MRS. TAMS'S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR
I
In the house at Bycars, where he arrived tardily after circuitous
wanderings, Louis first of all dropped the parcel from Faulkner's into
the oak chest, raising and lowering the lid without any noise. Once,
in the train in Bleakridge tunnel, he had almost thrown the parcel out
of the carriage on to the line, as though it were in some subtle way
a piece of evidence against him; but, aided by his vanity, he had
resisted the impulse. Why, indeed, should he be afraid of a parcel of
linen? Had he not the right to buy linen when and how he chose? Then
he removed his hat and coat, hung them carefully in their proper
place, smoothed his hair, and walked straight into the parlour. He had
a considerable gift of behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary
had happened when the contrary was the case. Nobody could have guessed
from his features that he was calculating and recalculating
the chances of immediate imprisonment, and that each successive
calculation disagreed with the previous one; at one moment the chances
were less than one in a hundred, less than one in a million;
at another they increased and multiplied themselves into tragic
certainty.
When Rachel heard him in the lobby her sudden tears were tears of joy
and deliverance. She did not try to restrain them. As she stole back
to her chair she ignored all her reasonings against him, and lived
only in the fact that he had returned. And she was triumphant. She
thought: "Now that he is in the house, he is mine. I have him. He
cannot escape me. In a caress I shall cancel all the past since his
accident. So long as I can hold him I don't care." Her soul dissolved
in softness towards him; even the body seemed to melt also, till,
instead of being a strong, sturdy girl, she was a living tentacular
endearment and naught else.
But when, with disconcerting quickness, he came into the room, she
hardened again in spite of herself. She simply could not display her
feelings. Upbringing, habit, environment were too much for her, and
spontaneity was checked. Had she been alone with a dog she would have
spent herself passionately on the dog, imaginatively transforming the
dog into Louis; but the sight of Louis in person congealed her, so
that she became a hard mass with just a tiny core of fire somewhere
within.
"Why cannot I jump up and fall on his neck?" she asked herself
angrily. But she could not.
She controlled her tears, and began to argue mentally whether Louis
had come home because he could not keep away from her, or for base
purposes of his own. She was conscious of a desire to greet him
sarcastically with the remark, "So you've come back, after all!" It
was a wilful, insensate desire; but there it was. She shut her lips on
it, not without difficulty.
"I've kept some supper for you," she said, with averted head. She
wanted to make her voice kind, but it would not obey her. It was
neither kind nor unkind. There were tears in it, however.
They did not look at each other.
"Why did you keep supper for me?" he mumbled.
"I thought you might find you weren't well enough to travel," she
answered thoughtfully, with her face still bent over the work which
she was spoiling with every clumsy, feverish stitch.
This surprising and ingenious untruth came from her without the
slightest effort. It seemed to invent itself.
"Well," said Louis, "I don't happen to want any supper." His accent
was slightly but definitely inimical. He perceived that he had an
advantage, and he decided to press it.
Rachel also perceived this, and she thought resentfully: "How cruel
he is! How mean he is!" She hated and loved him simultaneously. She
foresaw that peace must be preceded by the horrors of war, and she was
discouraged. Though determined that he should not escape from the room
unreconciled, she was ready to inflict dreadful injuries on him, as
he on her. They now regarded each other askance, furtively, as dire
enemies.
Louis, being deficient in common sense, thought of nothing but
immediate victory. He well knew that, in case of trouble with Jim
Horrocleave, he might be forced to humble himself before his wife, and
that present arrogance would only intensify future difficulties. Also,
he had easily divined that the woman opposite to him was a softer
Rachel than the one he had left, and very ready for pacific
compromise. Nevertheless, in his polite, patient way, he would
persist in keeping the attitude of an ill-used saint with a most
clear grievance. And more than this, he wanted to appear absolutely
consistent, even in coming home again. Could he have recalled the
precise terms of his letter, he would have contrived to interpret them
so as to include the possibility of his return that night. He fully
intended to be the perfect male.
Drawing his cigarette-case and match-box from his hip pocket, by means
of the silver cable which attached them to his person, he carefully
lit a cigarette and rose to put the spent match in the fire. While at
the hearth he looked at his plastered face in the glass, critically
and dispassionately, as though he had nothing else in the world to do.
Then his eye caught some bits of paper in the fender--fragments of his
letter which Rachel had cast into the fire and on to the hearth. He
stooped, picked up one white piece, gazed at it, dropped it, picked up
another, gazed at it, dropped it fastidiously.
"Hm!" he said faintly.
Then he stood again at his full height and blew smoke profusely about
the mantelpiece. He was very close to Rachel, and above her. He
could see the top of her bent, mysterious head; he could see all the
changing curves of her breast as she breathed. He knew intimately
her frock, the rings on her hand, the buckle on her shoe. He knew the
whole feel of the room--the buzz of the gas, the peculiarities of the
wall-paper, the thick curtain over the door to his right, the folds of
the table-cloth. And in his infelicity and in his resentment against
Rachel he savoured it all not without pleasure. The mere inviolable
solitude with this young, strange, provocative woman in the night
beyond the town stimulated him into a sort of zest of living.
There was a small sound from the young woman; her breathing was
checked; she had choked down a dry sob. This signal, so faint and
so dramatic in the stillness of the parlour, at once intimidated and
encouraged him.
"What have you done with that money?" he asked, in a cold voice.
"What money?" Rachel replied, low, without raising her head. Her hand
had ceased to move the needle.
"You know what money."
"I took it to Julian, of course."
"Why did you take it to Julian?"
"We agreed I should, last week--you yourself said so--don't you
remember?" Her tones acquired some confidence.
"No, I don't remember. I remember something was said about letting him
have half of it. Did you give him half or all of it?"
"I gave him all of it."
"I like that! I like that!" Louis remarked sarcastically. "I like
your nerve. You do it on the sly. You don't say a word to me; and not
content with that, you give him all of it. Why didn't you tell me? Why
didn't you ask me for the money?"
Rachel offered no answer.
Louis proceeded with more vivacity. "And did he take it?"
"I made him."
"What? All of it? What reason did you give? How did you explain
things?"
"I told him you'd had the rest of the money, of course, so it was all
right. It wouldn't have been fair to him if some one hadn't told him."
Louis now seriously convinced himself that his grievance was
tremendous, absolutely unexampled in the whole history of marriage.
"Well," said he, with high, gloomy dignity, "it may interest you to
know that I didn't have the rest of the money.... If I'd had it,
what do you suppose I've done with it?... Over five hundred pounds,
indeed!"
"Then what--?"
"I don't think I want any of your 'Then what's.' You wouldn't listen
before, so why should you be told now? However, I expect I must teach
you a lesson--though it's too late."
Rachel did not move. She heard him say that he had discovered the
bank-notes at night, under the chair on the landing. "I took charge of
them. I collared them, for the time being," he said. "I happened to
be counting them when you knocked at my bedroom door. I admit I was
rather taken aback. I didn't want you to see the notes. I didn't see
any reason why you should know anything about my aunt's carelessness.
You must remember you were only a paid employee then. I was close to
the fireplace. I just scrunched them up in my hand and dropped them
behind the fire-screen. Of course I meant to pick them up again
instantly you'd gone. Well, you didn't go. You seemed as if you
wouldn't go. I had to run for the doctor. There was no help for it.
Even then I never dreamt you intended to light the fire in that room.
It never occurred to me for a second.... And I should have thought
anybody lighting a fire couldn't have helped seeing a thing like a
ball of bank-notes on the top of the grate. I should have thought so.
But it seems I was wrong. When I got back of course the whole blooming
thing was up the chimney. Well, there you are! What was I to do? I ask
you that."
He paused. Rachel sobbed.
"Of course," he continued, with savage quietude, "you may say I might
have forced you to listen to me this last week. I might. But why
should I? Why should I beg and pray? If you didn't know the whole
story a week ago, is it my fault? I'm not one to ask twice. I can't go
on my knees and beg to be listened to. Some fellows could perhaps, but
not me!"
Rachel was overwhelmed. The discovery that it was she herself,
Pharisaical and unyielding, who had been immediately responsible
for the disappearance of the bank-notes almost dazed her. And
simultaneously the rehabilitation of her idol drowned her in bliss.
She was so glad to be at fault, so ravished at being able to respect
him again, that the very ecstasy of existing seemed likely to put an
end to her existence. Her physical sensations were such as she might
have experienced if her heart had swiftly sunk away out of her bosom
and left an empty space there that gasped. She glanced up at Louis.
"I'm so sorry!" she breathed.
Louis did not move, nor did his features relax in the slightest.
With one hand raised in appeal, surrender, abandonment and the other
on the arm of her chair, and her work slipping to the floor, she half
rose towards him.
"You can't tell how sorry I am!" she murmured. Her eyes were liquid.
"Louis!"
"And well you may be, if you'll excuse me saying so!" answered Louis
frigidly.
He was confirmed in his illusory but tremendous grievance. The
fundamental lack of generosity in him was exposed. Inexperienced
though he was in women, he saw in Rachel then, just as if he had been
twenty years older, the woman who lightly imagines that the past
can be wiped out with a soft tone, an endearment, a tear, a touching
appeal. He would not let her off so easily. She had horribly lacerated
his dignity for a week--he could recall every single hurt--and he
was not going to allow himself to recover in a minute. His dignity
required a gradual convalescence. He was utterly unaffected by her
wistful charm.
Rachel moved her head somewhat towards his, and then hesitated. The
set hardness of his face was incredible to her. Her head began to
swim. She thought, "I shall really die if this continues."
"Louis--don't!" she besought him plaintively.
He walked deliberately away and nervously played with an "ornament" on
the sideboard.
"And let me tell you another thing," said he slowly. "If you think I
came back to-night because I couldn't do without you, you're mistaken.
I'm going out again at once."
She said to herself, "He has killed me!" The room circled round her,
gathering speed, and Louis with it. The emptiness in her bosom was
intolerable.
II
Louis saw her face turning paler and paler, till it was, really,
almost as white as the table-cloth. She fell back into the chair, her
arms limp and lifeless.
"Confound the girl!" he thought. "She's going to faint now! What an
infernal nuisance!"
Compunction, instead of softening him, made him angry with himself. He
felt awkward, at a loss, furious.
"Mrs. Tams!" he called out, and hurried from the room. "Mrs. Tams!" As
he went out he was rather startled to find that the door had not been
quite closed.
In the lobby he called again, "Mrs. Tams!"
The kitchen gas showed a speck of blue. He had not noticed it when he
came into the house: the kitchen door must have been shut, then. He
looked up the stairs. He could discern that the door of Mrs. Tams's
bedroom, at the top, was open, and that there was no light in the
room. Puzzled, he rushed to the kitchen, and snatched at his hat as he
went, sticking it anyhow on his head.
"Eh, mester, what ever's amiss?"
With these alarmed words Mrs. Tams appeared suddenly from behind the
kitchen door; she seemed a little out of breath, as far as Louis could
hear; he could not see her very well. The thought flashed through his
mind. "She's been listening at doors."
"Oh! There you are," he said, with an effort at ordinariness of
demeanour. "Just go in to Mrs. Fores, will you? Something's the matter
with her. It's nothing, but I have to go out."
Mrs. Tams answered, trembling: "Nay, mester, I'm none going to
interfere. I go into no parlour."
"But I tell you she's fainting."
"Ye'd happen better look after her yerself, Mr. Louis," said Mrs. Tams
in a queer voice.
"But don't you understand I've got to go out?"
He was astounded and most seriously disconcerted by Mrs. Tams's very
singular behaviour.
"If ye'll excuse me being so bold, sir," said Mrs. Tams, "ye ought
for be right well ashamed o' yeself. And that I'll say with my dying
breath."
She dropped on to the hard Windsor chair, and, lifting her apron,
began to whimper.
Louis could feel himself blushing.
"It seems to me you'd better look out for a fresh situation," he
remarked curtly, as he turned to leave the kitchen.
"Happen I had, mester," Mrs. Tams agreed sadly; and then with fire:
"But I go into no parlour. You get back to her, mester. Going out
again at this time o' night, and missis as her is! If you stop where a
husband ought for be, her'll soon mend, I warrant."
He went back, cursing all women, because he had no alternative but to
go back. He dared not do otherwise.... It was only a swoon. But was
it only a swoon? Suppose ...! He was afraid of public opinion; he
was afraid of Mrs. Tams's opinion. Mrs. Tams had pierced him. He went
back, dashing his hat on to the oak chest.
III
Rachel was lying on the hearth-rug, one arm stretched nonchalantly
over the fender and the hand close to the fire. Her face was whiter
than any face he had ever seen, living or dead. He shook; the
inanimate figure with the disarranged clothes and hair, prone and
deserted there in the solitude of the warm, familiar room, struck
terror into him. He bent down; he knelt down and drew the arm away
from the fire. He knew not in the least what was the proper thing to
do; and naturally the first impulse of his ignorance was to raise
her body from the ground. But she was so heavy, so appallingly inert,
that, fortunately, he could not do so, and he let her head subside
again.
Then he remembered that the proper thing to do in these cases was to
loosen the clothes round the neck; but he could not loosen her bodice
because it was fastened behind and the hooks were so difficult. He
jumped to the window and opened it. The blind curved inward like a
sail under the cold entering breeze. When he returned to Rachel
he thought he noticed the faintest pinky flush in her cheeks. And
suddenly she gave a deep sigh. He knelt again. There was something
about the line of her waist that, without any warning, seemed to him
ineffably tender, wistful, girlish, seductive. Her whole figure began
to exert the same charm over him. Even her frock, which nevertheless
was not even her second best, took on a quality that in its simplicity
bewitched him. He recalled her wonderful gesture as she lighted his
cigarette on the night when he first saw her in her kitchen; and his
memory of it thrilled him.... Rachel opened her eyes and sighed deeply
once more. He fanned her with a handkerchief drawn from his sleeve.
"Louis!" she murmured in a tired baby's voice, after a few moments.
He thought: "It's a good thing I didn't go out, and I'm glad Mrs.
Tarns isn't here blundering about."
"You're better?" he said mildly.
She raised her arms and clasped him, dragging him to her with a force
that was amazing under the circumstances. They kissed; their faces
were merged for a long time. Then she pushed him a little away, and,
guarding his shoulders with her hands, examined his face, and smiled
pathetically.
"Call me Louise," she whispered.
"Silly little thing! Shall I get you some water?"
"Call me Louise!"
"Louise!"