THE CHANGED MAN
I
Exactly a week passed, and Easter had come, before Rachel could set
out upon an enterprise which she both longed and hated to perform. In
the meantime the situation in the house remained stationary, except
that after a relapse Louis' condition had gradually improved. She
nursed him; he permitted himself to be nursed; she slept near him
every night; no scene of irritation passed between them. But nothing
was explained; even the fact that Rachel on the Saturday morning
had overtaken Louis instead of meeting him--a detail which in secret
considerably puzzled Louis, since it implied that his wife had been
in the house when he left it--even this was not explained; as for the
motor-car, Louis, absorbed, had scarcely noticed it, and Rachel
did not mention it. She went on from one day into the next, proud,
self-satisfied, sure of her strength and her position, indifferently
scornful of Louis, and yet fatally stricken; she knew not in the least
what was to be done, and so she waited for Destiny. Louis had to stop
in bed for five days. His relapse worried Dr. Yardley, who, however,
like many doctors, was kept in complete ignorance of the truth;
Rachel was ashamed to confess that her husband had monstrously taken
advantage of her absence to rise up and dress and go out; and Louis
had said no word. On the Friday he was permitted to sit in a chair
in the bedroom, and on Saturday he had the freedom of the house.
It surprised Rachel that on the Saturday he had not dashed for the
street, for after the exploit of the previous Saturday she was ready
to expect anything. Had he done so she would not have interfered; he
was really convalescent, and also the number of white stripes over
his face and hair had diminished. In the afternoon he reclined on the
Chesterfield to read, and fell asleep. Then it was that Rachel set out
upon her enterprise. She said not a word to Louis, but instructed Mrs.
Tams to inform the master, if he inquired, that she had gone over to
Knype to see Mr. Maldon.
"Are you a friend of Mester Maldon's?" asked the grey-haired slattern
who answered her summons at the door of Julian's lodgings in Granville
Street, Knype. There was a challenge in the woman's voice. Rachel
accepted it at once.
"Yes, I am," she said, with decision.
"Well, I don't know as I want any o' Mester Maldon's friends here,"
said the landlady loudly. "Mester Maldon's done a flit from here,
Mester Maldon has; and," coming out on to the pavement and pointing
upward to a broken pane in the first-floor window, "that's a bit o'
his fancy work afore he flitted!"
Rachel put her lips together.
"Can you give me his new address?"
"Can I give yer his new address? Pr'aps I can and pr'aps I canna,
but I dunna see why I should waste my breath on Mester Maldon's
friends--that I dunna! And I wunna!"
Rachel walked away. Before she reached the end of the frowsy street,
whose meanness and monotony of tiny-bow-windows exemplified intensely
the most deplorable characteristics of a district where brutish
licence is decreasing, she was overtaken by a lanky girl in a
pinafore.
"If ye please, miss, Mester Maldon's gone to live at 29 Birches
Street, 'anbridge."
Having made this announcement, the girl ran off, with a short giggle.
Rachel, had to walk half a mile to reach the tram-route. This
re-visiting of her native town, which she had quitted only a few weeks
earlier, seemed to her like the sad resumption of an existence
long forgotten. She was self-conscious and hoped that she would not
encounter the curiosity of any of her Knype acquaintances. She felt
easier when she was within the sheltering car and rumbling and jerking
through the gloomy carnival of Easter Saturday afternoon in Knype and
Cauldon on the way to Hanbridge.
After leaving the car in Crown Square, she had to climb through all
the western quarter of Hanbridge to the very edge of the town, on the
hummock that separates it from the Axe Moorlands. Birches Street, as
she had guessed, was in the suburb known as Birches Pike. It ran
right to the top of the hill, and the upper portion consisted of new
cottage-houses in groups of two or three, with vacant lots between.
Why should Julian have chosen Birches Street for residence, seeing
that his business was in Knype? It was a repellent street; it was out
even of the little world where sordidness is at any rate dignified
by tradition and anaemic ideals can support each other in close
companionship. It had neither a past nor a future. The steep end of
it was an horizon of cloud. The April east wind blew the smoke of
Hanbridge right across it.
In this east wind men in shirt-sleeves, and women with aprons over
their heads, stood nonchalantly at cottage gates contemplating the
vacuum of leisure. On two different parcels of land teams of shrieking
boys were playing football, with piles of caps and jackets to serve as
goal-posts. To the left, in a clough, was an enormous yellow marlpit,
with pools of water in its depths, and gangways of planks along them,
and a few overturned wheelbarrows lying here and there. A group of men
drove at full speed up the street in a dogcart behind a sweating cob,
stopped violently at the summit, and, taking watches from pockets,
began to let pigeons out of baskets. The pigeons rose in wide circles
and were lost in the vast dome of melancholy that hung over the
district.
II
No. 29 was the second house from the top, new, and already in decay.
It and its attached twin were named "Prospect Villas" in vermilion
tiles on the yellowish-red bricks of the façade. Hot, and yet chilled
by the wind, Rachel hesitated a moment at the gate, suddenly realizing
the perils of her mission. And then she saw Julian Maldon standing in
the bay-window of the ground floor; he was eating. Simultaneously he
recognized her.
She thought, "I can't go back now."
He came sheepishly to the front door and asked her to walk in.
"Who'd have thought of seeing you?" he exclaimed. "You must take me as
I am. I've only just moved in."
"I've been to your old address," she said, smiling, with an attempt at
animation.
"A rare row I had there!" he murmured.
She understood, with a pang of compassion and yet with feminine
disdain, the horrible thing that his daily existence was. No wonder he
would never allow Mrs. Maldon to go and see him! The spectacle of his
secret squalor would have desolated the old lady.
"Don't take any notice of all this," he said apologetically, as he
preceded her into the room where she had seen him standing. "I'm not
straight yet.... Not that it matters. By the way, take a seat, will
you?"
Rachel courageously sat down.
Just as there were no curtains to the windows, so there was no carpet
on the planked floor. A few pieces of new, cheap, ignoble furniture
half filled the room. In one corner was a sofa-bedstead covered with
an army blanket, in the middle a crimson-legged deal table, partly
covered with a dirty cloth, and on the cloth were several apples, an
orange, and a hunk of brown bread--his meal. Although he had only just
"moved in," dust had had time to settle thickly on all the furniture.
No pictures of any kind hid the huge sunflower that made the pattern
of the wall-paper. In the hearth, which lacked a fender, a small fire
was expiring.
"Ye see," said Julian, "I only eat when I'm hungry. It's a good plan.
So I'm eating now. I've turned vegetarian. There's naught like it.
I've chucked all that guzzling an swilling business. It's no good. I
never touch a drop of liquor, nor a morsel of fleshmeat. Nor smoke,
either. When you come to think of it, smoking's a disgusting habit."
Rachel said, pleasantly, "But you were smoking last week, surely?"
"Ah! But it's since then. I don't mind telling you. In fact, I meant
to tell you, anyhow. I've turned over a new leaf. And it wasn't too
soon. I've joined the Knype Ethical Society. So there you are!" His
voice grew defiant and fierce, as in the past, and he proceeded with
his meal.
Rachel knew nothing of the Knype Ethical Society, except that in
spite of its name it was regarded with unfriendly suspicion by the
respectable as an illicit rival of churches and chapels and a haunt of
dubious characters who, under high-sounding mottoes, were engaged in
the wicked scheme of setting class against class. She had accepted
the general verdict on the Knype Ethical Society. And now she was
confirmed in it. As she gazed at Julian Maldon in that dreadful
interior, chewing apples and brown bread and sucking oranges, only
when he felt hungry, she loathed the Knype Ethical Society. It was
nothing to her that the Knype Ethical Society was responsible for a
religious and majestic act in Julian Maldon--the act of turning over a
new leaf.
"And why did you come up here?"
"Oh, various reasons!" said Julian, with a certain fictitious
nonchalance, beneath which was all his old ferocious domination.
"You see, I didn't get enough exercise before. Lived too close to the
works. In fact, a silly existence. I saw it all plain enough as soon
as I got back from South Africa.... Exercise! What you want is for
your skin to act at least once every day. Don't you think so?" He
seemed to be appealing to her for moral support in some revolutionary
theory.
"Well--I'm sure I don't know."
Julian continued--
"If you ask me, I believe there are some people who never perspire
from one year's end to another. Never! How can they expect to be well?
How can they expect even to be clean? The pores, you know. I've been
reading a lot about it. Well, I walk up here from Knype full speed
every day. Everybody ought to do it. Then I have a bath."
"Oh! Is there a bathroom?"
"No, there isn't," he answered curtly. Then in a tone of apology: "But
I manage. You see, I'm going to save. I was spending too much
down there--furnished rooms. Here I took two rooms--this one and a
kitchen--unfurnished; very much cheaper, of course. I've just fixed
them up temporarily. Little by little they'll be improved. The woman
upstairs comes in for half an hour in the morning and just cleans up
when I'm gone."
"And does your cooking?"
"Not much!" said Julian bravely. "I do that myself. In the first
place, I want very little cooking. Cooking's not natural. And what
bit I do want--well, I have my own ideas about it, I've got a little
pamphlet about rational eating and cooking. You might read it.
Everybody ought to read it."
"I suppose all that sort of thing's very interesting," Rachel remarked
at large, with politeness.
"It is," Julian said emphatically.
Neither of them felt the necessity of defining what was meant by "all
that sort of thing." The phrase had been used with intention and was
perfectly understood.
"But if you want to know what I really came up here for," Julian
resumed, "I'll show you."
"Where?"
"Outside." And he repeated, "I'll show you."
III
She followed him as, bareheaded, he hurried out of the room into the
street.
"Shan't you take cold without anything on your head in this wind?" she
suggested mildly.
He would have snapped off the entire head of any other person who had
ventured to make the suggestion. But he treated Rachel more gently
because he happened to think that she was the only truly sensible and
kind woman he had ever met in his life.
"No fear!" he muttered.
At the front gate he stopped and looked back at his bay-window.
"Now--curtains!" he said. "I won't have curtains. Blinds, at night,
yes, if you like. But curtains! I never could see any use in curtains.
Fallals! Keep the light out! Dust-traps!"
Rachel gazed at him. Despite his beard, he appeared to her as a big
schoolboy, blundering about in the world, a sort of leviathan puppy in
earnest. She liked him, on account of an occasional wistful expression
in his eyes, and because she had been kind to him during his fearful
visit to Bycars. She even admired him, for his cruel honesty and
force. At the same time, he excited her compassion to an acute degree.
As she gazed at him the tears were ready to start from her eyes. What
she had seen, and what she had heard of the new existence which he was
organizing for himself made her feel sick with pity. But mingled
with her pity was a sharp disdain. The idea of Julian talking about
cleanliness, dust-traps, and rationality gave her a desire to laugh
and cry at once. All the stolid and yet wary conservatism of her
character revolted against meals at odd hours, brown bread, apples,
orange-sucking, action of the skin, male cooking, camp-beds, the
frowsiness of casual charwomen, bare heads, and especially bare
windows. If Rachel had been absolutely free to civilize Julian's life,
she would have begun by measuring the bay-window.
She said firmly--
"I must say I don't agree with you about curtains."
His gestures of impatience were almost violent; but she would not
flinch.
"Don't ye?"
"No."
"Straight?"
She nodded.
He drew breath. "Well, I'll get some--if it'll satisfy you."
His surrender was intensely dramatic to her. It filled her with
happiness, with a consciousness of immense power. She thought: "I can
influence him. I alone can influence him. Unless _I_ look after
him his existence will be dreadful--dreadful."
"You'd much better let me buy them for you." She smiled persuasively.
"Have it your own way!" he said gloomily. "Just come along up here."
He led her up to the top of the street.
"Ye'll see what I live up here for," he muttered as they approached
the summit.
The other half of the world lay suddenly at their feet as they capped
the brow, but it was obscured by mist and cloud. The ragged downward
road was lost in the middle distance amid vaporous grey-greens and
earthy browns.
"No go!" he exclaimed crossly. "Not clear enough! But on a fine day ye
can see Axe and Axe Edge.... Finest view in the Five Towns."
The shrill cries of the footballers reached them.
"What a pity!" she sympathized eagerly. "I'm sure it must be
splendid." His situation seemed extraordinarily tragic to her. His
short hair, ruffled by the keen wind, was just like a boy's hair and
somehow the sight of it touched her deeply.
He put his hands far into his pockets and drummed one foot on the
ground.
"What brought ye up here?" he demanded, with his eyes on an invisible
town of Axe.
She opened her hand-bag.
"I came to bring you this," she said, and offered him an envelope,
which he took, wonderingly.
Then, when he had it in his hands, he said abruptly, angrily, "If it's
that money, I won't take it."
"Yes you will."
"Has Louis sent ye?" This was the first mention of Louis, though he
was well aware of the accident.
She shook her head.
"Well, let him keep his half, and you can keep mine."
"It's all there."
"How--all there?"
"All that you left the other night."
"But--but--" He seemed to be furious as he faced her.
Rachel went on--
"The other part of the missing money's been found ... Louis had it. So
all this belongs to you. If some one hadn't told you it wouldn't have
been fair."
She flushed slowly, trembling, but looking at him.
"Well!" Julian burst out with savage solemnity, "there's not many of
your sort knocking about. By G---- there isn't!"
She walked quickly away from his passionate homage to her.
"Here!" he shouted, fingering the envelope.
But she kept on at a swift pace towards Hanbridge. About a quarter of
a mile down the road the pigeon-flyer's dogcart stood empty outside a
public-house.