The Price of Love by Arnold Bennett (best books to read non fiction TXT) 📖

could not pass the night in the house, Louis, the interloper, had the effrontery to offer to fill his place--on some preposterous excuse about burglars! And the fellow was so polite and so persuasive, with his finicking eloquence. By virtue of a strange faculty not uncommon in human nature Julian loathed Louis' good manners and appearance--and acutely envied them.

He burst out with scarcely controlled savagery--

"A lot of good you'd be with burglars!"

The women were outraged by his really shocking rudeness. Rachel bit her lip and began to fold up the cloth. Mrs. Maldon's head slightly trembled. Louis alone maintained a perfect equanimity. It was as if he were invulnerable.

"You never know!" he smiled amiably, and shrugged his shoulders. Then he finished his operation on the fire.

"I'm sure it's very kind and thoughtful of you, Louis," said Mrs. Maldon, driven to acceptance by Julian's monstrous behaviour.

"Moreover," Louis urbanely continued, smoothing down his trousers with a long perpendicular caress as he usually did after any bending--"moreover, there's always my revolver."

He gave a short laugh.

"Revolver!" exclaimed Mrs. Maldon, intimidated by the mere name. Then she smiled, in an effort to reassure herself. "Louis, you are a tease. You really shouldn't tease me."

"I'm not," said Louis, with that careful air of false blank casualness which he would invariably employ for his more breath-taking announcements. "I always carry a loaded revolver."

The fearful word "loaded" sank into the heart of the old woman, and thrilled her. It was a fact that for some weeks past Louis had been carrying a revolver. At intervals the craze for firearms seizes the fashionable youth of a provincial town, like the craze for marbles at school, and then dies away. In the present instance it had been originated by the misadventure of a dandy with an out-of-work artisan on the fringe of Hanbridge. Nothing could be more correct than for a man of spirit and fashion thus to arm himself in order to cow the lower orders and so cope with the threatened social revolution.

"You _don't_, Louis!" Mrs. Maldon deprecated.

"I'll show you," said Louis, feeling in his hip pocket.

"_Please_!" protested Mrs. Maldon, and Rachel covered her face with her hands and drew back from Louis' sinister gesture. "Please don't _show_ it to us!" Mrs. Maiden's tone was one of imploring entreaty. For an instant she was just like a sentimentalist who resents and is afraid of hearing the truth. She obscurely thought that if she resolutely refused to see the revolver it would somehow cease to exist. With a loaded revolver in the house the situation seemed more dangerous and more complicated than ever. There was something absolutely terrifying in the conjuncture of a loaded revolver and a secret hoard of bank-notes.

"All right! All right!" Louis relented.

Julian cut across the scene with a gruff and final--

"I must clear out of this!"

He rose.

"Must you?" said his aunt.

She did not unduly urge him to delay, for the strain of family life was exhausting her.

"I must catch the 9.48," said Julian, looking at the clock and at his watch.

Herein was yet another example of the morbid reticence which so pained Mrs. Maldon. He must have long before determined to catch the 9.48; yet he had said nothing about it till the last moment! He had said nothing even about South Africa until the news was forced from him. It had been arranged that he should come direct to Bursley station from his commercial journey in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, pass the night at his aunt's house, which was conveniently near the station, and proceed refreshed to business on the morrow. A neat arrangement, well suiting the fact of his birthday! And now he had broken it in silence, without a warning, with the baldest possible explanation! His aunt, despite her real interest in him, could never extract from him a clear account of his doings and his movements. And this South African excursion was the last and worst illustration of his wilful cruel harshness to her.

Nevertheless, the extreme and unimaginable remoteness of South Africa seemed to demand a special high formality in bidding him adieu, and she rendered it. If he would not permit her to superintend his packing (he had never even let her come to his rooms!), she could at least superintend the putting on of his overcoat. And she did. And instead of quitting him as usual at the door of the parlour, she insisted on going to the front door and opening it herself. She was on her mettle. She was majestic and magnificent. By refusing to see his ill-breeding she actually did terminate its existence. She stood at the open front door with the three young ones about her, and by the force of her ideal the front door became the portal of an embassy and Julian's departure a ceremony of state. He had to shake hands all round. She raised her cheek, and he had to kiss. She said, "God bless you!" and he had to say, "Thank you."

As he was descending the outer steps, the pipe-case clipped under his arm, Louis threw at him--

"I say, old man!"

"What?" He turned round with sharp defiance beneath the light of the street-lamp.

"How are you going to get to London to-morrow morning in time for the boat-train at Waterloo, if you're staying at Knype to-night."

Louis travelled little, but it was his foible to be learned in boat-trains and "connections."

"A friend o' mine's motoring me to Stafford at five to-morrow morning, if you want to know. I shall catch the Scotch express. Anything else?"

"Oh!" muttered Louis, checked.

Julian clanked the gate and vanished up the street, Mrs. Maldon waving.

"What friend? What motor?" reflected Mrs. Maldon sadly. "He is incorrigible with his secretiveness."

"Mrs. Maldon," said Rachel anxiously, "you look pale. Is it being in this draught?" She shut the door.

Mrs. Maldon sighed and moved away. She hesitated at the parlour door and then said--

"I must go upstairs a moment."


CHAPTER IV


IN THE NIGHT

I


Louis stood hesitant and slightly impatient in the parlour, alone. A dark blue cloth now covered the table, and in the centre of it was a large copper jar containing an evergreen plant. Of the feast no material trace remained except a few crumbs on the floor. But the room was still pervaded by the emotional effluence of the perturbed souls who had just gone; and Louis felt it, though without understanding.

Throughout the evening he had of course been preoccupied by the consciousness of having in his pocket bank-notes to a value unknown. Several times he had sought for a suitable opportunity to disclose his exciting secret. But he had found none. In practice he could not say to his aunt, before Julian and Rachel: "Auntie, I picked up a lot of bank-notes on the landing. You really ought to be more careful!" He could not even in any way refer to them. The dignity of Mrs. Maldon had intimidated him. He had decided, after Julian's announcement of departure, that he would hand them over to her, simply and undramatically and with no triumphant air, as soon as he and she should for a moment be alone together. Then Mrs. Maldon vanished upstairs. And she had not returned. Rachel also had vanished. And he was waiting.

He desired to examine the notes, to let his eyes luxuriously rest upon them, but he dared not take them from his pocket lest one or other of the silent-footed women might surprise him by a sudden entrance. He fingered them as they lay in their covert, and the mere feel of them, raised exquisite images in his mind; and at the same time the whole room and every object in the room was transformed into a secret witness which spied upon him, disquieted him, and warned him. But the fact that the notes were intact, that nothing irremediable had occurred, reassured him and gave him strength, so that he could defy the suspicions of those senseless surrounding objects.

Within the room there was no sound but the faint regular hiss of the gas and an occasional falling together of coal in the weakening fire. Overhead, from his aunt's bedroom, vague movements were perceptible. Then these ceased, absolutely. The tension, increasing, grew too much for him, and with a curt gesture, and a self-conscious expression between a smile and a frown, he left the parlour and stood to listen in the lobby. Not for several seconds did he notice the heavy ticking of the clock, close to his ear, nor the chill draught that came under the front door. He gazed up into the obscurity at the top of the stairs. The red glow of the kitchen fire, in the distance to the right of the stairs, caught his attention at intervals. He was obsessed, almost overpowered, by the mysteriousness of the first floor. What had happened? What was happening? And suddenly an explanation swept into his brain--the obvious explanation. His aunt had missed the bank-notes and was probably at that very instant working herself into an anguish. What ought he to do? Should he run up and knock at her door? He was spared a decision by the semi-miraculous appearance of Rachel at the top of the stairs. She started.

"Oh! How you frightened me!" she exclaimed in a low voice.

He answered weakly, charmingly--

"Did I?"

"Will you please come and speak to Mrs. Maldon? She wants you."

"In her room?"

Rachel nodded and disappeared before he could ask another question. With heart beating he ascended the stairs by twos. Through the half-open door of the faintly lit room which he himself would occupy he could hear Rachel active. And then he was at the closed door of his aunt's room. "I must be jolly careful how I do it!" he thought as he knocked.


II


He was surprised, and impressed, to see Mrs. Maldon in bed. She lay on her back, with her striking head raised high on several pillows. Nothing else of her was visible; the purple eider-down covered the whole bed without a crease.

"Hello, auntie!" he greeted her, instinctively modifying his voice to the soft gentleness proper to the ordered and solemn chamber.

Mrs. Maldon, moving her head, looked at him in silence. He tiptoed to the foot of the bed and leaned on it gracefully. And as in the parlour his shadow had fallen on the table, so now, with the gas just behind him, it fell on the bed. The room was chilly and had a slight pharmaceutical odour.

Mrs. Maldon said, with a weak effort--

"I was feeling faint, and Rachel thought I'd better get straight to bed. I'm an old woman, Louis."

"She hasn't missed them!" he thought in a flash, and said, aloud--

"Nothing of the sort, auntie."

He was aware of the dim reflection of himself in the mirror of the immense Victorian mahogany wardrobe to his left.

Mrs. Maldon again hesitated before speaking.

"You aren't ill, are you, auntie?" he said in a cheerful, friendly whisper. He was touched by the poignant pathos of her great age and her debility. It rent his heart to think that she had no prospect but the grave.

She murmured, ignoring his question--

"I just wanted to tell you that you needn't go down home for your night things--unless you specially want to, that is. I have all that's necessary here, and I've