"I must go upstairs a moment."

CHAPTER IV

IN THE NIGHT

I

Louis stood hesitant and slightly impatient in the parlour, alone. A dark blue cloth now covered the table, and in the centre of it was a large copper jar containing an evergreen plant. Of the feast no material trace remained except a few crumbs on the floor. But the room was still pervaded by the emotional effluence of the perturbed souls who had just gone; and Louis felt it, though without understanding.

Throughout the evening he had of course been preoccupied by the consciousness of having in his pocket bank-notes to a value unknown.

Several times he had sought for a suitable opportunity to disclose his exciting secret. But he had found none. In practice he could not say to his aunt, before Julian and Rachel: "Auntie, I picked up a lot of bank-notes on the landing. You really ought to be more careful!" He could not even in any way refer to them. The dignity of Mrs. Maldon had intimidated him. He had decided, after Julian's announcement of departure, that he would hand them over to her, simply and undramatically and with no triumphant air, as soon as he and she should for a moment be alone together. Then Mrs. Maldon vanished upstairs. And she had not returned. Rachel also had vanished. And he was waiting.

He desired to examine the notes, to let his eyes luxuriously rest upon them, but he dared not take them from his pocket lest one or other of the silent-footed women might surprise him by a sudden entrance. He fingered them as they lay in their covert, and the mere feel of them, raised exquisite images in his mind; and at the same time the whole room and every object in the room was transformed into a secret witness which spied upon him, disquieted him, and warned him. But the fact that the notes were intact, that nothing irremediable had occurred, rea.s.sured him and gave him strength, so that he could defy the suspicions of those senseless surrounding objects.

Within the room there was no sound but the faint regular hiss of the gas and an occasional falling together of coal in the weakening fire.

Overhead, from his aunt's bedroom, vague movements were perceptible.

Then these ceased, absolutely. The tension, increasing, grew too much for him, and with a curt gesture, and a self-conscious expression between a smile and a frown, he left the parlour and stood to listen in the lobby. Not for several seconds did he notice the heavy ticking of the clock, close to his ear, nor the chill draught that came under the front door. He gazed up into the obscurity at the top of the stairs. The red glow of the kitchen fire, in the distance to the right of the stairs, caught his attention at intervals. He was obsessed, almost overpowered, by the mysteriousness of the first floor. What had happened? What was happening? And suddenly an explanation swept into his brain--the obvious explanation. His aunt had missed the bank-notes and was probably at that very instant working herself into an anguish.

What ought he to do? Should he run up and knock at her door? He was spared a decision by the semi-miraculous appearance of Rachel at the top of the stairs. She started.

"Oh! How you frightened me!" she exclaimed in a low voice.

He answered weakly, charmingly--

"Did I?"

"Will you please come and speak to Mrs. Maldon? She wants you."

"In her room?"

Rachel nodded and disappeared before he could ask another question.

With heart beating he ascended the stairs by twos. Through the half-open door of the faintly lit room which he himself would occupy he could hear Rachel active. And then he was at the closed door of his aunt's room. "I must be jolly careful how I do it!" he thought as he knocked.

II

He was surprised, and impressed, to see Mrs. Maldon in bed. She lay on her back, with her striking head raised high on several pillows.

Nothing else of her was visible; the purple eider-down covered the whole bed without a crease.

"h.e.l.lo, auntie!" he greeted her, instinctively modifying his voice to the soft gentleness proper to the ordered and solemn chamber.

Mrs. Maldon, moving her head, looked at him in silence. He tiptoed to the foot of the bed and leaned on it gracefully. And as in the parlour his shadow had fallen on the table, so now, with the gas just behind him, it fell on the bed. The room was chilly and had a slight pharmaceutical odour.

Mrs. Maldon said, with a weak effort--

"I was feeling faint, and Rachel thought I'd better get straight to bed. I'm an old woman, Louis."

"She hasn't missed them!" he thought in a flash, and said, aloud--

"Nothing of the sort, auntie."

He was aware of the dim reflection of himself in the mirror of the immense Victorian mahogany wardrobe to his left.

Mrs. Maldon again hesitated before speaking.

"You aren't ill, are you, auntie?" he said in a cheerful, friendly whisper. He was touched by the poignant pathos of her great age and her debility. It rent his heart to think that she had no prospect but the grave.

She murmured, ignoring his question--

"I just wanted to tell you that you needn't go down home for your night things--unless you specially want to, that is. I have all that's necessary here, and I've given orders to Rachel."

"Certainly, auntie. I won't leave the house. That's all right."

No, she a.s.suredly had not missed the notes! He was strangely uplifted.

He felt almost joyous in his relief. Could he tell her now as she lay in her bed? Impossible! He would tell her in the morning. It would be cruel to disturb her now with such a revelation of her own negligence.

He vibrated with sympathy for her, and he was proud to think that she appreciated the affectionate, comprehending, subdued intimacy of his att.i.tude towards her as he leaned gracefully on the foot of the bed, and that she admired him. He did not know, or rather he absolutely did not realize, that she was acquainted with aught against his good fame.

He forgot his sins with the insouciance of an animal.

"Don't stay up too late," said Mrs. Maldon, as it were dismissing him.

"A long night will do you no harm for once in a way." She smiled. "I know you'll see that everything's locked up."

He nodded soothingly, and stood upright.

"You might turn the gas down, rather low."

He tripped to the gas-bracket and put the room in obscurity. The light of the street lamp irradiated the pale green blinds of the two windows.

"That do?"

"Nicely, thank you! Good-night, my dear. No, I'm not ill. But you know I have these little attacks. And then bed's the best place for me."

Her voice seemed to expire.

He crept across the wide carpet and departed with the skill of a trained nurse, and inaudibly closed the door.

From the landing the whole of the rest of the house seemed to offer itself to him in the night as an enigmatic and alluring field of adventure ... Should he drop the notes under the chair on the landing, where he had found them?... He could not! He could not!... He moved to the head of the stairs, past the open door of the spare bedroom, which was now dark. He stopped at the head of the stairs, and then descended. The kitchen was lighted.

"Are you there?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Rachel.

"May I come?"

"Why, of course!" Her voice trembled.