The Price of Love Part 11

"Your bedtime, I suppose?" he murmured, rising elegantly.

She smiled. She said--

"Shall you lock up, or shall I?"

"Oh! I think I know all the tricks," he replied, and thought, "She's a pretty direct sort of girl, anyway!"

IV

About an hour later he went up to his room. It was a fact that everything had been made right for him. The gas burned low. He raised it, and it shone directly upon the washstand, which glittered with the ivory glaze of large earthenware, and the whiteness of towels that displayed all the creases of their folding. There was a new cake of soap in the ample soap-dish, and a new tooth-brush in a sheath of transparent paper lay on the marble. "Rather complete this!" he reflected. The nail-brush--an article in which he specialized--was worn, but it was worn evenly and had cost good money. The water-bottle dazzled him; its polished clarity was truly crystalline. He could not remember ever having seen a toilet array so s.h.i.+ning with strict cleanness. Indeed, it was probable that he had never set eyes on an absolutely clean water-bottle before; the qualities a.s.sociated with water-bottles in his memory were semi-opacity and spottiness.

The dressing-table matched the washstand. A carriage clock in leather had been placed on the mantelpiece. In front of the mantelpiece was an old embroidered fire-screen. Peeping between the screen and the grate, he saw that a fire had been scientifically laid, ready for lighting; but some bits of paper and oddments on the top of the coal showed that it was not freshly laid. The grate had a hob at one side, and on this was a small, bright tin kettle. The bed was clearly a good bed, resilient, softly garnished. On it was stretched a long, striped garment of flannel, with old-fas.h.i.+oned pearl b.u.t.tons at neck and sleeves. An honest garment, quite surely unshrinkable! No doubt in the sixties, long before the mind of man had leaped to the fine perverse conception of the decorated pyjama, this garment had enjoyed the fullest correctness. Now, after perhaps forty years in the cupboards of Mrs. Maldon, it seemed to recall the more excellent attributes of an already forgotten past, and to rebuke what was degenerate in the present.

Louis, ranging over his experiences in the disorderly and mean pretentiousness of the suburban home, and in the discomfort of various lodgings, appreciated the grave, comfortable benignity of that bedroom. Its appeal to his senses was so strong that it became for him almost luxurious. The bedroom at his latest lodgings was full of boot-trees and trouser-stretchers and coat-holders, but it was a paltry thing and a grimy. He saw the daily and hourly advantages of marriage with a loving, simple woman whose house was her pride. He had a longing for solidities, cert.i.tudes, and righteousness.

Musing delectably, he drew aside the crimson curtain from the window and beheld the same prospect that Rachel had beheld on her walk towards Friendly Street--the obscurity of the park, the chain of lamps down the slope of Moorthorne Road, and the distant fires of industry still farther beyond, towards Toft End. He had hated the foul, sordid, ragged prospects and vistas of the Five Towns when he came new to them from London, and he had continued to hate them. They desolated him.

But to-night he thought of them sympathetically. It was as if he was divining in them for the first time a recondite charm. He remembered what an old citizen named Dain had said one evening at the Conservative Club: "People may say what they choose about Bursley.

I've just returned from London and I tell thee I was glad to get back.

I _like_ Bursley." A grotesque saying, he had thought, then.

Yet now he positively felt himself capable of sharing the sentiment.

Rachel in the kitchen, and the kitchen in town, and the town amid those scarred and smoking hillocks!... Invisible phenomena! Mysterious harmonies! The influence of the night solaced and uplifted him and bestowed on him new faculties of perception.

At length, deciding, after characteristic procrastination, that he must really go to bed, he wound up his watch and put it on the dressing-table. His pockets had to be emptied and his clothes hung or folded. His fingers touched the notes in the left-hand outside pocket of his coat. Not for one instant had the problem of the bank-notes been absent from his mind. Throughout the conversation with Rachel, throughout the interval between her retirement and his own, throughout his meditations in the bedroom, he had not once escaped from the obsession of the bank-notes and their problem. He knew now how the problem must be solved. There was, after all, only one solution, and it was extremely simple. He must put the notes back where he had found them, underneath the chair on the landing. If advisable, he might rediscover them in the morning and surrender them immediately. But they must not remain in his room during the night. He must not examine them--he must not look at them.

He approached the door quickly, lest he might never reach the door.

But he was somehow forced to halt at the wardrobe, to see if it had coat-holders. It had one coat-holder.... His hand was on the door-k.n.o.b. He turned it with every species of precaution--and it complained loudly in the still night. The door opened with a terrible explosive noise of protest. He gazed into the darkness of the landing, and presently, by the light from the bedroom, could distinguish the vague boundaries of it. The chair, invisible, was on the left. He opened the door wider to the nocturnal riddle of the house. His hand clasped the notes in his pocket. No sound! He listened for the ticking of the lobby clock and could not catch it. He listened more intently.

It was impossible that he should not hear the ticking of the lobby clock. Was he dreaming? Was he under some delusion? Then it occurred to him that the lobby clock must have run down or otherwise stopped.

Clocks did stop.... And then his heart bounded and his flesh crept. He had heard footsteps somewhere below. Or were the footsteps merely in his imagination?

Alone in the parlour, after Rachel had gone to bed, he had spent some time in gazing at the _Signal_; for there had been absolutely nothing else to do, and he could not have thought of sleep at such an early hour. It is true that, with his intense preoccupations, he had for the most part gazed uncomprehendingly at the _Signal_. The tale of the latest burglaries, however, had by virtue of its intrinsic interest reached his brain through his eyes, and had impressed him, despite preoccupations. And now, as he stood in the gloom at the door of his bedroom and waited feverishly for the sound of more footsteps, it was inevitable that visions of burglars should disturb him.

The probability of burglars visiting any particular house in the town was infinitely slight--his common sense told him that. But supposing--just supposing that they actually had chosen his aunt's abode for their prey!... Conceivably they had learnt that Mrs. Maldon was to have a large sum of money under her roof. Conceivably a complex plan had been carefully laid. Conceivably one of the great burglaries of criminal history might be in progress. It was not impossible. No wonder that, with bank-notes loose all over the place, his shockingly negligent auntie should have special qualms concerning burglars on that night of all nights! Fortunate indeed that he carried a revolver, that the revolver was loaded, and that he had some skill to use it! A dramatic surprise--his gun and the man behind it--for burglars who had no doubt counted on having to deal with a mere couple of women! He had but to remove his shoes and creep down the stairs. He felt at the revolver in his pocket. Often had he pictured himself in the act of calmly triumphing over burglars or other villains.

Then, with no further hesitation, he silently closed the door--on the inside!... How could there be burglars in the house? The suspicion was folly. What he had heard could be naught but the nocturnal cracking and yielding of an old building at night. Was it not notorious that the night was full of noises? And even if burglars had entered!...

Better, safer, to ignore them! They could not make off with a great deal, for the main item of prey happened to be in his own pocket.

Let them search for the treasure! If they had the effrontery to come searching in his bedroom, he would give them a reception! Let them try! He looked at the revolver, holding it beneath the gas. Could he aim it at a human being?...

Or--another explanation--possibly Rachel, having forgotten something or having need of something, had gone downstairs for it. He had not thought of that. But what more natural? Sudden toothache--a desire for laudanum--a visit to a store cupboard: such was the cla.s.sic order of events.

He listened, secure within the four walls of his bedroom. He smiled.

He could have fancied that he heard an electric bell ring ever so faintly at a distance--in the next house, in the next world.

He laughed to himself.

Then at length he moved again towards the door; and he paused in front of it. There were no burglars! The notion of burglars was idiotic! He must put the notes back under the chair. His whole salvation depended upon his putting the notes back under the chair on the landing!...

An affair of two seconds!... With due caution he opened the door. And simultaneously, at the very selfsame instant, he most distinctly heard the click of the latch of his aunt's bedroom door, next his own! Now, in a horrible quandary, trembling and perspiring, he felt completely nonplussed. He pushed his own door to, but without quite closing it, for fear of a noise; and edged away from it towards the fireplace.

Had his aunt wakened up, and felt a misgiving about the notes, and found that they were not where they ought to be?

No further sound came though the crack of his door. In the dwelling absolute silence seemed to be established. He stood thus for an indefinite period in front of the fireplace, the brain's action apparently suspended, until his agitation was somewhat composed. And then, because he had no clear plan in his head, he put his hand into the pocket containing the notes and drew them out. And immediately he was aware of a pleasant feeling of relief, as one who, after battling against a delicious and shameful habit, yields and is glad. The beauty of the notes was eternal; no use could stale it. Their intoxicating effect on him was just as powerful now as before supper. And now, as then, the mere sight of them filled him with a pa.s.sionate conviction that without them he would be ruined. His tricks to destroy the suspicions of Horrocleave could not possibly be successful. Within twenty-four hours he might be in prison if he could not forthwith command a certain sum of money. And even possessing the money, he would still have an extremely difficult part to play. It would be necessary for him to arrive early at the works, to change notes for gold in the safe, to erase many of his pencilled false additions, to devise a postponement of his crucial scene with Horrocleave, and lastly to invent a plausible explanation of the piling up of a cash reserve.

If he had not been optimistic and an incurable procrastinator and a believer in luck at the last moment, he would have seen that nothing but a miracle could save him if Horrocleave were indeed suspicious.

Happily for his peace of mind, he was incapable of looking a fact in the face. Against all reason he insisted to himself that with the notes he might reach salvation. He did not trouble even to estimate the chances of the notes being traced by their numbers. Such is the magic force of a weak character.

But he powerfully desired not to steal the notes, or any of them.

The image of Rachel rose between him and his temptation. Her honesty, candour, loyalty, had revealed to him the beauty of the ways of righteousness. He had been born again in her glance. He swore he would do nothing unworthy of the ideal she had unconsciously set up in him.

He admitted that it was supremely essential for him to restore the notes to the spot whence he had removed them.... And yet--if he did so, and was lost? What then? For one second he saw himself in the dock at the police-court in the town hall. Awful hallucination! If it became reality, what use, then, his obedience to the new ideal? Better to accomplish this one act of treason to the ideal in order to be able for ever afterwards to obey it and to look Rachel in the eyes! Was it not so? He wanted advice, he wanted to be confirmed in his own opportunism, as a starving beggar may want food.

And in the midst of all this torture of his vacillations, he was staggered and overwhelmed by the sudden noise of Mrs. Maldon's door brusquely opening, and of an instant loud, firm knock on his own door.

The silence of the night was shattered as by an earthquake.

Almost mechanically he crushed the notes in his left hand--crushed them into a ball; and the knuckles of that hand turned white with the muscular tension.

"Are you up?" a voice demanded. It was Rachel's voice.

"Ye-es," he answered, and held his left hand over the screen in front of the fireplace.

"May I come in?"

And with the word she came in. She was summarily dressed, and very pale, and her hair, more notable than ever, was down. As she entered he opened his hand and let the ball of notes drop into the littered grate.

V

"Anything the matter?" he asked, moving away from the region of the hearth-rug.

She glanced at him with a kind of mild indulgence, as if to say: "Surely you don't suppose I should be wandering about in the night like this if nothing was the matter!"

She replied, speaking quickly and eagerly--"I'm so glad you aren't in bed. I want you to go and fetch the doctor--at once."

"Auntie ill?"

She gave him another glance like the first, as if to say: "_I'm_ not ill, and _you_ aren't. And Mrs. Maldon is the only other person in the house--"

"I'll go instantly," he added in haste. "Which doctor?"

"Yardley in Park Road. It's near the corner of Axe Street. You'll know it by the yellow gate--even if his lamp isn't lighted."

"I thought old Hawley up at Hillport was auntie's doctor."

"I believe he is, but you couldn't get up to Hillport in less than half an hour, could you?"

"Not so serious as all that, is it?"

"Well, you never know. Best to be on the safe side. It's not quite like one of her usual attacks. She's been upset. She actually went downstairs."