i
the inspiring and agreeable image of rachel floated above vast contending forces of ideas in the mind of louis fores as he bent over his petty-cash book amid the dust of the vile inner office at horrocleave's; and their altercation was sharpened by the fact that louis had not had enough sleep. he had had a great deal more sleep than rachel, but he had not had what he was in the habit of calling his "whack" of it. although never in a hurry to go to bed, he appreciated as well as any doctor the importance of sleep in the economy of the human frame, and his weekly average of repose was high; he was an expert sleeper.
he thirsted after righteousness, and the petty-cash book was permeated through and through with unrighteousness; and it was his handiwork. of course, under the unconscious influence of rachel, seen in her kitchen and seen also in various other striking aspects during the exciting night, he might have bravely exposed the iniquity of the petty-cash book to jim horrocleave, and cleared his conscience, and then gone and confessed to rachel, and thus prepared the way for the inner peace and a new life. he would have suffered—there was indeed a possibility of very severe suffering—but he would have been a free man—yes, free even if in prison, and he would have followed the fine tradition of rectitude, exhorting the respect and admiration of all true souls, etc. he had read authentic records of similar deeds. what stopped him from carrying out the programme of honesty was his powerful worldly common sense. despite what he had read, and despite the inspiring image of rachel, his common sense soon convinced him that confession would be an error of judgment and quite unremunerative for, at any rate, very many years. hence he abandoned regretfully the notion of confession, as a beautifully impossible dream. but righteousness was not thereby entirely denied to him; his thirst for it could still be assuaged by the device of an oath to repay secretly to horrocleave every penny that he had stolen from horrocleave, which oath he took—and felt better and worthier of rachel.
he might, perhaps, have inclined more effectually towards confession had not the petty-cash book appeared to him in the morning light as an admirably convincing piece of work. it had the most innocent air, and was markedly superior to his recollection of it. on many pages he himself could scarcely detect his own traces. he began to feel that he could rely pretty strongly on the cleverness of the petty-cash book. only four blank pages remained in it. a few days more and it would be filled up, finished, labelled with a gummed white label showing its number and the dates of its first and last entries, shelved and forgotten. a pity that horrocleave's suspicions had not been delayed for another month or so, for then the book might have been mislaid, lost, or even consumed in a conflagration! but never mind! a certain amount of ill luck fell to every man, and he would trust to his excellent handicraft in the petty-cash book. it was his only hope in the world, now that the mysterious and heavenly bank-notes were gone.
his attitude towards the bank-notes was, quite naturally, illogical and self-contradictory. while the bank-notes were in his pocket he had in the end seen three things with clearness. first, the wickedness of appropriating them. second, the danger of appropriating them—having regard to the prevalent habit of keeping the numbers of bank-notes. third, the wild madness of attempting to utilize them in order to replace the stolen petty cash, for by no ingenuity could the presence of a hoard of over seventy pounds in the petty-cash box have been explained. he had perfectly grasped all that; and yet, the notes having vanished, he felt forlorn, alone, as one who has lost his best friend—a prop and firm succour in a universe of quicksands.
in the matter of the burning of the notes his conscience did not accuse him. on the contrary, he emerged blameless from the episode. it was not he who first had so carelessly left the notes lying about. he had not searched for them, he had not purloined them. they had been positively thrust upon him. his intention in assuming charge of them for a brief space was to teach some negligent person a lesson. during the evening fate had given him no opportunity to produce them. and when in the night, with honesty unimpeachable, he had decided to restore them to the landing, fate had intervened once more. at each step of the affair he had acted for the best in difficult circumstances. persons so ill-advised as to drop bank-notes under chairs must accept all the consequences of their act. who could have foreseen that while he was engaged on the philanthropic errand of fetching a doctor for an aged lady rachel would light a fire under the notes?... no, not merely was he without sin in the matter of the bank-notes, he was rather an ill-used person, a martyr deserving of sympathy. and, further, he did not regret the notes; he was glad they were gone. they could no longer tempt him now, and their disappearance would remain a mystery for ever. so far as they were concerned, he could look his aunt or anybody else in the face without a tremor. the mere destruction of the immense, undetermined sum of money did not seriously ruffle him. as an ex-bank clerk he was aware that though an individual would lose, the state, through the bank of england, would correspondingly gain, and thus for the nonce he had the large sensation of a patriot.
ii
axon, the factotum of the counting-house, came in from the outer office, with a mien composed of mirth and apprehension in about equal parts. if axon happened to be a subject of a conversation and there was any uncertainty as to which axon out of a thousand axons he might be, the introducer of the subject would always say, "you know—sandy-haired fellow." this described him—hair, beard, moustache. sandy-haired men have no age until they are fifty-five, and axon was not fifty-five. he was a pigeon-flyer by choice, and a clerk in order that he might be a pigeon-flyer. his fault was that, with no moral right whatever to do so, he would treat louis fores as a business equal in the office and as a social equal in the street.
he sprang upon louis now as one grinning valet might spring upon another, enormous with news, and whispered—
"i say, guv'nor's put his foot through them steps from painting-shop and sprained his ankle. look out for ructions, eh? thank the lord it's a half-day!" and then whipped back to his own room.
on any ordinary saturday morning louis by a fine frigidity would have tried to show to the obtuse axon that he resented such demeanour towards himself on the part of an axon, assuming as it did that the art-director of the works was one of the servile crew that scuttled about in terror if the ferocious horrocleave happened to sneeze. but to-day the mere sudden information that horrocleave was on the works gave him an unpleasant start and seriously impaired his presence of mind. he had not been aware of horrocleave's arrival. he had been expecting to hear horrocleave's step and voice, and the rustle of him hanging up his mackintosh outside (horrocleave always wore a mackintosh instead of an overcoat), and all the general introductory sounds of his advent, before he finally came into the inner room. but, now, for aught louis knew, horrocleave might already have been in the inner room, before louis. he was upset. the enemy was not attacking him in the proper and usual way.
and the next instant, ere he could collect and reorganize his forces, he was paralysed by the footfall of horrocleave, limping, and the bang of a door.
and louis thought—
"he's in the outer office. he's only got to take his mackintosh off, and then i shall see his head coming through this door, and perhaps he'll ask me for the petty-cash book right off."
but horrocleave did not even pause to remove his mackintosh. in defiance of immemorial habit, being himself considerably excited and confused, he stalked straight in, half hopping, and sat down in his frowsy chair at his frowsy desk, with his cap at the back of his head. he was a spare man, of medium height, with a thin, shrewd face and a constant look of hard, fierce determination.
and there was louis staring like a fool at the open page of the petty-cash book, incriminating himself every instant.
"hello!" said louis, without looking round. "what's up?"
"what's up?" horrocleave scowled. "what d'ye mean?"
"i thought you were limping just the least bit in the world," said louis, whose tact was instinctive and indestructible.
"oh, that!" said horrocleave, as though nothing was farther from his mind than the peculiarity of his gait that morning. he bit his lip.
"slipped over something?" louis suggested.
"aye!" said horrocleave, somewhat less ominously, and began to open his letters.
louis saw that he had done well to feign ignorance of the sprain and to assume that horrocleave had slipped, whereas in fact horrocleave had put his foot through a piece of rotten wood. everybody in the works, upon pain of death, would have to pretend that the employer had merely slipped, and that the consequences were negligible. horrocleave had already nearly eaten an old man alive for the sin of asking whether he had hurt himself!
and he had not hurt himself because two days previously he had ferociously stopped the odd-man of the works from wasting his time in mending just that identical stair, and had asserted that the stair was in excellent condition. horrocleave, though napoleonic by disposition, had a provincial mind, even a five towns mind. he regarded as sheer loss any expenditure on repairs or renewals or the processes of cleansing. his theory was that everything would "do" indefinitely. he passed much of his time in making things "do." his confidence in the theory that things could indeed be made to "do" was usually justified, but the steps from the painting-shop—a gimcrack ladder with hand-rail, attached somehow externally to a wall—had at length betrayed it. that the accident had happened to himself, and not to a lad balancing a plankful of art-lustre ware on one shoulder, was sheer luck. and now the odd-man, with the surreptitious air of one engaged in a nefarious act, was putting a new tread on the stairs. thus devoutly are the napoleonic served!
horrocleave seemed to weary of his correspondence.
"by the by," he said in a strange tone, "let's have a look at that petty-cash book."
louis rose, and with all his charm, with all the elegance of a man intended by nature for wealth and fashion instead of a slave on a foul pot-bank, gave up the book. it was like giving up hope to the last vestige, like giving up the ghost. he saw with horrible clearness that he had been deceiving himself, that horrocleave's ruthless eye could not fail to discern at the first glance all his neat dodges, such as additions of ten to the shillings, and even to the pounds here and there, and ingenious errors in carrying forward totals from the bottom of one page to the top of the next. he began to speculate whether horrocleave would be content merely to fling him out of the office, or whether he would prosecute. prosecution seemed much more in accordance with the napoleonic temperament, and yet louis could not, then, conceive himself the victim of a prosecution.... anybody else, but not louis fores!
horrocleave, his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand and began to examine the book. suddenly he looked up at louis, who could not move and could not cease from agreeably smiling.
said horrocleave in a still more peculiar tone—
"just ask axon whether he means to go fetch wages to-day or to-morrow. has he forgotten it's saturday morning?"
louis shot away into the outer office, where axon was just putting on his hat to go to the bank.
alone in the outer office louis wondered. the whole of his vitality was absorbed in the single function of wondering. then through the thin slit of the half-open door between the top and the middle hinges, he beheld horrocleave bending in judgment over the book. and he gazed at the vision in the fascination of horror. in a few moments horrocleave leaned back, and louis saw that his face had turned paler. it went almost white. horrocleave was breathing strangely, his arms dropped downward, his body slipped to one side, his cap fell off, his eyes shut, his mouth opened, his head sank loosely over the back of the chair like the head of a corpse. he had fainted. the thought passed through louis' mind that stupefaction at the complex unrighteousness of the petty-cash records had caused horrocleave to lose consciousness. then the true explanation occurred to him. it was the pain in his ankle that had overcome the heroic sufferer. louis had desired to go to his aid, but he could not budge from his post. presently the colour began slowly to return to horrocleave's cheek; his eyes opened; he looked round sleepily and then wildly; and then he rubbed his eyes and yawned. he remained quiescent for several minutes, while a railway lorry thundered through the archway and the hoofs of the great horse crunched on shawds in the yard. then he called, in a subdued voice—
"louis! where the devil are ye?"
louis re-entered the room, and as he did so horrocleave shut the petty-cash book with an abrupt gesture.
"here, take it!" said he, pushing the book away.
"is it all right?" louis asked.
horrocleave nodded. "well, i've checked about forty additions." and he smiled sardonically.
"i think you might do it a bit oftener," said louis, and then went on: "i say, don't you think it might be a good thing if you took your boot off. you never know, when you've slipped, whether it won't swell—i mean the ankle."
"bosh!" exclaimed horrocleave, with precipitation, but after an instant added thoughtfully: "well, i dun'no'. wouldn't do any harm, would it? i say—get me some water, will you? i don't know how it is, but i'm as thirsty as a dog."
the heroic martyr to the affirmation that he had not hurt himself had handsomely saved his honour. he could afford to relax a little now the rigour of consistency in conduct. with twinges and yawns he permitted louis to help him with the boot and to put an art-lustre cup to his lips.
louis was in the highest spirits. he had seen the gates of the inferno, and was now snatched up to paradise. he knew that horrocleave had never more than half suspected him, and that the terrible horrocleave pride would prevent horrocleave from asking for the book again. henceforth, saved by a miracle, he could live in utter rectitude; he could respond freely to the inspiring influence of rachel, and he would do so. he smiled at his previous fears, and was convinced, by no means for the first time, that a providence watched over him because of his good intentions and his nice disposition—that nothing really serious could ever occur to louis fores. he reflected happily that in a few days he would begin a new petty-cash book—and he envisaged it as a symbol of his new life. the future smiled. he made sure that his aunt maldon was dying, and though he liked her very much and would regret her demise, he could not be expected to be blind to the fact that a proportion of her riches would devolve on himself. indeed, in unluckily causing a loss of money to his aunt maldon he had in reality only been robbing himself. so that there was no need for any kind of remorse. when the works closed for the week-end, he walked almost serenely up to bycars for news—news less of his aunt's condition than of the discovery that a certain roll of bank-notes had been mislaid.
iii
the front door was open when louis arrived at mrs. maldon's house, and he walked in. anybody might have walked in. there was nothing unusual in this; it was not a sign that the mistress of the house was ill in bed and its guardianship therefore disorganized. the front doors of bursley—even the most select—were constantly ajar and the fresh wind from off the pot-bank was constantly blowing through those exposed halls and up those staircases. for the demon of public inquisitiveness is understood in the five towns to be a nocturnal demon. the fear of it begins only at dusk. a woman who in the evening protects her parlour like her honour, will, while the sun is above the horizon, show the sacred secrets of the kitchen itself to any one who chooses to stand on the front step.
louis put his hat and stick on the oak chest, and with a careless, elegant gesture brushed back his dark hair. the door of the parlour was slightly ajar. he pushed it gently open, and peeped round it with a pleasant arch expression, on the chance of there being some one within.
rachel was lying on the chesterfield. her left cheek, resting on her left hand, was embedded in the large cushion. a large coil of her tawny hair, displaced, had spread loosely over the dark green of the sofa. the left foot hung limp over the edge of the sofa; the jutting angle of the right knee divided sharply the drapery of her petticoat into two systems, and her right shoe with its steel buckle pressed against the yielding back of the chesterfield. the right arm lay lissom like a snake across her breast. all her muscles were lax, and every full curve of her body tended downward in response to the negligent pose. her eyes were shut, her face flushed; and her chest heaved with the slow regularity of her deep, unconscious breathing.
louis as he gazed was enchanted. this was not miss fleckring, the companion and household help of mrs. maldon, but a nymph, a fay, the universal symbol of his highest desire.... he would have been happy to kiss the glinting steel buckle, so feminine, so provocative, so coy. the tight rounded line of the waist, every bend of the fingers, the fall of the eye-lashes—all were exquisite and precious to him after the harsh, unsatisfying, desolating masculinity of horrocleave's. this was the divine reward of horrocleave's, the sole reason of horrocleave's. horrocleave's only existed in order that this might exist and be maintained amid cushions and the softness of calm and sequestered interiors, waiting for ever in acquiescence for the arrival of manful doers from horrocleave's. the magnificent pride of male youth animated louis. he had not a care in the world. even his long-unpaid tailor's bill was magically abolished. he was an embodiment of exulting hope and fine aspirations.
rachel stirred, dimly aware of the invasion. and louis, actuated by the most delicate regard for her sensitive modesty, vanished back for a moment into the hall, until she should have fitted herself for his beholding.
mrs. tams had come from somewhere into the hall. she was munching a square of bread and cold bacon, and she curtsied, exclaiming—
"it's never mester fores! that's twice her's been woke up this day!"
"who's there?" rachel called out, and her voice had the breaking, bewildered softness of a woman's in the dark, emerging from a dream.
"sorry! sorry!" said louis, behind the door.
"it's all right," she reassured him.
he returned to the room. she was sitting upright on the sofa, her arms a little extended and the tips of her fingers touching the sofa. the coil of her hair had been arranged. the romance of the exciting night still clung to her, for louis; but what chiefly seduced him was the mingling in her mien of soft confusion and candid, sturdy honesty and dependableness. he felt that here was not only a ravishing charm, but a source of moral strength from which he could draw inexhaustibly that which he had had a slight suspicion he lacked. he felt that here was joy and salvation united, and it seemed too good to be true. strange that when she greeted him at the door-step on the previous evening, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time; and again later, in the kitchen, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time; and again, still later, in the sudden crisis at his bedroom door, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time. for now he perceived that he had never really seen her before; and he was astounded and awed.
"auntie still on the up-grade?" he inquired, using all his own charm. he guessed, of course, that mrs. maldon must be still better, and he was very glad, although, if she recovered, it would be she and not himself that he had deprived of bank-notes.
"oh yes, she's better," said rachel, not moving from the sofa; "but have you heard what's happened?"
in spite of himself he trembled, awaiting the disclosure. "now for the bank-notes!" he reflected, bracing his nerves. he shook his head.
she told him what had happened; she told him at length, quickening her speech as she proceeded. and for a few moments it was as if he was being engulfed by an enormous wave, and would drown. but the next instant he recollected that he was on dry land, safe, high beyond the reach of any catastrophe. his position was utterly secure. the past was past; the leaf was turned. he had but to forget, and he was confident of his ability to forget. the compartments of his mind were innumerable, and as separate as the dungeons of a mediaeval prison.
"isn't it awful?" she murmured.
"well, it is rather awful!"
"nine hundred and sixty-five pounds! fancy it!"
the wave approached him again as she named the sum. nevertheless, he never once outwardly blenched. as he had definitely put away unrighteousness, so his face showed no sign of guilt. like many ingenuous-minded persons, he had in a high degree the faculty of appearing innocent—except when he really was innocent.
"if you ask me," said rachel, "she never took any of the notes upstairs at all; she left them all somewhere downstairs and only took the serviette upstairs."
"yes," he agreed thoughtfully, wondering whether on the other hand, mrs. maldon had not taken all the notes upstairs, and left none of them downstairs. was it possible that in that small roll, in that crushed ball that he had dropped into the grate, there was nearly a thousand pounds—the equivalent of an income of a pound a week for ever and ever?... never mind! the incident, so far as he was concerned, was closed. the dogma of his future life would be that the bank-notes had never existed.
"and i've looked ev'rywhere!" rachel insisted with strong emphasis.
louis remarked, thoughtfully, as though a new aspect of the affair was presenting itself to him—
"it's really rather serious, you know!"
"i should just say it was—as much money as that!"
"i mean," said louis, "for everybody. that is to say, julian and me. we're involved."
"how can you be involved? you didn't even know it was in the house."
"no. but the old lady might have dropped it. i might have picked it up. julian might have picked it up. who's to prove—"
she cut in coldly—
"please don't talk like that!"
he smiled with momentary constraint. he said to himself—
"it won't do to talk to this kind of girl like that. she won't stand it.... why, she wouldn't even dream of suspicion falling on herself—wouldn't dream of it."
after a silence he began—
"well—" and made a gesture to imply that the enigma baffled him.
"i give it up!" breathed rachel intimately. "i fairly give it up!"
"and of course that was the cause of her attack?" he said suddenly, as if the idea had just occurred to him.
rachel nodded—"evidently."
"well," said he, "i'll look in again during the afternoon. i must be getting along for my grub." he was hoping that he had not unintentionally brought about his aunt's death.
"not had your dinner!" she cried. "why! it's after half-past two!"
"oh, well, you know ... saturday...."
"i shall get you a bit of dinner here," she said. "and then perhaps mrs. maldon will be waking up. yes," she repeated, positively, "i shall get you a bit of dinner here, myself. mrs. maldon would not be at all pleased if i didn't."
"i'm frightfully hungry," he admitted.
and he was.
when she had left the parlour he perceived evidences here and there that she had been hunting up hill and down dale for the notes; and he went into the back room with an earnest, examining air, as though he might find part of the missing hoard, after all, in some niche overlooked by rachel. he would have preferred to think that mrs. maldon had not taken the whole of the money upstairs, but reflection did much to convince him that she had. it was infinitely regrettable that he had not counted his treasure-trove under the chair.
