you ask me, I think I've come out of it rather well."
He dropped heavily on to the Chesterfield. What she could see of his cheeks was very pale.
"Open the window," he murmured. "It's frightfully stuffy here."
"The window is open," she said. In fact, a noticeable draught blew through the room. "I'll open it a bit more."
Before doing so she lifted his feet on to the Chesterfield.
"That's better. That's better," he breathed.
When, a moment later, she returned to him with a glass of water which she had brought from the kitchen, spilling drops of it along the whole length of the passage, he smiled at her and then winked.
It was the wink that seemed pathetic to her. She had maintained her laudable calm until he winked, and then her throat tightened.
"He may have some dreadful internal injury," she thought. "You never know. I may be a widow soon. And every one will say, 'How young she is to be a widow!' It will make me blush. But such things can't happen to me. No, he's all right. He came up here alone. They'd never have let him come up here alone if he hadn't been all right. Besides, he can walk. How silly I am!"
She bent down and kissed him passionately.
"I must have those bandages off, dearest," she whispered. "I suppose to-morrow I'd better return them to Mrs. Heath."
He muttered: "She said she always kept linen for bandages in the shop because they so often cut themselves. Now, I used to think in my innocence that butchers never cut themselves."
Very gently and intently Rachel unfastened two safety-pins that were hidden in Louis' untidy hair. Then she began to unwind a long strip of linen. It stuck to a portion of the cheek close to the ear. Louis winced. The inner folds of the linen were discoloured. Rachel had a glimpse of a wound....
"Go on!" Louis urged. "Get at it, child!"
"No," she said. "I think I shall leave it just as it is for the doctor to deal with. Shall you mind if I leave you for a minute? I must get some warm water and things ready against the doctor comes."
He retorted facetiously: "Oh! Do what you like! Work your will on me.... Doctor! Any one 'ud think I was badly injured. Why, you cuckoo, it's only skin wounds!"
"But doesn't ithurt?"
"Depends what you call hurt. It ain't a picnic."
"I think you're awfully brave," she said simply.
At the door she stopped and gazed at him, undecided.
"Louis," she said in a motherly tone, "I should like you to go to bed. I really should. You ought to, I'm sure."
"Well, I shan't," he replied.
"But please! To please me! You can get up again."
"Oh, go to blazes!" he cried resentfully. "What in thunder should I go to bed for, I should like to know? Have a little sense, do!" He shut his eyes.
He had never till then spoken to her so roughly.
"Very well," she agreed, with soothing acquiescence. His outburst had not irritated her in the slightest degree.
In the kitchen, as she bent over the kettle and the fire, each object was surrounded by a sort of halo, like the moon in damp weather. She brushed her hand across her eyes, contemptuous of herself. Then she ran lightly upstairs and searched out an old linen garment and tore the seams of it apart. She crept back to the parlour and peeped in. Louis had not moved on the sofa. His eyes were still closed. After a few seconds, he said, without stirring—
"I've not yet passed away. I can see you."
She responded with a little laugh, somewhat forced.
After an insupportable delay Mrs. Tams reappeared, out of breath. Dr. Yardley had just gone out, but he was expected back very soon and would then be sent down instantly.
Mrs. Tams, quite forgetful of etiquette, followed Rachel, unasked, into the parlour.
"What?" said Louis loudly. "Two of you! Isn't one enough?"
Mrs. Tams vanished.
"Heath took charge of the bikes," Louis murmured, as if to the ceiling.
Over half an hour elapsed before the gate creaked.
"There he is!" Rachel exclaimed happily. After having conceived a hundred different tragic sequels to the accident, she was lifted by the mere creak of the gate into a condition of pure optimism, and she realized what a capacity she had for secretly being a ninny in an unexpected crisis. But she thought with satisfaction: "Anyhow, I don't show it. That's one good thing!" She was now prepared to take oath that she had not for one moment beenreallyanxious about Louis. Her demeanour, as she stated the case to the doctor, was a masterpiece of tranquil unconcern.
Dr. Yardley said that he was in a hurry—that, in fact, he ought to have been quite elsewhere at the time. He was preoccupied, and showed no sympathy with the innocent cyclist who had escaped the fatal menace of hoofs. When Rachel offered him the torn linen, he silently disdained it, and, opening a small bag which he had brought with him, produced therefrom a roll of cotton-wool in blue paper, and a considerable quantity of sticking-plaster on a brass reel. He accepted, however, Rachel's warm water.
"You might get me some Condy's Fluid," he said shortly.
She had none! It was a terrible lapse for a capable housewife.
Dr. Yardley raised his eyebrows: "No Condy's Fluid in the house!"
She was condemned.
"I do happen to have a couple of tablets of Chinosol," he said, "but I wanted to keep them in reserve for later in the day."
He threw two yellow tablets into the basin of water.
Then he laid Louis flat on the sofa, asked him a few questions, and sounded him in various parts. And at length he slowly, but firmly, drew off Mrs. Heath's bandages, and displayed Louis' head to the light.
"Hm!" he exclaimed.
Rachel restrained herself from any sound. But the spectacle was ghastly. The one particle of comfort in the dreadful matter was that Louis could not see himself.
Thenceforward Dr. Yardley seemed to forget that he ought to have been elsewhere. Working with extraordinary deliberation, he coaxed out of Louis' flesh sundry tiny stones and many fragments of mud, straightened twisted bits of skin, and he removed other pieces entirely. He murmured, "Hm!" at intervals. He expressed a brief criticism of the performance of Mrs. Heath, as distinguished from her intentions. He also opined that the great Greene might not perhaps have succeeded much better than Mrs. Heath, even if he had not been bilious. When the dressing was finished, the gruesome terror of Louis' appearance seemed to be much increased. The heroic sufferer rose and glanced at himself in the mirror, and gave a faint whistle.
"Oh! So that's what I look like, is it? Well, what price me as a victim of the Inquisition!" he remarked.
"I should advise you not to take exercise just now, young man," said the doctor. "D'you feel pretty well?"
"Pretty well," answered Louis, and sat down.
In the lobby the doctor, once more in a hurry, said to Rachel—
"Better get him quietly to bed. The wounds are not serious, but he's had a very severe shock."
"He's not marked for life, is he?" Rachel asked anxiously.
"I shouldn't think so," said the doctor, as if the point was a minor one. "Let him have some nourishment. You can begin with hot milk—but put some water to it," he added when he was half-way down the steps.
As Rachel re-entered the parlour she said to herself: "I shall just have to get him to bed somehow, whatever he says! If he's unpleasant he mustbeunpleasant, that's all."
And she hardened her heart. But immediately she saw him again, sitting forlornly in the chair, with the whole of the left side of his face criss-crossed in whitish-grey plaster, she was ready to cry over him and flatter his foolishest whim. She wanted to take him in her arms, if he would but have allowed her. She felt that she could have borne his weight for hours without moving, had he fallen asleep against her bosom.... Still, he must be got to bed. How negligent of the doctor not to have given the order himself!
Then Louis said: "I say! I think I may as well lie down!"
She was about to cry out, "Oh, you must!"
But she forbore. She became as wily as old Batchgrew.
"Do you think so?" she answered, doubtfully.
"I've nothing else particular on hand," he said.
She knew that he wanted to surrender without appearing to surrender.
"Well," she suggested, "will you lie down on the bed for a bit?"
"I think I will."
"And then I'll give you some hot milk."
She dared not help him to mount the stairs, but she walked close behind him.
"I was thinking," he said on the landing, "I'd stroll down and take stock of those bicycles later in the day. But perhaps I'm not fit to be seen."
She thought: "You won't stroll down later in the day—I shall see to that."
"By the way," he said, "you might send Mrs. Tams down to Horrocleave's to explain that I shan't give them my valuable assistance to-day.... Oh! Mrs. Tams"—the woman was just bustling out of the bedroom, duster in hand—"will you toddle down to the works and tell them I'm not coming?"
"Eh, mester!" breathed Mrs. Tams, looking at him. "It's a mercy it's no worse."
"Yes," Louis teased her, "but you go and look at the basin downstairs, Mrs. Tams. That'll give you food for thought."
Shaking her head, she smiled at Rachel, because the master had spirit enough to be humorous with her.
In the bedroom, Louis said, "I might be more comfortable if I took some of my clothes off."
Thereupon he abandoned himself to Rachel. She did as she pleased with him, and he never opposed. Seven bruises could be counted on his left side. He permitted himself to be formally and completely put to bed. He drank half a glass of hot milk, and then said that he could not possibly swallow any more. Everything had been done that ought to be done and that could be done. And Rachel kept assuring herself that there was not the least cause for anxiety. She also told herself that she had been a ninny once that morning, and that once was enough. Nevertheless, she remained apprehensive, and her apprehensions increased. It was Louis' unnatural manageableness that disturbed her.
And when, about three hours later, he murmured, "Old girl, I feel pretty bad."
"I knew it," she said to herself.
His complaint was like a sudden thunderclap in her ears, after long faint rumblings of a storm.
Towards tea-time she decided that she must send for the doctor again. Louis indeed demanded the doctor. He said that he was very ill. His bruised limbs and his damaged face caused him a certain amount of pain. It was not, however, the pain that frightened him, but a general and profound sensation of illness. He could describe no symptoms. There were indeed no symptoms save the ebbing of vitality. He said he had never in his life felt as he felt then. His appearance confirmed the statement. The look of his eyes was tragic. His hands were pale. His agonized voice was extremely distressing to listen to. The bandages heightened the whole sinister effect. Dusk shadowed the room. Rachel lit the gas and drew the blinds. But in a few moments Louis complained of the light, and she had to lower the jet.
The sounds of the return of Mrs. Tams could be heard below. Mrs. Tams had received instructions to bring the doctor back with her, but Rachel's ear caught no sign of the doctor. She went out to the head of the stairs. The doctor simply must be there. It was not conceivable that when summoned he should be "out" twice in one day, but so it was. Mrs. Tams, whispering darkly from the dim foot of the stairs, said that Mrs. Yardley hoped that he would be in shortly, but could not be sure.
"What am I to do?" thought Rachel. "This is a crisis. Everything depends on me. What shall I do? Shall I send for another doctor?" She decided to risk the chances and wait. It would be too absurd to have two doctors in the house. What would people say of her and of Louis, if the rumour ran that she had lost her head and filled the house with doctors when the case had no real gravity? People would say that she was very young and inexperienced, and a freshly married wife, and so on. And Rachel hated to be thought young or freshly married. Besides, another doctor might be "out" too. And further, the case could not be truly serious. Of course, if afterwards it did prove to be serious, she would never forgive herself.
"He'll be here soon," she said cheerfully, to Louis in the bedroom.
"If he isn't—" moaned Louis, and stopped.
She gave him some brandy, against his will. Then, taking his wrist to feel it, she felt his fingers close on her wrist, as if for aid. And she sat thus on the bed holding his hand in the gloom of the lowered gas.