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

gate she deliberately stared at him with an unforgiving gaze. The impartial lamp-post lighted the scene.

"Good-night," she repeated harshly. She was saying to herself: "He really does take it in the most beautiful way. I could do anything I liked with him."

"Good-night," said Louis, with strict punctilio.

When she got to the top of the steps she remembered that Louis had the latch-key. He was gone. She gave a wet sob and impulsively ran down the steps and opened the gate. Louis returned. She tried to speak and could not.

"I beg your pardon," said Louis. "Of course you want the key."

He handed her the key with a gesture that disconcertingly melted the rigour of all her limbs. She snatched at it, and plunged for the gate just as the tears rolled down her cheeks in a shower. The noise of the gate covered a fresh sob. She did not look back. Amid all her quite real distress she was proud and happy--proud because she was old enough and independent enough and audacious enough to quarrel with her lover, and happy because she had suddenly discovered life. And the soft darkness and the wind, and the faint sky reflections of distant furnace fires, and the sense of the road winding upward, and the very sense of the black mass of the house in front of her (dimly lighted at the upper floor) all made part of her mysterious happiness.


CHAPTER VIII


END AND BEGINNING

I


"Mrs. Tams!" said Mrs. Maldon, in a low, alarmed, and urgent voice.

The gas was turned down in the bedroom, and Mrs. Maldon, looking from her bed across the chamber, could only just distinguish the stout, vague form of the charwoman asleep in an arm-chair. The light from the street lamp was strong enough to throw faint shadows of the window-frames on the blinds. The sleeper did not stir.

Mrs. Maldon summoned again, more loudly--

"Mrs. Tams!"

And Mrs. Tams, starting out of another world, replied with deprecation--

"Hey, hey!" as if saying: "I am here. I am fully awake and observant. Please remain calm."

Mrs. Maldon said agitatedly--

"I've just heard the front door open. I'm sure whoever it was was trying not to make a noise. There! Can't you hear anything?"

"That I canna'!" said Mrs. Tams.

"No!" Mrs. Maldon protested, as Mrs. Tams approached the gas to raise it. "Don't touch the gas. If anybody's got in let them think we're asleep."

The mystery of the vanished money and the fear of assassins seemed suddenly to oppress the very air of the room. Mrs. Maldon was leaning on one elbow in her bed.

Mrs. Tams said to her in a whisper--

"I mun go see."

"Please don't!" Mrs. Maldon entreated.

"I mun go see," said Mrs. Tams.

She was afraid, but she conceived that she ought to examine the house, and no fear could have stopped her from going forth into the zone of danger.

The next moment she gave a short laugh, and said in her ordinary tone--

"Bless us! I shall be forgetting the nose on my face next. It's Miss Rachel coming in, of course."

"Miss Rachel coming in!" repeated Mrs. Maldon. "Has she been out? I was not aware. She said nothing--"

"Her came up a bit since, and said her had to do some shopping."

"Shopping! At this time of night!" murmured Mrs. Maldon.

Said Mrs. Tams laconically--

"To-morrow's Sunday--and pray God ye'll fancy a bite o' summat tasty."

While the two old women, equalized in rank by the fact of Mrs. Maldon's illness, by the sudden alarm, and by the darkness of the room, were thus conversing, sounds came from the pavement through the slightly open windows--voices, and the squeak of the gate roughly pushed open.

"That's Miss Rachel now," said Mrs. Tams.

"Then who was it came in before?" Mrs. Maldon demanded.

There was the tread of rapid feet on the stone steps, and then the gate squeaked again.

Mrs. Tams went to the window and pulled aside the blind.

"Aye!" she announced simply. "It's Miss Rachel and Mr. Fores."

Mrs. Maldon caught her breath.

"You didn't tell me she was out with Mr. Fores," said Mrs. Maldon, stiffly but weakly.

"It's first I knew of it," Mrs. Tams replied, still spying over the pavement. "He's given her th' key. There! He's gone."

Mrs. Maldon muttered--

"The key? What key?"

"Th' latch-key belike."

"I must speak to Miss Rachel," breathed Mrs. Maldon in a voice of extreme and painful apprehension.

The front door closing sent a vibration through the bedroom. Mrs. Tarns hesitated an instant, and then raised the gas. Mrs. Maldon lay with shut eyes on her left side and gave no sign of consciousness. Light footsteps could be heard on the stairs.

"I'll go see," said Mrs. Tams.

In the heart of the aged woman exanimate on the bed, and in the heart of the aging woman whose stout, coarse arm was still raised to the gas-tap, were the same sentiments of wonder, envy, and pity, aroused by the enigmatic actions of a younger generation going its perilous, instinctive ways to keep the race alive.

Mrs. Tarns lighted a benzolene hand-lamp at the gas, and silently left the bedroom. She still somewhat feared an unlawful invader, but the arrival of Rachel had reassured her. Preceded by the waving little flame, she passed Rachel's door, which was closed, and went downstairs. Every mysterious room on the ground floor was in order and empty. No sign of an invasion. Through the window of the kitchen she saw the fresh cutlets under a wire cover in the scullery; and on the kitchen table were the tin of pineapple and the tin of cocoa, with the reticule near by. All doors that ought to be fastened were fastened. She remounted the stairs and blew out the lamp on the threshold of the mistress's bedroom. And as she did so she could hear Rachel winding up her alarm-clock in quick jerks, and the light shone bright like a silver rod under Rachel's door.

"Her's gone reet to bed," said Mrs. Tams softly, by the bedside of Mrs. Maldon. "Ye've no cause for to worrit yerself. I've looked over th' house."

Mrs. Maldon was fast asleep.

Mrs. Tams lowered the gas and resumed her chair, and the street lamp once more threw the shadows of the window-frames on the blinds.


II


The next day Mrs. Tams, who had been appointed to sleep in the spare room, had to exist under the blight of Rachel's chill disapproval because she had not slept in the spare room--nor in any bed at all. The arrangement had been that Mrs. Tams should retire at 4 a.m., Rachel taking her place with Mrs. Maldon. Mrs. Tams had not retired at 4 a.m. because Rachel had not taken her place.

As a fact, Rachel had been wakened by a bang of the front door, at 10.30 a.m. only. Her first glance at the alarm-clock on her dressing-table was incredulous. And she refused absolutely to believe that the hour was so late. Yet the alarm-clock was giving its usual sturdy, noisy tick, and the sun was high. Then she refused to believe that the alarm had gone off, and in order to remain firm in her belief she refrained from any testing of the mechanism, which might--indeed, would--have proved that the alarm had in fact gone off. It became with her an article of dogma that on that particular morning, of all mornings, the very reliable alarm-clock had failed in its duty. The truth was that she had lain awake till nearly three o'clock, turning from side to side and thinking bitterly upon the imperfections of human nature, and had then fallen into a deep, invigorating sleep from which perhaps half a dozen alarm-clocks might not have roused her.

She arose full of health and anger, and in a few minutes she was out of the bedroom, for she had not fully undressed; like many women, when there was watching to be done, she loved to keep her armour on and to feel the exciting strain of the unusual in every movement. She fell on Mrs. Tams as Mrs. Tams was coming upstairs after letting out the doctor and refreshing herself with cocoa in the kitchen. A careless observer might have thought from their respective attitudes that it was Mrs. Tarns, and not Rachel, who had overslept herself. Rachel divided the blame between the alarm-clock and Mrs. Tams for not wakening her; indeed, she seemed to consider herself the victim of a conspiracy between Mrs. Tams and the alarm-clock. She explicitly blamed Mrs. Tams for allowing the doctor to come and go without her knowledge. Even the doctor did not get off scot-free, for he ought to have asked for Rachel and insisted on seeing her.

She examined Mrs. Tams about the invalid's health as a lawyer examines a hostile witness. And when Mrs. Tams said that the invalid had slept, and was sleeping, stertorously in an unaccountable manner, and hinted that the doctor was not undisturbed by the new symptom and meant to call again later on, Rachel's tight-lipped mien indicated that this might not have occurred if only Mrs. Tams had fulfilled her obvious duty of wakening Rachel. Though she was hungry, she scornfully repulsed the suggestion of breakfast. Mrs. Tams, thoroughly accustomed to such behaviour in the mighty, accepted it as she accepted the weather. But if she had had to live through the night again--after all, a quite tolerable night--she would still not have wakened Rachel at 4 a.m.

Rachel softened as the day passed. She ate a good dinner at one o'clock, with Mrs. Tams in the kitchen, one or the other mounting at short intervals to see if Mrs. Maldon had stirred. Then she changed into her second-best frock, in anticipation of the doctor's Sunday afternoon visit, strictly commanded Mrs. Tams (but with relenting kindness in her voice) to go and lie down, and established herself neatly in the sick-room.

Though her breathing had become noiseless again, Mrs. Maldon still slept. She had wakened only once since the previous night. She lay calm and dignified in slumber--an old and devastated woman, with that disconcerting resemblance to a corpse shown by all aged people asleep, but yet with little sign of positive illness save the slight distortion of her features caused by the original attack. Rachel sat idle, prim, in vague reflection, at intervals smoothing her petticoat, or giving a faint cough, or gazing at the mild blue September sky. She might have been reading a book, but she was not by choice a reader. She had the rare capacity of merely existing. Her thoughts flitted to and fro, now resting on Mrs. Maldon with solemnity, now on Mrs. Tams with amused benevolence, now on old Batchgrew with lofty disgust, and now on Louis Fores with unquiet curiosity and delicious apprehension.

She gave a little shudder of fright and instantly controlled it--Mrs. Maldon, instead of being asleep, was looking at her. She rose and went to the bedside and stood over the sick woman, by the pillow, benignly, asking with her eyes what desire of the sufferer's she might fulfil. And Mrs. Maldon looked up at her with another benignity. And they both smiled.

"You've slept very well," said Rachel softly.

Mrs. Maldon, continuing to smile, gave a scarcely perceptible affirmative movement of the head.

"Will you have some of your Revalenta? I've only got to warm it, here. Everything's