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

ill was much nearer to the truth than the fine talking about being "lots better." If not very ill, he was, at any rate, more ill than he now thought he was, and eating had fatigued him. Nevertheless, he would wash his own hands. Rachel yielded to him in this detail with cynical indifference. She put the towel by the bowl, and left him to balance the bowl and keep the soap off the counterpane as best he could, while she rummaged in one of the drawers of the wardrobe--obviously for the simple sake of rummaging.

Her unwifeliness was astounding; it was so astounding that Louis did not all at once quite realize how dangerously he was wounded by it. He had seen that hard, contumelious mask on her face several times before; he had seen it, for instance, when she had been expressing her views on Councillor Batchgrew; but he had not conceived, in his absurd male confidence, that it would ever be directed against himself. He could not snatch the mask from her face, but he wondered how he might pierce it, and incidentally hurt her and make her cry softly. Ah! He had seen her in moods of softness which were celestial to him--surpassing all dreams of felicity!

The conviction of his own innocence and victimhood strengthened in him. Amid the morbid excitations of the fear of death, he had forgotten that in strict truth he had not stolen a penny from his great-aunt, that he was utterly innocent. He now vividly remembered that his sole intention in taking possession of the bank-notes had been to teach his great-aunt a valuable lesson about care in the guarding of money. Afterwards he had meant to put the notes back where he had found them; chance had prevented; he had consistently acted for the best in very sudden difficulties, and after all, in the result, it was not he who was responsible for the destruction of the notes, but Rachel.... True, that in the night his vision of the affair had been less favourable to himself, but in the night illness had vitiated his judgment, which was not strange, seeing the dreadful accident he had experienced.... He _might_ have died, and where would Rachel have been then?... Was it not amazing that a young wife who had just escaped widowhood so narrowly could behave to a husband, a seriously sick husband, as Rachel was behaving to him?

He wished that he had not used the word "collar" in confessing to Rachel. It was equal to "steal." Its significance was undebatable. Yes, "collar" was a grave error of phrasing.

"I'm about done with this basin thing," he said, with all possible dignity, and asked for brushes of various sorts for the completion of his toilet. She served him slowly, coolly. Her intention was clear to act as a capable but frigid nurse--not as a wife. He saw that she thought herself the wife of a thief, and that she was determined not to be the wife of a thief. He could not bear it. The situation must be changed immediately, because his pride was bleeding to death.

"I say," he began, when she had taken away the towel and his tooth-powder.

"What?" Her tone challenged him.

"You wouldn't let me finish last night. I just wanted to tell you that I didn't--"

"I've no wish to hear another word." She stopped him, precisely as she had stopped him in the night. She was at the washstand.

"I should be obliged if you'd look at me when you speak to me," he reproached her manners. "It's only polite."

She turned to him with face flaming. They were both aware that his deportment was better than hers; and he perceived that the correction had abraded her susceptibility.

"I'll look at you all right," she answered, curtly and rather loudly.

He adopted a superior attitude.

"Of course I'm ill and weak," he said, "but even if I am I suppose I'm entitled to some consideration." He lay back on the pillow.

"I can't help your being ill," she answered. "It's not my fault. And if you're so ill and weak as all that, it seems to me the best thing you can do is to be quiet and not to talk, especially about--about that!"

"Well, perhaps you'll let me be the best judge of what I ought to talk about. Anyhow, I'm going to talk about it, and you're going to listen."

"I'm not."

"I say you're going to listen," he insisted, turning on his side towards her. "And why not? Why, what on earth did I say last night, after all, I should like to know?"

"You said you'd taken the other part of the money of Mrs. Maldon's--that's what you said. You thought you were dying, and so you told me."

"That's just what I want to explain. I'm going to explain it to you."

"No explanations for me, thanks!" she sneered, walking in the direction of the hearth. "I'd sooner hear anything, anything, than your explanations." She seemed to shudder.

He nerved himself.

"I tell you I _found_ that money," he cried, recommencing.

"Well, good-bye," she said, moving to the door. "You don't seem to understand."

At the same moment there was a knock at the door.

"Come in, Mrs. Tarns," said Rachel calmly.

"She mustn't come in now," Louis protested.

"Come in, Mrs. Tams," Rachel repeated decisively.

And Mrs. Tams entered, curtsying towards the bed.

"What is it?" Rachel asked her.

"It's the greengrocer's cart, ma'am." The greengrocer usually did send round on Saturday mornings.

"I'll go down. Just clear up that washstand, will you?"

It was remarkable to Louis how chance would favour a woman in an altercation. But he had decided, even if somewhat hysterically, to submit to no more delay, and to end the altercation--and moreover, to end it in his own way.

"Rachel!" he called. Several times he called her name, more and more loudly. He ignored what was due to servants, to greengrocers, and to the dignity of employers. He kept on calling.

"Shall I fetch missis, sir?" Mrs. Tams suggested at length.

He nodded. Mrs. Tams departed, laden. Certainly the fat creature, from whom nothing could be hid by a younger generation, had divined that strife had supervened on illness, and that great destinies hung upon the issue. Neither Mrs. Tams nor Rachel returned to the bedroom. Louis began again to call for Rachel, and then to yell for her. He could feel that the effort was exhausting him, but he was determined to vanquish her.


IV


Without a sound she startlingly appeared in the room.

"What's the matter?" she inquired, with her irritating assumption of tranquillity.

"You know what's the matter."

"I wish you wouldn't scream like a baby," she said.

"You know I want to speak to you, and you're keeping out of the way on purpose."

Rachel said--

"Look here, Louis! Do you want me to leave the house altogether?"

He thought--

"What is she saying? We've only been married a few weeks. This is getting serious."

Aloud he answered--

"Of course I don't want you to leave the house."

"Well, then, don't say any more. Because if you do, I shall. I've heard all I want to hear. There are some things I can bear, and some I can't bear."

"If you don't listen--!" he exclaimed. "I'm warning you!"

She glanced at the thief in him, and at the coward penitent of the night, with the most desolating disdain, and left the room. That was her answer to his warning.

"All right, my girl! All right!" he said to himself, when she had gone, pulling together his self-esteem, his self-pity, and his masculinity. "You'll regret this. You see if you don't. As to leaving the house, we shall see who'll leave the house. Wait till I'm on my legs again. If there is to be a scandal, there shall be a scandal."

One thing was absolutely sure--he could not and would not endure her contumely, nor even her indifferent scorn. For him to live with it would be ridiculous as well as impossible. He was weak, but two facts gave him enormous strength. First, he loved her less than she loved him, and hence she was at a disadvantage. But supposing her passion for him was destroyed? Then the second fact came into play. He had money. He had thousands of pounds, loose, available! To such a nature as his the control of money gives a sense of everlasting security. Already he dreamt of freedom, of roaming the wide world, subject to no yoke but a bachelor's whim.


CHAPTER XIV


THE MARKET

I


Rachel thought she understood all Louis' mental processes. With the tragic self-confidence of the inexperienced wife, she was convinced that she had nothing to learn about the secret soul of the stranger to whom she had utterly surrendered herself, reserving from him naught of the maiden. Each fresh revelation of him she imagined to be final, completing her studies. In fact, it would have taken at least ten years of marriage to prove to her that a perception of ignorance is the summit of knowledge. She had not even realized that human nature is chiefly made up of illogical and absurd contradictions. Thus she left the house that Saturday morning gloomy, perhaps hopeless, certainly quite undecided as to the future, but serene, sure of her immediate position, and sure that Louis would act like Louis. She knew that she had the upper hand, both physically and morally. The doctor had called and done his work, and given a very reassuring report. She left Louis to Mrs. Tams, as was entirely justifiable, merely informing him that she had necessary errands, and even this information she gave through her veil, a demure contrivance which she had adapted for the first time on her honeymoon. It was his role to accept her august decisions.

The forenoon was better than the dawn. The sun had emerged; the moisture had nearly disappeared, except in the road; and the impulse of spring was moving in the trees and in the bodies of young women; the sky showed a virginal blue; the wandering clouds were milky and rounded, the breeze infinitely soft. It seemed to be in an earlier age that the dark colliers had silently climbed the steep of Bycars Lane amid the dankness and that the first column of smoke had risen forlornly from the chimney.

In spite of her desolated heart, and of her primness, Rachel stepped forward airily. She was going forth to an enormous event, namely, her first apparition in the shopping streets of the town on a Saturday morning as Mrs. Louis Fores, married woman. She might have postponed it, but into what future? Moreover, she was ashamed of being diffident about it. And, in the peculiar condition of her mind, she would have been ashamed to let a spiritual crisis, however appalling, interfere with the natural, obvious course of her duties. So far as the world was concerned, she was a happy married woman, who had to make her debut as a shopping housewife, and hence she was determined that her debut should be made.... And yet, possibly she might not have ventured away from the house at all, had she not felt that if she did not escape for a time from its unbreathable atmosphere into the liberty of the streets, she would stifle and expire. Wherever she put herself in the house she could not feel alone. In the streets