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

case you break your neck," Louis had said. Dr. Yardley's red lamp shone amicably among yellow lights, and its ray with theirs was lost in the mysterious obscurities of the closed park. Not only was it socially advisable for Rachel to study the perverse nature of the bicycle at night--for not to know how to ride the bicycle was as shameful as not to know how to read and write--but she preferred the night for the romantic feeling of being alone with Louis, in the dark and above the glow of the town. She loved the sharp night wind on her cheek, and the faint clandestine rustling of the low evergreens within the park palisade, and the invisible and almost tangible soft sky, revealed round the horizon by gleams of fire. She had longed to ride the bicycle as some girls long to follow the hunt or to steer an automobile or a yacht. And now her ambition was being attained amid all circumstances of bliss.

And yet she would shrink from beginning the lesson.

"The lamp! You've forgotten to light the lamp!" she said.

"Get on," said he.

"But suppose a policeman comes?"

"Suppose you get on and start! Do you think I don't know you? Policemen are my affair. Besides, all nice policemen are in bed.... Don't be afraid. It isn't alive. I've got hold of the thing. Sit well down. No! There are only two pedals. You seem to think there are about nineteen. Right! No, no, _no_! Don't--do not--cling to those blooming handle-bars as if you were in a storm at sea. Be a nice little cat in front of the fire--all your muscles loose. Now! Are you ready?"

"Yes," she murmured, with teeth set and dilated eyes staring ahead at the hideous dangers of Park Road.

He impelled. The pedals went round. The machine slid terribly forward.

And in a moment Louis said, mischievously--

"I told you you'd have to go alone to-night. There you are!"

His footsteps ceased.

"Louis!" she cried, sharply and yet sadly upbraiding his unspeakable treason. Her fingers gripped convulsively the handle-bars. She was moving alone. It was inconceivably awful and delightful. She was on the back of a wild pony in the forest. The miracle of equilibrium was being accomplished. The impossible was done, and at the first attempt. She thought very clearly how wondrous was life, and how perfectly happy fate had made her. And then she was lying in a tangle amid dozens of complex wheels, chains, and bars.

"Hurt?" shouted Louis, as he ran up.

She laughed and said "No," and sat up stiffly, full of secret dolours. Yet he knew and she knew that the accidents of the previous two nights had covered her limbs with blue discolorations, and that the latest fall was more severe than any previous one. Her courage enchanted Louis and filled him with a sense of security. She was not graceful in these exercises. Her ankles were thick and clumsy. Not merely had she no natural aptitude for physical feats--apparently she was not lissom, nor elegant in motion. But what courage! What calm, bright endurance! What stoicism! Most girls would have reproached him for betraying them to destruction, would have pouted, complained, demanded petting and apologies. But not she! She was like a man. And when he helped her to pick herself up he noticed that after all she was both lissom and agile, and exquisitely, disturbingly girlish in her short dusty skirt; and that she did trust him and depend on him. And he realized that he was safe for life with her. She was created for him.

Work was resumed.

"Now don't let go of me till I tell you," she enjoined lightly.

"I won't," he answered. And it seemed to him that his loyalty to her expanded and filled all his soul.

Later, as she approached the other end of Park Road, near Moorthorne Road, a tram-car hurled itself suddenly down Moorthorne Road and overthrew her. It is true that the tram-car was never less than twenty yards away from her. But even at twenty yards it could overthrow. Rachel sat dazed in the road, and her voice was uncertain as she told Louis to examine the bicycle. One of the pedals was bent, and prevented the back wheel from making a complete revolution.

"It's nothing," said Louis. "I'll have it right in the morning."

"Who's that?" Rachel, who had risen, gasping, turned to him excitedly as he was bending over the bicycle. Conscious that somebody had been standing at the corner of the street, he glanced up. A figure was moving quickly down Moorthorne Road in the direction of the station.

"I dun'no," said he.

"It's not Julian, is it?"

In a peculiar tone Louis replied--

"Looks like him, doesn't it?" And then impulsively he yelled "Hi!"

The figure kept on its way.

"Seeing that the inimitable Julian's still in South Africa, it can't very well be him. And, anyhow, I'm not going to run after him."

"No, of course it can't," Rachel assented.

Presently the returning procession was re-formed. Louis pushed the bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the pedal off the crank.

"It's perhaps a good thing you fell just then," said Louis. "Because old Batch is coming in to-night, and we'd better not be late."

"But you never told me!"

"Didn't I? I forgot," he said blandly.

"Oh, Louis!... He's not coming for supper, I hope?"

"My child, if there's a chance of a free meal, old Batch will be on the spot."

The unaccustomed housewife foretold her approaching shame, and proclaimed Louis to be the author of it. She began to quicken her steps.

"You certainly ought to have let me know sooner, dearest," she said seriously. "You really are terrible."

Hard knocks had not hurt her. But she was hurt now. And Louis' smile was very constrained. Her grave manner of saying "dearest" had disquieted him.


CHAPTER X


THE CHASM

I


It is true that Rachel held Councillor Thomas Batchgrew in hatred, that she had never pardoned him for the insult which he had put upon her in the Imperial Cinema de Luxe; and that, indeed, she could never pardon him for simply being Thomas Batchgrew. Nevertheless, there was that evening in her heart a little softening towards him. The fact was that the councillor had been flattering her. She would have denied warmly that she was susceptible to flattery; even if authoritatively informed that no human being whatever is unsusceptible to flattery, she would still have protested that she at any rate was, for, like numerous young and inexperienced women, she had persuaded herself that she was the one exception to various otherwise universal rules.

It remained that Thomas Batchgrew had been flattering her. On arrival he had greeted her with that tinge of deference which from an old man never fails to thrill a girl. Rachel's pride as a young married woman was tigerishly alert and hungry that evening. Thomas Batchgrew, little by little, tamed and fed it very judiciously at intervals, until at length it seemed to purr content around him like a cat. The phenomenon was remarkable, and the more so in that Rachel was convinced that, whereas she was as critical and inimical as ever, old Batchgrew had slightly improved. He behaved "heartily," and everybody appreciates such behaviour in the Five Towns. He was by nature far too insensitive to notice that the married lovers were treating each other with that finished courtesy which is the symptom of a tiff or of a misunderstanding. And the married lovers, noticing that he noticed nothing, were soon encouraged to make peace; and by means of certain tones and gestures peace was declared in the very presence of the unperceiving old brute, which was peculiarly delightful to the contracting parties.

Rachel had less difficulty with the supper than she feared, whereby also her good-humour was fostered. With half a cold leg of mutton, some cheeses, and the magnificent fancy remains of an At Home tea, arrayed with the d'oyleys and embroidered cloths which brides always richly receive in the Five Towns, a most handsome and impressive supper can be concocted. Rachel was astonished at the splendour of her own table. Mr. Batchgrew treated this supper with unsurpassable tact. The adjectives he applied to it were short and emphatic and spoken with a full mouth. He ate the supper; he kept on eating it; he passed his plate with alacrity; he refused naught. And as the meal neared its end he emitted those natural inarticulate noises from his throat which in Persia are a sign of high breeding. Useless for Rachel in her heart to call him a glutton--his attitude towards her supper was impeccable.

And now the solid part of the supper was over. One extremity of the Chesterfield had been drawn closer to the fire--an operation easily possible in its new advantageous position--and Louis as master of the house had mended the fire after his own method, and Rachel sat upright (somewhat in the manner of Mrs. Maldon) in the arm-chair opposite Mr. Batchgrew, extended half-reclining on the Chesterfield. And Mrs. Tams entered with coffee.

"You'll have coffee, Mr. Batchgrew?" said the hostess.

"Nay, missis! I canna' sleep after it."

Secretly enchanted by the sweet word "missis," Rachel was nevertheless piqued by this refusal.

"Oh, but you must have some of Louise's coffee," said Louis, standing negligently in front of the fire.

Already, though under a month old as a husband, Louis, following the eternal example of good husbands, had acquired the sure belief that his wife could achieve a higher degree of excellence in certain affairs than any other wife in the world. He had selected coffee as Rachel's speciality.

"Louise's?" repeated old Batchgrew, puzzled, in his heavy voice.

Rachel flushed and smiled.

"He calls me Louise, you know," said she.

"Calls you Louise, does he?" Batchgrew muttered indifferently. But he took a cup of coffee, stirred part of its contents into the saucer and on to the Chesterfield, and began to sup the remainder with a prodigious splutter of ingurgitation.

"And you must have a cigarette, too," Louis carelessly insisted. And Mr. Batchgrew agreed, though it was notorious that he only smoked once in a blue moon, because all tobacco was apt to be too strong for him.

"You can clear away," Rachel whispered, in the frigid tones of one accustomed to command cohorts of servants in the luxury of historic castles.

"Yes, ma'am," Mrs. Tams whispered back nervously, proud as a major-domo, though with less than a major-domo's aplomb.

No pride, however, could have outclassed Rachel's. She had had a full day, and the evening was the crown of the day, because in the evening she was entertaining privately for the first time. She was the one lady of the party; for these two men she represented woman, and they were her men. They depended on her for their physical well-being, and not in vain. She was the hostess; hers to command; hers the complex responsibility of the house. She had begun supper with painful timidity, but the timidity had now nearly vanished in the flush of social success. Critical as only a young wife can be, she was excellently well satisfied with Louis' performance in the role of host. She grew more than ever sure that there was only one Louis. See him manipulate a cigarette--it was the perfection of worldliness and agreeable, sensuous grace! See