III
When he had obediently taken the food and thanked her for it very nicely, he felt much better. The desire for a clergyman, or even for a lawyer, passed away from his mind; he forgot the majority of his sins and his aspirations, and the need for restoring the defalcations to Jim Horrocleave seemed considerably less urgent. Rachel stayed by him while he ate, but she would not meet his glance, and looked carefully at the window.
"As soon as I've tidied up the room, I'll just sponge your hands," said she. "The doctor will be here early. I suppose I mustn't touch your face."
Louis inquired—
"How do you know he'll be here early?"
"He said he should—because of the dressings, you know."
She went to work on the room, producing a duster from somewhere, and ringing for Mrs. Tams, who, however, was not permitted to enter. Louis hated these preparations for the doctor. He had never in his life been able to understand why women were always so absurdly afraid of the doctor's eye. As if the doctor would care! Moreover, the room was being tidied for the doctor, not for the invalid! The invalid didn't matter! When she came to him with a bowl of water, soap, and a towel, he loathed the womanish scheme of being washed in bed.
"I'll get up," he said. "I'm lots better." He had previously intended to feign extreme illness, but he forgot.
"Oh no, you won't," she replied coldly. "First you think you're dying, and then you think you're all right. You won't stir out of that bed till the doctor's been, at any rate."
And she lodged the bowl dangerously between his knees. He pretended to be contemptuous of her refusal to let him get up, but in fact he was glad of an excuse for not making good his boast. His previous statement that he was very ill was much nearer to the truth than the fine talking about being "lots better." If not very ill, he was, at any rate, more ill than he now thought he was, and eating had fatigued him. Nevertheless, he would wash his own hands. Rachel yielded to him in this detail with cynical indifference. She put the towel by the bowl, and left him to balance the bowl and keep the soap off the counterpane as best he could, while she rummaged in one of the drawers of the wardrobe—obviously for the simple sake of rummaging.
Her unwifeliness was astounding; it was so astounding that Louis did not all at once quite realize how dangerously he was wounded by it. He had seen that hard, contumelious mask on her face several times before; he had seen it, for instance, when she had been expressing her views on Councillor Batchgrew; but he had not conceived, in his absurd male confidence, that it would ever be directed against himself. He could not snatch the mask from her face, but he wondered how he might pierce it, and incidentally hurt her and make her cry softly. Ah! He had seen her in moods of softness which were celestial to him—surpassing all dreams of felicity!
The conviction of his own innocence and victimhood strengthened in him. Amid the morbid excitations of the fear of death, he had forgotten that in strict truth he had not stolen a penny from his great-aunt, that he was utterly innocent. He now vividly remembered that his sole intention in taking possession of the bank-notes had been to teach his great-aunt a valuable lesson about care in the guarding of money. Afterwards he had meant to put the notes back where he had found them; chance had prevented; he had consistently acted for the best in very sudden difficulties, and after all, in the result, it was not he who was responsible for the destruction of the notes, but Rachel.... True, that in the night his vision of the affair had been less favourable to himself, but in the night illness had vitiated his judgment, which was not strange, seeing the dreadful accident he had experienced.... He might have died, and where would Rachel have been then?... Was it not amazing that a young wife who had just escaped widowhood so narrowly could behave to a husband, a seriously sick husband, as Rachel was behaving to him?
He wished that he had not used the word "collar" in confessing to Rachel. It was equal to "steal." Its significance was undebatable. Yes, "collar" was a grave error of phrasing.
"I'm about done with this basin thing," he said, with all possible dignity, and asked for brushes of various sorts for the completion of his toilet. She served him slowly, coolly. Her intention was clear to act as a capable but frigid nurse—not as a wife. He saw that she thought herself the wife of a thief, and that she was determined not to be the wife of a thief. He could not bear it. The situation must be changed immediately, because his pride was bleeding to death.
"I say," he began, when she had taken away the towel and his tooth-powder.
"What?" Her tone challenged him.
"You wouldn't let me finish last night. I just wanted to tell you that I didn't—"
"I've no wish to hear another word." She stopped him, precisely as she had stopped him in the night. She was at the washstand.
"I should be obliged if you'd look at me when you speak to me," he reproached her manners. "It's only polite."
She turned to him with face flaming. They were both aware that his deportment was better than hers; and he perceived that the correction had abraded her susceptibility.
"I'll look at you all right," she answered, curtly and rather loudly.
He adopted a superior attitude.
"Of course I'm ill and weak," he said, "but even if I am I suppose I'm entitled to some consideration." He lay back on the pillow.
"I can't help your being ill," she answered. "It's not my fault. And if you're so ill and weak as all that, it seems to me the best thing you can do is to be quiet and not to talk, especially about—about that!"
"Well, perhaps you'll let me be the best judge of what I ought to talk about. Anyhow, I'm going to talk about it, and you're going to listen."
"I'm not."
"I say you're going to listen," he insisted, turning on his side towards her. "And why not? Why, what on earth did I say last night, after all, I should like to know?"
"You said you'd taken the other part of the money of Mrs. Maldon's—that's what you said. You thought you were dying, and so you told me."
"That's just what I want to explain. I'm going to explain it to you."
"No explanations for me, thanks!" she sneered, walking in the direction of the hearth. "I'd sooner hear anything, anything, than your explanations." She seemed to shudder.
He nerved himself.
"I tell you I found that money," he cried, recommencing.
"Well, good-bye," she said, moving to the door. "You don't seem to understand."
At the same moment there was a knock at the door.
"Come in, Mrs. Tarns," said Rachel calmly.
"She mustn't come in now," Louis protested.
"Come in, Mrs. Tams," Rachel repeated decisively.
And Mrs. Tams entered, curtsying towards the bed.
"What is it?" Rachel asked her.
"It's the greengrocer's cart, ma'am." The greengrocer usually did send round on Saturday mornings.
"I'll go down. Just clear up that washstand, will you?"
It was remarkable to Louis how chance would favour a woman in an altercation. But he had decided, even if somewhat hysterically, to submit to no more delay, and to end the altercation—and moreover, to end it in his own way.
"Rachel!" he called. Several times he called her name, more and more loudly. He ignored what was due to servants, to greengrocers, and to the dignity of employers. He kept on calling.
"Shall I fetch missis, sir?" Mrs. Tams suggested at length.
He nodded. Mrs. Tams departed, laden. Certainly the fat creature, from whom nothing could be hid by a younger generation, had divined that strife had supervened on illness, and that great destinies hung upon the issue. Neither Mrs. Tams nor Rachel returned to the bedroom. Louis began again to call for Rachel, and then to yell for her. He could feel that the effort was exhausting him, but he was determined to vanquish her.