"Yes, dear?" she spoke softly.
"I couldn"t bear it any longer," said the voice of Louis. "I just had to waken you."
She raised the gas, and her eyes blinked as she stared at him. His bedclothes were horribly disarranged.
"Are you in pain?" she asked, smoothing the blankets.
"No. But I"m so ill. I--I don"t want to frighten you--"
"The doctor said you"d feel ill. It"s the shock, you know."
She stroked his hand. He did indubitably look very ill. His appearance of woe, despair, and dreadful apprehension was pitiable in the highest degree. With a gesture of intense weariness he declined food, nor could she persuade him to take anything whatever.
"You"ll be ever so much better to-morrow. I"ll sit up with you. You were bound to feel worse in the night."
"It"s more than shock that I"ve got," he muttered. "I say, Rachel, it"s all up with me. I _know_ I"m done for. You"ll have to do the best you can."
The notion shot through her head that possibly, after all, the doctor might have misjudged the case. Suppose Louis were to die in the night?
Suppose the morning found her a widow? The world was full of the strangest happenings.... Then she was herself again and immovably cheerful in her secret heart. She thought: "I can go through worse nights than this. One night, some time in the future, either he will really be dying or I shall. This night is nothing." And she held his hand and sat in her old place on his bed. The room was chilly. She decided that in five minutes she would light the gas-stove, and also make some tea with the spirit-lamp. She would have tea whether he still refused or not. His watch on the night-table showed half-past two. In about an hour the dawn would be commencing. She felt that she had reserves of force against any contingency, against any nervous strain.
Then he said, "I say, Rachel."
He was too ill to call her "Louise."
"I shall make some tea soon," she answered.
He went on: "You remember about that missing money--I mean before auntie died. You remember--"
"Don"t talk about that, dear," she interrupted him eagerly. "Why should you bother about that now?"
In one instant those apparently exhaustless reserves of moral force seemed to have ebbed away. She had imagined herself equal to any contingency, and now there loomed a contingency which made her quail.
"I"ve got to talk about that," he said in his weak and desperate voice. His bruised head was hollowed into the pillow, and he stared monotonously at the ceiling, upon which the paper screen of the gas threw a great trembling shadow. "That"s why I wakened you. You don"t know what the inside of my brain"s like.... Why did you say to them you found the scullery door open that night? You know perfectly well it wasn"t open."
She could scarcely speak.
"I--I--Louis don"t talk about that now. You"re too ill," she implored.
"I know why you said it."
"Be quiet!" she said sharply, and her voice broke.
But he continued in the same tone--
"You made up that tale about the scullery door because you guessed I"d collared the money and you wanted to save me from being suspected.
Well, I did collar the money! Now I"ve told you!"
She burst into a sob, and her head dropped on to his body.
"Louis!" she cried pa.s.sionately, amid her sobs. "Why ever did you tell me? You"ve ruined everything now. Everything!"
"I can"t help that," said Louis, with a sort of obstinate and defiant weariness. "It was on my mind, and I just had to tell you. You don"t seem to understand that I"m dying."
Rachel jumped up and sprang away from the bed.
"Of course you"re not dying!" she reproached him. "How can you imagine such things?"
Her heart suddenly hardened against him--against his white-bandaged head and face, against his feeble voice of a beaten martyr. It seemed to her disgraceful that he, a strong male creature, should be lying there damaged, helpless, and under the foolish delusion that he was dying. She recalled with bitter gusto the tone in which the doctor had said, "He"s no more dying than I am!" All her fears that the doctor might be wrong had vanished away. She now resented her husband"s illness; as a nurse, when danger is over, will resent a patient"s long convalescence, somehow charging it to him as a sin.
"I found the other half of the notes under the chair on the--" Louis began again.
"Please!" she objected with quick resounding violence, and raised a hand.
He said--
"You must listen."
She answered, pa.s.sionately--
"I won"t listen! I won"t listen! And if you don"t stop I shall leave the room! I shall leave you all alone!... Yes, I shall!" She moved a little towards the door.
His gloomy and shifty glance followed her, and there was a short silence.
"You needn"t work yourself up into such a state," murmured Louis at length. "But I _should_ like to know whether the scullery door was open or not, when you came downstairs that night?"
Rachel"s glance fell. She blushed. The tears had ceased to drop from her eyes. She made no answer.
"You see," said Louis, with a half-sneering triumph, "I knew jolly well it wasn"t open. So did old Batchgrew know, too."
She shut her lips together, went decisively to the mantelpiece, struck a match, and lit the stove. Like the patent gas-burner downstairs, the stove often had to be extinguished after the first lighting and lighted again with a second and different kind of explosion. And so it was now. She flung down the match pettishly into the hearth.
Throughout the whole operation she sniffed convulsively, to prevent a new fit of sobbing. Her peignoir being very near to the purple-green flames that folded themselves round the asbestos of the stove, she reflected that the material was probably inflammable, and that a careless movement might cause it to be ignited. "And not a bad thing, either!" she said to herself. Then, without looking at all towards the bed, she lit the spirit-lamp in order to make tea. The sniffing continued, as she went through the familiar procedure.
The water would not boil, demonstrating the cruel truth of proverbs.
She sat down and, gazing into the stove, now a rich red, ignored the saucepan. The dry heat from the stove burnt her ankles and face. Not a sound from the small saucepan, balanced on its tripod over the wavering blue flame of the spirit-lamp! At last, uncontrollably impatient, she lifted the teapot off the inverted lid of the saucepan, where she had placed it to warm, and peered into the saucepan. The water was cheerfully boiling! She made the tea, and sat down again to wait until it should be infused. She had to judge the minutes as well as she could, for she would not go across to the night-table to look at Louis" watch; her own was out of order, and so was the clock. She counted two hundred and fifty, and then, antic.i.p.ating feverishly the tonic glow of the tea in her breast, she poured out a cup. Only colourless steaming water came forth from the pot. She had forgotten to put in the tea! Misfortune not unfamiliar to dazed makers of tea in the night! But to Rachel now the consequences of the omission seemed to amount to a tragedy. Had she the courage to begin the interminable weary process afresh? She was bound to begin it afresh. With her eyes obscured by tears, she put the water back into the saucepan and searched for the match-box. The water boiled almost immediately, and by so doing comforted her.
While waiting for the infusion, she realized little by little that for a few moments she must have been nearly hysterical, and she partially resumed possession of herself. The sniffing ceased, her vision cleared; she grew sardonic. All her chest was filled with cold lead.
"This truly is the end," she thought. She had thought that Julian"s confession must be the end of the violent experiences which had befallen her in Mrs. Malden"s house. Then she had thought that Louis"
accident must be the end. Each time she had been mistaken. But she could not be mistaken now. No conceivable event, however awful, could cap Louis" confession that he had thieved--and under such circ.u.mstances!
She did not drink the first cup of tea. No! She must needs carry it, spilling it, to Louis in bed. He was asleep, or he was in a condition that resembled sleep. a.s.suredly he was ill. He made a dreadful object in his bandages amid the disorder of the bed, upon which strong shadows fell from the gas and from the stove. No matter! If he was ill, he was ill. So much the worse for him! He was not dangerously ill. He was merely pa.s.sing through a stress which had to be pa.s.sed through. It would soon be over, and he would be the same eternal Louis that he had always been.
"Here!" she said.
He stirred, opened his eyes.
"Here"s some tea!" she said coldly. "Drink it."
He gave a gesture of dissent. But it was useless. She had brewed the tea and had determined that he should drink a cup. Whether he desired it or loathed it was a question irrelevant. He was appointed to drink some tea, and she would not taste until he had drunk. This self-sacrifice was her perverse pleasure.