i
that evening rachel sat alone in the parlour, reclining on the chesterfield over the signal. she had picked up the signal in order to read about captured burglars, but the paper contained not one word on the subject, or on any other subject except football. the football season had commenced in splendour, and it happened to be the football edition of the signal that the paper-boy had foisted upon mrs. maldon's house. despite repeated and positive assurances from mrs. maldon that she wanted the late edition and not the football edition on saturday nights, the football edition was usually delivered, because the paper-boy could not conceive that any customer could sincerely not want the football edition. rachel was glancing in a torpid condition at the advertisements of the millinery and trimming shops.
she would have been more wakeful could she have divined the blow which she had escaped a couple of hours before. between five and six o'clock, when she was upstairs in the large bedroom, mrs. maldon had said to her, "rachel—" and stopped. "yes, mrs. maldon," she had replied. and mrs. maldon had said, "nothing." mrs. maldon had desired to say, but in words carefully chosen: "rachel, i've never told you that louis fores began life as a bank clerk, and was dismissed for stealing money. and even since then his conduct has not been blameless." mrs. maldon had stopped because she could not find the form of words which would permit her to impart to her paid companion this information about her grand-nephew. mrs. maldon, when the moment for utterance came, had discovered that she simply could not do it, and all her conscientious regard for rachel and all her sense of duty were not enough to make her do it. so that rachel, unsuspectingly, had been spared a tremendous emotional crisis. by this time she had grown nearly accustomed to the fact of the disappearance of the money. she had completely recovered from the hysteria caused by old batchgrew's attack, and was, indeed, in the supervening calm, very much ashamed of it.
she meant to doze, having firmly declined the suggestion of mrs. tams that she should go to bed at seven o'clock, and she was just dropping the paper when a tap on the window startled her. she looked in alarm at the window, where the position of one of the blinds proved the correctness of mrs. maldon's secret theory that if mrs. maldon did not keep a personal watch on the blinds they would never be drawn properly. eight inches of black pane showed, and behind that dark transparency something vague and pale. she knew it must be the hand of louis fores that had tapped, and she could feel her heart beating. she flew on tiptoe to the front door, and cautiously opened it. at the same moment louis sprang from the narrow space between the street railings and the bow window on to the steps. he raised his hat with the utmost grace.
"i saw your head over the arm of the chesterfield," he said in a cheerful, natural low voice. "so i tapped on the glass. i thought if i knocked at the door i might waken the old lady. how are things to-night?"
in those few words he perfectly explained his manner of announcing himself, endowing it with the highest propriety. rachel's misgivings were soothed in an instant. her chief emotion was an ecstatic pride—because he had come, because he could not keep away, because she had known that he would come, that he must come. and in fact was it not his duty to come? quietly he came into the hall, quietly she closed the door, and when they were shut up together in the parlour they both spoke in hushed voices, lest the invalid should be disturbed. and was not this, too, highly proper?
she gave him the news of the house and said that mrs. tams was taking duty in the sick-room till four o'clock in the morning, and herself thenceforward, but that the invalid gave no apparent cause for apprehension.
"old batch been again?" asked louis, with a complete absence of any constraint.
she shook her head.
"you'll find that money yet—somewhere, when you're least expecting it," said he, almost gaily.
"i'm sure we shall," she agreed with conviction.
"and how are you?" his tone became anxious and particular. she blushed deeply, for the outbreak of which she had been guilty and which he had witnessed, then smiled diffidently.
"oh, i'm all right."
"you look as if you wanted some fresh air—if you'll excuse me saying so."
"i haven't been out to-day, of course," she said.
"don't you think a walk—just a breath—would do you good!"
without allowing herself to reflect, she answered—
"well, i ought to have gone out long ago to get some food for to-morrow, as it's sunday. everything's been so neglected to-day. if the doctor happened to order a cutlet or anything for mrs. maldon, i don't know what i should do. truly i ought to have thought of it earlier."
she seemed to be blaming herself for neglectfulness, and thus the enterprise of going out had the look of an act of duty. her sensations bewildered her.
"perhaps i could walk down with you and carry parcels. it's a good thing it's saturday night, or the shops might have been closed."
she made no answer to this, but stood up, breathing quickly.
"i'll just speak to mrs. tams."
creeping upstairs, she silently pushed open the door of mrs. maldon's bedroom. the invalid was asleep. mrs. tams, her hands crossed in her comfortable lap, and her mouth widely open, was also asleep. but mrs. tams was used to waking with the ease of a dog. rachel beckoned her to the door. without a sound the fat woman crossed the room.
"i'm just going out to buy a few things we want," said rachel in her ear, adding no word as to louis fores.
mrs. tams nodded.
rachel went to her bedroom, turned up the gas, straightened her hair, and put on her black hat, and her blue jacket trimmed with a nameless fur, and picked up some gloves and her purse. before descending she gazed at herself for many seconds in the small, slanting glass. coming downstairs, she took the marketing reticule from its hook in the kitchen passage. then she went back to the parlour and stood in the doorway, speechless, putting on her gloves rapidly.
"ready?"
she nodded.
"shall i?" louis questioned, indicating the gas.
she nodded again, and, stretching to his full height, he managed to turn the gas down without employing a footstool as rachel was compelled to do.
"wait a moment," she whispered in the hall, when he had opened the front door. these were the first words she had been able to utter. she went to the kitchen for a latch-key. inserting this latch-key in the keyhole on the outside, and letting louis pass in front of her, she closed the front door with very careful precautions against noise, and withdrew the key.
"i'll take charge of that if you like," said louis, noticing that she was hesitating where to bestow it.
she gave it up to him with a violent thrill. she was intensely happy and intensely fearful. she was only going out to do some shopping; but the door was shut behind her, and at her side was this magic, mysterious being, and the nocturnal universe lay around. only twenty-four hours earlier she had shut the door behind her and gone forth to find louis. and now, having found him, he and she were going forth together like close friends. so much had happened in twenty-four hours that the previous night seemed to be months away.
ii
instead of turning down friendly street, they kept straight along the lane till, becoming suddenly urban, it led them across tram-lines and turnhill road, and so through a gulf or inlet of the market-place behind the shambles, the police office, and the town hall, into the market-place itself, which in these latter years was recovering a little of the commercial prestige snatched from it half a century earlier by st. luke's square. rats now marauded in the empty shops of st. luke's square, while the market-place glittered with custom, and the electric decoy of its façades lit up strangely the lower walls of the black and monstrous town hall.
innumerable organized activities were going forward at that moment in the serried buildings of the endless confused streets that stretched up hill and down dale from one end of the five towns to the other—theatres, empire music-halls, hippodrome music-halls, picture-palaces in dozens, concerts, singsongs, spiritualistic propaganda, democratic propaganda, skating-rinks, wild west exhibitions, dutch auctions, and the private séances in dubious quarters of "psychologists," "clair-voyants," "scientific palmists," and other rascals who sold a foreknowledge of the future for eighteenpence or even a shilling. viewed under certain aspects, it seemed indeed that the five towns, in the week-end desertion of its sordid factories, was reaching out after the higher life, the subtler life, the more elegant life of greater communities; but the little crowds and the little shops of bursley market-place were nevertheless a proof that a tolerable number of people were still mainly interested in the primitive elemental enterprise of keeping stomachs filled and skins warm, and had no thought beyond it. in bursley market-place the week's labour was being translated into food and drink and clothing by experts who could distinguish infallibly between elevenpence-halfpenny and a shilling. rachel was such an expert. she forced her thoughts down to the familiar, sane, safe subject of shopping, though to-night her errands were of the simplest description, requiring no brains. but she could not hold her thoughts. a voice was continually whispering to her—not louis fores' voice, but a voice within herself, that she had never clearly heard before. alternatively she scorned it and trembled at it.
she stopped in front of the huge window of wason's provision emporium.
"is this the first house of call?" asked louis airily, swinging the reticule and his stick together.
"well—" she hesitated. "mrs. tams told me they were selling singapore pineapple at sevenpence-halfpenny. mas. maldon fancies pineapple. i've known her fancy a bit of pineapple when she wouldn't touch anything else.... yes, there it is!"
in fact, the whole of the upper half of wason's window was yellow with tins of preserved pineapple. and great tickets said: "delicious chunks, 7 1/2d. per large tin. chunks, 6 1/2d. per large tin."
customers in ones and twos kept entering and leaving the shop. rachel moved on towards the door, which was at the corner of the cock yard, and looked within. the long double counters were being assailed by a surging multitude who fought for the attention of prestidigitatory salesmen.
"hm!" murmured rachel. "that may be all very well for mrs. tams...."
a moment later she said—
"it's always like that with wason's shops for the first week or two!"
and her faintly sarcastic tone of a shrewd housewife immediately set wason in his place—wason with his two hundred and sixty-five shops, and his racing-cars, and his visits to kings and princes. wason had emporia all over the kingdom, and in particular at knype, hanbridge, and longshaw. and now he had penetrated to bursley, sleepiest of the five. his method was to storm a place by means of electricity, full-page advertisements in news-papers, the power of his mere name, and a leading line or so. at bursley his leading line was apparently "singapore delicious chunks at 7-1/2d. per large tin." rachel knew wason; she had known him at knype. and she was well aware that his speciality was second-rate. she despised him. she despised that multitude of simpletons who, full of the ancient illusion that somewhere something can regularly be had for nothing, imagined that wason's bacon and cheese were cheap because he sold preserved pineapple at a penny less than anybody else in the town. and she despised the roaring, vulgar success of advertising and electricity. she had in her some tincture of the old nineteenth century, which loved the decency of small, quiet things. and in the prim sanity of her judgment upon wason she forgot for a few instants that she was in a dream, and that the streets and the whole town appeared strange and troubling to her, and that she scarcely knew what she was doing, and that the most seductive and enchanting of created men was at her side and very content to be at her side. and also the voice within her was hushed.
she said—
"i don't see the fun of having the clothes torn off my back to save a penny. i think i shall go to malkin's. i'll get some cocoa there, too. mrs. tams simply lives for cocoa."
and louis archly answered—
"i've always wondered what mrs. tams reminds me of. now i know. she's exactly like a cocoa-tin dented in the middle."
she laughed with pleasure, not because she considered the remark in the least witty, but because it was so characteristic of louis fores. she wished humbly that she could say things just like that, and with caution she glanced up at him.
they went into ted malkin's sober shop, where there was a nice handful of customers, in despite of wason only five doors away. and no sooner had rachel got inside than she was in the dream again, and the voice resumed its monotonous phrase, and she blushed. the swift change took her by surprise and frightened her. she was not in bursley, but in some forbidden city without a name, pursuing some adventure at once shameful and delicious. a distinct fear seized her. her self-consciousness was intense.
and there was young ted malkin in his starched white shirt-sleeves and white apron and black waistcoat and tie, among his cheeses and flitches, every one of which he had personally selected and judged, weighing a piece of cheddar in his honourable copper-and-brass scales. he was attending to two little girls. he nodded with calm benevolence to rachel and then to louis fores. it is true that he lifted his eyebrows—a habit of his—at sight of fores, but he did so in a quite simple, friendly, and justifiable manner, with no insinuations.
"in one moment, miss fleckring," said he.
and as he rapidly tied up the parcel of cheese and snapped off the stout string with a skilled jerk of the hand, he demanded calmly—
"how's mrs. maldon to-night?"
"much better," said rachel, "thank you."
and louis fores joined easily in—
"you may say, very much better."
"that's rare good news! rare good news!" said malkin. "i heard you had an anxious night of it.... go across and pay at the other counter, my dears." then he called out loudly—"one and seven, please."
the little girls tripped importantly away.
"yes, indeed," rachel agreed. the tale of the illness, then, was spread over the town! she was glad, and her self-consciousness somehow decreased. she now fully understood the wisdom of mrs. maldon in refusing to let the police be informed of the disappearance of the money. what a fever in the shops of bursley—even in the quiet shop of ted malkin—if the full story got abroad!
"and what is it to be to-night, miss fleckring? these aren't quite your hours, are they? but i suppose you've been very upset."
"oh," said rachel, "i only want a large tin of singapore delicious chunks, please."
but if she had announced her intention of spending a thousand pounds in ted malkin's shop she would not have better pleased him. he beamed. he desired the whole shop to hear that order, for it was the vindication of honest, modest trading—of his father's methods and his own. his father, himself, and about a couple of other tradesmen had steadily fought the fight of the market-place against st. luke's square in the day of its glory, and more recently against the powerfully magnetic large shops at hanbridge, and they had not been defeated. as for ted malkin, he was now beyond doubt the "best" provision-dealer and grocer in the town, and had drawn ahead even of "holl's" (as it was still called), the one good historic shop left in luke's square. the onslaught of wason had alarmed him, though he had pretended to ignore it. but he was delectably reassured by this heavenly incident of the representative of one of his most distinguished customers coming into the shop and deliberately choosing to buy preserved pineapple from him at 8-1/2d. when it could be got thirty yards away for 7 1/2d. rachel read his thoughts plainly. she knew well enough that she had done rather a fine thing, and her demeanour showed it. ted malkin enveloped the tin in suitable paper.
"sure there's nothing else?"
"not at this counter."
he gave her the tin, smiled, and as he turned to the next waiting customer, called out—
"singapore delicious, eight and a half pence."
it was rather a poor affair, that tin—a declension from the great days of mrs. maldon's married life, when she spent freely, knowing naught of her husband's income except that it was large and elastic. in those days she would buy a real pineapple, entire, once every three weeks or so, costing five, six, seven, or eight shillings—gorgeous and spectacular fruit. now she might have pineapple every day if she chose, but it was not quite the same pineapple. she affected to like it, she did like it, but the difference between the old pineapple and the new was the saddening difference, for mrs. maldon's secret heart, between the great days and the paltry, facile convenience of the twentieth century.
it was to his aunt, who presided over the opposite side of the shop, including the cash-desk, that ted malkin proclaimed in a loud voice the amounts of purchases on his own side. miss malkin was a virgin of fifty-eight years' standing, with definite and unchangeable ideas on every subject on earth or in heaven except her own age. as rachel, followed by louis fores, crossed the shop, miss malkin looked at them and closed her lips, and lowered her eyelids, and the upper part of her body seemed to curve slightly, with the sinuosity of a serpent—a strange, significant movement, sometimes ill described as "bridling."
the total effect was as though miss malkin had suddenly clicked the shutters down on all the windows of her soul and was spying at rachel and louis fores through a tiny concealed orifice in the region of her eye. it was nothing to miss malkin that rachel on that night of all nights had come in to buy singapore delicious chunks at 8-1/2d. it was nothing to her that mrs. maldon had had "an attack." miss malkin merely saw rachel and fores gadding about the town together of a saturday night while mrs. maldon was ill in bed. and she regarded ted's benevolence as the benevolence of a simpleton. between miss malkin's taciturnity and the voice within her rachel had a terrible three minutes. she was "sneaped"; which fortunately made her red hair angry, so that she could keep some of her dignity. louis fores seemed to be quite unconscious that a fearful scene was enacting between miss malkin and rachel, and he blandly insisted on taking the pineapple-tin and the cocoa-tin and slipping them into the reticule, as though he had been shopping with rachel all his life and there was a perfect understanding between them. the moral effect was very bad. rachel blushed again.
when she emerged from the shop she had the illusion of being breathless, and in the midst of a terrific adventure the end of which none could foresee. she was furious against miss malkin and against herself. yet she indignantly justified herself. was not louis fores mrs. maiden's nephew, and were not he and she doing the best thing they could together under the difficult circumstances of the old lady's illness? if she was not to co-operate with the old lady's sole relative in bursley, with whom was she to co-operate? in vain such justifications!... she murderously hated miss malkin. she said to herself, without meaning it, that no power should induce her ever to enter the shop again.
and she thought: "i can't possibly go into another shop to-night—i can't possibly do it! and yet i must. why am i such a silly baby?"
as they walked slowly along the pavement she was in the wild dream anew, and louis fores was her only hope and reliance. she clung to him, though not with her arm. she seemed to know him very intimately, and still he was more enigmatic to her than ever he had been.
as for louis, beneath his tranquil mien of a man of experience and infinite tact, he was undergoing the most extraordinary and delightful sensations, keener even than those which had thrilled him in rachel's kitchen on the previous evening. the social snob in him had somehow suddenly expired, and he felt intensely the strange charm of going shopping of a saturday night with a young woman, and making a little purchase here and a little purchase there, and thinking about halfpennies. and in his fancy he built a small house to which he and rachel would shortly return, and all the brilliant diversions of bachelordom seemed tame and tedious compared to the wondrous existence of this small house.
"now i have to go to heath's the butcher's," said rachel, determined at all costs to be a woman and not a silly baby. after that plain announcement her cowardice would have no chance to invent an excuse for not going into another shop.
but she added—
"and that'll be all."
"i know master bob heath. known him a long time," said louis fores, with amusement in his voice, as though to imply that he could relate strange and titillating matters about heath if he chose, and indeed that he was a mine of secret lore concerning the citizens.
the fact was that he had travelled once to woore races with the talkative heath, and that heath had introduced him to his brother stanny heath, a local book-maker of some reputation, from whom louis had won five pounds ten during the felicitous day. ever afterwards bob heath had effusively saluted louis on every possible occasion, and had indeed once stopped him in the street and said: "my brother treated you all right, didn't he? stanny's a true sport." and louis had to be effusive also. it would never do to be cold to a man from whose brother you had won—and received—five pounds ten on a racecourse.
so that when louis followed rachel into heath's shop at the top of duck bank the fat and happy heath gave him a greeting in which astonishment and warm regard were mingled. the shop was empty of customers, and also it contained little meat, for heath's was not exactly a saturday-night trade. bob heath, clothed from head to foot in slightly blood-stained white, stood behind one hacked counter, and mrs. heath, similarly attired, and rather stouter, stood behind the other; and each possessed a long steel which hung from an ample loose girdle.
heath, a man of forty, had a salute somewhat military in gesture, though conceived in a softer, more accommodating spirit. he raised his chubby hand to his forehead, but all the muscles of it were lax and the fingers loosely curved; at the same time he drew back his left foot and kicked up the heel a few inches. louis amiably responded. rachel went direct to mrs. heath, a woman of forty-five. she had never before seen heath in the shop.
"doing much with the gees lately, mr. fores?" heath inquired in a cheerful, discreet tone.
"not me!"
"well, i can't say i've had much luck myself, sir."
the conversation was begun in proper form. through it louis could hear rachel buying a cutlet, and then another cutlet, from mrs. heath, and protesting that five-pence was a good price and all she desired to pay even for the finest cutlet in the shop. and then rachel asked about sweetbreads. heath's voice grew more and more confidential and at length, after a brief pause, he whispered—
"ye're not married, are ye, sir? excuse the liberty."
it was a whisper, but one of those terrible, miscalculated whispers that can be heard for miles around, like the call of the cuckoo. plainly heath was not aware of the identity of rachel fleckring. and in his world, which was by no means the world of his shop and his wife, it was incredible that a man should run round shopping with a woman on a saturday night unless he was a husband on unescapable duty.
louis shook his head.
mrs. heath called out in severe accents which were a reproof and a warning: "got a sweetbread, robert? it's for mrs. maldon."
the clumsy fool understood that he had blundered.
he had no sweetbread—not even for mrs. maldon. the cutlets were wrapped in newspaper, and louis rather self-consciously opened the maw of the reticule for them.
"no offence, i hope, sir," said heath as the pair left the shop, thus aggravating his blunder. louis and rachel crossed duck bank in constrained silence. rachel was scarlet. the new cinema next to the new congregational chapel blazed in front of them.
"wouldn't care to look in here, i suppose, would you?" louis imperturbably suggested.
rachel did not reply.
"only for a quarter of an hour or so," said louis.
rachel did not venture to glance up at him. she was so agitated that she could scarcely speak.
"i don't think so," she muttered.
"why not?" he exquisitely pleaded. "it will do you good."
she raised her head and saw the expression of his face, so charming, so provocative, so persuasive. the voice within her was insistent, but she would not listen to it. nobody had ever looked at her as louis was looking at her then. the streets, the town faded. she thought: "whatever happens, i cannot withstand that face." she was feverishly happy, and at the same time ravaged by both pain and fear. she became a fatalist. and she abandoned the pretence that she was not the slave of that face. her eyes grew candidly acquiescent, as if she were murmuring to him, "i am defenceless against you."
iii
it was not surprising that rachel, who never in her life had beheld at close quarters any of the phenomena of luxury, should blink her ingenuous eyes at the blinding splendour of the antechambers of the imperial cinema de luxe. eyes less ingenuous than hers had blinked before that prodigious dazzlement. even louis, a man of vast experience and sublime imperturbability, visiting the imperial on its opening night, had allowed the significant words to escape him, "well, i'm blest!"—proof enough of the triumph of the imperial!
the imperial had set out to be the most gorgeous cinema in the five towns; and it simply was. its advertisements read: "there is always room at the top." there was. over the ceiling of its foyer enormous crimson peonies expanded like tropic blooms, and the heart of each peony was a sixteen-candle-power electric lamp. no other two cinemas in the five towns, it was reported, consumed together as much current as the imperial de luxe; and nobody could deny that the degree of excellence of a cinema is finally settled by its consumption of electricity.
rachel now understood better the symbolic meaning of the glare in the sky caused at night by the determination of the imperial to make itself known. she had been brought up to believe that, gas being dear, no opportunity should be lost of turning a jet down, and that electricity was so dear as to be inconceivable in any house not inhabited by crass spendthrift folly. she now saw electricity scattered about as though it were as cheap as salt. she saw written in electric fire across the inner entrance the beautiful sentiment, "our aim is to please you." the "you" had two lines of fire under it. she saw, also, the polite nod of the official, dressed not less glitteringly than an admiral of the fleet in full uniform, whose sole duty in life was to welcome and reassure the visitor. all this in bursley, which even by knype was deemed an out-of-the-world spot and home of sordid decay! in hanbridge she would have been less surprised to discover such marvels, because the flaunting modernity of hanbridge was notorious. and her astonishment would have been milder had she had been in the habit of going out at night. like all those who never went out at night, she had quite failed to keep pace with the advancing stride of the five towns on the great road of civilization.
more impressive still than the extreme radiance about her was the easy and superb gesture of louis as, swinging the reticule containing pineapple, cocoa, and cutlets, he slid his hand into his pocket and drew therefrom a coin and smacked it on the wooden ledge of the ticket-window—gesture of a man to whom money was naught provided he got the best of everything. "two!" he repeated, with slight impatience, bending down so as to see the young woman in white who sat in another world behind gilt bars. he was paying for rachel! exquisite experience for the daughter and sister of fleckrings! experience unique in her career! and it seemed so right and yet so wondrous, that he should pay for her!... he picked up the change, and without a glance at them dropped the coins into his pocket. it was a glorious thing to be a man! but was it not even more glorious to be a girl and the object of his princely care?... they passed a heavy draped curtain, on which was a large card, "tea-room," and there seemed to be celestial social possibilities behind that curtain, though indeed it bore another and smaller card: "closed after six o'clock"—the result of excessive caution on the part of a kill-joy town council. a boy in the likeness of a midshipman took halves of the curving tickets and dropped them into a tin box, and then next rachel was in a sudden black darkness, studded here and there with minute glowing rubies that revealed the legend: "exit. exit. exit."
row after row of dim, pale, intent faces became gradually visible, stretching far back-into complete obscurity; thousands, tens of thousands of faces, it seemed—for the imperial de luxe was demonstrating that saturday night its claim to be "the fashionable rage of bursley." then mysterious laughter rippled in the gloom, and loud guffaws shot up out of the rippling. rachel saw nothing whatever to originate this mirth until an attendant in black with a tiny white apron loomed upon them out of the darkness, and, beckoning them forward, bent down, and indicated two empty places at the end of a row, and the great white scintillating screen of the cinema came into view. instead of being at the extremity it was at the beginning of the auditorium. and as rachel took her seat she saw on the screen—which was scarcely a dozen feet away—a man kneeling at the end of a canal-lock, and sucking up the water of the canal through a hose-pipe; and this astoundingly thirsty man drank with such rapidity that the water, with huge boats floating on it, subsided at the rate of about a foot a second, and the drinker waxed enormously in girth. the laughter grew uproarious. rachel herself gave a quick, uncontrolled, joyous laugh, and it was as if the laugh had been drawn out of her violently unawares. louis fores also laughed very heartily.
"cute idea, that!" he whispered.
when the film was cut off rachel wanted to take back her laugh. she felt a little ashamed of having laughed at anything so silly.
"how absurd!" she murmured, trying to be serious.
nevertheless she was in bliss. she surrendered herself to the joy of life, as to a new sensation. she was intoxicated, ravished, bewildered, and quite careless. perhaps for the first time in her adult existence she lived without reserve or preoccupation completely in and for the moment. moreover the hearty laughter of louis fores helped to restore her dignity. if the spectacle was good enough for him, with all his knowledge of the world, to laugh at, she need not blush for its effect on herself. and in another ten seconds, when the swollen man, staggering along a wide thoroughfare, was run down by an automobile and squashed flat, while streams of water inundated the roadway, she burst again into free laughter, and then looked round at louis, who at the same instant looked round at her, and they exchanged an intimate smiling glance. it seemed to rachel that they were alone and solitary in the crowded interior, and that they shared exactly the same tastes and emotions and comprehended one another profoundly and utterly; her confidence in him, at that instant, was absolute, and enchanting to her. half a minute later the emaciated man was in a room and being ecstatically kissed by a most beautiful and sweetly shameless girl in a striped shirtwaist; it was a very small room, and the furniture was close upon the couple, giving the scene an air of delightful privacy. and then the scene was blotted out and gay music rose lilting from some unseen cave in front of the screen.
rachel was rapturously happy. gazing along the dim rows, she descried many young couples, without recognizing anybody at all, and most of these couples were absorbed in each other, and some of the girls seemed so elegant and alluring in the dusk of the theatre, and some of the men so fine in their manliness! and the ruby-studded gloom protected them all, including rachel and louis, from the audience at large.
the screen glowed again. and as it did so louis gave a start.
"by jove!" he said, "i've left my stick somewhere. it must have been at heath's. yes, it was. i put it on the counter while i opened this net thing. don't you remember? you were taking some money out of your purse." louis had a very distinct vision of his rachel's agreeably gloved fingers primly unfastening the purse and choosing a shilling from it.
"how annoying!" murmured rachel feelingly.
"i wouldn't lose that stick for a five-pound note." (he had a marvellous way of saying "five-pound note.") "would you mind very much if i just slip over and get it, before he shuts? it's only across the road, you know."
there was something in the politeness of the phrase "mind very much" that was irresistible to rachel. it caused her to imagine splendid drawing-rooms far beyond her modest level, and the superlative deportment therein of the well-born.
"not at all!" she replied, with her best affability. "but will they let you come in again without paying?"
"oh, i'll risk that," he whispered, smiling superiorly.
then he went, leaving the reticule, and she was alone.
she rearranged the reticule on the seat by her side. the reticule being already perfectly secure, there was no need for her to touch it, but some nervous movement was necessary to her. yet she was less self-conscious than she had been with louis at her elbow. she felt, however, a very slight sense of peril—of the unreality of the plush fauteuil on which she sat, and those rows of vaguely discerned faces on her right; and the reality of distant phenomena such as mrs. maldon in bed. notwithstanding her strange and ecstatic experiences with louis fores that night in the dark, romantic town, the problem of the lost money remained, or ought to have remained, as disturbing as ever. to ignore it was not to destroy it. she sat rather tight in her place, increasing her primness, and trying to show by her carriage that she was an adult in full control of all her wise faculties. she set her lips to judge the film with the cold impartiality of middle age, but they persisted in being the fresh, responsive, mobile lips of a young girl. they were saying noiselessly: "he will be back in a moment. and he will find me sitting here just as he left me. when i hear him coming i shan't turn my head to look. it will be better not."
the film showed a forest with a wooden house in the middle of it. out of this house came a most adorable young woman, who leaped on to a glossy horse and galloped at a terrific rate, plunging down ravines, and then trotting fast over the crests of clearings. she came to a man who was boiling a kettle over a camp-fire, and slipped lithely from the horse, and the man, with a start of surprise, seized her pretty waist and kissed her passionately, in the midst of the immense forest whose every leaf was moving. and she returned his kiss without restraint. for they were betrothed. and rachel imagined the free life of distant forests, where love was, and where slim girls rode mettlesome horses more easily than the girls of the five towns rode bicycles. she could not even ride a bicycle, had never had the opportunity to learn. the vision of emotional pleasures that in her narrow existence she had not dreamed of filled her with mild, delightful sorrow. she could conceive nothing more heavenly than to embrace one's true love in the recesses of a forest.... then came crouching indians.... and then she heard louis fores behind her. she had not meant to turn round, but when a hand was put heavily on her shoulder she turned quickly, resenting the contact.
"i should like a word with ye, if ye can spare a minute, young miss," whispered a voice as heavy as the hand. it was old thomas batchgrew's face and whiskers that she was looking up at in the gloom.
as if fascinated, she followed in terror those flaunting whiskers up the slope of the narrow isle to the back of the auditorium. thomas batchgrew seemed to be quite at home in the theatre; he wore no hat and there was a pen behind his ear. never would she have set foot inside the imperial de luxe had she guessed that thomas batchgrew was concerned in it. she thought she had heard once, somewhere, that he had to do with cinemas in other parts of the country, but it would not have occurred to her to connect him with a picture-palace so near home. she was not alone in her ignorance of the councillor's share in the imperial. practically nobody had heard of it until that night, for batchgrew had come into the new enterprise by the back door of a loan to its promoters, who were richer in ideas than in capital; and now, the harvest being ripe, he was arranging, by methods not unfamiliar to capitalists, to reap where he had not sown.
shame and fear overcame rachel. the crystal dream was shivered to dust. awful apprehension, the expectancy of frightful events, succeeded to it. she perceived that since the very moment of quitting the house the dread of some disaster had been pursuing her; only she had refused to see it—she had found oblivion from it in the new and agitatingly sweet sensations which louis fores had procured for her. but now the real was definitely sifted out from the illusory. and nothing but her own daily existence, as she had always lived it, was real. the rest was a snare. there were no forests, no passionate love, no flying steeds, no splendid adorers—for her. she was rachel fleckring and none else.
councillor batchgrew turned to the left, and through a small hole in the painted wall rachel saw a bright beam shooting out in the shape of a cone—forests, and the unreal denizens of forests shimmering across the entire auditorium to impinge on the screen! and she heard the steady rattle of a revolving machine. then batchgrew beckoned her into a very small, queerly shaped room furnished with a table and a chair and a single electric lamp that hung by a cord from a rough hook in the ceiling. a boy stood near the door holding three tin boxes one above another in his arms, and keeping the top one in position with his chin. these boxes were similar to that in which louis' tickets had been dropped.
"did you want your boxes, sir?" asked the boy.
"put 'em down," thomas batchgrew growled.
the boy deposited them in haste on the table and hurried out.
"how is mrs. maldon?" demanded mr. batchgrew with curtness, after he had snorted and sniffed. he remained standing near to rachel.
"oh, she's very much better," said rachel eagerly. "she was asleep when i left."
"have ye left her by herself?" mr. batchgrew continued his inquiry. his voice was as offensive as thick dark glue.
"of course not! mrs. tams is sitting up with her." rachel meant her tone to be a dignified reproof to thomas batchgrew for daring to assume even the possibility of her having left mrs. maldon to solitude. but she did not succeed, because she could not manage her tone. she desired intensely to be the self-possessed, mature woman, sure of her position and of her sagacity; but she could be nothing save the absurd, guilty, stammering, blushing little girl, shifting her feet and looking everywhere except boldly into thomas batchgrew's horrid eyes.
"so it's mrs. tams as is sitting with her!"
rachel could not help explaining—
"i had to come down town to do some shopping for sunday. somebody had to come. mr. fores had called in to ask after mrs. maldon, and so he walked down with me." every word she said appeared intolerably foolish to her as she uttered it.
"and then he brought ye in here!" batchgrew grimly completed the tale.
"we came in here for ten minutes or so, as i'd finished my shopping so quickly. mr. fores has just run across to the butcher's to get something that was forgotten."
mr. batchgrew coughed loosely and loudly. and beyond the cough, beyond the confines of the ugly little room which imprisoned her so close to old batchgrew and his grotesque whiskers, rachel could hear the harsh, quick laughter of the audience, and then faint music—far off.
"if young fores was here," said mr. batchgrew brutally, "i should tell him straight as he might do better than to go gallivanting about the town until that there money's found."
he turned towards his boxes.
"i don't know what you mean, mr. batchgrew," said rachel, tapping her foot and trying to be very dignified.
"and i'll tell ye another thing, young miss," batchgrew went on. "every minute as ye spend with young fores ye'll regret. he's a bad lot, and ye may as well know it first as last. ye ought to thank me for telling of ye, but ye won't."
"i really don't know what you mean, mr. batchgrew!" she could not invent another phrase.
"ye know what i mean right enough, young miss!... if ye only came in for ten minutes yer time's up."
rachel moved to leave.
"hold on!" batchgrew stopped her. there was a change in his voice.
"look at me!" he commanded, but with the definite order was mingled some trace of cajolery.
she obeyed, quivering, her cheeks the colour of a tomato. in spite of all preoccupations, she distinctly noticed—and not without a curious tremor—that his features had taken on a boyish look. in the almost senile face she could see ambushed the face of the youth that thomas batchgrew had been perhaps half a century before.
"ye're a fine wench," said he, with a note of careless but genuine admiration. "i'll not deny it. don't ye go and throw yerself away. keep out o' mischief."
forgetting all but the last phrase, rachel marched out of the room, unspeakably humiliated, wounded beyond any expression of her own. the cowardly, odious brute! the horrible ancient! what right had he?... what had she done that was wrong, that would not bear the fullest inquiry. the shopping was an absolute necessity. she was obliged to come out. mrs. maldon was better, and quietly sleeping. mrs. tarns was the most faithful and capable old person that was ever born. hence she was justified in leaving the invalid. louis fores had offered to go with her. how could she refuse the offer? what reason could there be for refusing it? as for the cinema, who could object to the cinema? certainly not thomas batchgrew! there was no hurry. and was she not an independent woman, earning her own living? who on earth had the right to dictate to her? she was not a slave. even a servant had an evening out once a week. she was sinless....
and yet while she was thus ardently defending herself she knew well that she had sinned against the supreme social law—the law of "the look of things." it was true that chance had worked against her. but common sense would have rendered chance powerless by giving it no opportunity to be malevolent. she was furious with rachel fleckring. that rachel fleckring, of all mortal girls, should have exposed herself to so dreadful, so unforgettable a humiliation was mortifying in the very highest degree. her lips trembled. she was about to burst into a sob. but at this moment the rattle of the revolving machine behind the hole ceased, the theatre blazed from end to end with sudden light, the music resumed, and a number of variegated advertisements were weakly thrown on the screen. she set herself doggedly to walk back down the slope of the aisle, not daring to look ahead for louis. she felt that every eye was fixed on her with base curiosity.... when, after the endless ordeal of the aisle, she reached her place, louis was not there. and though she was glad, she took offence at his delay. gathering up the reticule with a nervous sweep of the hand, she departed from the theatre, her eyes full of tears. and amid all the wild confusion in her brain one little thought flashed clear and was gone: the wastefulness of paying for a whole night's entertainment and then only getting ten minutes of it!
iv
she met louis fores high up bycars lane, about a hundred yards below mrs. maldon's house. she saw some one come out of the gate of the house, and heard the gate clang in the distance. for a moment she could not surely identify the figure, but as soon as louis, approaching, and carrying his stick, grew unmistakable even in the darkness, all her agitation, which had been subsiding under the influence of physical exercise, rose again to its original fever.
"ah!" said louis, greeting her with a most deferential salute. "there you are. i was really beginning to wonder. i opened the front door, but there was no light and no sound, so i shut it again and came back. what happened to you?"
his ingenuous and delightful face, so confident, good-natured, and respectful, had exactly the same effect on her as before. at the sight of it thomas batchgrew's vague accusation against louis was dismissed utterly as the rancorous malice of an evil old man. for the rest, she had never given it any real credit, having an immense trust in her own judgment. but she had no intention of letting louis go free. as she had been put in the wrong, so must he be put in the wrong. this seemed to her only just. besides, was he not wholly to blame? also she remembered with strange clearness the admiration in the mien of the hated batchgrew, and the memory gave her confidence.
she said, with an effort after chilly detachment—
"i couldn't wait in the cinema alone for ever."
he was perturbed.
"but i assure you," he said nicely, "i was as quick as ever i could be. heath had put my stick in his back parlour to keep it safe for me, and it was quite a business finding it again. why didn't you wait?... i say, i hope you weren't vexed at my leaving you."
"of course i wasn't vexed," she answered, with heat. "didn't i tell you i didn't mind? but if you want to know, old batchgrew came along while you were gone and insulted me."
"insulted you? how? what was he doing there?"
"how should i know what he was doing there? better ask him questions like that! all i can tell you is that he came to me and called me into a room at the back—and—and—told me i'd no business to be there, nor you either, while mrs. maldon was ill in bed."
"silly old fool! i hope you didn't take any notice of him."
"yes, that's all very fine, that is! it's easy for you to talk like that. but—but—well, i suppose there's nothing more to be said!" she moved to one side; her anger was rising. she knew that it was rising. she was determined that it should rise. she did not care. she rather enjoyed the excitement. she smarted under her recent experience; she was deeply miserable; and yet, at the same time, standing there close to louis in the rustling night, she was exultant as she certainly had never been exultant before.
she walked forward grimly. louis turned and followed her.
"i'm most frightfully sorry," he said.
she replied fiercely—
"it isn't as if i didn't wait. i waited in the porch i don't know how long. then of course i came home, as there was no sign of you."
"when i went back you weren't there; it must have been while you were with old batch; so i naturally didn't stay. i just came straight up here. i was afraid you were vexed because i'd left you alone."
"well, and if i was!" said rachel, splendidly contradicting herself. "it's not a very nice thing for a girl to be left alone like that—and all on account of a stick!" there was a break in her voice.
arrived at the gate, she pushed it open.
"good-night," she snapped. "please don't come in."
and within the gate she deliberately stared at him with an unforgiving gaze. the impartial lamp-post lighted the scene.
"good-night," she repeated harshly. she was saying to herself: "he really does take it in the most beautiful way. i could do anything i liked with him."
"good-night," said louis, with strict punctilio.
when she got to the top of the steps she remembered that louis had the latch-key. he was gone. she gave a wet sob and impulsively ran down the steps and opened the gate. louis returned. she tried to speak and could not.
"i beg your pardon," said louis. "of course you want the key."
he handed her the key with a gesture that disconcertingly melted the rigour of all her limbs. she snatched at it, and plunged for the gate just as the tears rolled down her cheeks in a shower. the noise of the gate covered a fresh sob. she did not look back. amid all her quite real distress she was proud and happy—proud because she was old enough and independent enough and audacious enough to quarrel with her lover, and happy because she had suddenly discovered life. and the soft darkness and the wind, and the faint sky reflections of distant furnace fires, and the sense of the road winding upward, and the very sense of the black mass of the house in front of her (dimly lighted at the upper floor) all made part of her mysterious happiness.
