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

to the time of her death. Rachel had at first been even intimidated by it; Louis had sincerely praised it. And indeed its perfection was an axiom of drawing-room conversation. But as soon as Louis and Rachel began to look on the house with the eye of inhabitants, the axiom fell to a dogma, and the dogma was exploded. The dreadful truth came out that Mrs. Maldon had shown a strange indifference to certain aspects of convenience, and that, in short, she must have been a peculiar old lady with ideas of her own. Louis proved unanswerably that in the hitherto faultless parlour the furniture was ill arranged, and suddenly the sideboard and the Chesterfield had changed places, and all concerned had marvelled that Mrs. Maldon had for so long kept the Chesterfield where so obviously the sideboard ought to have been, and the sideboard where so obviously the Chesterfield ought to have been.

And still graver matters had come to light. The house had an attic floor, which was unused and the scene of no activity except spring cleaning. A previous owner, infected by the virus of modernity, had put a bath into one of the attics. Now Mrs. Maldon, as experiments disclosed, had actually had the water cut off from the bath. Eyebrows were lifted at the revelation of this caprice. The restoration of the supply of water and the installing of a geyser were the only expenditures which thrifty Rachel had sanctioned in the way of rejuvenating the house. Rachel had decided that the house must, at any rate for the present, be "made to do." That such a decision should be necessary astonished Rachel; and Mrs. Maldon would have been more than astonished to learn that the lady help, by fortitude and determination, was making her perfect house "do." As regards the household inventory, Rachel had been obliged to admit exceptions to her rule of endurance. Perhaps her main reason for agreeing to live in the house had been that there would be no linen to buy. But truly Mrs. Maldon's notion of what constituted a sufficiency of--for example--towels, was quite too inadequate. Louis protested that he could comfortably use all Mrs. Maldon's towels in half a day. More towels had to be obtained. There were other shortages, but some of them were set right by means of veiled indications to prospective givers of gifts.

"You mean that 'Garden of the Hesperides' affair for up here, do you?" said Louis.

Rachel gazed round the bedchamber. A memory of what it had been shot painfully through her mind. For the room was profoundly changed in character. Two narrow bedsteads given by Thomas Batchgrew, and described by Mrs. Tarns, in a moment of daring, as "flighty," had taken the place of Mrs. Maldon's bedstead, which was now in the spare room, the spare-room bedstead having been allotted to Mrs. Tams, and Rachel's old bedstead sold. Bright crocheted and embroidered wedding-presents enlivened the pale tones of the room. The wardrobe, washstand, dressing-table, chairs, carpet, and ottoman remained. But there were razors on the washstand and boot-trees under it; the wardrobe had been emptied, and filled on strange principles with strange raiment; and the Maldon family Bible, instead of being on the ottoman, was in the ottoman--so as to be out of the dust.

"Perhaps we may as well keep that here, after all," said Rachel, indicating Athelsan's water-colour. Her voice was soft. She remembered that the name of Mrs. Maldon, only a little while since a major notability of Bursley and the very mirror of virtuous renown, had been mentioned but once, and even then apologetically, during the afternoon.

Louis asked, sharply--

"Why, if you don't care for it? _I_ don't."

"Well--" said Rachel. "As you like, then, dearest."

Louis walked out of the room with the water-colour, and in a moment returned with a photogravure of Lord Leighton's "The Garden of the Hesperides," in a coquettish gold frame--a gift newly arrived from Louis' connections in the United States. The marmoreal and academic work seemed wonderfully warm and original in that room at Bycars. Rachel really admired it, and admired herself for admiring it. But when Louis had hung it and flicked it into exact perpendicularity, and they had both exclaimed upon its brilliant effect even in the dusk, Rachel saw it also with the eyes of Mrs. Maldon, and wondered what Mrs. Maldon would have thought of it opposite her bed, and knew what Mrs. Maldon would have thought of it.

And then, the job being done and the progress of civilization assured, Louis murmured in a new appealing voice--

"I say, Louise!"

"Louise" was perhaps his most happy invention, and the best proof that Louis was Louis. Upon hearing that her full Christian names were Rachel Louisa, he had instantly said--"I shall call you Louise." Rachel was ravished, Louisa is a vulgar name--at least it is vulgar in the Five Towns, where every second general servant bears it. But Louise was full of romance, distinction, and beauty. And it was the perfect complement to Louis. Louis and Louise--ideal coincidence! "But nobody except me is to call you Louise," he had added. And thus completed her bliss.

"What?" she encouraged him amorously.

"Suppose we go to Llandudno on Saturday for the week-end?"

His tone was gay, gentle, innocent, persuasive. Yet the words stabbed her and her head swam.

"But why?" she asked, controlling her utterance.

"Oh, well! Be rather a lark, wouldn't it?" It was when he talked in this strain that the inconvenient voice of sagacity within her would question for one agonizing instant whether she was more secure as the proud, splendid wife of Louis Fores than she had been as a mere lady help. And the same insistent voice would repeat the warnings which she had had from Mrs. Maldon and from Thomas Batchgrew, and would remind her of what she herself had said to herself when Louis first kissed her--"This is wrong. But I don't care. He is mine."

Upon hearing of his inheritance from Mrs. Maldon, Louis was for throwing up immediately his situation at Horrocleave's. Rachel had dissuaded him from such irresponsible madness. She had prevented him from running into a hundred expenses during their engagement and in connection with the house. And he had in the end enthusiastically praised her common sense. But that very morning at the midday meal he had surprised her by announcing that on account of the reception he should not go to the works at all in the afternoon, though he had omitted to warn Horrocleave. Ultimately she had managed, by guile, to dispatch him to the works for two hours. And now in the evening he was alarming her afresh. Why go to Llandudno? What point was there in rushing off to Llandudno, and scattering in three days more money than they could save in three weeks? He frightened her ingrained prudence, and her alarm was only increased by his obvious failure to realize the terrible defect in himself. (For to her it was terrible.) The joyous scheme of an excursion to Llandudno had suddenly crossed his mind, exciting the appetite for pleasure. Hence the appetite must be immediately indulged!... Rachel had been brought up otherwise. And as a direct result of Louis' irresponsible suggestion she had a vision of the house with county-court bailiffs lodged in the kitchen.... She had only to say--"Yes, let's go," and they would be off on the absurd and wicked expedition.

"I'd really rather not," she said, smiling, but serious.

"All serene. But, anyhow, next week's Easter, and we shall have to go somewhere then, you know."

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked close at him, knowing that she must use her power and that the heavy dusk would help her.

"Why?" she asked again. "I'd much sooner stay here at Easter. Truly I would!... With you!"

The episode ended with an embrace. She had won.

"Very well! Very well!" said Louis. "Easter in the coal-cellar if you like. I'm on for anything."

"But don't you _see_, dearest?" she said.

And he imitated her emphasis, full of teasing good humour--

"Yes, I _see_, dearest."

She breathed relief, and asked--

"Are you going to give me my bicycle lesson?"


III


Louis had borrowed a bicycle for Rachel to ruin while learning to ride. He said that a friend had lent it to him--a man in Hanbridge whose mother had given up riding on account of stoutness--but who exactly this friend was Rachel knew not, Louis' information being characteristically sketchy and incomplete; and with his air of candour and good humour he had a strange way of warding off questions; so that already Rachel had grown used to a phrase which she would utter only in her mind, "I don't like to ask him--"

It pleased Louis to ride this bicycle out of the back yard, down the sloping entry, and then steer it through another narrow gateway, across the pavement, and let it solemnly bump, first with the front wheel and then with the back wheel, from the pavement into the road. During this feat he stood on the pedals. He turned the machine up Bycars Lane, and steadily climbed the steep at Rachel's walking pace. And Rachel, hurrying by his side, watched in the obscurity the play of his ankles as he put into practice the principles of pedalling which he had preached. He was a graceful rider; every movement was natural and elegant. Rachel considered him to be the most graceful cyclist that ever was. She was fascinated by the revolutions of his feet.

She felt ecstatically happy. The episode of his caprice for the seaside was absolutely forgotten; after all, she asked for nothing more than possession of him, and she had that, though indeed it seemed too marvellous to be true. The bicycle lesson was her hour of magic; and more so on this night than on previous nights.

"I must change my dress," she had said. "I can't go in this one."

"Quick, then!"

His impatience could not wait. He had helped her. He undid hooks, and fastened others.... The rich blue frock lay across the bed and looked lovely on the ivory-coloured counterpane. It seemed indeed to be a part of that in her which was Louise. Then she was in a short skirt which she had devised herself, and he was pushing her out of the room, his hand on her back. And she had feigned reluctance, resisting his pressure, while laughing with gleeful eagerness to be gone. No delay had been allowed. As they passed through the kitchen, not one instant for parley with Mrs. Tams as to the domestic organization of the evening! He was still pushing her.... Thus she had had to confide her precious house and its innumerable treasures to Mrs. Tams. And in this surrender to Louis' whim there was a fearful joy.

When Louis turned at last into Park Road, and stepped from between the wheels, she exclaimed, a little breathless from quick walking level with him up the hill--

"I can't bear to see you ride so well. Oh!" She crunched her teeth with a loving, cruel gesture. "I should like to hurt you frightfully!"

"What for?"

"Because I shall never, never be able to ride as well as you do!"

He winked.

"Here! Take hold."

"I'm not ready! I'm not ready!" she cried.

But he loosed the machine, and she was obliged to seize it as it fell. That was his teasing.

Park Road had been the scene of the lesson for three nights. It was level, and it was unfrequented. "And the doctor's handy in