The Price of Love Part 17

Rachel nodded--"Evidently."

"Well," said he, "I'll look in again during the afternoon. I must be getting along for my grub." He was hoping that he had not unintentionally brought about his aunt's death.

"Not had your dinner!" she cried. "Why! It's after half-past two!"

"Oh, well, you know ... Sat.u.r.day...."

"I shall get you a bit of dinner here," she said. "And then perhaps Mrs. Maldon will be waking up. Yes," she repeated, positively, "I shall get you a bit of dinner here, myself. Mrs. Maldon would not be at all pleased if I didn't."

"I'm frightfully hungry," he admitted.

And he was.

When she had left the parlour he perceived evidences here and there that she had been hunting up hill and down dale for the notes; and he went into the back room with an earnest, examining air, as though he might find part of the missing h.o.a.rd, after all, in some niche overlooked by Rachel. He would have preferred to think that Mrs.

Maldon had not taken the whole of the money upstairs, but reflection did much to convince him that she had. It was infinitely regrettable that he had not counted his treasure-trove under the chair.

IV

The service of his meal, which had the charm of a picnic, was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, whose report on the invalid, however, was so favourable that Louis could quite dismiss the possibly homicidal aspect of his dealings with the bank-notes. The shock of the complete disappearance of the vast sum had perhaps brought Mrs.

Maldon to the brink of death, but she had edged safely away again, in accordance with her own calm prophecy that very morning. When the doctor had gone, and the patient was indulged in her desire to be left alone for sleep, Louis very slowly and luxuriously finished his repast, with Rachel sitting opposite to him, in Mrs. Maldon's place, at the dining-table. He lit a cigarette and, gracefully leaning his elbows on the table, gazed at her through the beautiful grey smoke-veil, which was like the clouds of Paradise.

What thrilled Louis was the obvious fact that he fascinated her. She was transformed under his glance. How her eyes shone! How her cheek flushed and paled! What pa.s.sionate vitality found vent in her little gestures! But in the midst of this transformation her honesty, her loyalty, her exquisite ingenuousness, her superb dependability remained. She was no light creature, no flirt nor seeker after dubious sensations. He felt that at last he was appreciated by one whose appreciation was tremendously worth having. He was confirmed in that private opinion of himself that no mistakes. .h.i.therto made in his career had been able to destroy. He felt happy and confident as never before.

Luck, of course; but luck deserved! He could marry this unique creature and be idolized and cherished for the rest of his life. In an instant, from being a scorner of conjugal domesticity, he became a scorner of the bachelor's existence, with its immeasurable secret ennui hidden beneath the jaunty cloak of a specious freedom--freedom to be bored, freedom to fret, and long and envy, freedom to eat ashes and masticate dust! He would marry her. Yes, he was saved, because he was loved. And he meant to be worthy of his regenerate destiny. All the best part of his character came to the surface and showed in his face. But he did not ask his heart whether he was or was not in love with Rachel. The point did not present itself. He certainly never doubted that he was seeing her with a quite normal vision.

Their talk went through and through the enormous topic of the night and day, arriving at no conclusion whatever, except that there was no conclusion--not even a theory of a conclusion. (And the Louis who now discussed the case was an innocent, reborn Louis, quite unconnected with the Louis of the previous evening; he knew no more of the inwardness of the affair than Rachel did. Of such singular feats of doubling the personality is the self-deceiving mind capable.) After a time it became implicit in the tone of their conversation that the mysterious disappearance in a small, ordinary house of even so colossal a sum as nine hundred and sixty-five pounds did not mean the end of the world. That is to say, they grew accustomed to the situation. Louis, indeed, permitted himself to suggest, as a man of the large, still-existing world, that Rachel should guard against over-estimating the importance of the sum. True, as he had several times reflected, it did represent an income of about a pound a week! But, after all, what was a pound a week, viewed in a proper perspective?...

Louis somehow glided from the enormous topic to the topic of the newest cinema--Rachel had never seen a cinema, except a very primitive one, years earlier--and old Batchgrew was mentioned, he being notoriously a cinema magnate. "I cannot stand that man," said Rachel with a candour that showed to what intimacy their talk had developed.

Louis was delighted by the explosion, and they both fell violently upon Thomas Batchgrew and found intense pleasure in destroying him.

And Louis was saying to himself, enthusiastically, "How well she understands human nature!"

So that when old Batchgrew, without any warning or preliminary sound, stalked pompously into the room their young confusion was excessive.

They felt themselves suddenly in the presence of not merely a personal adversary, but of an enemy of youth and of love and of joy--of a being mysterious and malevolent who neither would nor could comprehend them.

And they were at once resentful and intimidated.

During the morning Councillor Batchgrew had provided himself--doubtless by purchase, since he had not been home--with a dandiacal spotted white waistcoat in honour of the warm and sunny weather. This waistcoat by its sprightly unsuitability to his aged uncouthness, somehow intensified the sinister quality of his appearance.

"Found it?" he demanded tersely.

Rachel, strangely at a loss, hesitated and glanced at Louis as if for succour.

"No, I haven't, Mr. Batchgrew," she said. "I haven't, I'm sure. And I've turned over every possible thing likely or unlikely."

Mr. Batchgrew growled--

"From th' look of ye I made sure that th' money had turned up all right--ye were that comfortable and cosy! Who'd guess as nigh on a thousand pound's missing out of this house since last night!"

The heavy voice rolled over them brutally. Louis attempted to withstand Mr. Batchgrew's glare, but failed. He was sure of the absolute impregnability of his own position; but the clear memory of at least one humiliating and disastrous interview with Thomas Batchgrew in the past robbed Louis' eye of its composure. The circ.u.mstances under which he had left the councillor's employ some years ago were historic and unforgettable.

"I came in back way instead of front way," said Thomas Batchgrew, "because I thought I'd have a look at that scullery door. Kitchen's empty."

"What about the scullery door?" Louis lightly demanded.

Rachel murmured--

"I forgot to tell you; it was open when I came down in the middle of the night." And then she added: "Wide open."

"Upon my soul!" said Louis slowly, with marked constraint. "I really forget whether I looked at that door before I went to bed. I know I looked at all the others."

"I'd looked at it, anyway," said Rachel defiantly, gazing at the table.

"And when you found it open, miss," pursued Thomas Batchgrew, "what did ye do?"

"I shut it and locked it."

"Where was the key?"

"In the door."

"Lock in order?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, how could it have been opened from the outside? There isn't a mark on the door, outside _or_ in."

"As far as that goes, Mr. Batchgrew," said Rachel, "only last week the key fell out of the lock on the inside and slid down the brick floor to the outside--you know there's a slope. And I had to go out of the house by the front and the lamplighter climbed over the back gate for me and let me into the yard so that I could get the key again. That might have happened last night. Some one might have shaken the key out, and pulled it under the door with a bit of wire or something."

"That won't do," Thomas Batchgrew stopped her. "You said the key was in the door on the inside."

"Well, when they'd once opened the door from the outside, couldn't they have put the key on the inside again?"

"They? Who?"

"Burglars."

Thomas Batchgrew repeated sarcastically--

"Burglars! Burglars!" and snorted.

"Well, Mr. Batchgrew, either burglars must have been at work," said Louis, who was fascinated by Rachel's surprising news and equally surprising theory--"either burglars must have been at work," he repeated impressively, "_or_--the money is still in the house.

That's evident."

"Is it?" snarled Batchgrew. "Look here, miss, and you, young Fores, I didn't make much o' this this morning, because I thought th' money 'ud happen be found. But seeing as it isn't, and _as_ we're talking about it, what time was the rumpus last night?"

"What time?" Rachel muttered. "What time was it, Mr. Fores?"

"I dun'no'," said Louis. "Perhaps the doctor would know."