Mrs. Tarns pulled the gate towards herself and, crushed behind it, curtsied to Thomas Batchgrew. This curtsy, the most servile of all Western salutations, and now nearly unknown in Five Towns, consisted in a momentary shortening of the stature by six inches, and in nothing else. Mrs. Tams had acquired it in her native village of Sneyd, where an earl held fast to that which was good, and she had never been able to quite lose it. It did far more than the celerity of the chauffeur to appease Thomas Batchgrew.

Snorting and self-conscious, and with his white whiskers flying behind him, he stepped in his two overcoats across the narrow, muddy pavement and on to Mrs. Tarn's virgin stonework, and with two haughty black footmarks he instantly ruined it. The tragedy produced no effect on Mrs. Tams. And indeed n.o.body in the Five Towns would have been moved by it. For the social convention as to porticoes enjoined, not that they should remain clean, but simply that they should show evidence of having been clean at some moment early in each day. It mattered not how dirty they were in general, provided that the religious and futile rite of stoning had been demonstrably performed during the morning.

Mrs. Tams adroitly moved her bucket, aside, though there was plenty of room for feet even larger than those of Thomas Batchgrew, and then waited to be spoken to. She was not spoken to. Mr. Batchgrew, after hesitating and clearing his throat, proceeded up the steps, defiling them. As he did so Mrs. Tams screwed together all her features and clenched her hands as if in agony, and stared horribly at the open front door, which was blowing to. It seemed that she was trying to arrest the front door by sheer force of muscular contraction. She did not succeed. Gently the door closed, with a firm click of its latch, in face of Mr. Batchgrew.

"Nay, nay!" muttered Mrs. Tarns, desolated.

And Mr. Batchgrew, once more justly angered, raised his hand to the heavy knocker.

"Dunna' knock, mester! Dunna' knock!" Mrs. Tarns implored in a whisper. "Missis is asleep. Miss Rachel's been up aw night wi' her, seemingly, and now her's gone off in a doze like, and Miss Rachel's resting, too, on th' squab i' th' parlor. Doctor was fetched."

Apparently charging Mrs. Tarns with responsibility for the illness, Mr. Batchgrew demanded severely--

"What was it?"

"One o' them attacks as her has," said Mrs. Tarns with a meekness that admitted she could offer no defence, "only wuss!"

"Hurry round to th' back door and let me in."

"I doubt back door's bolted on th' inside," said Mrs. Tarns with deep humility.

"This is ridiculous," said Mr. Batchgrew, truly. "Am I to stand here all day?" And raised his hand to the knocker.

Mrs. Tarns with swiftness darted up the steps and inserted a large, fat, wet hand between the raised knocker and its bed. It was the sublime gesture of a martyr, and her large brown eyes gazed submissively, yet firmly, at Mr. Batchgrew with the look of a martyr.

She had nothing to gain by the defiance of a great man, but she could not permit her honoured employer to be wakened. She was accustomed to emergencies, and to desperate deeds therein, and she did not fail now in promptly taking the right course, regardless of consequences.

Somewhat younger than Mr. Batchgrew in years, she was older in experience and in wisdom. She could do a thousand things well; Mr.

Batchgrew could do nothing well. At that very moment she conquered, and he was beaten. Yet her brown eyes and even the st.u.r.dy uplifted arm cringed to him, and asked in abas.e.m.e.nt to be forgiven for the impiety committed. From her other hand a cloth dripped foul water on to the topmost step.

And then the door yielded. Thomas Batchgrew and Mrs. Tarns both abandoned the knocker. Rachel, pale as a lily, stern, with dilated eyes, stood before them. And Mr. Batchgrew realized, as he looked at her against the dark, hushed background of the stairs, that Mrs.

Maldon was indeed ill. Mrs. Tams respectfully retired down the steps.

A mightier than she, the young, nave, ignorant girl, to whom she could have taught everything save possibly the art of washing cutlery, had relieved her of responsibility.

"You can't see her," said Rachel in a low tone, trembling.

"But--but--" Thomas Batchgrew spluttered, ineffectively. "D'you know I'm her trustee, miss? Let me come in."

Rachel would not take her hand off the inner k.n.o.b.

There was the thin, far-off sound of an electric bell, breaking the silence of the house. It was the bell in Rachel's bedroom, rung from Mrs. Maldon's bedroom. And at this mysterious signal from the invalid, this faint proof that the hidden sufferer had consciousness and volition, Rachel started and Thomas Batchgrew started.

"Her bell!" Rachel exclaimed, and fled upstairs.

In the large bedroom Mrs. Maldon lay apparently at ease.

"Did they waken you?" cried Rachel, distressed.

"Who is there, dear?" Mrs. Maldon asked, in a voice that had almost recovered from the weakness of the night, Rachel was astounded.

"Mr. Batchgrew."

"I must see him," said the old lady.

"But--"

"I must see him at once," Mrs. Maldon repeated. "At once. Kindly bring him up." And she added, in a curiously even and resigned tone, "I've lost all that money!"

II

"Nay," said Mrs. Maldon to Thomas Batchgrew, "I'm not going to die just yet."

Her voice was cheerful, even a little brisk, and she spoke with a benign smile in the tranquil accents of absolute conviction. But she did not move her head; she waited to look at Thomas Batchgrew until he came within her field of vision at the foot of the bed. This quiescence had a disconcerting effect, contradicting her voice.

She was lying on her back, in the posture customary to her, the arms being stretched down by the sides under the bed-quilt. Her features were drawn slightly askew; the skin was shiny; the eyes stared as though Mrs. Maldon had been a hysterical subject. It was evident that she had pa.s.sed through a tremendous physical crisis. Nevertheless, Rachel was still astounded at the change for the better in her, wrought by sleep and the force of her obstinate vitality.

The contrast between the scene which Thomas Batchgrew now saw and the scene which had met Rachel in the night was so violent as to seem nearly incredible. Not a sign of the catastrophe remained, except in Mrs. Maldon's face, and in some invalid gear on the dressing-table, for Rachel had gradually got the room into order. She had even closed and locked the wardrobe.

On answering Mrs. Maldon's summons in the night, Rachel had found the central door of the wardrobe swinging and the sacred big drawer at the bottom of that division only half shut, and Mrs. Maldon in a peignoir lying near it on the floor, making queer inhuman noises, not moans, but a kind of anxious, inarticulate entreaty, and shaking her head constantly to the left--never to the right. Mrs. Maldon had recognized Rachel, and had seemed to implore with agonized intensity her powerful a.s.sistance in some nameless and hopeless tragic dilemma. The sight--especially of the destruction of the old woman's dignity--was dreadful to such an extent that Rachel did not realize its effect on herself until several hours afterwards. At the moment she called on the immense reserves of her self-confidence to meet the situation--and she met it, a.s.sisting her pride with the curious pretence, characteristic of the Five Towns race, that the emergency was insufficient to alarm in the slightest degree a person of sagacity and sang-froid.

She had restored Mrs. Maldon to her bed and to some of her dignity.

But the horrid symptoms were not thereby abated. The inhuman noises and the distressing, incomprehensible appeal had continued.

Immediately Rachel's back was turned Mrs. Maldon had fallen out of bed. This happened three times, so that clearly the sufferer was falling out of bed under the urgency of some half-conscious purpose.

Rachel had soothed her. And once she had managed to say with some clearness the words, "I've been downstairs." But when Rachel went back to the room from dispatching Louis for the doctor, she was again on the floor. Louis' absence from the house had lasted an intolerable age, but the doctor had followed closely on the messenger, and already the symptoms had become a little less acute. The doctor had diagnosed with rapidity. Supervening upon her ordinary cardiac attack after supper, Mrs. Maldon had had, in the night, an embolus in one artery of the brain. The way in which the doctor announced the fact showed to Rachel that nothing could easily have been more serious. And yet the mere naming of the affliction eased her, although she had no conception of what an embolus might be. Dr. Yardley had remained until four o'clock, when Mrs. Maldon, surprisingly convalescent, dropped off to sleep. He remarked that she might recover.

At eight o'clock he had come back. Mrs. Maldon was awake, but had apparently no proper recollection of the events of the night, which even to Rachel had begun to seem unreal, like a waning hallucination.

The doctor gave orders, with optimism, and left, sufficiently rea.s.sured to allow himself to yawn. At a quarter past eight Louis had departed to his own affairs, on Rachel's direct suggestion. And when Mrs. Tams had been informed of the case so full of disturbing enigmas, while Rachel and she drank tea together in the kitchen, the daily domestic movement of the house was partly resumed, from vanity, because Rachel could not bear to sit idle nor to admit to herself that she had been scared to a standstill.

And now Mrs. Maldon, in full possession of her faculties, faced Thomas Batchgrew for the interview which she had insisted on having. And Rachel waited with an uncanny apprehension, her ears full of the mysterious and frightful phrase, "I've lost all that money."

III

Mrs. Maldon, after a few words had pa.s.sed as to her illness, used exactly the same phrase again--"I've lost all that money!"

Mr. Batchgrew snorted, and glanced at Rachel for an explanation.

"Yes. It's all gone," proceeded Mrs. Maldon with calm resignation.

"But I'm too old to worry. Please listen to me. We lost my serviette and ring last evening at supper. Couldn't find it anywhere. And in the night it suddenly occurred to me where it was. I've remembered everything now, almost, and I'm quite sure. You know you first told me to put the money in my wardrobe. Now before you said that, I had thought of putting it on the top of the cupboard to the right of the fireplace in the back room downstairs. I thought that would be a good place for it in case burglars _did_ come. No burglar would ever think of looking there."

"G.o.d bless me!" Mr. Batchgrew muttered, scornfully protesting.

"It couldn't possibly be seen, you see. However, I thought I ought to respect your wish, and so I decided I'd put part of it on the top of the cupboard, and part of it underneath a lot of linen at the bottom of the drawer in my wardrobe. That would satisfy both of us."

"Would it!" exclaimed Mr. Batchgrew, without any restraint upon his heavy, rolling voice.

"Well, I must have picked up the serviette and ring with the bank-notes, you see. I fear I'm absent-minded like that sometimes. I know I went out of the sitting-room with both hands full. I know both hands were occupied, because I remember when I went into the back room I didn't turn the gas up, and I pushed a chair up to the cupboard with my knee, for me to stand on. I'm certain I put some of the notes on the top of the cupboard. Then I came upstairs. The window on the landing was rattling, and I put the other part of the money on the chair while I tried to fasten the window. However, I couldn't fasten it. So I left it. And then I thought I picked up the money again off the chair and came in here and hid it at the bottom of the drawer and locked the wardrobe."