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

'em." He glared afresh, and with even increased virulence.

"That's all right," said Louis. "That's all right. Besides, we only want half of them."

Sundry sheets of the confession, which had not previously caught fire, suddenly blazed up with a roar in the grate, and all looked momentarily at the flare.

"You've _got_ to have it all!" said Julian, flushing.

"My dear fellow," Louis repeated, "we shall only take half. The other half's yours."

"As God sees me," Julian urged, "I'll never take a penny of that money! Here--"

He snatched up all the notes and dashed wrathfully out of the parlour. Rachel followed quickly. He went to the back room, where the gas had been left burning high, sprang on to a chair in front of the cupboard, and deposited the notes on the top of the cupboard, in the very place from which he had originally taken them.

"There!" he exclaimed, jumping down from the chair. The symbolism of the action appeared to tranquillize him.


IV


For a moment Rachel, as a newly constituted housewife to whom every square foot of furniture surface had its own peculiar importance, was enraged to see Julian's heavy and dirty boots again on the seat of her unprotected chair. But the sense of hurt passed like a spasm as her eyes caught Julian's. They were alone together in the back room and not far from each other. And in the man's eyes she no longer saw the savage Julian, but an intensely suffering creature, a creature martyrized by destiny. She saw the real Julian glancing out in torment at the world through those eyes. The effect of the vibration in Julian's voice a few minutes earlier was redoubled. Her emotion nearly overcame her. She desired very much to succour Julian, and was aware of a more distinct feeling of impatience against Louis.

She thought Julian had been magnificently heroic, and all his faults of demeanour were counted to him for excellences. He had been a thief; but the significance of the word "thief" was indeed completely altered for her. She had hitherto envisaged thieves as rascals in handcuffs bandied along the streets by policemen at the head of a procession of urchins--dreadful rascals! But now a thief was just a young man like other young men--only he had happened to see some bank-notes lying about and had put them in his pocket and then had felt very sorry for what he had done. There was no crime in what he had done ... was there? She pictured Julian's pilgrimage through South Africa, all alone. She pictured his existence at Knype, all alone; and his very ferocity rendered him the more wistful and pathetic in her sight. She was sure that his mother and sisters had never understood him; and she did not think it quite proper on their part to have gone permanently to America, leaving him solitary in England, as they had done. She perceived that she herself was the one person in the world capable of understanding Julian, the one person who could look after him, influence him, keep him straight, civilize him, and impart some charm to his life. And she was glad that she had the status of a married woman, because without that she would have been helpless.

Julian sat down, or sank, on to the chair.

"I'm very sorry I spoke like that to you in the other room--I mean about what you'd written," she said. "I suppose I ought not to have burnt it."

She spoke in this manner because to apologize to him gave her a curious pleasure.

"That's nothing," he answered, with the quietness of fatigue. "I dare say you were right enough. Anyhow, ye'll never see me again."

She exclaimed, kindly protesting--

"Why not, I should like to know?"

"You won't want me here as a visitor, after all this." He faintly sneered.

"I shall," she insisted.

"Louis won't."

She replied: "You must come and see me. I shall expect you to. I must tell you," she added confidentially, in a lower tone, "I think you've been splendid to-night. I'm sure I respect you much more than I did before--and you can take it how you like!"

"Nay! Nay!" he murmured deprecatingly. All the harshness had melted out of his voice.

Then he stood up.

"I'd better hook it," he said briefly. "Will you get me my overcoat, missis."

She comprehended that he wished to avoid speaking to Louis again that night, and, nodding, went at once to the parlour and brought away the overcoat.

"He's going," she muttered hastily to Louis, who was standing near the fire. Leaving the parlour, she drew the door to behind her.

She helped Julian with his overcoat and preceded him to the front door. She held out her hand to be tortured afresh, and suffered the grip of the vice with a steady smile.

"Now don't forget," she whispered.

Julian seemed to try to speak and to fail.... He was gone. She carefully closed and bolted the door.


V


Louis had not followed Julian and Rachel into the back room because he felt the force of an instinct to be alone with his secret satisfaction. In those moments it irked him to be observed, and especially to be observed by Rachel, not to mention Julian. He was glad for several reasons--on account of his relief, on account of the windfall of money, and perhaps most of all on account of the discovery that he was not the only thief in the family. The bizarre coincidence which had divided the crime about equally between himself and Julian amused him. His case and Julian's were on a level. Nevertheless, he somewhat despised Julian, patronized him, condescended to him. He could not help thinking that Julian was, after all, a greater sinner than himself. Never again could Julian look him (Louis) in the face as if nothing had happened. The blundering Julian was marked for life, by his own violent, unreasonable hand. Julian was a fool.

Rachel entered rather solemnly.

"Has he really gone?" Louis asked. Rachel did not care for her husband's tone, which was too frivolous for her. She was shocked to find that Louis had not been profoundly impressed by the events of the night.

"Yes," she said.

"What's he done with the money?"

"He's left it in the other room." She would not disclose to Louis that Julian had restored the notes to the top of the cupboard, because she was afraid that he might treat the symbolic act with levity.

"All of it?"

"Yes. I'll bring it you."

She did so. Louis counted the notes and casually put them in his breast pocket.

"Oddest chap I ever came across!" he observed, smiling.

"But aren't you sorry for him?" Rachel demanded.

"Yes," said Louis airily. "I shall insist on his taking half, naturally."

"I'm going to bed," said Rachel. "You'll see all the lights out."

She offered her face and kissed him tepidly.

"What's come over the kid?" Louis asked himself, somewhat disconcerted, when she had gone.

He remained smoking, purposeless, in the parlour until all sounds had ceased overhead in the bedroom. Then he extinguished the gas in the parlour, in the back room, in the kitchen, and finally in the lobby, and went upstairs by the light of the street lamp. In the bedroom Rachel lay in bed, her eyes closed. She did not stir at his entrance. He locked the bank-notes in a drawer of the dressing-table, undressed with his usual elaborate care, approached Rachel's bed and gazed at her unresponsive form, turned down the gas to a pinpoint, and got into bed himself. Not the slightest sound could be heard anywhere, either in or out of the house, save the faint breathing of Rachel. And after a few moments Louis no longer heard even that. In the darkness the mystery of the human being next him began somehow to be disquieting. He was capable of imagining that he lay in the room with an utter stranger. Then he fell asleep.


CHAPTER XII


RUNAWAY HORSES

I


Rachel, according to her own impression the next morning, had no sleep during that night. The striking of the hall clock could not be heard in the bedroom with the door closed, but it could be felt as a faint, distinct concussion; and she had thus noted every hour, except four o'clock, when daylight had come and the street lamp had been put out. She had deliberately feigned sleep as Louis entered the room, and had maintained the soft, regular breathing of a sleeper until long after he was in bed. She did not wish to talk; she could not have talked with any safety.

Her brain was occupied much by the strange and emotional episode of Julian's confession, but still more by the situation of her husband in the affair. Julian's story had precisely corroborated one part of Mrs. Maldon's account of her actions on the evening when the bank-notes had disappeared. Little by little that recital of Mrs. Maldon's had been discredited, and at length cast aside as no more important than the delirium of a dying creature; it was an inconvenient story, and would only fit in with the alternative theories that money had wings and could fly on its own account, or that there had been thieves in the house. Far easier to assume that Mrs. Maldon in some lapse had unwittingly done away with the notes! But Mrs. Maldon was now suddenly reinstated as a witness. And if one part of her evidence was true, why should not the other part be true? Her story was that she had put the remainder of the bank-notes on the chair on the landing, and then (she thought) in the wardrobe. Rachel recalled clearly all that she had seen and all that she had been told. She remembered once more the warnings that had been addressed to her. She lived the evening and the night of the theft over again, many times, monotonously, and with increasing woe and agitation.

Then with the greenish dawn, that the blinds let into the room, came some refreshment and new health to the brain, but the trend of her ideas was not modified. She lay on her side and watched the unconscious Louis for immense periods, and occasionally tears filled her eyes. The changes in her existence seemed so swift and so tremendous as to transcend belief. Was it conceivable that only twelve hours earlier she had been ecstatically happy? In twelve hours--in six hours--she had aged twenty years, and she now saw the Rachel of the reception and of the bicycle lesson as a young girl, touchingly ingenuous, with no more notion of danger than a baby.

At six o'clock she arose. Already she had formed the habit of arising before Louis, and had reconciled herself to the fact that Louis had to be forced out of bed. Happily, his feet once on the floor, he became immediately manageable. Already she was the conscience and time-keeper of the house. She could dress herself noiselessly; in a week she had perfected all her little devices for avoiding noise and saving time. She finally left the room neat, prim, with lips set to a thousand responsibilities. She had a peculiar sensation of tight elastic about her eyes, but she felt no fatigue, and she did not yawn. Mrs. Tams, who had just descended, found her taciturn and exacting. She would have every household task performed precisely in her own way, without compromise. And it appeared that the house,