IN THE MONASTERY
I
When Mrs. Tams brought in his early cup of tea that Easter Saturday
afternoon, Louis had no project whatever in his head, and he was
excessively, exasperatingly bored. A quarter of an hour earlier he had
finished reading the novel which had been mitigating the worst
tedium of his shamed convalescence, and the state of his mind was not
improved by the fact that in his opinion the author of the novel had
failed to fulfil clear promises--had, in fact, abused his trust. On
the other hand, he felt very appreciably stronger, and his self-esteem
was heightened by the complete correctness of his toilet. On that
morning he had dressed himself with art and care for the first time
since the accident. He enjoyed a little dandyism; dandified, he was a
better man; the "fall" of a pair of trousers over the knee, the gloss
of white wristbands, just showing beneath the new cloth of a well-cut
sleeve--these phenomena not only pleased him but gave him confidence.
And herein was the sole bright spot of his universe when Mrs. Tams
entered.
He was rather curt with Mrs. Tams because she was two minutes late;
for two endless minutes he had been cultivating the resentment of a
man neglected and forgotten by every one of those whose business in
life it is to succour, humour, and soothe him.
Mrs. Tams comprehended his mood with precision, and instantly. She
hovered round him like a hen, indeed like a whole flock of hens, and
when he savagely rebuffed her she developed from a flock of hens into
a flight of angels.
"Missis said as I was to tell you as she'd gone to see Mr. Julian
Maldon, sir," said Mrs. Tams, in the way of general gossip.
Louis made no sign.
"Her didna say how soon her'd be back. I was for going out, sir, but
I'll stop in, sir, and willing--"
"What time are you supposed to go out?" Louis demanded, in a tone less
inimical than his countenance.
"By rights, now, sir," said Mrs. Tams, looking backward through the
open door at the lobby clock.
"Well," Louis remarked with liveliness, "if you aren't outside this
house in one minute, in sixty seconds, I shall put you out, neck and
crop."
Mrs. Tams smiled. His amiability was returning, he had done her the
honour to tease her. She departed, all her "things" being ready in the
kitchen. Even before she had gone Louis went quickly upstairs, having
drunk less than half a cup of tea, and with extraordinary eagerness
plunged into the bedroom and unlocked his private drawer. He both
hoped and feared that the money which he had bestowed there after
Julian's historic visit would have vanished. It had vanished.
The shock was unpleasant, but the discovery itself had a pleasant
side, because it justified the theory which had sprung complete into
his mind when he learnt where Rachel had gone, and also because it
denuded Rachel of all reasonable claim to consideration. He had
said to himself: "She has gone off to return half of that money to
Julian--that's what it is. And she's capable of returning all of it to
him!" ... And she had done so. And she had not consulted him, Louis.
He, then, was a nobody--zero in the house! She had deliberately
filched the money from him, and to accomplish her purpose she had
abstracted his keys, which he had left in his pocket. She must have
stolen the notes several days before, perhaps a week before, when he
was really seriously ill. She had used the keys and restored them to
his pocket. Astounding baseness!
He murmured: "This finishes it. This really does finish it."
He was immensely righteous as he stood alone in the bedroom in front
of the rifled drawer. He was more than righteous--he was a martyr. He
had done absolutely nothing that was wrong. He had not stolen money;
he had not meant to steal; the more he examined his conduct, the more
he was convinced that it had been throughout unexceptionable, whereas
the conduct of Rachel ...! At every point she had sinned. It was she,
not he, who had burnt Mrs. Maldon's hoard. Was it not monstrous that a
woman should be so careless as to light a fire without noticing that
a bundle of notes lay on the top of the coal? Besides, what affair
was it of hers, anyway? It concerned himself, Mrs. Maldon, and Julian,
alone. But she must needs interfere. She had not a penny to bless
herself with, but he had magnanimously married her; and his reward was
her inexcusable interference in his private business.
His accident was due solely to his benevolence for her. If he had not
been wheeling a bicycle procured for her, and on his way to buy her a
new bicycle, the accident would never have occurred. But had she shown
any gratitude? None. It was true that he had vaguely authorized her to
return half of the money replaced by the contrite Julian; but no date
for doing so had been fixed, and assuredly she had no pretext whatever
for dealing with all of it. That she should go to Julian Maldon with
either the half or the whole of the money without previously informing
him and obtaining the ratification of his permission was simply
scandalous. And that she should sneakingly search his pockets for
keys, commit a burglary in his drawer, and sneakingly put the keys
back was outrageous, infamous, utterly intolerable.
He said, "I'll teach you a lesson, my lady, once for all."
Then he went downstairs. The kitchen was empty; Mrs. Tams had gone.
But between the kitchen and the parlour he changed his course, and ran
upstairs again to the drawer, which he pulled wide open. At the back
of it there ought to have been an envelope containing twenty pounds in
notes, balance of an advance payment from old Batchgrew. The envelope
was there with its contents. Rachel had left the envelope. "Good of
her!" he ejaculated with sarcasm. He put the money in his pocket-book,
and descended to finish his tea, which he drank up excitedly.
A dubious scheme was hypnotizing him. He was a man well acquainted
with the hypnotism of dubious schemes. He knew all the symptoms.
He fought against the magic influence, and then, as always, yielded
himself deliberately and voluptuously to it. He would go away. He
would not wait; he would go at once, in a moment. She deserved as
much, if not more. He knew not where he should go; a thousand reasons
against going assailed him; but he would go. He must go. He could no
longer stand, even for a single hour, her harshness, her air of moral
superiority, her adamantine obstinacy. He missed terribly her candid
worship of him, to which he had grown accustomed and which had become
nearly a necessity of his existence. He could not live with an eternal
critic; the prospect was totally inconceivable. He wanted love, and he
wanted admiring love, and without it marriage was meaningless to him,
a mere imprisonment.
So he would go. He could not and would not pack; to pack would
distress him and bore him; he would go as he was. He could buy what
he needed. The shops--his kind of shops--were closed, and would remain
closed until Tuesday. Nevertheless, he would go. He could buy the
indispensable at Faulkner's establishment on the platform at Knype
railway-station, conveniently opposite the Five Towns Hotel. He
had determined to go to the Five Towns Hotel that night. He had no
immediate resources beyond the twenty pounds, but he would telegraph
to Batchgrew, who ad not yet transferred to him the inheritance, to
pay money into his bank early on Tuesday; if he were compelled to
draw a cheque he would cross it, and then it could not possibly be
presented before Wednesday morning.
At all costs he would go. His face was still plastered; but he would
go, and he would go far, no matter where! The chief thing was to go.
The world was calling him. The magic of the dubious scheme held him
fast. And in all other respects he was free--free as impulse. He would
go. He was not yet quite recovered, not quite strong.... Yes, he was
all right; he was very strong! And he would go.
He put on his hat and his spring overcoat. Then he thought of the
propriety of leaving a letter behind him--not for Rachel's sake, but
to insist on his own dignity and to spoil hers. He wrote the letter,
read it through with satisfaction, and quitted the house, shutting the
door cheerfully, but with a trembling hand. Lest he might meet Rachel
on her way home he went up the lane instead of down, and, finding
himself near the station, took a train to Knype--travelling first
class. The glorious estate of a bachelor was his once more.
II
The Five Towns Hotel stood theoretically in the borough of Hanbridge,
but in fact it was in neither Hanbridge nor Knype, but "opposite Knype
station," on the quiet side of Knype station, far away from any urban
traffic; the gross roar of the electric trams running between Knype
and Hanbridge could not be heard from the great portico of the hotel.
It is true that the hotel primarily existed on its proximity to the
railway centre of the Five Towns. But it had outgrown its historic
origin, and would have moderately flourished even had the North
Staffordshire railway been annihilated. By its sober grandeur and its
excellent cooking it had taken its place as the first hotel in the
district. It had actually no rival. Heroic, sublime efforts had been
made in the centre of Hanbridge to overthrow the pre-eminence of
the Five Towns Hotel. The forlorn result of one of these efforts--so
immense was it!--had been bought by the municipality and turned into a
Town Hall--supreme instance of the Five Towns' habit of "making things
do!" No effort succeeded. Men would still travel from the ends of the
Five Towns to the bar, the billiard-rooms, the banqueting-halls of the
Five Towns Hotel, where every public or semi-public ceremonial that
included conviviality was obliged to happen if it truly respected
itself.
The Five Towns Hotel had made fortunes, and still made them. It was
large and imposing and sombre. The architect, who knew his business,
had designed staircases, corridors, and accidental alcoves on the
scale of a palace; so that privacy amid publicity could always be
found within its walls. It was superficially old-fashioned, and in
reality modern. It had a genuine chef, with sub-chefs, good waiters
whose sole weakness was linguistic, and an apartment of carven oak
with a vast counterfeit eye that looked down on you from the ceiling.
It was ready for anything--a reception to celebrate the nuptials of
a maid, a lunch to a Cabinet Minister with an axe to grind in the
district, or a sale by auction of house-property with wine _ad
libitum_ to encourage bids.
But its chief social use was perhaps as a retreat for men who were
tired of a world inhabited by two sexes. Sundry of the great hotels
of Britain have forgotten this ancient function, and are as full of
frills, laces, colour, and soft giggles as a London restaurant, so
that in Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow a man in these days has
no safe retreat except the gloominess of a provincial club. The Five
Towns Hotel has held fast to old tradition in this respect. Ladies
were certainly now and then to be seen there, for it was a hotel and
as such enjoyed much custom. But in the main it resembled a monastery.
Men breathed with a new freedom as they entered it. Commandments
reigned there, and their authority was enforced; but they were
not precisely the tables of Moses. The enormous pretence which men
practise for the true benefit of women was abandoned in the Five Towns
Hotel. Domestic sultans who never joked in the drawing-room would
crack with laughter in the Five Towns Hotel, and make others crack,
too. Old men would meet young men on equal terms, and feel rather
pleased at their own ability to do so. And young men shed their youth
there, displaying the huge stock of wisdom and sharp cynicism which by
hard work they had acquired in an incredibly short time. Indeed, the
hotel was a wonderful institution, and a source of satisfaction to
half a county.
III
It was almost as one returned from the dead that Louis Fores entered
the Five Towns Hotel on Easter Saturday afternoon, for in his celibate
prime he had been a habitué of the place. He had a thrill; and he knew
that he would be noticed, were it only as the hero and victim of a
street accident; a few remaining plasters still drew attention to his
recent history. At the same time, the thrill which affected him was
not entirely pleasurable, for he was frightened by what he had done:
by the letter written to Rachel, by his abandonment of her, and also
by the prospect of what he meant to do. The resulting situation would
certainly be scandalous in a high degree, and tongues would dwell
on the extreme brevity of the period of marriage. The scandal would
resound mightily. And Louis hated scandal, and had always had a
genuine desire for respectability.... Then he reassured himself.
"Pooh! What do I care?" Besides, it was not his fault. He was utterly
blameless; Rachel alone was the sinner. She had brought disaster upon
herself. On the previous Saturday he had given her fair warning by
getting up out of bed in his weakness and leaving the house--more from
instinct than from any set plan. But she would not take a hint. She
would not learn. Very good! The thought of his inheritance and of his
freedom uplifted him till he became nearly a god.
Owing to the Easter holidays the hotel was less bright and worldly
than usual. Moreover, Saturday was never one of its brilliant days of
the week. In the twilight of a subsidiary lounge, illuminated by one
early electric spark, a waiter stood alone amid great basket-chairs
and wicker-tables. Louis knew the waiter, as did every man-about-town;
but Louis imagined that he knew him better than most; the waiter gave
a similar impression to all impressionable young men.
"How do you do, Krupp!" Louis greeted him, with kind familiarity.
"Good afternoon, sir."
It was perhaps the hazard of his name that had given the waiter
a singular prestige in the district. Krupp is a great and an
unforgettable name, wherever you go. And also it offers people a
chance to be jocose with facility. A hundred habitué's had made the
same joke to Krupp about Krupp's name, and each had supposed himself
to be humorous in an original manner. Krupp received the jocularities
with the enigmatic good-fellow air with which he received everything.
None knew whether Krupp admired or disdained, loved or hated, the Five
Towns and the English character. He was a foreigner from some vague
frontier of Switzerland, possessing no language of his own but a
patois, and speaking other languages less than perfectly. He had been
a figure in the Five Towns Hotel for over twenty years. He was an
efficient waiter; yet he had never risen on the staff, and was still
just the lounge or billiard-room waiter that he had always been--and
apparently content with Destiny.
Louis asked brusquely, as one who had no time to waste, "Will
Faulkner's be open?"
Krupp bent down and glanced through an interstice of a partition at a
clock in the corridor.
"Yes, sir," said Krupp with calm certainty.
Louis, pleased, thought, "This man is a fine waiter." Somehow Krupp
made it seem as if by the force of his will he had forced Faulkner's
to be open--in order to oblige Mr. Fores.
"Because," said Louis casually, "I've no luggage, not a rag, and I
want to buy a few things, and no other place'll be open."
"Yes, sir," said Krupp, mysterious and quite incurious. He did not
even ask, "Do you wish a room, sir?"
"Heard about my accident, I suppose?" Louis went on, a little
surprised that Krupp should make no sympathetic reference to his
plasters.
Krupp became instantly sympathetic, yet keeping his customary reserve.
"Yes, sir. And I am pleased to see you are recovered," he said, with
the faint, indefinable foreign accent and the lack of idiom which
combined to deprive his remarks of any human quality.
"Well," said Louis, not quite prepared to admit that the affair had
gone so smoothly as Krupp appeared to imply, "I can tell you I've
had a pretty bad time. I really ought not to be here now, but--" He
stopped.
"Strange it should happen to you, sir. A gentleman who was in here
the other day said that in his opinion you were one of the cleverest
cyclists in the Five Towns."
Louis naturally inquired, "Who was that?"
"I could not say, sir. Not one of our regular customers, sir," with a
touch of mild depreciation. "A dark gentleman, with a beard, a little
lame, I fancy." As Krupp had invented the gentleman and his opinion
to meet the occasion, he was right in depriving him of the rank of a
regular customer.
"Oh!" murmured Louis. "By the way, has Mr. Gibbs come yet?"
"Mr. Gibbs, sir?"
"Yes, an American. I have an appointment with him this afternoon. If
he comes in while I am over at Faulkner's just tell him, will you? I
think he's stopping at the Majestic."
The Majestic being the latest rival hotel at Hanbridge, Krupp raised
his eyebrows in a peculiar way and nodded his head.
Just as Krupp had invented a gentleman, so now Louis was inventing
one. Neither Krupp nor Louis guessed the inventive act of the other.
Krupp's act was a caprice, a piece of embroidery, charming and
unnecessary. But Louis was inventing with serious intent, for he had
to make his presence at the Five Towns Hotel on Easter Saturday seem
natural and inevitable.
"And also I want the Cunard list of sailings, and the White Star, too.
There's a Cunard boat from Liverpool on Monday, isn't there?"
"I don't _think_ so, sir," said Krupp, "but I'll see."
"I understood from Mr. Gibbs there was. And I'm going to Liverpool by
that early train to-morrow."
"Sunday, sir?"
"Yes, I must be in Liverpool to-morrow night."
Louis went across to the station to Faulkner's. He considered that
he was doing very well. And after all, why not go to America--not on
Monday, for he was quite aware that no boat left on Monday--but in a
few days, after he had received the whole sum that Thomas Batchgrew
held for him. He could quite plausibly depart on urgent business
connected with new capitalistic projects. He could quite plausibly
remain in America as long as convenient. America beckoned to him. He
remembered all the appetizing accounts that he had ever heard
from American commercial travellers of Broadway and Fifth
Avenue--incredible streets. In America he might treble, quadruple, his
already vast capital. The romance of the idea intoxicated him.
IV
When he got back from Faulkner's with a parcel (which he threw to the
cloak-room attendant to keep) he felt startlingly hungry, and, despite
the early hour, he ordered a steak in the grill-room; and not a steak
merely, but all the accoutrements of a steak, with beverages to match.
And to be on the safe side he paid for the meal at once, with a cheque
for ten pounds, receiving the change in gold and silver, and thus
increasing his available cash to about thirty pounds. Then in the
lounge, with Cuban cigar-smoke in his eyes, and Krupp discoursing to
him of all conceivable Atlantic liners, he wrote a letter to Thomas
Batchgrew and marked it "Very urgent"--which was simple prudence on
his part, for he had drawn a cheque for ten pounds on a non-existent
bank-balance. At last, as Mr. Gibbs had not arrived, he said he should
stroll up to the Majestic. He had not yet engaged a room; he seemed to
hesitate before that decisive act....
Then it was that, in the corridor immediately outside the lounge, he
encountered Jim Horrocleave. The look in Jim Horrocleave's ferocious
eye shocked him. Louis had almost forgotten his employer, and the
sudden spectacle of him was disconcerting.
"Hello, Fores!" said Horrocleave very sardonically, with no other
greeting. "I thought ye were too ill to move." No word of sympathy
in the matter of the accident! Simply the tone of an employer somehow
aggrieved!
"I'm out to-day for the first time. Had to come down here on a
matter--"
Horrocleave spoke lower, and even more sardonically. "I hear ye're off
to America."
Louis looked through the fretted partition at the figure of Krupp
alone in the lounge. And Horrocleave also looked at Krupp. And
Krupp looked back with his enigmatic gaze, perhaps scornful, perhaps
indifferent, perhaps secretly appreciative--but in any case profoundly
foreign and aloof and sinister.
"Well--" Louis began at a disadvantage. "Who says I'm off to America?"
Horrocleave advanced his chin and clenched a fist.
"Don't you go!" said he. "If ye did, ye might be brought back by
the scruff o' the neck. You mark my words and come down to the works
to-morrow morning--_to-morrow_, ye understand!" He was breathing
quickly. Then a malicious grin seemed to pass over his face as his
glance rested for an instant on Louis' plasters. The next instant he
walked away, and Louis heard him at the cloak-room counter barking the
one word, "Mackintosh."
Louis understood, only too completely. During his absence from the
works Horrocleave had amused himself by critically examining the old
petty-cash book. That was all, and it was enough. Good-bye to romance,
to adventure, to the freedom of the larger world! The one course to
pursue was to return home, to deny (as was easy) that the notion
of going to America had ever occurred to him, or even the notion of
putting up at the hotel, and with such dignity as he could assume to
restore to Horrocleave the total sum abstracted. With care and luck
he might yet save his reputation. It was impossible that Horrocleave
should prosecute. And what was seventy odd pounds, after all? He was
master of thousands.
If he could but have walked straight out of the hotel! But he could
not. His dignity, the most precious of all his possessions, had to be
maintained. Possibly Krupp had overheard the conversation, or divined
its nature. He strolled back into the lounge.
"A benedictine," he ordered casually, and, neatly pulling up his
trousers at the knee, sank into a basket-chair and crossed his legs,
while blowing forth much smoke.
"Yes, sir."
When Krupp brought the tiny glass, Louis paid for it without looking
at him, and gave a good tip. Ah! He would have liked to peer into
Krupp's inmost mind and know exactly how Krupp had been discussing
him with Jim Horrocleave. He would have liked to tell Krupp in cutting
tones that waiters had no right to chatter to one customer about
another. And then he would have liked to destroy Krupp. But he could
not. His godlike dignity would not permit him to show by even the
slightest gesture that he had been inconvenienced. The next moment he
perceived that Providence had been watching over him. If he had gone
to America unknown to Horrocleave, Horrocleave might indeed have
proved seriously awkward.... Extradition--was there such a word, and
such a thing? He finished the benedictine, went to the cloak-room
and obtained his hat, coat, stick, and parcel; and the hovering Krupp
helped him with his overcoat; and as Destiny cast him out of the dear
retreat which a little earlier he had entered with such pleasurable
anticipations, he was followed down the corridor by the aloof,
disinterested gaze of the Swiss whose enigma no Staffordshire man had
ever penetrated.