LOUIS' DISCOVERY
I
Louis Fores was late at his grand-aunt's because he had by a certain
preoccupation, during a period of about an hour, been rendered
oblivious of the passage of time. The real origin of the affair went
back nearly sixty years, to an indecorous episode in the history of
the Maldon family.
At that date--before Mrs. Maldon had even met Austin Maldon, her
future husband--Austin's elder brother Athelstan, who was well
established as an earthenware broker in London, had a conjugal
misfortune, which reached its climax in the Matrimonial Court, and
left the injured and stately Athelstan with an incomplete household,
a spoiled home, and the sole care of two children, a boy and a girl.
These children were, almost of necessity, clumsily brought up. The
girl married the half-brother of a Lieutenant-General Fores, and Louis
Fores was their son. The boy married an American girl, and had issue,
Julian Maldon and some daughters.
At the age of eighteen, Louis Fores, amiable, personable, and an
orphan, was looking for a career. He had lived in the London suburb of
Barnes, and under the influence of a father whose career had chiefly
been to be the stepbrother of Lieutenant-General Fores. He was in
full possession of the conventionally snobbish ideals of the suburb,
reinforced by more than a tincture of the stupendous and unsurpassed
snobbishness of the British Army. He had no money, and therefore the
liberal professions and the higher division of the Civil Service were
closed to him. He had the choice of two activities: he might tout for
wine, motor-cars, or mineral-waters on commission (like his father),
or he might enter a bank; his friends were agreed that nothing else
was conceivable. He chose the living grave. It is not easy to enter
the living grave, but, august influences aiding, he entered it with
_éclat_ at a salary of seventy pounds a year, and it closed
over him. He would have been secure till his second death had he not
defiled the bier. The day of judgment occurred, the grave opened, and
he was thrown out with ignominy, but ignominy unpublished. The august
influences, by simple cash, and for their own sakes, had saved him
from exposure and a jury.
In order to get rid of him his protectors spoke well of him,
emphasizing his many good qualities, and he was deported to the Five
Towns (properly enough, since his grandfather had come thence)
and there joined the staff of Batchgrew & Sons, thanks to the kind
intervention of Mrs. Maldon. At the end of a year John Batchgrew told
him to go, and told Mrs. Maldon that her grand-nephew had a fault.
Mrs. Maldon was very sorry. At this juncture Louis Fores, without
intending to do so, would certainly have turned Mrs. Maldon's last
years into a tragedy, had he not in the very nick of time inherited
about a thousand pounds. He was rehabilitated. He "had money" now. He
had a fortune; he had ten thousand pounds; he had any sum you like,
according to the caprice of rumour. He lived on his means for a
little time, frequenting the Municipal School of Art at the Wedgwood
Institution at Bursley, and then old Batchgrew had casually suggested
to Mrs. Maldon that there ought to be an opening for him with Jim
Horrocleave, who was understood to be succeeding with his patent
special processes for earthenware manufacture. Mr. Horrocleave, a man
with a chin, would not accept him for a partner, having no desire to
share profits with anybody; but on the faith of his artistic tendency
and Mrs. Maldon's correct yet highly misleading catalogue of his
virtues, he took him at a salary, in return for which Louis was to be
the confidential employee who could and would do anything, including
design.
And now Louis was the step-nephew of a Lieutenant-General, a man
of private means and of talent, and a trusted employee with a fine
wage--all under one skin! He shone in Bursley, and no wonder! He was
very active at Horrocleave's. He not only designed shapes for vases,
and talked intimately with Jim Horrocleave about fresh projects, but
he controlled the petty cash. The expenditure of petty cash grew, as
was natural in a growing business. Mr. Horrocleave soon got accustomed
to that, and apparently gave it no thought, signing cheques instantly
upon request. But on the very day of Mrs. Maldon's party, after
signing a cheque and before handing it to Louis, he had somewhat
lengthily consulted his private cash-book, and, as he handed over
the cheque, had said: "Let's have a squint at the petty-cash book
to-morrow morning, Louis." He said it gruffly, but he was a gruff man.
He left early. He might have meant anything or nothing. Louis could
not decide which; or rather, from five o'clock to seven he had come to
alternating decisions every five minutes.
II
It was just about at the time when Louis ought to have been removing
his paper cuff-shields in order to start for Mrs. Maldon's that he
discovered the full extent of his debt to the petty-cash box. He
sat alone at a rough and dirty desk in the inner room of the works
"office," surrounded by dust-covered sample vases and other vessels of
all shapes, sizes, and tints--specimens of Horrocleave's "Art Lustre
Ware," a melancholy array of ingenious ugliness that nevertheless
filled with pride its creators. He looked through a dirt-obscured
window and with unseeing gaze surveyed a muddy, littered quadrangle
whose twilight was reddened by gleams from the engine-house. In this
yard lay flat a sign that had been blown down from the façade of the
manufactory six months before: "Horrocleave. Art Lustre Ware."
Within the room was another sign, itself fashioned in lustre-ware:
"Horrocleave. Art Lustre Ware." And the envelopes and paper and
bill-heads on the desk all bore the same legend: "Horrocleave. Art
Lustre Ware."
He owed seventy-three pounds to the petty-cash box, and he was
startled and shocked. He was startled because for weeks past he had
refrained from adding up the columns of the cash-book--partly from
idleness and partly from a desire to remain in ignorance of his own
doings. He had hoped for the best. He had faintly hoped that the
deficit would not exceed ten pounds, or twelve; he had been prepared
for a deficit of twenty-five, or even thirty. But seventy-three really
shocked. Nay, it staggered. It meant that in addition to his salary,
some thirty shillings a week had been mysteriously trickling through
the incurable hole in his pocket. Not to mention other debts! He well
knew that to Shillitoe alone (his admirable tailor) he owed eighteen
pounds.
It may be asked how a young bachelor, with private means and a
fine salary, living in a district where prices are low and social
conventions not costly, could have come to such a pass. The answer is
that Louis had no private means, and that his salary was not fine. The
thousand pounds had gradually vanished, as a thousand pounds will, in
the refinements of material existence and in the pursuit of happiness.
His bank-account had long been in abeyance. His salary was three
pounds a week. Many a member of the liberal professions--many a
solicitor, for example--brings up a family on three pounds a week in
the provinces. But for a Lieutenant-General's nephew, who had once had
a thousand pounds in one lump, three pounds a week was inadequate. As
a fact, Louis conceived himself "Art Director" of Horrocleave's, and
sincerely thought that as such he was ill-paid. Herein was one of his
private excuses for eccentricity with the petty cash. It may also be
asked what Louis had to show for his superb expenditure. The answer
is, nothing.
With the seventy-three pounds desolatingly clear in his mind, he
quitted his desk in order to reconnoitre the outer and larger portion
of the counting-house. He went as far as the archway, and saw black
smoke being blown downwards from heaven into Friendly Street. A
policeman was placidly regarding the smoke as he strolled by. And
Louis, though absolutely sure that the officer would not carry out his
plain duty of summoning Horrocleave's for committing a smoke-nuisance,
did not care for the spectacle of the policeman. He returned to the
inner office, and locked the door. The "staff" and the "hands" had all
gone, save one or two piece-workers in the painting-shop across the
yard.
The night watchman, fresh from bed, was moving fussily about the yard.
He nodded with respect to Louis through the grimy window. Louis lit
the gas, and spread a newspaper in front of the window by way of
blind. And then he began a series of acts on the petty-cash book. The
office clock indicated twenty past six. He knew that time was short,
but he had a natural gift for the invention and execution of these
acts, and he calculated that under half an hour would suffice
for them. But when he next looked at the clock, the acts being
accomplished, one hour had elapsed; it had seemed to him more like a
quarter of an hour. Yet as blotting-paper cannot safely be employed in
such delicate calligraphic feats as those of Louis', even an hour was
not excessive for what he had done. An operator clumsier, less cool,
less cursory, more cautious than himself might well have spent half a
night over the job. He locked up the book, washed his hands and face
with remarkable celerity in a filthy lavatory basin, brushed his hair,
removed his cuff-shields, changed his coat, and fled at speed, leaving
the key of the office with the watchman.
III
"I suppose the old lady was getting anxious?" said he brightly (but
in a low tone so that the old lady should not hear), as he shook hands
with Rachel in the lobby. He had recognized her in front of him up the
lane--had, in fact, nearly overtaken her; and she was standing at the
open door when he mounted the steps. She had had just time to prove
to Mrs. Maldon, by a "He's coming" thrown through the sitting-room
doorway, that she had not waited for Louis Fores and walked up with
him.
"Yes," Rachel replied in the same tone, most deceitfully leaving him
under the false impression that it was the old lady's anxiety that had
sent her out. She had, then, emerged scathless in reputation from the
indiscreet adventure!
The house was animated by the arrival of Louis; at once it seemed to
live more keenly when he had crossed the threshold. And Louis found
pleasure in the house--in the welcoming aspect of its interior, in
Rachel's evident excited gladness at seeing him, in her honest and
agreeable features, and in her sheer girlishness. A few minutes
earlier he had been in the sordid and dreadful office. Now he was in
another and a cleaner, prettier world. He yielded instantly and fully
to its invitation, for he had the singular faculty of being able to
cast off care like a garment. He felt sympathetic towards women, and
eager to employ for their contentment all the charm which he knew
he possessed. He gave himself, generously, in every gesture and
intonation.
"Office, auntie, office!" he exclaimed, elegantly entering the
parlour. "Sack-cloth! Ashes! Hallo! where's Julian? Is he late too?"
When he had received the news about Julian Maldon he asked to see
the telegram, and searched out its place of origin, and drew forth
a pocket time-table, and remarked in a wise way that he hoped Julian
would "make the connection" at Derby. Lastly he predicted the precise
minute at which Julian "ought" to be knocking at the front door. And
both women felt their ignorant, puzzled inferiority in these recondite
matters of travel, and the comfort of having an omniscient male in the
house.
Then slightly drawing up his dark blue trousers with an accustomed
movement, he carefully sat down on the Chesterfield, and stroked
his soft black moustache (which was estimably long for a fellow of
twenty-three) and patted his black hair.
"Rachel, you didn't fasten that landing window, after all!" said Mrs.
Maldon, looking over Louis' head at the lady companion, who hesitated
modestly near the door. "I've tried, but I couldn't."
"Neither could I, Mrs. Maldon," said Rachel. "I was thinking perhaps
Mr. Fores wouldn't mind--"
She did not explain that her failure to fasten the window had been
more or less deliberate, since, while actually tugging at the window,
she had been visited by the sudden delicious thought: "How nice it
would be to ask Louis Fores to do this hard thing for me!"
And now she had asked him.
"Certainly!" Louis jumped to his feet, and off he went upstairs.
Most probably, if the sudden delicious thought had not skipped into
Rachel's brain, he would never have made that critical ascent to the
first floor.
A gas-jet burned low on the landing.
"Let's have a little light on the subject," he cheerfully muttered to
himself, as he turned on the gas to the full.
Then in the noisy blaze of yellow and blue light he went to the window
and with a single fierce wrench he succeeded in pulling the catch into
position. He was proud of his strength. It pleased him to think of the
weakness of women; it pleased him to anticipate the impressed thanks
of the weak women for this exertion of his power on their behalf.
"Have you managed it so soon?" his aunt would exclaim, and he would
answer in a carefully offhand way, "Of course. Why not?"
He was about to descend, but he remembered that he must not leave the
gas at full. With his hand on the tap, he glanced perfunctorily around
the little landing. The door of Mrs. Maldon's bedroom was in front of
him, at right angles to the window. By the door, which was ajar,
stood a cane-seated chair. Underneath the chair he perceived a whitish
package or roll that seemed to be out of place there on the floor. He
stooped and picked it up. And as the paper rustled peculiarly in his
hand, he could feel his heart give a swift bound. He opened the roll.
It consisted of nothing whatever but bank-notes. He listened intently,
with ear cocked and rigid limbs, and he could just catch the soothing
murmur of women's voices in the parlour beneath the reverberating,
solemn pulse of the lobby clock.
IV
Louis Fores had been intoxicated into a condition of poesy. He was
deliciously incapable of any precise thinking; he could not formulate
any theory to account for the startling phenomenon of a roll of
bank-notes loose under a chair on a first-floor landing of his
great-aunt's house; he could not even estimate the value of the
roll--he felt only that it was indefinitely prodigious. But he had the
most sensitive appreciation of the exquisite beauty of those pieces of
paper. They were not merely beautiful because they stood for delight
and indulgence, raising lovely visions of hosiers' and jewellers'
shops and the night interiors of clubs and restaurants--raising one
clear vision of himself clasping a watch-bracelet on the soft arm of
Rachel who had so excitingly smiled upon him a moment ago. They were
beautiful in themselves; the aspect and very texture of them were
beautiful--surpassing pictures and fine scenery. They were the most
poetic things in the world. They transfigured the narrow, gaslit
first-floor landing of his great-aunt's house into a secret and
unearthly grove of bliss. He was drunk with quivering emotion.
And then, as he gazed at the divine characters printed in sable on the
rustling whiteness, he was aware of a stab of ugly, coarse pain. Up to
the instant of beholding those bank-notes he had been convinced that
his operations upon the petty-cash book would be entirely successful
and that the immediate future of Horrocleave's was assured of
tranquillity; he had been blandly certain that Horrocleave held no
horrid suspicion against him, and that even if Horrocleave's pate
did conceal a dark thought, it would be conjured at once away by the
superficial reasonableness of the falsified accounts. But now his mind
was terribly and inexplicably changed, and it seemed to him impossible
to gull the acute and mighty Horrocleave. Failure, exposure, disgrace,
ruin, seemed inevitable--and also intolerable. It was astonishing
that he should have deceived himself into an absurd security. The
bank-notes, by some magic virtue which they possessed, had opened
his eyes to the truth. And they presented themselves as absolutely
indispensable to him. They had sprung from naught, they belonged
to nobody, they existed without a creative cause in the material
world--and they were indispensable to him! Could it be conceived that
he should lose his high and brilliant position in the town, that two
policemen should hustle him into the black van, that the gates of
a prison should clang behind him? It could not be conceived. It was
monstrously inconceivable.... The bank-notes ... he saw them wavy, as
through a layer of hot air.
A heavy knock on the front door below shook him and the floor and the
walls. He heard the hurried feet of Rachel, the opening of the door,
and Julian's harsh, hoarse voice. Julian, then, was not quite an hour
late, after all. The stir in the lobby seemed to be enormous, and very
close to him; Mrs. Maldon had come forth from the parlour to greet
Julian on his birthday.... Louis stuck the bank-notes into the side
pocket of his coat. And as it were automatically his mood underwent a
change, violent and complete. "I'll teach the old lady to drop notes
all over the place," he said to himself. "I'll just teach her!" And
he pictured his triumph as a wise male when, during the course of the
feast, his great-aunt should stumble on her loss and yield to senile
feminine agitation, and he should remark superiorly, with elaborate
calm: "Here is your precious money, auntie. A good thing it was I and
not burglars who discovered it. Let this be a lesson to you!... Where
was it? It was on the landing carpet, if you please! That's where it
was!" And the nice old creature's pathetic relief!
As he went jauntily downstairs there remained nothing of his mood of
intoxication except a still thumping heart.