She would have been more wakeful could she have divined the blow which she had escaped a couple of hours before. Between five and six o'clock, when she was upstairs in the large bedroom, Mrs. Maldon had said to her, "Rachel—" and stopped. "Yes, Mrs. Maldon," she had replied. And Mrs. Maldon had said, "Nothing." Mrs. Maldon had desired to say, but in words carefully chosen: "Rachel, I've never told you that Louis Fores began life as a bank clerk, and was dismissed for stealing money. And even since then his conduct has not been blameless." Mrs. Maldon had stopped because she could not find the form of words which would permit her to impart to her paid companion this information about her grand-nephew. Mrs. Maldon, when the moment for utterance5 came, had discovered that she simply could not do it, and all her conscientious6 regard for Rachel and all her sense of duty were not enough to make her do it. So that Rachel, unsuspectingly, had been spared a tremendous emotional crisis. By this time she had grown nearly accustomed to the fact of the disappearance7 of the money. She had completely recovered from the hysteria caused by old Batchgrew's attack, and was, indeed, in the supervening calm, very much ashamed of it.
She meant to doze9, having firmly declined the suggestion of Mrs. Tams that she should go to bed at seven o'clock, and she was just dropping the paper when a tap on the window startled her. She looked in alarm at the window, where the position of one of the blinds proved the correctness of Mrs. Maldon's secret theory that if Mrs. Maldon did not keep a personal watch on the blinds they would never be drawn10 properly. Eight inches of black pane11 showed, and behind that dark transparency something vague and pale. She knew it must be the hand of Louis Fores that had tapped, and she could feel her heart beating. She flew on tiptoe to the front door, and cautiously opened it. At the same moment Louis sprang from the narrow space between the street railings and the bow window on to the steps. He raised his hat with the utmost grace.
"I saw your head over the arm of the Chesterfield," he said in a cheerful, natural low voice. "So I tapped on the glass. I thought if I knocked at the door I might waken the old lady. How are things to-night?"
In those few words he perfectly12 explained his manner of announcing himself, endowing it with the highest propriety13. Rachel's misgivings14 were soothed15 in an instant. Her chief emotion was an ecstatic pride—because he had come, because he could not keep away, because she had known that he would come, that he must come. And in fact was it not his duty to come? Quietly he came into the hall, quietly she closed the door, and when they were shut up together in the parlour they both spoke16 in hushed voices, lest the invalid17 should be disturbed. And was not this, too, highly proper?
She gave him the news of the house and said that Mrs. Tams was taking duty in the sick-room till four o'clock in the morning, and herself thenceforward, but that the invalid gave no apparent cause for apprehension18.
"Old Batch8 been again?" asked Louis, with a complete absence of any constraint19.
She shook her head.
"You'll find that money yet—somewhere, when you're least expecting it," said he, almost gaily20.
"I'm sure we shall," she agreed with conviction.
"And how are you?" His tone became anxious and particular. She blushed deeply, for the outbreak of which she had been guilty and which he had witnessed, then smiled diffidently.
"Oh, I'm all right."
"You look as if you wanted some fresh air—if you'll excuse me saying so."
"I haven't been out to-day, of course," she said.
"Don't you think a walk—just a breath—would do you good!"
Without allowing herself to reflect, she answered—
"Well, I ought to have gone out long ago to get some food for to-morrow, as it's Sunday. Everything's been so neglected to-day. If the doctor happened to order a cutlet or anything for Mrs. Maldon, I don't know what I should do. Truly I ought to have thought of it earlier."
She seemed to be blaming herself for neglectfulness, and thus the enterprise of going out had the look of an act of duty. Her sensations bewildered her.
"Perhaps I could walk down with you and carry parcels. It's a good thing it's Saturday night, or the shops might have been closed."
She made no answer to this, but stood up, breathing quickly.
"I'll just speak to Mrs. Tams."
Creeping upstairs, she silently pushed open the door of Mrs. Maldon's bedroom. The invalid was asleep. Mrs. Tams, her hands crossed in her comfortable lap, and her mouth widely open, was also asleep. But Mrs. Tams was used to waking with the ease of a dog. Rachel beckoned21 her to the door. Without a sound the fat woman crossed the room.
"I'm just going out to buy a few things we want," said Rachel in her ear, adding no word as to Louis Fores.
Mrs. Tams nodded.
Rachel went to her bedroom, turned up the gas, straightened her hair, and put on her black hat, and her blue jacket trimmed with a nameless fur, and picked up some gloves and her purse. Before descending22 she gazed at herself for many seconds in the small, slanting23 glass. Coming downstairs, she took the marketing24 reticule from its hook in the kitchen passage. Then she went back to the parlour and stood in the doorway25, speechless, putting on her gloves rapidly.
"Ready?"
She nodded.
"Shall I?" Louis questioned, indicating the gas.
She nodded again, and, stretching to his full height, he managed to turn the gas down without employing a footstool as Rachel was compelled to do.
"Wait a moment," she whispered in the hall, when he had opened the front door. These were the first words she had been able to utter. She went to the kitchen for a latch-key. Inserting this latch-key in the keyhole on the outside, and letting Louis pass in front of her, she closed the front door with very careful precautions against noise, and withdrew the key.
"I'll take charge of that if you like," said Louis, noticing that she was hesitating where to bestow26 it.
She gave it up to him with a violent thrill. She was intensely happy and intensely fearful. She was only going out to do some shopping; but the door was shut behind her, and at her side was this magic, mysterious being, and the nocturnal universe lay around. Only twenty-four hours earlier she had shut the door behind her and gone forth27 to find Louis. And now, having found him, he and she were going forth together like close friends. So much had happened in twenty-four hours that the previous night seemed to be months away.
II
Instead of turning down Friendly Street, they kept straight along the lane till, becoming suddenly urban, it led them across tram-lines and Turnhill Road, and so through a gulf28 or inlet of the market-place behind the Shambles29, the Police Office, and the Town Hall, into the market-place itself, which in these latter years was recovering a little of the commercial prestige snatched from it half a century earlier by St. Luke's Square. Rats now marauded in the empty shops of St. Luke's Square, while the market-place glittered with custom, and the electric decoy of its façades lit up strangely the lower walls of the black and monstrous30 Town Hall.
Innumerable organized activities were going forward at that moment in the serried31 buildings of the endless confused streets that stretched up hill and down dale from one end of the Five Towns to the other—theatres, Empire music-halls, Hippodrome music-halls, picture-palaces in dozens, concerts, singsongs, spiritualistic propaganda, democratic propaganda, skating-rinks, Wild West exhibitions, Dutch auctions32, and the private séances in dubious33 quarters of "psychologists," "clair-voyants," "scientific palmists," and other rascals34 who sold a foreknowledge of the future for eighteenpence or even a shilling. Viewed under certain aspects, it seemed indeed that the Five Towns, in the week-end desertion of its sordid36 factories, was reaching out after the higher life, the subtler life, the more elegant life of greater communities; but the little crowds and the little shops of Bursley market-place were nevertheless a proof that a tolerable number of people were still mainly interested in the primitive37 elemental enterprise of keeping stomachs filled and skins warm, and had no thought beyond it. In Bursley market-place the week's labour was being translated into food and drink and clothing by experts who could distinguish infallibly between elevenpence-halfpenny and a shilling. Rachel was such an expert. She forced her thoughts down to the familiar, sane39, safe subject of shopping, though to-night her errands were of the simplest description, requiring no brains. But she could not hold her thoughts. A voice was continually whispering to her—not Louis Fores' voice, but a voice within herself, that she had never clearly heard before. Alternatively she scorned it and trembled at it.
She stopped in front of the huge window of Wason's Provision Emporium.
"Is this the first house of call?" asked Louis airily, swinging the reticule and his stick together.
"Well—" she hesitated. "Mrs. Tams told me they were selling Singapore pineapple at sevenpence-halfpenny. Mas. Maldon fancies pineapple. I've known her fancy a bit of pineapple when she wouldn't touch anything else.... Yes, there it is!"
In fact, the whole of the upper half of Wason's window was yellow with tins of preserved pineapple. And great tickets said: "Delicious chunks40, 7 1/2d. per large tin. Chunks, 6 1/2d. per large tin."
Customers in ones and twos kept entering and leaving the shop. Rachel moved on towards the door, which was at the corner of the Cock yard, and looked within. The long double counters were being assailed41 by a surging multitude who fought for the attention of prestidigitatory salesmen.
"Hm!" murmured Rachel. "That may be all very well for Mrs. Tams...."
A moment later she said—
"It's always like that with Wason's shops for the first week or two!"
And her faintly sarcastic42 tone of a shrewd housewife immediately set Wason in his place—Wason with his two hundred and sixty-five shops, and his racing-cars, and his visits to kings and princes. Wason had emporia all over the kingdom, and in particular at Knype, Hanbridge, and Longshaw. And now he had penetrated43 to Bursley, sleepiest of the Five. His method was to storm a place by means of electricity, full-page advertisements in news-papers, the power of his mere44 name, and a leading line or so. At Bursley his leading line was apparently45 "Singapore delicious chunks at 7-1/2d. per large tin." Rachel knew Wason; she had known him at Knype. And she was well aware that his speciality was second-rate. She despised him. She despised that multitude of simpletons who, full of the ancient illusion that somewhere something can regularly be had for nothing, imagined that Wason's bacon and cheese were cheap because he sold preserved pineapple at a penny less than anybody else in the town. And she despised the roaring, vulgar success of advertising46 and electricity. She had in her some tincture of the old nineteenth century, which loved the decency47 of small, quiet things. And in the prim38 sanity48 of her judgment49 upon Wason she forgot for a few instants that she was in a dream, and that the streets and the whole town appeared strange and troubling to her, and that she scarcely knew what she was doing, and that the most seductive and enchanting50 of created men was at her side and very content to be at her side. And also the voice within her was hushed.
She said—
"I don't see the fun of having the clothes torn off my back to save a penny. I think I shall go to Malkin's. I'll get some cocoa there, too. Mrs. Tams simply lives for cocoa."
And Louis archly answered—
"I've always wondered what Mrs. Tams reminds me of. Now I know. She's exactly like a cocoa-tin dented51 in the middle."
She laughed with pleasure, not because she considered the remark in the least witty52, but because it was so characteristic of Louis Fores. She wished humbly53 that she could say things just like that, and with caution she glanced up at him.
They went into Ted2 Malkin's sober shop, where there was a nice handful of customers, in despite of Wason only five doors away. And no sooner had Rachel got inside than she was in the dream again, and the voice resumed its monotonous55 phrase, and she blushed. The swift change took her by surprise and frightened her. She was not in Bursley, but in some forbidden city without a name, pursuing some adventure at once shameful56 and delicious. A distinct fear seized her. Her self-consciousness was intense.
And there was young Ted Malkin in his starched57 white shirt-sleeves and white apron58 and black waistcoat and tie, among his cheeses and flitches, every one of which he had personally selected and judged, weighing a piece of cheddar in his honourable59 copper-and-brass scales. He was attending to two little girls. He nodded with calm benevolence60 to Rachel and then to Louis Fores. It is true that he lifted his eyebrows—a habit of his—at sight of Fores, but he did so in a quite simple, friendly, and justifiable61 manner, with no insinuations.
"In one moment, Miss Fleckring," said he.
And as he rapidly tied up the parcel of cheese and snapped off the stout62 string with a skilled jerk of the hand, he demanded calmly—
"How's Mrs. Maldon to-night?"
"Much better," said Rachel, "thank you."
And Louis Fores joined easily in—
"You may say, very much better."
"That's rare good news! Rare good news!" said Malkin. "I heard you had an anxious night of it.... Go across and pay at the other counter, my dears." Then he called out loudly—"One and seven, please."
The little girls tripped importantly away.
"Yes, indeed," Rachel agreed. The tale of the illness, then, was spread over the town! She was glad, and her self-consciousness somehow decreased. She now fully4 understood the wisdom of Mrs. Maldon in refusing to let the police be informed of the disappearance of the money. What a fever in the shops of Bursley—even in the quiet shop of Ted Malkin—if the full story got abroad!
"And what is it to be to-night, Miss Fleckring? These aren't quite your hours, are they? But I suppose you've been very upset."
"Oh," said Rachel, "I only want a large tin of Singapore Delicious Chunks, please."
But if she had announced her intention of spending a thousand pounds in Ted Malkin's shop she would not have better pleased him. He beamed. He desired the whole shop to hear that order, for it was the vindication63 of honest, modest trading—of his father's methods and his own. His father, himself, and about a couple of other tradesmen had steadily64 fought the fight of the market-place against St. Luke's Square in the day of its glory, and more recently against the powerfully magnetic large shops at Hanbridge, and they had not been defeated. As for Ted Malkin, he was now beyond doubt the "best" provision-dealer and grocer in the town, and had drawn ahead even of "Holl's" (as it was still called), the one good historic shop left in Luke's Square. The onslaught of Wason had alarmed him, though he had pretended to ignore it. But he was delectably65 reassured67 by this heavenly incident of the representative of one of his most distinguished68 customers coming into the shop and deliberately69 choosing to buy preserved pineapple from him at 8-1/2d. when it could be got thirty yards away for 7 1/2d. Rachel read his thoughts plainly. She knew well enough that she had done rather a fine thing, and her demeanour showed it. Ted Malkin enveloped70 the tin in suitable paper.
"Sure there's nothing else?"
"Not at this counter."
He gave her the tin, smiled, and as he turned to the next waiting customer, called out—
"Singapore Delicious, eight and a half pence."
It was rather a poor affair, that tin—a declension from the great days of Mrs. Maldon's married life, when she spent freely, knowing naught71 of her husband's income except that it was large and elastic72. In those days she would buy a real pineapple, entire, once every three weeks or so, costing five, six, seven, or eight shillings—gorgeous and spectacular fruit. Now she might have pineapple every day if she chose, but it was not quite the same pineapple. She affected73 to like it, she did like it, but the difference between the old pineapple and the new was the saddening difference, for Mrs. Maldon's secret heart, between the great days and the paltry74, facile convenience of the twentieth century.
It was to his aunt, who presided over the opposite side of the shop, including the cash-desk, that Ted Malkin proclaimed in a loud voice the amounts of purchases on his own side. Miss Malkin was a virgin75 of fifty-eight years' standing76, with definite and unchangeable ideas on every subject on earth or in heaven except her own age. As Rachel, followed by Louis Fores, crossed the shop, Miss Malkin looked at them and closed her lips, and lowered her eyelids77, and the upper part of her body seemed to curve slightly, with the sinuosity of a serpent—a strange, significant movement, sometimes ill described as "bridling78."
The total effect was as though Miss Malkin had suddenly clicked the shutters79 down on all the windows of her soul and was spying at Rachel and Louis Fores through a tiny concealed80 orifice in the region of her eye. It was nothing to Miss Malkin that Rachel on that night of all nights had come in to buy Singapore Delicious Chunks at 8-1/2d. It was nothing to her that Mrs. Maldon had had "an attack." Miss Malkin merely saw Rachel and Fores gadding81 about the town together of a Saturday night while Mrs. Maldon was ill in bed. And she regarded Ted's benevolence as the benevolence of a simpleton. Between Miss Malkin's taciturnity and the voice within her Rachel had a terrible three minutes. She was "sneaped"; which fortunately made her red hair angry, so that she could keep some of her dignity. Louis Fores seemed to be quite unconscious that a fearful scene was enacting82 between Miss Malkin and Rachel, and he blandly83 insisted on taking the pineapple-tin and the cocoa-tin and slipping them into the reticule, as though he had been shopping with Rachel all his life and there was a perfect understanding between them. The moral effect was very bad. Rachel blushed again.
When she emerged from the shop she had the illusion of being breathless, and in the midst of a terrific adventure the end of which none could foresee. She was furious against Miss Malkin and against herself. Yet she indignantly justified84 herself. Was not Louis Fores Mrs. Maiden's nephew, and were not he and she doing the best thing they could together under the difficult circumstances of the old lady's illness? If she was not to co-operate with the old lady's sole relative in Bursley, with whom was she to co-operate? In vain such justifications85!... She murderously hated Miss Malkin. She said to herself, without meaning it, that no power should induce her ever to enter the shop again.
And she thought: "I can't possibly go into another shop to-night—I can't possibly do it! And yet I must. Why am I such a silly baby?"
As they walked slowly along the pavement she was in the wild dream anew, and Louis Fores was her only hope and reliance. She clung to him, though not with her arm. She seemed to know him very intimately, and still he was more enigmatic to her than ever he had been.
As for Louis, beneath his tranquil86 mien87 of a man of experience and infinite tact88, he was undergoing the most extraordinary and delightful89 sensations, keener even than those which had thrilled him in Rachel's kitchen on the previous evening. The social snob90 in him had somehow suddenly expired, and he felt intensely the strange charm of going shopping of a Saturday night with a young woman, and making a little purchase here and a little purchase there, and thinking about halfpennies. And in his fancy he built a small house to which he and Rachel would shortly return, and all the brilliant diversions of bachelordom seemed tame and tedious compared to the wondrous91 existence of this small house.
"Now I have to go to Heath's the butcher's," said Rachel, determined92 at all costs to be a woman and not a silly baby. After that plain announcement her cowardice93 would have no chance to invent an excuse for not going into another shop.
But she added—
"And that'll be all."
"I know Master Bob Heath. Known him a long time," said Louis Fores, with amusement in his voice, as though to imply that he could relate strange and titillating94 matters about Heath if he chose, and indeed that he was a mine of secret lore95 concerning the citizens.
The fact was that he had travelled once to Woore races with the talkative Heath, and that Heath had introduced him to his brother Stanny Heath, a local book-maker of some reputation, from whom Louis had won five pounds ten during the felicitous96 day. Ever afterwards Bob Heath had effusively97 saluted99 Louis on every possible occasion, and had indeed once stopped him in the street and said: "My brother treated you all right, didn't he? Stanny's a true sport." And Louis had to be effusive98 also. It would never do to be cold to a man from whose brother you had won—and received—five pounds ten on a racecourse.
So that when Louis followed Rachel into Heath's shop at the top of Duck Bank the fat and happy Heath gave him a greeting in which astonishment101 and warm regard were mingled102. The shop was empty of customers, and also it contained little meat, for Heath's was not exactly a Saturday-night trade. Bob Heath, clothed from head to foot in slightly blood-stained white, stood behind one hacked103 counter, and Mrs. Heath, similarly attired104, and rather stouter105, stood behind the other; and each possessed106 a long steel which hung from an ample loose girdle.
Heath, a man of forty, had a salute100 somewhat military in gesture, though conceived in a softer, more accommodating spirit. He raised his chubby107 hand to his forehead, but all the muscles of it were lax and the fingers loosely curved; at the same time he drew back his left foot and kicked up the heel a few inches. Louis amiably108 responded. Rachel went direct to Mrs. Heath, a woman of forty-five. She had never before seen Heath in the shop.
"Doing much with the gees109 lately, Mr. Fores?" Heath inquired in a cheerful, discreet110 tone.
"Not me!"
"Well, I can't say I've had much luck myself, sir."
The conversation was begun in proper form. Through it Louis could hear Rachel buying a cutlet, and then another cutlet, from Mrs. Heath, and protesting that five-pence was a good price and all she desired to pay even for the finest cutlet in the shop. And then Rachel asked about sweetbreads. Heath's voice grew more and more confidential111 and at length, after a brief pause, he whispered—
"Ye're not married, are ye, sir? Excuse the liberty."
It was a whisper, but one of those terrible, miscalculated whispers that can be heard for miles around, like the call of the cuckoo. Plainly Heath was not aware of the identity of Rachel Fleckring. And in his world, which was by no means the world of his shop and his wife, it was incredible that a man should run round shopping with a woman on a Saturday night unless he was a husband on unescapable duty.
Louis shook his head.
Mrs. Heath called out in severe accents which were a reproof112 and a warning: "Got a sweetbread, Robert? It's for Mrs. Maldon."
The clumsy fool understood that he had blundered.
He had no sweetbread—not even for Mrs. Maldon. The cutlets were wrapped in newspaper, and Louis rather self-consciously opened the maw of the reticule for them.
"No offence, I hope, sir," said Heath as the pair left the shop, thus aggravating113 his blunder. Louis and Rachel crossed Duck Bank in constrained114 silence. Rachel was scarlet115. The new cinema next to the new Congregational chapel116 blazed in front of them.
"Wouldn't care to look in here, I suppose, would you?" Louis imperturbably117 suggested.
Rachel did not reply.
"Only for a quarter of an hour or so," said Louis.
Rachel did not venture to glance up at him. She was so agitated118 that she could scarcely speak.
"I don't think so," she muttered.
"Why not?" he exquisitely120 pleaded. "It will do you good."
She raised her head and saw the expression of his face, so charming, so provocative121, so persuasive122. The voice within her was insistent123, but she would not listen to it. Nobody had ever looked at her as Louis was looking at her then. The streets, the town faded. She thought: "Whatever happens, I cannot withstand that face." She was feverishly124 happy, and at the same time ravaged
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