RACHEL AND MR. HORROCLEAVE
I
The next morning, Sunday, Rachel had a fancy to superintend in person
the boiling of Louis' breakfast egg. For a week past Louis had not
been having his usual breakfast, but on this morning the ideal
life was recommencing in loveliest perfection for Rachel. The usual
breakfast was to be resumed; and she remembered that in the past the
sacred egg had seldom, if ever, been done to a turn by Mrs. Tams. Mrs.
Tams, indeed, could not divide a minute into halves, and was apt
to regard a preference for a certain consistency in a boiled egg as
merely finicking and negligible. To Mrs. Tams a fresh egg was a fresh
egg, and there was no more to be said.
Rachel entered the kitchen like a radiance. She was dressed with
special care, rather too obviously so, in order that she might be
worthy to walk by Louis' side to church. She was going with him to
church gladly, because he had rented the pew and she desired to please
him by an alert gladness in subscribing to his wishes; it was not
enough for her just to do what he wanted. Her eyes glittered above the
darkened lower lids; her gaze was self-conscious and yet bold; a faint
languor showed beneath her happy energy. But there was no sign that on
the previous evening she had been indisposed.
Mrs. Tams was respectfully maternal, but preoccupied. She fetched the
egg for Rachel, and Rachel, having deposited it in a cooking-spoon,
held it over the small black saucepan of incontestably boiling water
until the hand of the clock precisely covered a minute mark, whereupon
she deftly slipped the egg into the saucepan; the water ceased to boil
for a few seconds and then bubbled up again. And amid the heavenly
frizzling of bacon and the odour of her own special coffee Rachel
stood sternly watching the clock while Mrs. Tams rattled plates and
did the last deeds before serving the meal. Then Mrs. Tarns paused and
said--
"I don't hardly like to tell ye, ma'm--I didn't hardly like to tell ye
last night when ye were worried like--no, and I dunna like now like,
but its like as if what must be--I must give ye notice to leave. I
canna stop here no longer."
Rachel turned to her, protesting--
"Now, Mrs. Tams, what _are_ you talking about? I thought you were
perfectly happy here."
"So I am, mum. Nobody could wish for a better place. I'm sure I've no
fault to find. But it's like as if what must be."
"But what's the matter?"
"Well, ma'am, it's Emmy." (Emmy was Mrs. Tams's daughter and the
mother of her favourite grandchild.) "Emmy and all on' em seem to
think it'll be better all round if I don't take a regular situation,
so as I can be more free for 'em, and they'll all look after me i' my
old age. I s'll get my old house back, and be among 'em all. There's
so many on 'em."
Every sentence contained a lie. And the aged creature went on lying
to the same pattern until she had created quite a web of convincing
detail--more than enough to persuade her mistress that she was in
earnest, foolishly in earnest, that she didn't know on which side
her bread was buttered, and that the poorer classes in general had no
common sense.
"You're all alike," said the wise Rachel.
"I'm very sorry, ma'm."
"And what am I to do? It's very annoying for me, you know. I thought
you were a permanency."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I should like to give your daughters and daughters-in-law a piece of
my mind.... Good heavens! Give me that cooking-spoon, quick!"
She nipped the egg out of the saucepan; it was already several seconds
overdone.
"It isn't as if I could keep you on as a charwoman," said Rachel. "I
must have some one all the time, and I couldn't do with a charwoman as
well."
"No, ma'am! It's like as if what must be."
"Well, I hope you'll think it over. I must say I didn't expect this
from you, Mrs. Tams."
Mrs. Tams put her lips together and bent obstinately over a tray.
Rachel said to herself: "Oh, she really means to leave! I can see
that. She's made up her mind.... I shall never trust any servant
again--never!"
She was perhaps a little hurt (for she considered that she had much
benefited Mrs. Tams), and a little perturbed for the future. But in
her heart she did not care. She would not have cared if the house had
fallen in, or if her native land had been invaded and enslaved by a
foreign army. She was at peace with Louis. He was hers. She felt that
her lien on him was strengthened.
II
The breakfast steaming and odorous on the table, and Rachel all
tingling in front of her tray, awaited the descent of the master of
the house. The Sunday morning post, placed in its proper position by
Mrs. Tams, consisted of a letter and a post-card. Rachel stretched her
arm across the table to examine them. The former had a legal aspect.
It was a foolscap envelope addressed to Mrs. Maldon. Rachel opened it.
A typewritten circular within respectfully pointed out to Mrs. Maldon
that if she had only followed the writers' advice, given gratis a few
weeks earlier, she would have made one hundred and twenty-five pounds
net profit by spending thirty-five pounds in the purchase of an option
on Canadian Pacific Railway shares. The statement was supported by
the official figures of the Stock Exchange, which none could question.
"Can you afford to neglect such advice in future?" the writers
asked Mrs. Maldon, and went on to suggest that she should send them
forty-five pounds to buy an option on "Shells," which were guaranteed
to rise nine points in less than a month.
Mystified, half sceptical, and half credulous, Rachel reflected
casually that the world was full of strange phenomena. She wondered
what "Shells" were, and why the writers should keep on writing to
a woman who had been dead for ages. She carefully burnt both the
circular and the envelope.
And then she looked at the post-card, which was addressed to "Louis
Fores, Esq." As it was a post-card, she was entitled to read it.
She read: "Shall expect you at the works in the morning at ten. Jas.
Horrocleave." She thought it rather harsh and oppressive on the part
of Mr. Horrocleave to expect Louis to attend at the works on Bank
Holiday--and so soon after his illness, too! How did Mr. Horrocleave
know that Louis was sufficiently recovered to be able to go to the
works at all?
Louis came, rubbing his hands, which for an instant he warmed at the
fire. He was elegantly dressed. The mere sight of him somehow thrilled
Rachel. His deportment, his politeness, his charming good-nature were
as striking as ever. The one or two stripes (flesh-coloured now,
not whitish) on his face were not too obvious, and, indeed, rather
increased the interest of his features. The horrible week was
forgotten, erased from history, though Rachel would recollect that
even at the worst crisis of it Louis had scarcely once failed in
politeness of speech. It was she who had been impolite--not once,
but often. Louis had never raged. She was contrite, and her penitence
intensified her desire to please, to solace, to obey. When she
realized that it was she who had burnt that enormous sum in
bank-notes, she went cold in the spine.
Not that she cared twopence for the enormous sum, really, now that
concord was established! No, her little flutters of honest remorse
were constantly disappearing in the immense exultant joy of being
alive and of contemplating her idol. Louis sat down. She smiled at
him. He smiled back. But in his exquisite demeanour there was a faint
reserve of melancholy which persisted. She had not yet that morning
been able to put it to flight; she counted, however, on doing so very
soon, and in the meantime it did not daunt her. After all, was it not
natural?
She began--
"I say, what do you think? Mrs. Tams has given me notice."
She pretended to be aggrieved and to be worried, but essential joy
shone through these absurd masks. Moreover, she found a certain
naïve satisfaction in being a mistress with cares, a mistress to whom
"notice" had to be given, and who would have to make serious inquiry
into the character of future candidates for her employment.
Louis raised his eyebrows.
"Don't you think it's a shame?"
"Oh," said he cautiously, "you'll get somebody else as good,
_and_ better. What's she leaving for?"
Rachel repeated Mrs. Tams's rigmarole.
"Ah!" murmured Louis.
He was rather sorry for Mrs. Tams. His good-nature was active enough
this morning. But he was glad that she had taken the initiative. And
he was content that she should go. After the scene of the previous
night, their relations could not again have been exactly what the
relations between master and servant ought to be. And further, "you
never knew what women wouldn't tell one another," even mistress and
maid, maid and mistress. Yes, he preferred that she should leave. He
admired her and regretted the hardship on the old woman--and that was
an end of it! What could he do to ease her? The only thing to do would
be to tell her privately that so far as he was concerned she might
stay. But he had no intention of doing aught so foolish. It was
strange, but he was entirely unconscious of any obligation to her for
the immense service she had rendered him. His conclusion was that some
people have to be martyrs. And in this he was deeply right.
Rachel, misreading his expression, thought that he did not wish to be
bothered with household details. She recalled some gratuitous advice
half humorously offered to her by a middle-aged lady at her reception,
"Never talk servants to your men." She had thought, at the time, "I
shall talk everything with _my_ husband." But she considered that
she was wiser now.
"By the way," she said in a new tone, "there's a post-card for you.
I've read it. Couldn't help."
Louis read the post-card. He paled, and Rachel noticed his pallor. The
fact was that in his mind he had simply shelved, and shelved again,
the threat of James Horrocleave. He had sincerely desired to tell a
large portion of the truth to Rachel, taking advantage of her soft
mood; but he could not; he could not force his mouth to open on the
subject. In some hours he had quite forgotten the danger--he was
capable of such feats--then it reasserted itself and he gazed on it
fascinated and helpless. When Rachel, to please him and prove her
subjugation, had suggested that they should go to church--"for the
Easter morning service"--he had concurred, knowing, nevertheless,
that he dared not fail to meet Horrocleave at the works. On the whole,
though it gave him a shock, he was relieved that Horrocleave had sent
the post-card and that Rachel had seen it. But he still was quite
unable to decide what to do.
"It's a nice thing, him asking you to go to the works on a Bank
Holiday like that!" Rachel remarked.
Louis answered: "It's not to-morrow he wants me. It's to-day."
"Sunday!" she exclaimed.
"Yes. I met him for a second yesterday afternoon, and he told me then.
This was just a reminder. He must have sent it off last night. A good
thing he did send it, though. I'd quite forgotten."
"But what is it? What does he want you to go on Sunday for?"
Louis shrugged his shoulders, as if to intimate that nothing that
Horrocleave did ought to surprise anybody.
"Then what about church?"
Louis replied on the spur of the moment--
"You go there by yourself. I'll meet you there. I can easily be there
by eleven."
"But I don't know the pew."
"They'll show you your pew all right, never fear."
"I shall wait for you in the churchyard."
"Very well. So long as it isn't raining."
She kissed him fervently when he departed.
Long before it was time to leave for church she had a practical and
beautiful idea--one of those ideas that occur to young women in love.
Instead of waiting for Louis in the churchyard she would call for him
at the works, which was not fifty yards off the direct route to St.
Luke's. By this means she would save herself from the possibility of
inconvenience within the precincts of the church, and she would also
prevent the conscienceless Mr. Horrocleave from keeping Louis in the
office all the morning. She wondered that the idea had not occurred
to Louis, who was very gifted in such matters as the arrangement of
rendezvous.
She started in good time because she wanted to walk without hurry, and
to ponder. The morning, though imperfect and sunless, had in it some
quality of the spring, which the buoyant youth of Rachel instantly
discovered and tasted in triumph. Moreover, the spirit of a festival
was abroad, and visible in the costume and faces of passers-by; and
it was the first festival of the year. Rachel responded to it eagerly,
mingling her happiness with the general exultation. She was intensely,
unreasonably happy. She knew that she was unreasonably happy; and she
did not mind.
When she turned into Friendly Street the big black double gates of
the works were shut, but in one of them a little door stood ajar.
She pushed it, stooped, and entered the twilight of the archway. The
office door was shut. She walked uncertain up the archway into the
yard, and through a dirty window on her left she could dimly discern
a man gesticulating. She decided that he must be Horrocleave. She
hesitated, and then, slightly confused, thought, "Perhaps I'd better
go back to the archway and knock at the office door."
III
In the inner office, among art-lustre ware, ink-stained wood, dusty
papers, and dirt, Jim Horrocleave banged down a petty-cash book on to
Louis' desk. His hat was at the back of his head, and his eyes blazed
at Louis, who stood somewhat limply, with a hesitant, foolish, faint
smile on his face.
"That's enough!" said Horrocleave fiercely. "I haven't had patience to
go all through it. But that's enough. I needn't tell ye I suspected ye
last year, but ye put me off. And I was too busy to take the trouble
to go into it. However, I've had a fair chance while you've been
away." He gave a sneering laugh. "I'll tell ye what put me on to ye
again, if you've a mind to know. The weekly expenses went down as soon
as ye thought I had suspicions. Ye weren't clever enough to keep 'em
up. Well, what have ye got to say for yeself, seeing ye are on yer way
to America?"
"I never meant to go to America," said Louis. "Why should I go to
America?"
"Ask me another. Then ye confess?"
"I don't," said Louis.
"Oh! Ye don't!" Horrocleave sat down and put his hands on his
outstretched knees.
"There may be mistakes in the petty-cash book. I don't say there
aren't. Any one who keeps a petty-cash book stands to lose. If he's
too busy at the moment to enter up a payment, he may forget it--and
there you are! He's out of pocket. Of course," Louis added, with a
certain loftiness, "as you're making a fuss about it I'll pay up for
anything that's wrong ... whatever the sum is. If you make it out to
be a hundred pounds I'll pay up."
Horrocleave growled: "Oh, so ye'll pay up, will ye? And suppose I
won't let ye pay up? What shall ye do then?"
Louis, now quite convinced that Horrocleave was only bullying
retorted, calmly:
"It's I that ought to ask you that question."
The accuser was exasperated.
"A couple o' years in quod will be about your mark, I'm thinking," he
said.
Whereupon Louis was suddenly inspired to answer:
"Yes. And supposing I was to begin to talk about illicit commissions?"
Horrocleave jumped up with such ferocious violence that Louis drew
back, startled. The recent Act of Parliament, making a crime of secret
commissions to customers' employees, had been a blow to the trade
in art-lustre ware, and it was no secret in the inner office that
Horrocleave, resenting its interference with the natural course
of business, had more than once discreetly flouted it, and thus
technically transgressed the criminal law. Horrocleave used to defend
and justify himself by the use of that word "technical." Louis' polite
and unpremeditated threat enraged him to an extreme degree. He was the
savage infuriate. He cared for no consequences, even consequences to
himself. He hated Louis because Louis was spick and span, and quiet,
and because Louis had been palmed off on him by Louis' unscrupulous
respectable relatives as an honest man.
"Now thou'st done for thyself!" he cried, in the dialect. "Thou'st
done for thyself! And I'll have thee by the heels for embezzlement,
and blackmail as well." He waved his arms. "May God strike me if I
give thee any quarter after that! I'll--"
He stopped with open mouth, disturbed by the perception of a highly
strange phenomenon beyond the window. He looked and saw Rachel in the
yard. For a moment he thought that Louis had planned to use his wife
as a shield in the affair if the worst should come to the worst. But
Rachel's appearance simultaneously showed him that he was wrong. She
was the very mirror of happy confidence. And she seemed so young, and
so obviously just married; and so girlish and so womanish at the same
time; and her frock was so fresh, and her hat so pert against the
heavy disorder of the yard, and her eyes were unconsciously so
wistful--that Horrocleave caught his breath. He contrasted Rachel with
Mrs. Horrocleave, her complete antithesis, and at once felt very sorry
for himself and very scornful of Mrs. Horrocleave, and melting with
worshipful sympathy for Rachel.
"Yer wife's in the yard," he whispered in a different tone.
"My wife!" Louis was gravely alarmed; all his manner altered.
"Hast told her anything of this?"
"I should think I hadn't."
"Ye must pay me, and I'll give ye notice to leave," said Horrocleave,
quickly, in a queer, quiet voice. The wrath was driven out of him. The
mere apparition of Rachel had saved her husband.
A silence.
Rachel had disappeared. Then there was a distant tapping. Neither of
the men spoke nor moved. They could hear the outer door open and light
footfalls in the outer office.
"Anybody here?" It was Rachel's voice, timid.
"Come in, come in!" Horrocleave roared.
She entered, blushing, excusing herself, glancing from one to the
other, and by her spotless Easter finery emphasizing the squalor of
the den.
In a few minutes Horrocleave was saying to Rachel, rather
apologetically--
"Louis and I are going to part company, Mrs. Fores. I can't keep him
on. His wages are too high for me. It won't run to it. Th' truth is,
I'm going to chuck this art business. It doesn't pay. Art, as they
call it, 's no good in th' pottery trade."
Rachel said, "So that's what you wanted to see him about on a Sunday
morning, is it, Mr. Horrocleave?"
She was a little hurt at the slight on her husband, but the wife
in her was persuaded that the loss would be Mr. Horrocleave's.
She foresaw that Louis would now want to use his capital in some
commercial undertaking of his own; and she was afraid of the prospect.
Still, it had to be faced, and she would face it. He would probably do
well as his own master. During a whole horrible week her judgment on
him had been unjustly severe, and she did not mean to fall into the
same sin again. She thought with respect of his artistic gifts, which
she was too inartistic to appreciate. Yes, the chances were that he
would succeed admirably.
She walked him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory
good-bye. And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St.
Luke's, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her passion stealthily
with the sight. True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left
to think of others besides.
She hoped that John's Ernest would find a suitable mate. She
remembered that she had Julian's curtains to attend to. She continued
to think kindly of Thomas Batchgrew, and she chid herself for having
thought of him in her distant inexperienced youth, of six months
earlier, as _that man_. And, regretting that Mrs. Tams--at her
age, too!--could be so foolish, she determined to look after Mrs.
Tams also, if need should arise. But these solicitudes were mere downy
trifles floating on the surface of her profound absorption in Louis.
And in the depths of that absorption she felt secure, and her courage
laughed at the menace of life (though the notion of braving a church
full of people did intimidate the bride). Yet she judged Louis
realistically and not sentimentally. She was not conspicuously blind
to any aspect of his character; nor had the tremendous revulsion of
the previous night transformed him into another and a more heavenly
being for her. She admitted frankly to herself that he was not
blameless in the dark affair of the bank-notes. She would not deny
that in some ways he was untrustworthy, and might be capable of acts
of which the consequences were usually terrible. His irresponsibility
was notorious. And, being impulsive herself, she had no mercy for
his impulsiveness. As for his commonsense, was not her burning of the
circular addressed to Mrs. Maldon a sufficient commentary on it?
She was well aware that Louis' sins of omission and commission might
violently shock people of a certain temperament--people of her own
temperament in particular. These people, however, would fail to see
the other side of Louis. If she herself had merely heard of Louis,
instead of knowing him, she would probably have set him down as
undesirable. But she knew him. His good qualities seemed to her to
overwhelm the others. His charm, his elegance, his affectionateness,
his nice speech, his courtesy, his quick wit, his worldliness--she
really considered it extraordinary that a plain, blunt girl, such
as she, should have had the luck to please him. It was indeed almost
miraculous.
If he had faults--and he had--she preferred them (proudly and
passionately) to the faults of scores of other women's husbands. He
was not a brute, nor even a boor nor a savage--thousands of savages
ranged free and terror-striking in the Five Towns. Even when vexed and
furious he could control himself. It was possible to share his daily
life and see him in all his social moods without being humiliated. He
was not a clodhopper; watch him from the bow-window of a morning as he
walked down the street! He did not drink; he was not a beast. He was
not mean. He might scatter money, but he was not mean. In fact, except
that one sinister streak in his nature, she could detect no fault.
There was danger in that streak.... Well, there was danger in every
man. She would accept it; she would watch it. Had she not long since
reconciled herself to the prospect of an everlasting vigil?
She did not care what any one said, and she did not care! He was the
man she wanted; the whole rest of the world was nothing in comparison
to him. He was irresistible. She had wanted him, and she would always
want him, as he was. She had won him and she would keep him, as
he was, whatever the future might hold. The past was the past; the
opening chapter of her marriage was definitely finished and its drama
done. She was ready for the future. One tragedy alone could overthrow
her--Louis' death. She simply could not and would not conceive
existence without him. She would face anything but that.... Besides,
he was not _really_ untrustworthy--only weak! She faltered and
recovered. "He's mine and I wouldn't have him altered for the world. I
don't want him perfect. If anything goes wrong, well, let it go wrong!
I'm his wife. I'm his!" And as, slightly raising her confident chin
in the street, she thus undertook to pay the price of love, there was
something divine about Rachel's face.