THE MARRIED WOMAN
I
Wonderful things happen. If anybody had foretold to Mrs. Tams that in
her fifty-eighth year she would accede to the honourable order of the
starched white cap, Mrs. Tams could not have credited the prophecy.
But there she stood, in the lobby of the house at Bycars, frocked
in black, with the strings of a plain but fine white apron stretched
round her stoutness, and the cap crowning her grey hair. It was Louis
who had insisted on the cap, which Rachel had thought unnecessary
and even snobbish, and which Mrs. Tams had nervously deprecated.
Not without pleasure, however, had both women yielded to his indeed
unanswerable argument: "You can't possibly have a servant opening the
door without a cap. It's unthinkable."
Thus in her latter years of grandmotherhood had Mrs. Tams cast off
the sackcloth of the charwoman and become a glorious domestic servant,
with a room of her own in the house, and no responsibilities beyond
the house, and no right to leave the house save once a week, when she
visited younger generations, who still took from her and gave nothing
back. She owed the advancement to Rachel, who, quite unused to
engaging servants, and alarmed by harrowing stories of the futility
of registry offices and advertisements, had seen in Mrs. Tams the
comfortable solution of a fearful problem. Louis would have preferred
a younger, slimmer, nattier, fluffier creature than Mrs. Tams, but was
ready to be convinced that such as he wanted lived only in his fancy.
Moreover, he liked Mrs. Tams, and would occasionally flatter her by a
smack on the shoulder.
So in the April dusk Mrs. Tams stood in the windy lobby, and was full
of vanity and the pride of life. She gazed forth in disdain at
the little crowd of inquisitive idlers and infants that remained
obstinately on the pavement hoping against hope that the afternoon's
marvellous series of social phenomena was not over. She scorned the
slatternly, stupid little crowd for its lack of manners. Yet she ought
to have known, and she did know as well as any one, that though in
Bursley itself people will pretend out of politeness that nothing
unusual is afoot when something unusual most obviously _is_
afoot, in the small suburbs of Bursley, such as Bycars, no human
or divine power can prevent the populace from loosing its starved
curiosity openly upon no matter what spectacle that may differ from
the ordinary. Alas! Mrs. Tams in the past had often behaved even as
the simple members of that crowd. Nevertheless, all ceremonies being
over, she shut the front door with haughtiness, feeling glad that she
was not as others are. And further, she was swollen and consequential
because, without counting persons named Batchgrew, two visitors had
come in a motor, and because at one supreme moment no less than two
motors (including a Batchgrew motor) had been waiting together at
the curb in front of her cleaned steps. Who could have foreseen this
arrant snobbishness in the excellent child of nature, Mrs. Tams?
A far worse example of spiritual iniquity sat lolling on the
Chesterfield in the parlour. Ignorance and simplicity and a menial
imitativeness might be an excuse for Mrs. Tams; but not for Rachel,
the mistress, the omniscient, the all-powerful, the giver of good,
who could make and unmake with a nod. Rachel sitting gorgeous on the
Chesterfield amid an enormous twilit welter and litter of disarranged
chairs and tables; empty teapots, cups, jugs, and glasses; dishes of
fragmentary remains of cake and chocolate; plates smeared with roseate
ham, sticky teaspoons, loaded ash-trays, and a large general crumby
mess--Rachel, the downright, the contemner of silly social prejudices
and all nonsense, was actually puffed up because she had a servant in
a cap and because automobiles had deposited elegant girls at her door
and whirled them off again. And she would have denied it and yet was
not ashamed.
The sole extenuation of Rachel's base worldliness was that during the
previous six months she had almost continuously had the sensations of
a person crossing Niagara on a tight-rope, and that now, on this very
day, she had leaped to firm ground and was accordingly exultant. After
Mrs. Maldon's death she had felt somehow guilty of disloyalty; she
passionately regretted having had no opportunity to assure the old
lady that her suspicions about Louis were wrong and cruel, and
to prove to her in some mysterious way the deep rightness of the
betrothal. She blushed only for the moment of her betrothal. She had
solemnly bound Louis to keep the betrothal secret until Christmas. She
had laid upon both of them a self-denying ordinance as to meeting.
The funeral over, she was without a home. She wished to find another
situation; Louis would not hear of it. She contemplated a visit to her
father and brother in America. In response to a letter, her brother
sent her the exact amount of the steerage fare, and, ready to accept
it, she was astounded at Louis' fury against her brother and at the
accent with which he had spit out the word "steerage." Her brother
and father had gone steerage. However, she gave way to Louis, chiefly
because she could not bear to leave him even for a couple of months.
She was lodging at Knype, at a total normal expense of ten shillings
a week. She possessed over fifty pounds--enough to keep her for six
months and to purchase a trousseau, and not one penny would she deign
to receive from her affianced.
The disclosure of Mrs. Maldon's will increased the delicacy of her
situation. Mrs. Maldon had left the whole of her property in equal
shares to Louis and Julian absolutely. There were others who by blood
had an equal claim upon her with these two, but the rest had been
mere names to her, and she had characteristically risen above the
conventionalism of heredity. Mr. Batchgrew, the executor, was able
to announce that in spite of losses the heirs would get over three
thousand five hundred pounds apiece. Hence it followed that Rachel
would be marrying for money as well as for position! She trembled
when the engagement was at length announced. And when Louis, after
consultation with Mr. Batchgrew, pointed out that it would be
advantageous not merely to the estate as a whole, but to himself and
to her, if he took over the house at Bycars and its contents at
a valuation and made it their married home, she at first declined
utterly. The scheme seemed sacrilegious to her. How could she dare to
be happy in that house where Mrs. Maldon had died, in that house which
was so intimately Mrs. Maldon's? But the manifold excellences of the
scheme, appealing strongly to her common sense, overcame her scruples.
The dead are dead; the living must live, and the living must not be
morbid; it would be absurd to turn into a pious monument every
house which death has emptied; Mrs. Maldon, had she known all the
circumstances, would have been only too pleased, etc., etc. The affair
was settled, and grew into public knowledge.
Rachel had to emerge upon the world as an engaged girl. Left to
herself she would have shunned all formalities; but Louis, bred up
in Barnes, knew what was due to society. Naught was omitted. Louis'
persuasiveness could not be withstood. Withal, he was so right. And
though Rachel in one part of her mind had a contempt for "fuss," in
another she liked it and was half ashamed of liking it. Further, her
common sense, of which she was still proud, told her that the delicacy
of her situation demanded "fuss," and would be much assuaged thereby.
And finally, the whole thing, being miraculous, romantic, and
incredible, had the quality of a dream through which she lived in a
dazed nonchalance. Could it be true that she had resided with Mrs.
Maldon only for a month? Could it be true that her courtship had
lasted only two days--or at most, three? Never, she thought, had a
sensible, quiet girl ridden such a whirlwind before in the entire
history of the world. Could Louis be as foolishly fond of her as
he seemed? Was she truly to be married? "I shan't have a single
wedding-present," she had said. Then wedding-presents began to come.
"Are we married?" she had said, when they were married and in the
conventional clothes in the conventional vehicle. After that she soon
did realize that the wondrous and the unutterable had happened to her
too. And she swung over to the other extreme: instead of doubting the
reality of her own experiences, she was convinced that her experiences
were more real than those of any other created girl, and hence she
felt a slight condescension towards all the rest. "I am a married
woman," she reflected at intervals, with intense momentary pride.
And her fits of confusion in public would end in recurrences of this
strange, proud feeling.
Then she had to face the return to Bursley, and, later, the At Home
which Louis propounded as a matter of course, and which she knew to be
inevitable. The house was her toy, and Mrs. Tams was her toy. But
the glee of playing with toys had been overshadowed for days by the
delicious dread of the At Home. "It will be the first caller that will
kill me," she had said. "But will anybody really come?" And the first
caller had called. And, finding herself still alive, she had become
radiant, and often during the afternoon had forgotten to be clumsy.
The success of the At Home was prodigious, startling. Now and then
when the room was full, and people without chairs perched on the end
of the Chesterfield, she had whispered to her secret heart in a tiny,
tiny voice: "These are my guests. They all treat me with special
deference. I am the hostess. _I am Mrs. Fores_." The Batchgrew
clan was well represented, no doubt by order from authority, Mrs.
Yardley came, in surprising stylishness. Visitors arrived from Knype.
Miss Malkin came and atoned for her historic glance in the shop. But
the dazzlers were sundry male friends of Louis, with Kensingtonian
accents, strange phrases, and assurance in the handling of teacups and
the choosing of cake.... One by one and two by two they had departed,
and at last Rachel, with a mind as it were breathless from rapid
flittings to and fro, was seated alone on the sofa.
She was richly dressed in a dark blue taffeta dress that gave
brilliance to her tawny hair. Perhaps she was over-richly dressed,
for, like many girls who as a rule are not very interested in clothes,
she was too interested in them at times, and inexperienced taste was
apt to mislead her into an unfitness. Also her figure was too stiff
and sturdy to favour elegance. But on this occasion the general
effect of her was notably picturesque, and her face and hair, and the
expression of her pose, atoned in their charm for the shortcomings
and the luxuriance of the frock. She was no more the Rachel that
Mrs. Maldon had known and that Louis had first kissed. Her glance had
altered, and her gestures. She would ask herself, could it be true
that she was a married woman? But her glance and gestures announced
it true at every instant. A new languor and a new confidence had
transformed the girl. Her body had been modified and her soul at
once chastened and fired. Fresh in her memory was endless matter for
meditation. And on the sofa, in a negligent attitude of repose,
with shameless eyes gazing far into the caverns of the fire, and an
unreadable faint smile on her face, she meditated. And she was the
most seductive, tantalizing, self-contradictory object for study in
the whole of Bursley. She had never been so interesting as in this
brief period, and she might never be so interesting again.
Mrs. Tams entered. With her voice Mrs. Tams said, "Shall I begin to
clear all these things away, _mam_?" But with her self-conscious
eyes Mrs. Tams said to the self-conscious eyes of Rachel, "What a
staggering world we live in, don't we?"
II
Rachel sprang from the Chesterfield, smoothed down her frock, shook
her hair, and then ran upstairs to the large front bedroom, where
Louis, to whom the house was just as much a toy as to Rachel, was
about to knock a nail into a wall. Out of breath, she stood close
to him very happily. The At Home was over. She was now definitely
received as a married woman in a town full of married women and girls
waiting to be married women. She had passed successfully through a
trying and exhausting experience; the nervous tension was slackened.
And therefore it might be expected that she would have a sense of
reaction, the vague melancholy which is produced when that which has
long been seen before is suddenly seen behind. But it was not so
in the smallest degree. Every moment of her existence equally was
thrilling and happy. One piquant joy was succeeded immediately by
another as piquant. To Rachel it was not in essence more exciting to
officiate at an At Home than to watch Louis drive a nail into a wall.
The man winked at her in the dusk; she winked back, and put her hand
intimately on his shoulder. She thought, "I am safe with him now in
the house." The feeling of solitude with him, of being barricaded
against the world and at the mercy of Louis alone, was exquisite to
her. Then Louis raised himself on his toes, and raised his left arm
with the nail as high as he could, and stuck the point of the nail
against a pencil-mark on the wall. Then he raised the right hand with
the hammer; but the mark was just too high to be efficiently reached
by both hands simultaneously. Louis might have stood on a chair. This
simple device, however, was too simple for them.
Rachel said--
"Shall I stand on a chair and hold the nail for you?" Louis murmured--
"Brainy little thing! Never at a loss!"
She skipped on to a chair and held the nail. Towering thus above him,
she looked down on her husband and thought: "This man is mine alone,
and he is all mine." And in Rachel's fancy the thought itself seemed
to caress Louis from head to foot.
"Supposing I catch you one?" said Louis, as he prepared to strike.
"I don't care," said Rachel.
And the fact was that really she would have liked him to hit her
finger instead of the nail--not too hard, but still smartly. She would
have taken pleasure in the pain: such was the perversity of the young
wife. But Louis hit the nail infallibly every time.
He took up a picture which had been lying against the wall in a dark
corner, and thrust the twisting wire of it over the nail.
Rachel, when in the deepening darkness she had peered into the frame,
exclaimed, pouting--
"Oh, darling, you aren't going to hang that here, are you? It's so
old-fashioned. You said it was old-fashioned yourself. I did want that
thing that came this morning to be put somewhere here. Why can't
you stick this in the spare room?... Unless, of course, you
_prefer_...." She was being deferential to the art-expert in him,
as well as to the husband.
"Not in the least!" said Louis, acquiescent, and unhooked the picture.
Taste changes. The rejected of Rachel was a water-colour by the late
Athelstan Maldon, adored by Mrs. Maldon. Already it had been degraded
from the parlour to the bedroom, and now it was to be pushed away
like a shame into obscurity. It was a view of the celebrated Vale of
Llangollen, finicking, tight, and hard in manner, but with a certain
sentiment and modest skill. The way in which the initials "A.M."
had been hidden amid the foreground foliage in the left-hand corner
disclosed enough of the painter's quiet and proud temperament to
show that he "took after" his mother. Yet a few more years, and the
careless observer would miss those initials altogether and would
be contemptuously inquiring, "Who did this old daub, I wonder?" And
nobody would know who did the old daub, or that the old daub for
thirty years had been an altar for undying affection, and also a
distinguished specimen--admired by a whole generation of townsfolk--of
the art of water-colour.
And the fate of Athelstan's sketch was symptomatic. Mrs. Maiden's
house had been considered perfect, up to the time of her death. Rachel
had at first been even intimidated by it; Louis had sincerely
praised it. And indeed its perfection was an axiom of drawing-room
conversation. But as soon as Louis and Rachel began to look on the
house with the eye of inhabitants, the axiom fell to a dogma, and the
dogma was exploded. The dreadful truth came out that Mrs. Maldon had
shown a strange indifference to certain aspects of convenience, and
that, in short, she must have been a peculiar old lady with ideas
of her own. Louis proved unanswerably that in the hitherto faultless
parlour the furniture was ill arranged, and suddenly the sideboard and
the Chesterfield had changed places, and all concerned had marvelled
that Mrs. Maldon had for so long kept the Chesterfield where so
obviously the sideboard ought to have been, and the sideboard where so
obviously the Chesterfield ought to have been.
And still graver matters had come to light. The house had an attic
floor, which was unused and the scene of no activity except spring
cleaning. A previous owner, infected by the virus of modernity, had
put a bath into one of the attics. Now Mrs. Maldon, as experiments
disclosed, had actually had the water cut off from the bath. Eyebrows
were lifted at the revelation of this caprice. The restoration of
the supply of water and the installing of a geyser were the only
expenditures which thrifty Rachel had sanctioned in the way of
rejuvenating the house. Rachel had decided that the house must, at any
rate for the present, be "made to do." That such a decision should be
necessary astonished Rachel; and Mrs. Maldon would have been more
than astonished to learn that the lady help, by fortitude and
determination, was making her perfect house "do." As regards the
household inventory, Rachel had been obliged to admit exceptions to
her rule of endurance. Perhaps her main reason for agreeing to live in
the house had been that there would be no linen to buy. But truly
Mrs. Maldon's notion of what constituted a sufficiency of--for
example--towels, was quite too inadequate. Louis protested that he
could comfortably use all Mrs. Maldon's towels in half a day. More
towels had to be obtained. There were other shortages, but some of
them were set right by means of veiled indications to prospective
givers of gifts.
"You mean that 'Garden of the Hesperides' affair for up here, do you?"
said Louis.
Rachel gazed round the bedchamber. A memory of what it had been shot
painfully through her mind. For the room was profoundly changed
in character. Two narrow bedsteads given by Thomas Batchgrew, and
described by Mrs. Tarns, in a moment of daring, as "flighty," had
taken the place of Mrs. Maldon's bedstead, which was now in the spare
room, the spare-room bedstead having been allotted to Mrs. Tams,
and Rachel's old bedstead sold. Bright crocheted and embroidered
wedding-presents enlivened the pale tones of the room. The wardrobe,
washstand, dressing-table, chairs, carpet, and ottoman remained.
But there were razors on the washstand and boot-trees under it; the
wardrobe had been emptied, and filled on strange principles with
strange raiment; and the Maldon family Bible, instead of being on the
ottoman, was in the ottoman--so as to be out of the dust.
"Perhaps we may as well keep that here, after all," said Rachel,
indicating Athelsan's water-colour. Her voice was soft. She remembered
that the name of Mrs. Maldon, only a little while since a major
notability of Bursley and the very mirror of virtuous renown, had
been mentioned but once, and even then apologetically, during the
afternoon.
Louis asked, sharply--
"Why, if you don't care for it? _I_ don't."
"Well--" said Rachel. "As you like, then, dearest."
Louis walked out of the room with the water-colour, and in a moment
returned with a photogravure of Lord Leighton's "The Garden of the
Hesperides," in a coquettish gold frame--a gift newly arrived from
Louis' connections in the United States. The marmoreal and academic
work seemed wonderfully warm and original in that room at Bycars.
Rachel really admired it, and admired herself for admiring it. But
when Louis had hung it and flicked it into exact perpendicularity, and
they had both exclaimed upon its brilliant effect even in the dusk,
Rachel saw it also with the eyes of Mrs. Maldon, and wondered what
Mrs. Maldon would have thought of it opposite her bed, and knew what
Mrs. Maldon would have thought of it.
And then, the job being done and the progress of civilization assured,
Louis murmured in a new appealing voice--
"I say, Louise!"
"Louise" was perhaps his most happy invention, and the best proof
that Louis was Louis. Upon hearing that her full Christian names
were Rachel Louisa, he had instantly said--"I shall call you Louise."
Rachel was ravished, Louisa is a vulgar name--at least it is vulgar
in the Five Towns, where every second general servant bears it. But
Louise was full of romance, distinction, and beauty. And it was the
perfect complement to Louis. Louis and Louise--ideal coincidence!
"But nobody except me is to call you Louise," he had added. And thus
completed her bliss.
"What?" she encouraged him amorously.
"Suppose we go to Llandudno on Saturday for the week-end?"
His tone was gay, gentle, innocent, persuasive. Yet the words stabbed
her and her head swam.
"But why?" she asked, controlling her utterance.
"Oh, well! Be rather a lark, wouldn't it?" It was when he talked in
this strain that the inconvenient voice of sagacity within her would
question for one agonizing instant whether she was more secure as the
proud, splendid wife of Louis Fores than she had been as a mere lady
help. And the same insistent voice would repeat the warnings which she
had had from Mrs. Maldon and from Thomas Batchgrew, and would remind
her of what she herself had said to herself when Louis first kissed
her--"This is wrong. But I don't care. He is mine."
Upon hearing of his inheritance from Mrs. Maldon, Louis was for
throwing up immediately his situation at Horrocleave's. Rachel had
dissuaded him from such irresponsible madness. She had prevented him
from running into a hundred expenses during their engagement and in
connection with the house. And he had in the end enthusiastically
praised her common sense. But that very morning at the midday meal he
had surprised her by announcing that on account of the reception he
should not go to the works at all in the afternoon, though he had
omitted to warn Horrocleave. Ultimately she had managed, by guile, to
dispatch him to the works for two hours. And now in the evening he
was alarming her afresh. Why go to Llandudno? What point was there in
rushing off to Llandudno, and scattering in three days more money than
they could save in three weeks? He frightened her ingrained prudence,
and her alarm was only increased by his obvious failure to realize the
terrible defect in himself. (For to her it was terrible.) The joyous
scheme of an excursion to Llandudno had suddenly crossed his mind,
exciting the appetite for pleasure. Hence the appetite must be
immediately indulged!... Rachel had been brought up otherwise. And as
a direct result of Louis' irresponsible suggestion she had a vision of
the house with county-court bailiffs lodged in the kitchen.... She had
only to say--"Yes, let's go," and they would be off on the absurd and
wicked expedition.
"I'd really rather not," she said, smiling, but serious.
"All serene. But, anyhow, next week's Easter, and we shall have to go
somewhere then, you know."
She put her hands on his shoulders and looked close at him, knowing
that she must use her power and that the heavy dusk would help her.
"Why?" she asked again. "I'd much sooner stay here at Easter. Truly I
would!... With you!"
The episode ended with an embrace. She had won.
"Very well! Very well!" said Louis. "Easter in the coal-cellar if you
like. I'm on for anything."
"But don't you _see_, dearest?" she said.
And he imitated her emphasis, full of teasing good humour--
"Yes, I _see_, dearest."
She breathed relief, and asked--
"Are you going to give me my bicycle lesson?"
III
Louis had borrowed a bicycle for Rachel to ruin while learning to
ride. He said that a friend had lent it to him--a man in Hanbridge
whose mother had given up riding on account of stoutness--but who
exactly this friend was Rachel knew not, Louis' information being
characteristically sketchy and incomplete; and with his air of candour
and good humour he had a strange way of warding off questions; so that
already Rachel had grown used to a phrase which she would utter only
in her mind, "I don't like to ask him--"
It pleased Louis to ride this bicycle out of the back yard, down
the sloping entry, and then steer it through another narrow gateway,
across the pavement, and let it solemnly bump, first with the front
wheel and then with the back wheel, from the pavement into the road.
During this feat he stood on the pedals. He turned the machine up
Bycars Lane, and steadily climbed the steep at Rachel's walking pace.
And Rachel, hurrying by his side, watched in the obscurity the play of
his ankles as he put into practice the principles of pedalling which
he had preached. He was a graceful rider; every movement was natural
and elegant. Rachel considered him to be the most graceful cyclist
that ever was. She was fascinated by the revolutions of his feet.
She felt ecstatically happy. The episode of his caprice for the
seaside was absolutely forgotten; after all, she asked for nothing
more than possession of him, and she had that, though indeed it seemed
too marvellous to be true. The bicycle lesson was her hour of magic;
and more so on this night than on previous nights.
"I must change my dress," she had said. "I can't go in this one."
"Quick, then!"
His impatience could not wait. He had helped her. He undid hooks, and
fastened others.... The rich blue frock lay across the bed and looked
lovely on the ivory-coloured counterpane. It seemed indeed to be a
part of that in her which was Louise. Then she was in a short skirt
which she had devised herself, and he was pushing her out of the room,
his hand on her back. And she had feigned reluctance, resisting his
pressure, while laughing with gleeful eagerness to be gone. No delay
had been allowed. As they passed through the kitchen, not one instant
for parley with Mrs. Tams as to the domestic organization of the
evening! He was still pushing her.... Thus she had had to confide her
precious house and its innumerable treasures to Mrs. Tams. And in this
surrender to Louis' whim there was a fearful joy.
When Louis turned at last into Park Road, and stepped from between the
wheels, she exclaimed, a little breathless from quick walking level
with him up the hill--
"I can't bear to see you ride so well. Oh!" She crunched her teeth
with a loving, cruel gesture. "I should like to hurt you frightfully!"
"What for?"
"Because I shall never, never be able to ride as well as you do!"
He winked.
"Here! Take hold."
"I'm not ready! I'm not ready!" she cried.
But he loosed the machine, and she was obliged to seize it as it fell.
That was his teasing.
Park Road had been the scene of the lesson for three nights. It was
level, and it was unfrequented. "And the doctor's handy in case
you break your neck," Louis had said. Dr. Yardley's red lamp shone
amicably among yellow lights, and its ray with theirs was lost in the
mysterious obscurities of the closed park. Not only was it socially
advisable for Rachel to study the perverse nature of the bicycle at
night--for not to know how to ride the bicycle was as shameful as not
to know how to read and write--but she preferred the night for the
romantic feeling of being alone with Louis, in the dark and above the
glow of the town. She loved the sharp night wind on her cheek, and
the faint clandestine rustling of the low evergreens within the park
palisade, and the invisible and almost tangible soft sky, revealed
round the horizon by gleams of fire. She had longed to ride the
bicycle as some girls long to follow the hunt or to steer an
automobile or a yacht. And now her ambition was being attained amid
all circumstances of bliss.
And yet she would shrink from beginning the lesson.
"The lamp! You've forgotten to light the lamp!" she said.
"Get on," said he.
"But suppose a policeman comes?"
"Suppose you get on and start! Do you think I don't know you?
Policemen are my affair. Besides, all nice policemen are in bed....
Don't be afraid. It isn't alive. I've got hold of the thing. Sit well
down. No! There are only two pedals. You seem to think there are about
nineteen. Right! No, no, _no_! Don't--do not--cling to those
blooming handle-bars as if you were in a storm at sea. Be a nice
little cat in front of the fire--all your muscles loose. Now! Are you
ready?"
"Yes," she murmured, with teeth set and dilated eyes staring ahead at
the hideous dangers of Park Road.
He impelled. The pedals went round. The machine slid terribly forward.
And in a moment Louis said, mischievously--
"I told you you'd have to go alone to-night. There you are!"
His footsteps ceased.
"Louis!" she cried, sharply and yet sadly upbraiding his unspeakable
treason. Her fingers gripped convulsively the handle-bars. She was
moving alone. It was inconceivably awful and delightful. She was on
the back of a wild pony in the forest. The miracle of equilibrium was
being accomplished. The impossible was done, and at the first attempt.
She thought very clearly how wondrous was life, and how perfectly
happy fate had made her. And then she was lying in a tangle amid
dozens of complex wheels, chains, and bars.
"Hurt?" shouted Louis, as he ran up.
She laughed and said "No," and sat up stiffly, full of secret dolours.
Yet he knew and she knew that the accidents of the previous two nights
had covered her limbs with blue discolorations, and that the latest
fall was more severe than any previous one. Her courage enchanted
Louis and filled him with a sense of security. She was not graceful in
these exercises. Her ankles were thick and clumsy. Not merely had she
no natural aptitude for physical feats--apparently she was not lissom,
nor elegant in motion. But what courage! What calm, bright endurance!
What stoicism! Most girls would have reproached him for betraying them
to destruction, would have pouted, complained, demanded petting and
apologies. But not she! She was like a man. And when he helped her
to pick herself up he noticed that after all she was both lissom and
agile, and exquisitely, disturbingly girlish in her short dusty skirt;
and that she did trust him and depend on him. And he realized that he
was safe for life with her. She was created for him.
Work was resumed.
"Now don't let go of me till I tell you," she enjoined lightly.
"I won't," he answered. And it seemed to him that his loyalty to her
expanded and filled all his soul.
Later, as she approached the other end of Park Road, near Moorthorne
Road, a tram-car hurled itself suddenly down Moorthorne Road and
overthrew her. It is true that the tram-car was never less than twenty
yards away from her. But even at twenty yards it could overthrow.
Rachel sat dazed in the road, and her voice was uncertain as she
told Louis to examine the bicycle. One of the pedals was bent, and
prevented the back wheel from making a complete revolution.
"It's nothing," said Louis. "I'll have it right in the morning."
"Who's that?" Rachel, who had risen, gasping, turned to him excitedly
as he was bending over the bicycle. Conscious that somebody had been
standing at the corner of the street, he glanced up. A figure was
moving quickly down Moorthorne Road in the direction of the station.
"I dun'no," said he.
"It's not Julian, is it?"
In a peculiar tone Louis replied--
"Looks like him, doesn't it?" And then impulsively he yelled "Hi!"
The figure kept on its way.
"Seeing that the inimitable Julian's still in South Africa, it can't
very well be him. And, anyhow, I'm not going to run after him."
"No, of course it can't," Rachel assented.
Presently the returning procession was re-formed. Louis pushed the
bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support
the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the
pedal off the crank.
"It's perhaps a good thing you fell just then," said Louis. "Because
old Batch is coming in to-night, and we'd better not be late."
"But you never told me!"
"Didn't I? I forgot," he said blandly.
"Oh, Louis!... He's not coming for supper, I hope?"
"My child, if there's a chance of a free meal, old Batch will be on
the spot."
The unaccustomed housewife foretold her approaching shame, and
proclaimed Louis to be the author of it. She began to quicken her
steps.
"You certainly ought to have let me know sooner, dearest," she said
seriously. "You really are terrible."
Hard knocks had not hurt her. But she was hurt now. And Louis'
smile was very constrained. Her grave manner of saying "dearest" had
disquieted him.