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

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.


II


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 all _right_! 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--_I_ don'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