"Oh, dear! I do hope--!" Mrs. Maldon muttered as she hastily tugged at the envelope.

Having read the message, she pa.s.sed it on to Rachel, and at the same time forgivingly responded to her smile. The excitement of the telegram had sufficed to dissipate Mrs. Maldon's trifling resentment.

Rachel read--

"Train hour late. Julian."

The telegraph boy was dismissed: "No answer, thank you."

X

During the next half-hour excitement within the dwelling gradually increased. It grew out of nothing--out of Mrs. Maldon's admirable calm in receiving the message of the telegram--until it affected like an atmospheric disturbance the ground floor--the sitting-room where Mrs. Maldon was spending nervous force in the effort to preserve an absolutely tranquil mind, the kitchen where Rachel was "putting back"

the supper, the lobby towards which Rachel's eye and Mrs. Maiden's ear were strained to catch any sign of an arrival, and the unlighted, unused room behind the sitting-room which seemed to absorb and even intensify the changing moods of the house.

The fact was that Mrs. Maldon, in her relief at finding that Julian was not killed or maimed for life in a railway accident, had begun by treating a delay of one hour in all her arrangements for the evening as a trifle. But she had soon felt that, though a trifle, it was really very upsetting and annoying. It gave birth to irrational yet real forebodings as to the non-success of her little party. It meant that the little party had "started badly." And then her other grand-nephew, Louis Fores, did not arrive. He had been invited for supper at seven, and should have appeared at five minutes to seven at the latest. But at five minutes to seven he had not come; nor at seven, nor at five minutes past--he who had barely a quarter of a mile to walk! There was surely a fate against the party! And Rachel strangely persisted in not leaving the kitchen! Even after Mrs. Maldon had heard her fumbling for an interminable time with the difficult window on the first-floor landing, she went back to the kitchen instead of presenting herself to her expectant mistress.

At last Rachel entered the sitting-room, faintly humming an air. Mrs.

Maldon thought that she looked self-conscious. But Mrs. Maldon also was self-conscious, and somehow could not bring her lips to utter the name of Louis Fores to Rachel. For the old lady had divined a connection of cause and effect between Louis Fores and the apparition of Rachel's superlative frock. And she did not like the connection; it troubled her, and offended the extreme nicety of her social code.

There was a constrained silence, which was broken by the lobby clock striking the first quarter after seven. This harsh announcement on the part of the inhuman clock seemed to render the situation intolerable.

Fifteen minutes past seven, and Louis not come, and not a word of comment thereon! Mrs. Maldon had to admit privately that she was in a high state of agitation.

Then Rachel, bending delicately to sweep the hearth with the bra.s.s-handled brush proper to it, remarked with an obvious affectation of nonchalance--

"Your other guest's late too."

If Mrs. Maldon had not been able to speak his name, neither could Rachel! Mrs. Maldon read with painful certainty all the girl's symptoms.

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Maldon.

"It's like as if what must be!" Rachel murmured, employing a local phrase which Mrs. Maldon had ever contemned as meaningless and ungrammatical.

"Fortunately it doesn't matter, as Julian is late too," said Mrs.

Maldon insincerely, for it was mattering very much. "But still--I wonder--"

Rachel broke out upon her hesitation in a very startling manner--

"I'll just see if he's coming."

And she abruptly quitted the room, almost slamming the door.

Mrs. Maldon was dumbfounded. Scared and attentive, she listened in a maze for the sound of the front door. She heard it open. But was it possible that she heard also the creak of the gate? She sprang to the bow window with surprising activity, and pulled aside a blind, one inch.... There was Rachel tripping hatless and in her best frock down the street! Inconceivable vision, affecting Mrs. Maldon with palpitation! A girl so excellent, so lovable, so trustworthy, to be guilty of the wanton caprice of a minx! Supposing Louis were to see her, to catch her in the brazen act of looking for him! Mrs. Maldon was grieved; and her gentle sorrow for Rachel's incalculable lapse was so dignified, affectionate, and jealous for the good repute of human nature that it mysteriously enn.o.bled instead of degrading the young creature.

XI

Going down Bycars Lane amid the soft wandering airs of the September night, Rachel had the delicious and exciting sensation of being unyoked, of being at liberty for a s.p.a.ce to obey the strong, free common sense of youth instead of conforming to the outworn and tiresome code of another age. Mrs. Maldon's was certainly a house that put a strain on the nerves. It did not occur to Rachel that she was doing aught but a very natural and proper thing. The non-appearance of Louis Fores was causing disquiet, and her simple aim was to shorten the period of anxiety. Nor did it occur to her that she was impulsive.

Something had to be done, and she had done something. Not much longer could she have borne the suspense. All that day she had lived forward towards supper-time, when Louis Fores would appear. Over and over again she had lived right through the moment of opening the front door for him at a little before seven o'clock. The moments between seven o'clock and a quarter past had been a crescendo of torment, intolerable at last. His lateness was inexplicable, and he was so close to that not to look for him would have been ridiculous.

She was apprehensive, and yet she was obscurely happy in her fears.

The large, inviting, dangerous universe was about her--she had escaped from the confining shelter of the house. And the night was about her. It was not necessary for her to wear three coats, like the gross Batchgrew, in order to protect herself from the night! She could go forth into it with no precaution. She was young. Her vigorous and confident body might challenge perils.

When she had proceeded a hundred yards she stopped and turned to look back at the cl.u.s.ter of houses collectively called Bycars.

The distinctive bow-window of Mrs. Maldon's shone yellow. Within the sacred room was still the old lady, sitting expectant, and trying to interest herself in the paper. Strange thought!

Bycars Lane led in a north-easterly direction over the broad hill whose ridge separates the lane from the moorlands honeycombed with coal and iron mines. Above the ridge showed the fire and vapour of the first mining villages, on the way to Red Cow, proof that not all colliers were yet on strike. And above that pyrotechny hung the moon. The munic.i.p.al park, of which Bycars Lane was the north-western boundary, lay in mysterious and forbidden groves behind its spiked red wall and locked gates, and beyond it a bright tram-car was leaping down from lamp to lamp of Moorthorne Road towards the town. Between the ma.s.ses of the ragged hedge on the north side of the lane there was the thin gleam of Bycars Pool, lost in a vague, unoccupied region of shawdrucks and dirty pasture--the rendezvous of skaters when the frost held, Louis Fores had told her, and she had heard from another source that he skated divinely. She could believe it, too.

She resumed her way more slowly. She had only stopped because, though burned with the desire to see him, she yet had an instinct to postpone the encounter. She was almost minded to return. But she went on. The town was really very near. The illuminated clock of the Town Hall had dominion over it; the golden shimmer above the roofs to the left indicated the electrical splendour of the new Cinema in Moorthorne Road next to the new Primitive Methodist Chapel. He had told her about that, too. In two minutes, in less than two minutes, she was among houses again, and approaching the corner of Friendly Street. He would come from the Moorthorne Road end of Friendly Street. She would peep round the corner of Friendly Street to see if he was coming....

But before she reached the corner, her escapade suddenly presented itself to her as childish madness, silly, inexcusable; and she thought self-reproachfully, "How impulsive I am!" and sharply turned back towards Mrs. Maldon's house, which seemed to be about ten miles off.

A moment later she heard hurried footfalls behind her on the narrow brick pavement, and, after one furtive glance over her shoulder, she quickened her pace. Louis Fores in all his elegance was pursuing her!

Nothing had happened to him. He was not ill; he was merely a little late! After all, she would sit by his side at the supper-table! She had a spasm of shame that was excruciating. But at the same time she was wildly glad. And already this inebriating illusion of an ingenuous girl concerning a common male was helping to shape monstrous events.

CHAPTER II

LOUIS' DISCOVERY

I

Louis Fores was late at his grand-aunt's because he had by a certain preoccupation, during a period of about an hour, been rendered oblivious of the pa.s.sage of time. The real origin of the affair went back nearly sixty years, to an indecorous episode in the history of the Maldon family.

At that date--before Mrs. Maldon had even met Austin Maldon, her future husband--Austin's elder brother Athelstan, who was well established as an earthenware broker in London, had a conjugal misfortune, which reached its climax in the Matrimonial Court, and left the injured and stately Athelstan with an incomplete household, a spoiled home, and the sole care of two children, a boy and a girl.

These children were, almost of necessity, clumsily brought up. The girl married the half-brother of a Lieutenant-General Fores, and Louis Fores was their son. The boy married an American girl, and had issue, Julian Maldon and some daughters.

At the age of eighteen, Louis Fores, amiable, personable, and an orphan, was looking for a career. He had lived in the London suburb of Barnes, and under the influence of a father whose career had chiefly been to be the stepbrother of Lieutenant-General Fores. He was in full possession of the conventionally sn.o.bbish ideals of the suburb, reinforced by more than a tincture of the stupendous and unsurpa.s.sed sn.o.bbishness of the British Army. He had no money, and therefore the liberal professions and the higher division of the Civil Service were closed to him. He had the choice of two activities: he might tout for wine, motor-cars, or mineral-waters on commission (like his father), or he might enter a bank; his friends were agreed that nothing else was conceivable. He chose the living grave. It is not easy to enter the living grave, but, august influences aiding, he entered it with _eclat_ at a salary of seventy pounds a year, and it closed over him. He would have been secure till his second death had he not defiled the bier. The day of judgment occurred, the grave opened, and he was thrown out with ignominy, but ignominy unpublished. The august influences, by simple cash, and for their own sakes, had saved him from exposure and a jury.

In order to get rid of him his protectors spoke well of him, emphasizing his many good qualities, and he was deported to the Five Towns (properly enough, since his grandfather had come thence) and there joined the staff of Batchgrew & Sons, thanks to the kind intervention of Mrs. Maldon. At the end of a year John Batchgrew told him to go, and told Mrs. Maldon that her grand-nephew had a fault.

Mrs. Maldon was very sorry. At this juncture Louis Fores, without intending to do so, would certainly have turned Mrs. Maldon's last years into a tragedy, had he not in the very nick of time inherited about a thousand pounds. He was rehabilitated. He "had money" now. He had a fortune; he had ten thousand pounds; he had any sum you like, according to the caprice of rumour. He lived on his means for a little time, frequenting the Munic.i.p.al School of Art at the Wedgwood Inst.i.tution at Bursley, and then old Batchgrew had casually suggested to Mrs. Maldon that there ought to be an opening for him with Jim Horrocleave, who was understood to be succeeding with his patent special processes for earthenware manufacture. Mr. Horrocleave, a man with a chin, would not accept him for a partner, having no desire to share profits with anybody; but on the faith of his artistic tendency and Mrs. Maldon's correct yet highly misleading catalogue of his virtues, he took him at a salary, in return for which Louis was to be the confidential employee who could and would do anything, including design.

And now Louis was the step-nephew of a Lieutenant-General, a man of private means and of talent, and a trusted employee with a fine wage--all under one skin! He shone in Bursley, and no wonder! He was very active at Horrocleave's. He not only designed shapes for vases, and talked intimately with Jim Horrocleave about fresh projects, but he controlled the petty cash. The expenditure of petty cash grew, as was natural in a growing business. Mr. Horrocleave soon got accustomed to that, and apparently gave it no thought, signing cheques instantly upon request. But on the very day of Mrs. Maldon's party, after signing a cheque and before handing it to Louis, he had somewhat lengthily consulted his private cash-book, and, as he handed over the cheque, had said: "Let's have a squint at the petty-cash book to-morrow morning, Louis." He said it gruffly, but he was a gruff man.

He left early. He might have meant anything or nothing. Louis could not decide which; or rather, from five o'clock to seven he had come to alternating decisions every five minutes.

II

It was just about at the time when Louis ought to have been removing his paper cuff-shields in order to start for Mrs. Maldon's that he discovered the full extent of his debt to the petty-cash box. He sat alone at a rough and dirty desk in the inner room of the works "office," surrounded by dust-covered sample vases and other vessels of all shapes, sizes, and tints--specimens of Horrocleave's "Art l.u.s.tre Ware," a melancholy array of ingenious ugliness that nevertheless filled with pride its creators. He looked through a dirt-obscured window and with unseeing gaze surveyed a muddy, littered quadrangle whose twilight was reddened by gleams from the engine-house. In this yard lay flat a sign that had been blown down from the facade of the manufactory six months before: "Horrocleave. Art l.u.s.tre Ware."

Within the room was another sign, itself fashioned in l.u.s.tre-ware: "Horrocleave. Art l.u.s.tre Ware." And the envelopes and paper and bill-heads on the desk all bore the same legend: "Horrocleave. Art l.u.s.tre Ware."

He owed seventy-three pounds to the petty-cash box, and he was startled and shocked. He was startled because for weeks past he had refrained from adding up the columns of the cash-book--partly from idleness and partly from a desire to remain in ignorance of his own doings. He had hoped for the best. He had faintly hoped that the deficit would not exceed ten pounds, or twelve; he had been prepared for a deficit of twenty-five, or even thirty. But seventy-three really shocked. Nay, it staggered. It meant that in addition to his salary, some thirty shillings a week had been mysteriously trickling through the incurable hole in his pocket. Not to mention other debts! He well knew that to Shillitoe alone (his admirable tailor) he owed eighteen pounds.