"Julian back? Not as I know of," said Mr. Batchgrew aggressively.

"Why?"

"We thought we saw him walking down Moorthorne Road to-night."

"Yes," said Rachel. "We both thought we saw him."

"Happen he is if he aeroplaned it!" said Batchgrew, and fumbled nervously with the papers.

"It couldn't have been Julian," said Louis, confidently, to Rachel.

"No, it couldn't," said Rachel.

But neither conjured away the secret uneasiness of the other. And as for Rachel, she knew that all through the evening she had, inexplicably, been disturbed by an apprehension that Julian, after his long and strange sojourn in South Africa, had returned to the district. Why the possible advent of Julian should disconcert her, she thought she could not divine. Mr. Batchgrew's demeanour as he answered Louis' question mysteriously increased her apprehension. At one moment she said to herself, "Of course it wasn't Julian." At the next, "I'm quite sure I couldn't be mistaken." At the next, "And supposing it was Julian--what of it?"

II

When Batchgrew and Louis, sitting side by side on the Chesterfield, began to turn over doc.u.ments and peer into columns, and carry the finger horizontally across sheets of paper in search of figures, Rachel tactfully withdrew, not from the room, but from the conversation, it being her proper role to pretend that she did not and could not understand the complicated details which they were discussing. She expected some rather dazzling revelation of men's trained methods at this "business interview" (as Louis had announced it), for her brother and father had never allowed her the slightest knowledge of their daily affairs. But she was disappointed. She thought that both the men were somewhat absurdly and self-consciously trying to be solemn and learned. Louis beyond doubt was self-conscious--acting as it were to impress his wife--and Batchgrew's efforts to be hearty and youthful with the young roused her private ridicule.

Moreover, nothing fresh emerged from the interview. She had known all of it before from Louis. Batchgrew was merely repeating and resuming.

And Louis was listening with politeness to recitals with which he was quite familiar. In words almost identical with those already reported to her by Louis, Batchgrew insisted on the honesty and efficiency of the valuer in Hanbridge, a lifelong friend of his own, who had for a specially low fee put a price on the house at Bycars and its contents for the purpose of a division between Louis and Julian. And now, as previously with Louis, Rachel failed to comprehend how the valuer, if he had been favourably disposed towards Louis, as Batchgrew averred, could at the same time have behaved honestly towards Julian. But neither Louis nor Batchgrew seemed to realize the point. They both apparently flattered themselves with much simplicity upon the partiality of the lifelong friend and valuer for Louis, without perceiving the logical deduction that if he was partial he was a rascal. Further, Thomas Batchgrew "rubbed Rachel the wrong way" by subtly emphasizing his own marvellous abilities as a trustee and executor, and by a.s.suring Louis repeatedly that all conceivable books of account, correspondence, and doc.u.ments were open for his inspection at any time. Batchgrew, in Rachel's opinion, might as well have said, "You naturally suspect me of being a knave, but I can prove to you that you are wrong."

Finally, they came to the grand total of Louis' inheritance, which Rachel had known by heart for several days past; yet Batchgrew rolled it out as a piece of tremendous news, and immediately afterwards hinted that the sum represented less than the true worth of Louis'

inheritance, and that he, Batchgrew, as well as his lifelong friend the valuer, had been influenced by a partiality for Louis. For example, he had contrived to put all the house property, except the house at Bycars, into Julian's share; which was extremely advantageous for Louis because the federation of the Five Towns into one borough had rendered property values the most capricious and least calculable of all worldly possessions.... And Louis tried to smile knowingly at the knowing trustee and executor with his amiable partiality for one legatee as against the other. Louis' share, beyond the Bycars house, was in the gilt-edged stock of limited companies which sold water and other necessaries of life to the public on their own terms.

Rachel left the pair for a moment, and returned from upstairs with a grey jacket of Louis' from which she had to unst.i.tch the black _crepe_ armlet announcing to the world Louis' grief for his dead great-aunt; the period of mourning was long over, and it would not have been quite nice for Louis to continue announcing his grief.

As she came back into the room she heard the word "debentures,"

and that single word changed her mood instantly from bland feminine toleration to porcupinish defensiveness. She did not, as a fact, know what debentures were. She could not for a fortune have defined the difference between a debenture and a share. She only knew that debentures were connected with "limited companies"--not waterworks companies, which she cla.s.sed with the Bank of England--but just any limited companies, which were in her mind a bottomless pit for the savings of the foolish. She had an idea that a debenture was, if anything, more fatal than a share. She was, of course, quite wrong, according to general principles; but, unfortunately, women, as all men sooner or later learn, have a disconcerting habit of being right in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. In a single moment, without justification, she had in her heart declared war on all debentures.

And as soon as she gathered that Thomas Batchgrew was suggesting to Louis the exchange of waterworks stock for seven per cent. debentures in the United Midland Cinemas Corporation, Limited, she became more than ever convinced that her instinct about debentures was but too correct. She sat down primly, and detached the armlet, and removed all the bits of black cotton from the sleeve, and never raised her head nor offered a remark, but she was furious--furious to protect her husband against sharks and against himself.

The conduct and demeanour of Thomas Batchgrew were now explained.

His visit, his flattery, his heartiness, his youthfulness, all had a motive. He had safeguarded Louis' interests under the will in order to rob him afterwards as a cinematograph speculator. The thing was as clear as daylight. And yet Louis did not seem to see it. Louis listened to Batchgrew's ingenious arguments with nave interest and was obviously impressed. When Batchgrew called him "a business man as smart as they make 'em," and then proved that the money so invested would be as safe as in a stocking, Louis agreed with a great air of ac.u.men that certainly it would. When Batchgrew pointed out that, under the proposed new investment, Louis would be receiving in income thirty or thirty-five shillings for every pound under the old investments, Louis' eye glistened--positively glistened! Rachel trembled. She saw her husband beggared, and there was nothing that frightened her more than the prospect of Louis without a reserve of private income. She did not argue the position--she simply knew that Louis without sure resources behind him would be a very dangerous and uncertain Louis, perhaps a tragic Louis. She frankly admitted this to herself. And old Batchgrew went on talking and inveigling until Rachel was ready to believe that the device of debentures had been originally invented by Thomas Batchgrew himself with felonious intent.

An automobile hooted in the street.

"Well, ye'll think it over," said Thomas Batchgrew.

"Oh I _will_!" said Louis eagerly.

And Rachel asked herself, almost shaking--"Is it possible that he is such a simpleton?"

"Only I must know by Tuesday," said Thomas Batchgrew. "I thought I'd give ye th' chance, but I can't keep it open later than Tuesday."

"Thanks, awfully," said Louis. "I'm very much obliged for the offer.

I'll let you know--before Tuesday."

Rachel frowned as she folded up the jacket. If, however, the two men could have seen into her mind they would have perceived symptoms of danger more agitating than one little frown.

"Of course," said Thomas Batchgrew easily, with a short laugh, in the lobby, "if it hadna been for _her_ making away with that nine hundred and sixty-odd pound, you'd ha' had a round sum o' thousands to invest. I've been thinking o'er that matter, and all I can see for it is as her must ha' thrown th' money into th' fire in mistake for th'

envelope, or with th' envelope. That's all as I can see for it."

Louis flushed slightly as he slapped his thigh.

"Never thought of that!" he cried. "It very probably _was_ that.

Strange it never occurred to me!"

Rachel said nothing. She had extreme difficulty in keeping control of herself while old Batchgrew, with numerous senile precautions, took his slow departure. She forgot that she was a hostess and a woman of the world.

III

"h.e.l.lo! What's that?" Rachel asked, in a self-conscious voice, when they were in the parlour again.

Louis had almost surrept.i.tiously taken an envelope from his pocket, and was extracting a paper from it.

On finding themselves alone they had not followed their usual custom of bursting into comment, favourable or unfavourable, on the departed--a practice due more to a desire to rouse and enjoy each other's individualities than to a genuine interest in the third person. Nor had they impulsively or deliberately kissed, as they were liable to do after release from a spell of worldliness. On the contrary, both were still constrained, as if the third person was still with them. The fact was that there were two other persons in the room, darkly discerned by Louis and Rachel--namely, a different, inimical Rachel and a different, inimical Louis. All four, the seen and the half-seen, walked stealthily, like rival beasts in the edge of the jungle.

"Oh!" said Louis with an air of nonchalance. "It came by the last post while old Batch was here, and I just shoved it into my pocket."

The arrivals of the post were always interesting to them, for during the weeks after marriage letters are apt to be more numerous than usual, and to contain delicate and enchanting surprises. Both of them were always strictly ceremonious in the handling of each other's letters, and yet both deprecated this ceremoniousness in the beloved.

Louis urged Rachel to open his letters without scruple, and Rachel did the same to Louis. But both--Louis by chivalry and Rachel by pride--were prevented from acting on the invitation. The envelope in Louis' hand did not contain a letter, but only a circular. The fact that the flap of the envelope was unsealed and the stamp a mere halfpenny ought rightly to have deprived the packet of all significance as a subject of curiosity. Nevertheless, the different, inimical Rachel, probably out of sheer perversity, went up to Louis and looked over his shoulder as he read the communication, which was a printed circular, somewhat yellowed, with blanks neatly filled in, and the whole neatly signed by a churchwarden, informing Louis that his application for sittings at St. Luke's Church (commonly called the Old Church) had been granted. It is to be noted that, though applications for sittings in the Old Church were not overwhelmingly frequent, and might indeed very easily have been coped with by means of autograph replies, the authorities had a sufficient sense of dignity always to circularize the applicants.

This doc.u.ment, harmless enough, and surely a proof of laudable aspirations in Louis, gravely displeased the different, inimical Rachel, and was used by her for bellicose purposes.

"So that's it, is it?" she said ominously.

"But wasn't it understood that we were to go to the Old Church?" said the other Louis, full of ingenious innocence.

"Oh! Was it?"

"Didn't I mention it?"

"I don't remember."

"I'm sure I did."

The truth was that Louis had once casually remarked that he supposed they would attend the Old Church. Rachel would have joyously attended any church or any chapel with him. At Knype she had irregularly attended the Bethesda Chapel--sometimes (in the evenings) with her father, oftener alone, never with her brother. During her brief employment with Mrs. Maldon she had been only once to a place of worship, the new chapel in Moorthorne Road, which was the nearest to Bycars and had therefore been favoured by Mrs. Maldon when her limbs were stiff. In the abstract she approved of religious rites.

Theologically her ignorance was such that she could not have distinguished between the tenets of church and the tenets of chapel, and this ignorance she shared with the large majority of the serious inhabitants of the Five Towns. Why, then, should she have "pulled a face" (as the saying down there is) at the Old Parish Church?

One reason, which would have applied equally to church or chapel, was that she was disconcerted and even alarmed by Louis' manifest tendency to settle down into utter correctness. Louis had hitherto been a devotee of joy--never as a bachelor had he done aught to increase the labour of churchwardens--and it was somehow as a devotee of joy that Rachel had married him. Rachel had been settled down all her life, and naturally desired and expected that an unsettling process should now occur in her career. It seemed to her that in mere decency Louis might have allowed at any rate a year or two to pa.s.s before occupying himself so stringently with her eternal welfare. She belonged to the middle cla.s.s (intermediate between the industrial and the aristocratic employing) which is responsible for the Five Towns' reputation for joylessness, the cla.s.s which sticks its chin out and gets things done (however queer the things done may be), the cla.s.s which keeps the district together and maintains its solidity, the cla.s.s which is ashamed of nothing but idleness, frank enjoyment, and the caprice of the moment. (Its idiomatic phrase for expressing the experience of gladness, "I sang 'O be joyful,'" alone demonstrates its unwillingness to rejoice.) She had espoused the hedonistic cla.s.s (always secretly envied by the other), and Louis' behaviour as a member of that cla.s.s had already begun to disappoint her. Was it fair of him to say in his conduct: "The fun is over. We must be strictly conventional now"? His costly caprices for Llandudno and the pleasures of idleness were quite beside the point.

Another reason for her objection to Louis' overtures to the Old Church was that they increased her suspicion of his sn.o.bbishness. No person nourished from infancy in chapel can bring himself to believe that the chief motive of church-goers is not the sn.o.bbish motive of social propriety. And dissenters are so convinced that, if chapel means salvation in the next world, church means salvation in this, that to this day, regardless of the feelings of their pastors, they will go to church once in their lives--to get married. At any rate, Rachel was positively sure that no anxiety about his own soul or about hers had led Louis to join the Old Church.

"Have you been confirmed?" she asked.