The Price of Love by Arnold Bennett (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📕

clearness that he had been deceiving himself, that Horrocleave's ruthless eye could not fail to discern at the first glance all his neat dodges, such as additions of ten to the shillings, and even to the pounds here and there, and ingenious errors in carrying forward totals from the bottom of one page to the top of the next. He began to speculate whether Horrocleave would be content merely to fling him out of the office, or whether he would prosecute. Prosecution seemed much more in accordance with the Napoleonic temperament, and yet Louis could not, then, conceive himself the victim of a prosecution.... Anybody else, but not Louis Fores!

Horrocleave, his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand and began to examine the book. Suddenly he looked up at Louis, who could not move and could not cease from agreeably smiling.

Said Horrocleave in a still more peculiar tone--

"Just ask Axon whether he means to go fetch wages to-day or to-morrow. Has he forgotten it's Saturday morning?"

Louis shot away into the outer office, where Axon was just putting on his hat to go to the bank.

Alone in the outer office Louis wondered. The whole of his vitality was absorbed in the single function of wondering. Then through the thin slit of the half-open door between the top and the middle hinges, he beheld Horrocleave bending in judgment over the book. And he gazed at the vision in the fascination of horror. In a few moments Horrocleave leaned back, and Louis saw that his face had turned paler. It went almost white. Horrocleave was breathing strangely, his arms dropped downward, his body slipped to one side, his cap fell off, his eyes shut, his mouth opened, his head sank loosely over the back of the chair like the head of a corpse. He had fainted. The thought passed through Louis' mind that stupefaction at the complex unrighteousness of the petty-cash records had caused Horrocleave to lose consciousness. Then the true explanation occurred to him. It was the pain in his ankle that had overcome the heroic sufferer. Louis had desired to go to his aid, but he could not budge from his post. Presently the colour began slowly to return to Horrocleave's cheek; his eyes opened; he looked round sleepily and then wildly; and then he rubbed his eyes and yawned. He remained quiescent for several minutes, while a railway lorry thundered through the archway and the hoofs of the great horse crunched on shawds in the yard. Then he called, in a subdued voice--

"Louis! Where the devil are ye?"

Louis re-entered the room, and as he did so Horrocleave shut the petty-cash book with an abrupt gesture.

"Here, take it!" said he, pushing the book away.

"Is it all right?" Louis asked.

Horrocleave nodded. "Well, I've checked about forty additions." And he smiled sardonically.

"I think you might do it a bit oftener," said Louis, and then went on: "I say, don't you think it might be a good thing if you took your boot off. You never know, when you've slipped, whether it won't swell--I mean the ankle."

"Bosh!" exclaimed Horrocleave, with precipitation, but after an instant added thoughtfully: "Well, I dun'no'. Wouldn't do any harm, would it? I say--get me some water, will you? I don't know how it is, but I'm as thirsty as a dog."

The heroic martyr to the affirmation that he had not hurt himself had handsomely saved his honour. He could afford to relax a little now the rigour of consistency in conduct. With twinges and yawns he permitted Louis to help him with the boot and to put an art-lustre cup to his lips.

Louis was in the highest spirits. He had seen the gates of the Inferno, and was now snatched up to Paradise. He knew that Horrocleave had never more than half suspected him, and that the terrible Horrocleave pride would prevent Horrocleave from asking for the book again. Henceforth, saved by a miracle, he could live in utter rectitude; he could respond freely to the inspiring influence of Rachel, and he would do so. He smiled at his previous fears, and was convinced, by no means for the first time, that a Providence watched over him because of his good intentions and his nice disposition--that nothing really serious could ever occur to Louis Fores. He reflected happily that in a few days he would begin a new petty-cash book--and he envisaged it as a symbol of his new life. The future smiled. He made sure that his aunt Maldon was dying, and though he liked her very much and would regret her demise, he could not be expected to be blind to the fact that a proportion of her riches would devolve on himself. Indeed, in unluckily causing a loss of money to his aunt Maldon he had in reality only been robbing himself. So that there was no need for any kind of remorse. When the works closed for the week-end, he walked almost serenely up to Bycars for news--news less of his aunt's condition than of the discovery that a certain roll of bank-notes had been mislaid.


III


The front door was open when Louis arrived at Mrs. Maldon's house, and he walked in. Anybody might have walked in. There was nothing unusual in this; it was not a sign that the mistress of the house was ill in bed and its guardianship therefore disorganized. The front doors of Bursley--even the most select--were constantly ajar and the fresh wind from off the pot-bank was constantly blowing through those exposed halls and up those staircases. For the demon of public inquisitiveness is understood in the Five Towns to be a nocturnal demon. The fear of it begins only at dusk. A woman who in the evening protects her parlour like her honour, will, while the sun is above the horizon, show the sacred secrets of the kitchen itself to any one who chooses to stand on the front step.

Louis put his hat and stick on the oak chest, and with a careless, elegant gesture brushed back his dark hair. The door of the parlour was slightly ajar. He pushed it gently open, and peeped round it with a pleasant arch expression, on the chance of there being some one within.

Rachel was lying on the Chesterfield. Her left cheek, resting on her left hand, was embedded in the large cushion. A large coil of her tawny hair, displaced, had spread loosely over the dark green of the sofa. The left foot hung limp over the edge of the sofa; the jutting angle of the right knee divided sharply the drapery of her petticoat into two systems, and her right shoe with its steel buckle pressed against the yielding back of the Chesterfield. The right arm lay lissom like a snake across her breast. All her muscles were lax, and every full curve of her body tended downward in response to the negligent pose. Her eyes were shut, her face flushed; and her chest heaved with the slow regularity of her deep, unconscious breathing.

Louis as he gazed was enchanted. This was not Miss Fleckring, the companion and household help of Mrs. Maldon, but a nymph, a fay, the universal symbol of his highest desire.... He would have been happy to kiss the glinting steel buckle, so feminine, so provocative, so coy. The tight rounded line of the waist, every bend of the fingers, the fall of the eye-lashes--all were exquisite and precious to him after the harsh, unsatisfying, desolating masculinity of Horrocleave's. This was the divine reward of Horrocleave's, the sole reason of Horrocleave's. Horrocleave's only existed in order that this might exist and be maintained amid cushions and the softness of calm and sequestered interiors, waiting for ever in acquiescence for the arrival of manful doers from Horrocleave's. The magnificent pride of male youth animated Louis. He had not a care in the world. Even his long-unpaid tailor's bill was magically abolished. He was an embodiment of exulting hope and fine aspirations.

Rachel stirred, dimly aware of the invasion. And Louis, actuated by the most delicate regard for her sensitive modesty, vanished back for a moment into the hall, until she should have fitted herself for his beholding.

Mrs. Tams had come from somewhere into the hall. She was munching a square of bread and cold bacon, and she curtsied, exclaiming--

"It's never Mester Fores! That's twice her's been woke up this day!"

"Who's there?" Rachel called out, and her voice had the breaking, bewildered softness of a woman's in the dark, emerging from a dream.

"Sorry! Sorry!" said Louis, behind the door.

"It's all right," she reassured him.

He returned to the room. She was sitting upright on the sofa, her arms a little extended and the tips of her fingers touching the sofa. The coil of her hair had been arranged. The romance of the exciting night still clung to her, for Louis; but what chiefly seduced him was the mingling in her mien of soft confusion and candid, sturdy honesty and dependableness. He felt that here was not only a ravishing charm, but a source of moral strength from which he could draw inexhaustibly that which he had had a slight suspicion he lacked. He felt that here was joy and salvation united, and it seemed too good to be true. Strange that when she greeted him at the door-step on the previous evening, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time; and again later, in the kitchen, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time; and again, still later, in the sudden crisis at his bedroom door, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time. For now he perceived that he had never really seen her before; and he was astounded and awed.

"Auntie still on the up-grade?" he inquired, using all his own charm. He guessed, of course, that Mrs. Maldon must be still better, and he was very glad, although, if she recovered, it would be she and not himself that he had deprived of bank-notes.

"Oh yes, she's better," said Rachel, not moving from the sofa; "but have you heard what's happened?"

In spite of himself he trembled, awaiting the disclosure. "Now for the bank-notes!" he reflected, bracing his nerves. He shook his head.

She told him what had happened; she told him at length, quickening her speech as she proceeded. And for a few moments it was as if he was being engulfed by an enormous wave, and would drown. But the next instant he recollected that he was on dry land, safe, high beyond the reach of any catastrophe. His position was utterly secure. The past was past; the leaf was turned. He had but to forget, and he was confident of his ability to forget. The compartments of his mind were innumerable, and as separate as the dungeons of a mediaeval prison.

"Isn't it awful?" she murmured.

"Well, it is rather awful!"

"Nine hundred and sixty-five pounds! Fancy it!"

The wave approached him again as she named the sum. Nevertheless, he never once outwardly blenched. As he had definitely put away unrighteousness, so his face showed no sign of guilt. Like many ingenuous-minded persons, he had in a high degree the faculty of appearing innocent--except when he really was innocent.

"If you ask me," said Rachel, "she never took any of the notes upstairs at all; she left them all somewhere downstairs and only took the serviette upstairs."

"Yes," he agreed thoughtfully, wondering whether on the other hand, Mrs. Maldon had not