The Price of Love, Arnold Bennett [important of reading books .TXT] 📗

want to know--the whole gang of three on 'em."

"Then what about that burglary last night down the Lane?" Rachel asked sharply.

"Oh!" exclaimed Louis. "Was there a burglary down the Lane last night? I didn't know that."

"No, there wasn't," said Batchgrew ruthlessly. "That burglary was a practical joke, and it's all over the town. Denry Machin had a hand in that affair, and by now I dare say he wishes he hadn't."

"Still, Mr. Batchgrew," Louis argued superiorly, with the philosophic impartiality of a man well accustomed to the calm unravelling of crime, "there may be other burglars in the land beside just those three." He would not willingly allow the theory of burglars to crumble. Its attractiveness increased every moment.

"There may and there mayn't, young Fores," said Thomas Batchgrew. "Did _you_ hear anything of 'em?"

"No, I didn't," Louis replied restively.

"And yet you ought to have been listening out for 'em."

"Why ought I to have been listening out for them?"

"Knowing there was all that money in th' house."

"Mr. Fores didn't know," said Rachel.

Louis felt himself unjustly smirched.

"It's scarcely an hour ago," said he, "that I heard about this money for the first time." And he felt as innocent and aggrieved as he looked.

Mr. Batchgrew smacked his lips loudly.

"Then," he announced, "I'm going down to th' police-station, to put it i' Snow's hands."

Rachel straightened herself.

"But surely not without telling Mrs. Maldon?"

Mr. Batchgrew fingered his immense whiskers.

"Is she better?" he inquired threateningly. This was his first sign of interest in Mrs. Maldon's condition.

"Oh, yes; much. She's going on very well. The doctor's just been."

"Is she asleep?"

"She's resting. She may be asleep."

"Did ye tell her ye hadn't found her money?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

"She didn't say anything."

"It might be municipal money, for all she seems to care!" remarked Thomas Batchgrew, with a short, bitter grin. "Well, I'll be moving to th' police-station. I've never come across aught like this before, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it."

Rachel slipped out of the door into the hall.

"Please wait a moment, Mr. Batchgrew," she whispered timidly.

"What for?"

"Till I've told Mrs. Maldon."

"But if her's asleep?"

"I must waken her. I couldn't think of letting you go to the police-station without letting her know--after what she said this morning."

Rachel waited. Mr. Batchgrew glanced aside.

"Here! Come here!" said Mr. Batchgrew in a different tone. The fact was that, put to the proof, he dared not, for all his autocratic habit, openly disobey the injunction of the benignant, indifferent, helpless Mrs. Maldon. "Come here!" he repeated coarsely. Rachel obeyed, shamefaced despite herself. Batchgrew shut the door. "Now," he said grimly, "what's your secret? Out with it. I know you and her's got a secret. What is it?"

Rachel sat down on the sofa, hid her face in her hands, and startled both men by a sob. She wept with violence. And then through her tears, and half looking up, she cried out passionately: "It's all your fault. Why did you leave the money in the house at all? You know you'd no right to do it, Mr. Batchgrew!"

The councillor was shaken out of his dignity by the incredible impudence of this indictment from a chit like Rachel. Similar experiences, however, had happened to him before; for, though as a rule people most curiously conspired with him to keep up the fiction that he was sacred, at rare intervals somebody's self-control would break down, and bitter, inconvenient home truths would resound in the ear of Thomas Batchgrew. But he would recover himself in a few moments, and usually some diversion would occur to save him--he was nearly always lucky. A diversion occurred now, of the least expected kind. The cajoling tones of Mrs. Tams were heard on the staircase.

"Nay, ma'am! Nay, ma'am! This'll never do. Must I go on my bended knees to ye?"

And then the firm but soft voice of Mrs. Maldon--

"I must speak to Mr. Batchgrew. I must have Mr. Batchgrew here at once. Didn't you hear me call and call to you?"

"That I didn't, ma'am! I was beating the feather bed in the back bedroom. Nay, not a step lower do you go, ma'am, not if I lose me job for it."

Thomas Batchgrew and Louis were already out in the hall. Half-way down the stairs stood Mrs. Maldon, supporting herself by the banisters and being supported by Mrs. Tams. She was wearing her pink peignoir with white frills at the neck and wrists. Her black hair was loose on her shoulders like the hair of a young girl. Her pallid and heavily seamed features with the deep shining eyes trembled gently, as if in response to a distant vibration. She gazed upon the two silent men with an expression that united benignancy with profound inquietude and sadness. All her past life was in her face, inspiring it with strength and sorrow.

"Mr. Batchgrew," she said. "I've heard your voice for a long time. I want to speak to you."

And then she turned, yielded to the solicitous alarm of Mrs. Tams, climbed feebly up the stairs, and vanished round the corner at the top. And Mrs. Tams, putting her frowsy head for an instant over the hand-rail, stopped to adjure Mr. Batchgrew--

"Eh, mester; ye'd better stop where ye are awhile."

From the parlour came the faint sobbing of Rachel.

The two men had not a word to say. Mr. Batchgrew grunted, vacillating. It seemed as if the majestic apparition of Mrs. Maldon had rebuked everything that was derogatory and undignified in her trustee, and that both he and Louis were apologizing to the empty hall for being common, base creatures. Each of them--and especially Louis--had the sense of being awakened to events of formidable grandeur whose imminence neither had suspected. Still assuring himself that his position was absolutely safe, Louis nevertheless was aware of a sinking in the stomach. He could rebut any accusation. "And yet ...!" murmured his craven conscience. What could be the enigma between Mrs. Maldon and Rachel? He was now trying to convince himself that Mrs. Maldon had in fact divided the money into two parts, of which he had handled only one, and that the impressive mystery had to do with the other part of the treasure, which he had neither seen nor touched. How, then, could he personally be threatened? "And yet!..." said his conscience again.

In about a minute Mrs. Tarns reappeared at the head of the stairs.

"Her _will_ have ye, mester!" said she to the councillor.

Thomas Batchgrew mounted after her.

Louis made a noise with his tongue as if starting a horse, and returned to the parlour.

Rachel, still on the sofa, showed her wet face.

"I've got no secret," she said passionately. "And I'm sure Mrs. Maldon hasn't. What's he driving at?"

The natural freedom of her gestures and vehement accent was enchanting to Louis.

She jumped from the Chesterfield and ran away upstairs, flying. He followed to the lobby, and saw her dash into her own room and feverishly shut the door, which was in full view at the top of the stairs. And Louis thought he had never lived in any moment so exquisite and so alarming as that moment.

He was now alone on the ground floor. He caught no sound from above.

"Well, I'd better get out of this," he said to himself. "Anyhow, I'm all right!... What a girl! Terrific!" And, lighting a fresh cigarette, he left the house.


V


"And now what's amiss?" Thomas Batchgrew demanded, alone with Mrs. Maldon in the tranquillity of the bedroom.

Mrs. Maldon lay once more in bed; the bedclothes covered her without a crease, and from the neat fold-back of the white sheet her wrinkled ivory face and curving black hair emerged so still and calm that her recent flight to the stairs seemed unreal, impossible. The impression her mien gave was that she never had moved and never would move from the bed. Thomas Batchgrew's blusterous voice frankly showed acute irritation. He was angry because nine hundred and sixty-five pounds had monstrously vanished, because the chance of a good investment was lost, because Mrs. Maldon tied his hands, because Rachel had forgotten her respect and his dignity in addressing him; but more because he felt too old to impose himself by sheer rough-riding, individual force on the other actors in the drama, and still more because he, and nobody else, had left the nine hundred and sixty-five pounds in the house. What an orgy of denunciation he would have plunged into had some other person insisted on leaving the money in the house with a similar result!

Mrs. Maldon looked up at him with a glance of compassion. She was filled with pity for him because he had arrived at old age without dignity and without any sense of what was fine in life; he was not even susceptible to the chastening influences of a sick-room. She knew, indeed, that he hated and despised sickness in others, and that when ill himself he became a moaning mass of cowardice and vituperation. And in her heart she invented the most wonderful excuses for him, and transformed him into a martyr of destiny who had suffered both through ancestry and through environment. Was it his fault that he was thus tragically defective? So that by the magic power of her benevolence he became dignified in spite of himself.

She said--

"Mr. Batchgrew, I want you to oblige me by not discussing my affairs with any one but me."

At that moment the front door closed firmly below, and the bedroom vibrated.

"Is that Louis going?" she asked.

Batchgrew went to the window and looked downward, lowering the pupils as far as possible so as to see the pavement.

"It's Louis going," he replied.

Mrs. Maldon sighed relief.

Mr. Batchgrew said no more.

"What were you talking about downstairs to those two?" Mrs. Maldon went on carefully.

"What d'ye suppose we were talking about?" retorted Batchgrew, still at the window. Then he turned towards her and proceeded in an outburst: "If you want to know, missis, I was asking that young wench what the secret was between you and her."

"The secret? Between Rachel and me?"

"Aye! Ye both know what's happened to them notes, and ye've made it up between ye to say nowt!"

Mrs. Maldon answered gravely--

"You are quite mistaken. I know nothing, and I'm sure Rachel doesn't. And we have made nothing up between us. How can you imagine such things?"

"Why don't ye have the police told?"

"I cannot do with the police in my house."

Mr. Batchgrew approached the bed almost threateningly.

"I'll tell you why ye won't have the police told. Because ye know Louis Fores has taken your money. It's as plain as a pikestaff. Ye put it on the chair on the landing here, and ye left it there, and he came along and pocketed it." Mrs. Maldon essayed to protest, but he cut her short. "Did he or did he not come upstairs after ye'd been upstairs yourself?"

As Mrs. Maldon hesitated, Thomas Batchgrew began to feel younger and more impressive.

"Yes, he did," said Mrs. Maldon at length. "But only because I asked him to come up--to fasten the window."

"What window?"