IV
Rachel stood expectant and watchful in the kitchen. She was now filled with dread. She wanted to go up and waken Mrs. Tams, but was too proud. The thought had come into her mind: "His coming like this has something to do with the money. Perhaps he wasn't sulking with me after all. Perhaps ..." But what it was that she dreaded she could not have defined. And then she caught the sound of an approaching automobile. The car threw its shadow across the glazed front door, which she commanded from the kitchen, and stopped. And the front-door bell rang uncannily over her head. She opened the door to Councillor Batchgrew, whose breathing was irregular and rapid.
"Has Louis Fores been here?" Batchgrew asked.
"He's upstairs now with Mrs. Maldon."
Without warning, Thomas Batchgrew strode into the house and straight upstairs. His long whiskers sailed round the turn of the stairs and disappeared. Rachel was somewhat discomfited, and very resentful. But her dread was not thereby diminished. "They'll kill the old lady between them if they don't take care," she thought.
The next instant Louis appeared at the head of the stairs. With astounding celerity Rachel slipped into the parlour. She could not bear to encounter him in the lobby—it was too narrow. She heard Louis come down the stairs, saw him take his hat from the oak chest and heard him open the front gate. In the lobby he had looked neither to right nor left. "How do, Ernest!" she heard him greet the amateur chauffeur-in-chief of the Batchgrew family. His footfalls on the pavement died away into the general silence of the street. Overhead she could hear old Batchgrew walking to and fro. Without reflection she went upstairs and hovered near the door of Mrs. Maldon's bedroom. She said to herself that she was not eavesdropping. She listened, while pretending not to listen, but there was no sign of conversation within the room. And then she very distinctly heard old Batchgrew exclaim—
"And they go gallivanting off together to the cinema!"
Upon which ensued another silence.
Rachel flushed with shame, fury, and apprehension. She hated Batchgrew, and Louis, and all gross masculine invaders.
The mysterious silence within the room persisted. And then old Batchgrew violently opened the door and glared at Rachel. He showed no surprise at seeing her there on the landing.
"Ye'd better keep an eye on missis," he said gruffly. "She's gone to sleep seemingly."
And with no other word he departed.
Before the car had given its warning hoot Rachel was at Mrs. Maldon's side. The old lady lay in all tranquillity on her left arm. She was indeed asleep, or she was in a stupor, and the peculiar stertorous noise of her breathing had recommenced.
Rachel's vague dread vanished as she gazed at the worn features, and gave place to a new and definite fright.
"They have killed her!" she muttered.
And she ran into the next room and called Mrs. Tams.
"Who's below?" asked Mrs. Tarns, as, wide awake, she came out on to the landing.
"Nobody," said Rachel. "They've gone."
But the doctor was below. Mr. Batchgrew had left the front door open.
"What a good thing!" cried Rachel.
In the bedroom Dr. Yardley, speaking with normal loudness, just as though Mrs. Maldon had not been present, said to Rachel—
"I expected this this morning. There's nothing to be done. If you try to give her food she'll only get it into the lung. It's very improbable that she'll regain consciousness."
"But are you sure, doctor?" Rachel asked.
The doctor answered grimly—
"No, I'm not—I'm never sure. She may recover."
"She's been rather disturbed this afternoon."
The doctor lifted his shoulders.
"That's got nothing to do with it," said he. "As I told you, she's had an embolus in one artery of the brain. It lessened at first for a bit—they do sometimes—and now it's enlarging, that's all. Nothing external could affect it either way."
"But how long—?" asked Rachel, recoiling.
V
Her chief sensation that evening was that she was alone, for Mrs. Tams was not a companion, but a slave. She was alone with a grave and strange responsibility, which she could not evade. Indeed, events had occurred in such a manner as to make her responsibility seem natural and inevitable, to give it the sanction of the most correct convention. Between 4.30 and 6 in the afternoon four separate calls of inquiry had been made at the house, thus demonstrating Mrs. Maldon's status in the town. One lady had left a fine bunch of grapes. To all these visitors Rachel had said the same things, namely, that Mrs. Maldon had been better on the Saturday, but was worse; that the case was very serious; that the doctor had been twice that day and was coming again, that Councillor Batchgrew was fully informed and had seen the patient; that Mr. Louis Fores, Mrs. Maldon's only near relative in England, was constantly in and out; that she herself had the assistance of Mrs. Tams, who was thoroughly capable, and that while she was much obliged for offers of help, she could think of no way of utilizing them.
So that when the door closed on the last of the callers, Rachel, who a month earlier had never even seen Mrs. Maldon, was left in sole rightful charge of the dying-bed. And there was no escape for her. She could not telegraph—the day being Sunday. Moreover, except Thomas Batchgrew, there was nobody to whom she might telegraph. And she did not want Mr. Batchgrew. Though Mr. Batchgrew certainly had not guessed the relapse, she felt no desire whatever to let him have news. She hated his blundering intrusions; and in spite of the doctor's statements she would insist to herself that he and Louis between them had somehow brought about the change in Mrs. Maldon. Of course she might fetch Louis. She did not know his exact address, but he could be discovered. At any rate, Mrs. Tams might be sent for him. But she could not bring herself to make any advance towards Louis.
At a little after six o'clock, when the rare chapel-goers had ceased to pass, and the still rarer church-goers were beginning to respond to distant bells, Mrs. Tams informed her that tea was ready for her in the parlour, and she descended and took tea, utterly alone. Mrs. Tams had lighted the fire, and had moved the table comfortably towards the fire—act of astounding initiative and courage, in itself a dramatic proof that Mrs. Maldon no longer reigned at Bycars. Tea finished, Rachel returned to the sick-room, where there was nothing whatever to do except watch the minutes recede. She thought of her father and brother in America.
Then Mrs. Tams, who had been clearing away the tea-things, came into the bedroom and said—
"Here's Mr. Fores, miss."
Rachel started.
"Mr. Fores! What does he want?" she asked querulously.
Mrs. Tams preserved her blandness.
"He asked for you, miss."
"Didn't he ask how Mrs. Maldon is?"
"No, miss."
"Well, I don't want to see him. You might run down and tell him what the doctor said, Mrs. Tams." She tried to make her voice casually persuasive.
"Shall I, miss?" said Miss Tams doubtfully, and turned to the door.
Rachel was again full of fear and resentment. Louis had committed the infamy of luring her into the cinematograph. It was through him that she had "got herself talked about." Mrs. Maldon's last words had been a warning against him. He and Mr. Batchgrew had desecrated the sick-room with their mysterious visitations. And now Louis was come again. From what catastrophes had not Mrs. Maldon's warning saved her!
"Here! I'll go," said Rachel, in a sudden resolve.
"I'm glad on it," said Mrs. Tams simply.
In the parlour Louis stood in front of the fire. Although the blinds were drawn, the gas had not been lighted; but the fire and the powerful street lamp together sufficed to give clearness to every object in the room. The table had been restored to its proper situation. The gift of grapes ornamented the sideboard.
"Good-evening," said Rachel sullenly, as if pouting. She avoided looking at Louis, and sat down on the Chesterfield.
Louis broke forth in a cascade of words—
"I say, I'm most awfully sorry. I hadn't the faintest notion this afternoon she was any worse—not the faintest. Otherwise I shouldn't have dreamt—I met the doctor just now in Moorthorne Road, and he told me."
"What did he tell you?" asked Rachel, still with averted head, picking at her frock.
"Well, he gave me to understand there's very little hope, and nothing to be done. If I'd had the faintest notion—"
"You needn't worry about that," said Rachel. "Your coming made no difference. The doctor said so." And she asked herself why she should go out of her way to reassure Louis. It would serve him right to think that his brusque visit, with Mr. Batchgrew's, was the origin of the relapse.
"Is there any change?" Louis asked.
Rachel shook her head "No," she said. "We just have to sit and watch."
"Doctor's coming in again to-night, isn't he?"
Rachel nodded.
"It seems it's an embolus."
Rachel nodded once more. She had still no conception of what an embolus was; but she naturally assumed that Louis could define an embolus with exactitude.
"I say," said Louis, and his voice was suddenly charged with magical qualities of persuasion, entreaty, and sincerity—"I say, you might look at me."
She flushed, but she looked up at him. She might have sat straight and remarked: "Mr. Fores, what do you mean by talking to me like that?" But she raised her eyes and her crimson cheeks for one timid instant, and dropped them. His voice had overcome her. With a single phrase, with a mere inflection, he had changed the key of the interview. And the glance at him had exposed her to the appeal of his face, more powerful than ten thousand logical arguments and warnings. His face proved that he was a sympathetic, wistful, worried fellow-creature—and miraculously, uniquely handsome. His face in the twilight was the most romantic face that Rachel had ever seen. His gestures had a celestial charm.
He said—
"I know I ought to apologize for the way I came in this afternoon. I do. But if you knew what cause I had ...! Would you believe that old Batch had come to my place, and practically accused me of stealing the old lady's money—stealing it!"
"Never!" Rachel murmured.
"Yes, he did. The fact is, he knew jolly well he'd no business to have left it in the house that night, so he wanted to get out of it by making me suffer. You know he's always been down on me. Well, I came straight up here and I told auntie. Of course I couldn't make a fuss, with her ill in bed. So I simply told her I hadn't got her money and I hadn't stolen it, and I left it at that. I thought the less said the better. But I had to say that much. I wonder what Julian would have said if he'd been accused. I just wonder!" He repeated the word, queerly evocative: "Julian!"
"What did Mrs. Maldon say?" Rachel asked.
"Well, she didn't say much. She believed me, naturally. And then old Batch came. I wasn't going to have a regular scene with him up there, so I left. I thought that was the only dignified thing to do. I wanted to tell you, and I've told you. Don't you think it's a shame?"
Rachel answered passionately—
"I do."
She answered thus because she had a tremendous desire to answer thus. To herself she said: "Do I?... Yes, I do." Louis' eyes drew sympathy out of her. It seemed to her to be of the highest importance that those appealing eyes should not appeal in vain.
"Item, he made a fearful fuss about you and me being at the cinema last night."
"I should like to know what it's got to do with him!" said Rachel, almost savagely. The word "item" puzzled her. Not understanding it, she thought she had misheard.
"That's what I thought, too," said Louis, and added, very gravely: "At the same time I'm really awfully sorry. Perhaps I oughtn't to have asked you. It was my fault. But old Batch would make the worst of anything."
Rachel replied with feverish conviction—
"Mr. Batchgrew ought to be ashamed. You weren't to blame, and I won't hear of it!"
Louis started forward with a sudden movement of the left arm.
"You're magnificent," he said, with emotion.
Rachel trembled, and shut her eyes. She heard his voice again, closer to her, repeating with even greater emotion: "You're magnificent." Tears were in her eyes. Through them she looked at him. And his form was so graceful, his face so nice, so exquisitely kind and lovable and loving, that her admiration became intense, even to the point of pain. She thought of Batchgrew, not with hate, but with pity. He was a monster, but he could not help it. He alone was responsible for all slanders against Louis. He alone had put Mrs. Maldon against Louis. Louis was obviously the most innocent of beings. Mrs. Maiden's warning, "The woman who married him would suffer horribly," was manifestly absurd. "Suffer horribly"—what a stinging phrase, like a needle broken in a wound! She felt tired and weak, above all tired of loneliness.
His hand was on hers. She trembled anew. She was not Rachel, but some new embodiment of surrender and acquiescence. And the change was delicious, fearful.... She thought: "I could die for him." She forgot that a few minutes before she had been steeling herself against him. She wanted him to kiss her, and waited an eternity. And when he had kissed her, and she was in a maze of rapture, a tiny idea shaped itself clearly in her mind for an instant: "This is wrong. But I don't care. He is mine"—and then melted like a cloud in a burning sky. And a sense of the miraculousness of destiny overcame her. In two days had happened enough for two years. It was staggering to think that only two days earlier she had been dreaming of him as of a star. Could so much, indeed, happen in two days? She imagined blissfully, in her ignorance of human experience, that her case was without precedent. Nay, her case appalled her in the rapidity of its development! And was thereby the more thrilling! She thought again: "Yes, I could die for him—and I would!" He was still the star, but—such was the miracle—she clasped him.
They heard Mrs. Tams knocking at the door. Nothing would ever cure the charwoman's habit of knocking before entering. Rachel arose from the sofa as out of a bush of blossoms. And in the artless, honest glance of her virginity and her simplicity, her eyes seemed to say to Mrs. Tams: "Behold the phoenix among men! He is to be my husband." Her pride in the strange, wondrous, incredible state of being affianced was tremendous, to the tragic point.
"Can ye hear, begging yer pardon?" said Mrs. Tams, pointing through the open door and upward. "Her's just begun to breathe o' that'n [like that]."
The loud, stertorous sound of Mrs. Maldon unconsciously drawing the final breaths of life filled the whole house. Louis and Rachel glanced at each other, scared, shamed, even horrified, to discover that the vast pendulum of the universe was still solemnly ticking through their ecstasy.
"I'm coming," said Rachel.