Rachel considered that she ought to pursue her advantage, and in a voice light and yet firm, good-natured and yet restive, she said--
"I really don"t think anybody has the right to talk to me about Mr.
Fores.... No, truly I don"t."
"You mustn"t misunderstand me, Rachel," Mrs. Maldon replied, and her other hand crept out, and stroked Rachel"s captive hand. "I am only saying to you what it is my duty to say to you--or to any other young woman that comes to live in my house. You"re a young woman, and Louis is a young man. I"m making no complaint. But it"s my duty to warn you against my nephew."
"But, Mrs. Maldon, I didn"t know either him or you a month ago!"
Mrs. Maldon, ignoring the interruption, proceeded quietly--
"My nephew is not to be trusted."
Her aged face slowly flushed as in that single brief sentence she overthrew the grand principle of a lifetime. She who never spoke ill of anybody had spoken ill of one of her own family.
"But--" Rachel stopped. She was frightened by the appearance of the flush on those devastated yellow cheeks, and by a quiver in the feeble voice and in the clasping hand. She could divine the ordeal which Mrs.
Maldon had set herself and through which she had pa.s.sed. Mrs. Maldon carried conviction, and in so doing she inspired awe. And on the top of all Rachel felt profoundly and exquisitely flattered by the immolation of Mrs. Maiden"s pride.
"The money--it has something to do with that!" thought Rachel.
"My nephew is not to be trusted," said Mrs. Maldon again. "I know all his good points. But the woman who married him would suffer horribly--horribly!"
"I"m so sorry you"ve had to say this," said Rachel, very kindly. "But I a.s.sure you that there"s nothing at all, nothing whatever, between Mr. Fores and me." And in that instant she genuinely believed that there was not. She accepted Mrs. Maldon"s estimate of Louis. And further, and perhaps illogically, she had the feeling of having escaped from a fatal danger. She expected Mrs. Maldon to agree eagerly that there was nothing between herself and Louis, and to reiterate her perfect confidence. But, instead, Mrs. Maldon, apparently treating Rachel"s a.s.surance as negligible, continued with an added solemnity--
"I shall only live a little while longer--a very little while." The contrast between this and her buoyant announcement on the previous day that she was not going to die just yet was highly disturbing, but Rachel could not protest or even speak. "A very little while!"
repeated Mrs. Maldon reflectively. "I"ve not known you long--as you say--Rachel. But I"ve never seen a girl I liked more, if you don"t mind me telling you. I"ve never seen a girl I thought better of. And I don"t think I could die in peace if I thought Louis was going to cause you any trouble after I"m gone. No, I couldn"t die in peace if I thought that."
And Rachel, intimately moved, thought: "She has saved me from something dreadful!" (Without trying to realize precisely from what.) "How splendid she is!"
And she cast out from her mind all the mult.i.tudinous images of Louis Fores that were there. And, full of affection, and flattered pride and grat.i.tude and childlike admiration, she bent down and rewarded the old woman who had so confided in her with a priceless girlish kiss. And she had the sensation of beginning a new life.
III
And yet, a few moments later, when Mrs. Maldon faintly murmured, "Some one at the front door," Rachel grew at once uneasy, and the new life seemed an illusion--either too fine to be true or too leaden to be desired; and she was swaying amid uncertainties. Perhaps Louis was at the front door. He had not yet called; but surely he was bound to call some time during the day! Of the dozen different Rachels in Rachel, one adventurously hoped that he would come, and another feared that he would come; one ruled him sharply out of the catalogue of right-minded persons, and another was ready pa.s.sionately to defend him.
"I think not," said Rachel.
"Yes, dear; I heard some one," Mrs. Maldon insisted.
Mrs. Maldon, long practised in reconstructing the life of the street from trifling hints of sound heard in bed, was not mistaken. Rachel, opening the door of the bedroom, caught the last tinkling of the front-door bell below. On the other side of the front door somebody was standing--Louis Fores, or another!
"It may be the doctor," she said brightly, as she left the bedroom.
The coward in her wanted it to be the doctor. But, descending the stairs, she could see plainly through the gla.s.s that Louis himself was at the front door. The Rachel that feared was instantly uppermost in her. She was conscious of dread. From the breathless sinking within her bosom the stairs might have been the deck of a steamer pitching in a heavy sea.
She thought--
"Here is the Louis to whom I am indifferent. There is nothing between us, really. But shall I have strength to open the door to him?"
She opened the door, with the feeling that the act was tremendous and irrevocable.
The street, in the Sabbatic sunshine, was as calm as at midnight.
Louis Fores, stiff and constrained, stood strangely against the background of it. The unusualness of his demeanour, which was plain to the merest glance, increased Rachel"s agitation. It appeared to Rachel that the two of them faced each other like wary enemies. She tried to examine his face in the light of Mrs. Maldon"s warning, as though it were the face of a stranger; but without much success.
"Is auntie well enough for me to see her?" asked Louis, without greeting or preliminary of any sort. His voice was imperfectly under control.
Rachel replied curtly--
"I dare say she is."
To herself she said--
"Of course if he"s going to sulk about last night--well, he must sulk.
Really and truly he got much less than he deserved. He had no business at all to have suggested me going to the cinematograph with him. The longer he sulks the better I shall be pleased."
And in fact she was relieved at his sullenness. She tossed her proud head, but with primness. And she fervently credited to the full Mrs.
Maldon"s solemn insinuations against the disturber.
Louis hesitated a second, then stepped in. Rachel marched processionally upstairs, and with the detachment of a footman announced to Mrs. Maldon that Mr. Fores waited below. "Oh, please bring him up," said Mrs. Maldon, with a mild and casual benevolence that surprised the girl; for Rachel, in the righteous ferocity of her years, vaguely thought that an adverse moral verdict ought to be swiftly followed by something in the nature of annihilation.
"Will you please come up," she invited Louis, from the head of the stairs, adding privately--"I can be as stiff as you can--and stiffer.
How mistaken I was in you!"
She preceded him into the bedroom, and then with ostentatious formality left aunt and nephew together. n.o.body should ever say any more that she encouraged the attentions of Louis Fores.
"What is the matter, dear?" Mrs. Maldon inquired from her bed, perceiving the signs of emotion on Louis" face.
"Has Mr. Batchgrew been here yet?" Louis demanded.
"No. Is he coming?"
"Yes, he"s just been to my digs. Came in his car. Auntie, do you know that he"s accusing me of stealing your money--and--and--all sorts of things! I don"t want to hide anything from you. It"s true I was with Rachel at the cinematograph last night, but--"
Mrs. Maldon raised her enfeebled, shaking hand.
"Louis!" she entreated. His troubled, ingenuous face seemed to torture her.
"I know it"s a shame to bother you, auntie. But what was I to do? He"s coming up here. I only want to tell you I"ve not got your money. I"ve not stolen it. I"m absolutely innocent--absolutely. And I"ll swear it on anything you like." His voice almost broke under the strain of its own earnestness. His plaintive eyes invoked justice and protection.
Who could have doubted that he was sincere in this pa.s.sionate, wistful protestation of innocence?
"Louis!" Mrs. Maldon entreated again, committing herself to naught, taking no side, but finding shelter beneath the enigmatic, appealing repet.i.tion of his name. It was the final triumph of age over crude youth. "Louis!"
IV
Rachel stood expectant and watchful in the kitchen. She was now filled with dread. She wanted to go up and waken Mrs. Tams, but was too proud. The thought had come into her mind: "His coming like this has something to do with the money. Perhaps he wasn"t sulking with me after all. Perhaps ..." But what it was that she dreaded she could not have defined. And then she caught the sound of an approaching automobile. The car threw its shadow across the glazed front door, which she commanded from the kitchen, and stopped. And the front-door bell rang uncannily over her head. She opened the door to Councillor Batchgrew, whose breathing was irregular and rapid.
"Has Louis Fores been here?" Batchgrew asked.