The price of love

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Price of Love, by Arnold Bennett This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Price of Love Author: Arnold Bennett Release Date: July 14, 2004 [eBook #12912] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRICE OF LOVE*** E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE PRICE OF LOVE A TALE BY ARNOLD BENNETT 1914 CONTENTS CHAPTER I MONEY IN THE HOUSE CHAPTER II LOUIS' DISCOVERY CHAPTER III THE FEAST CHAPTER IV IN THE NIGHT CHAPTER V NEWS OF THE NIGHT CHAPTER VI THEORIES OF THE THEFT CHAPTER VII THE CINEMA CHAPTER VIII END AND BEGINNING CHAPTER IX THE MARRIED WOMAN CHAPTER X THE CHASM CHAPTER XI JULIAN'S DOCUMENT CHAPTER XII RUNAWAY HORSES CHAPTER XIII DEAD-LOCK CHAPTER XIV THE MARKET CHAPTER XV THE CHANGED MAN CHAPTER XVI THE LETTER CHAPTER XVII IN THE MONASTERY CHAPTER XVIII MRS TAMS'S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR CHAPTER XIX RACHEL AND MR HORROCLEAVE CHAPTER I MONEY IN THE HOUSE I In the evening dimness of old Mrs Maldon's sitting-room stood the youthful virgin, Rachel Louisa Fleckring The prominent fact about her appearance was that she wore an apron Not one of those white, waist-tied aprons, with or without bibs, worn proudly, uncompromisingly, by a previous generation of unaspiring housewives and housegirls! But an immense blue pinafore-apron, covering the whole front of the figure except the head, hands, and toes Its virtues were that it fully protected the most fragile frock against all the perils of the kitchen; and that it could be slipped on or off in one second, without any manipulation of tapes, pins, or buttons and buttonholes—for it had no fastenings of any sort and merely yawned behind In one second the drudge could be transformed into the elegant infanta of boudoirs, and vice versa To suit the coquetry of the age the pinafore was enriched with certain flouncings, which, however, only intensified its unshapen ugliness On a plain, middle-aged woman such a pinafore would have been intolerable to the sensitive eye But on Rachel it simply had a piquant and perverse air, because she was young, with the incomparable, the unique charm of comely adolescence; it simply excited the imagination to conceive the exquisite treasures of contour and tint and texture which it veiled Do not infer that Rachel was a coquette Although comely, she was homely—a "downright" girl, scorning and hating all manner of pretentiousness She had a fine best dress, and when she put it on everybody knew that it was her best; a stranger would have known Whereas of a coquette none but her intimate companions can say whether she is wearing best or second-best on a given high occasion Rachel used the pinafore-apron only with her best dress, and her reason for doing so was the sound, sensible reason that it was the usual and proper thing to do She opened a drawer of the new Sheraton sideboard, and took from it a metal tube that imitated brass, about a foot long and an inch in diameter, covered with black lettering This tube, when she had removed its top, showed a number of thin wax tapers in various colours She chose one, lit it neatly at the red fire, and then, standing on a footstool in the middle of the room, stretched all her body and limbs upward in order to reach the gas If the tap had been half an inch higher or herself half an inch shorter, she would have had to stand on a chair instead of a footstool; and the chair would have had to be brought out of the kitchen and carried back again But Heaven had watched over this detail The gas-fitting consisted of a flexible pipe, resembling a thick black cord, and swinging at the end of it a specimen of that wonderful and blessed contrivance, the inverted incandescent mantle within a porcelain globe: the whole recently adopted by Mrs Maldon as the dangerous final word of modern invention It was safer to ignite the gas from the orifice at the top of the globe; but even so there was always a mild disconcerting explosion, followed by a few moments' uncertainty as to whether or not the gas had "lighted properly." When the deed was accomplished and the room suddenly bright with soft illumination, Mrs Maldon murmured— "That's better!" She was sitting in her arm-chair by the glitteringly set table, which, instead of being in the centre of the floor under the gas, had a place near the bow-window —advantageous in the murky daytime of the Five Towns, and inconvenient at night The table might well have been shifted at night to a better position in regard to the gas But it never was Somehow for Mrs Maldon the carpet was solid concrete, and the legs of the table immovably embedded therein Rachel, gentle-footed, kicked the footstool away to its lair under the table, and simultaneously extinguished the taper, which she dropped with a scarce audible click into a vase on the mantelpiece Then she put the cover on the tube with another faintest click, restored the tube to its drawer with a rather louder click, and finally, with a click still louder, pushed the drawer home All these slight sounds were familiar to Mrs Maldon; they were part of her regular night life, part of an unconsciously loved ritual, and they contributed in their degree to her placid happiness "Now the blinds, my dear!" said she world was full of strange phenomena She wondered what "Shells" were, and why the writers should keep on writing to a woman who had been dead for ages She carefully burnt both the circular and the envelope And then she looked at the post-card, which was addressed to "Louis Fores, Esq." As it was a post-card, she was entitled to read it She read: "Shall expect you at the works in the morning at ten Jas Horrocleave." She thought it rather harsh and oppressive on the part of Mr Horrocleave to expect Louis to attend at the works on Bank Holiday—and so soon after his illness, too! How did Mr Horrocleave know that Louis was sufficiently recovered to be able to go to the works at all? Louis came, rubbing his hands, which for an instant he warmed at the fire He was elegantly dressed The mere sight of him somehow thrilled Rachel His deportment, his politeness, his charming good-nature were as striking as ever The one or two stripes (flesh-coloured now, not whitish) on his face were not too obvious, and, indeed, rather increased the interest of his features The horrible week was forgotten, erased from history, though Rachel would recollect that even at the worst crisis of it Louis had scarcely once failed in politeness of speech It was she who had been impolite—not once, but often Louis had never raged She was contrite, and her penitence intensified her desire to please, to solace, to obey When she realized that it was she who had burnt that enormous sum in bank-notes, she went cold in the spine Not that she cared twopence for the enormous sum, really, now that concord was established! No, her little flutters of honest remorse were constantly disappearing in the immense exultant joy of being alive and of contemplating her idol Louis sat down She smiled at him He smiled back But in his exquisite demeanour there was a faint reserve of melancholy which persisted She had not yet that morning been able to put it to flight; she counted, however, on doing so very soon, and in the meantime it did not daunt her After all, was it not natural? She began— "I say, what do you think? Mrs Tams has given me notice." She pretended to be aggrieved and to be worried, but essential joy shone through these absurd masks Moreover, she found a certain naïve satisfaction in being a mistress with cares, a mistress to whom "notice" had to be given, and who would have to make serious inquiry into the character of future candidates for her employment Louis raised his eyebrows "Don't you think it's a shame?" "Oh," said he cautiously, "you'll get somebody else as good, and better What's she leaving for?" Rachel repeated Mrs Tams's rigmarole "Ah!" murmured Louis He was rather sorry for Mrs Tams His good-nature was active enough this morning But he was glad that she had taken the initiative And he was content that she should go After the scene of the previous night, their relations could not again have been exactly what the relations between master and servant ought to be And further, "you never knew what women wouldn't tell one another," even mistress and maid, maid and mistress Yes, he preferred that she should leave He admired her and regretted the hardship on the old woman—and that was an end of it! What could he do to ease her? The only thing to do would be to tell her privately that so far as he was concerned she might stay But he had no intention of doing aught so foolish It was strange, but he was entirely unconscious of any obligation to her for the immense service she had rendered him His conclusion was that some people have to be martyrs And in this he was deeply right Rachel, misreading his expression, thought that he did not wish to be bothered with household details She recalled some gratuitous advice half humorously offered to her by a middle-aged lady at her reception, "Never talk servants to your men." She had thought, at the time, "I shall talk everything with my husband." But she considered that she was wiser now "By the way," she said in a new tone, "there's a post-card for you I've read it Couldn't help." Louis read the post-card He paled, and Rachel noticed his pallor The fact was that in his mind he had simply shelved, and shelved again, the threat of James Horrocleave He had sincerely desired to tell a large portion of the truth to Rachel, taking advantage of her soft mood; but he could not; he could not force his mouth to open on the subject In some hours he had quite forgotten the danger—he was capable of such feats—then it reasserted itself and he gazed on it fascinated and helpless When Rachel, to please him and prove her subjugation, had suggested that they should go to church—"for the Easter morning service"—he had concurred, knowing, nevertheless, that he dared not fail to meet Horrocleave at the works On the whole, though it gave him a shock, he was relieved that Horrocleave had sent the post-card and that Rachel had seen it But he still was quite unable to decide what to do "It's a nice thing, him asking you to go to the works on a Bank Holiday like that!" Rachel remarked Louis answered: "It's not to-morrow he wants me It's to-day." "Sunday!" she exclaimed "Yes I met him for a second yesterday afternoon, and he told me then This was just a reminder He must have sent it off last night A good thing he did send it, though I'd quite forgotten." "But what is it? What does he want you to go on Sunday for?" Louis shrugged his shoulders, as if to intimate that nothing that Horrocleave did ought to surprise anybody "Then what about church?" Louis replied on the spur of the moment— "You go there by yourself I'll meet you there I can easily be there by eleven." "But I don't know the pew." "They'll show you your pew all right, never fear." "I shall wait for you in the churchyard." "Very well So long as it isn't raining." She kissed him fervently when he departed Long before it was time to leave for church she had a practical and beautiful idea —one of those ideas that occur to young women in love Instead of waiting for Louis in the churchyard she would call for him at the works, which was not fifty yards off the direct route to St Luke's By this means she would save herself from the possibility of inconvenience within the precincts of the church, and she would also prevent the conscienceless Mr Horrocleave from keeping Louis in the office all the morning She wondered that the idea had not occurred to Louis, who was very gifted in such matters as the arrangement of rendezvous She started in good time because she wanted to walk without hurry, and to ponder The morning, though imperfect and sunless, had in it some quality of the spring, which the buoyant youth of Rachel instantly discovered and tasted in triumph Moreover, the spirit of a festival was abroad, and visible in the costume and faces of passers-by; and it was the first festival of the year Rachel responded to it eagerly, mingling her happiness with the general exultation She was intensely, unreasonably happy She knew that she was unreasonably happy; and she did not mind When she turned into Friendly Street the big black double gates of the works were shut, but in one of them a little door stood ajar She pushed it, stooped, and entered the twilight of the archway The office door was shut She walked uncertain up the archway into the yard, and through a dirty window on her left she could dimly discern a man gesticulating She decided that he must be Horrocleave She hesitated, and then, slightly confused, thought, "Perhaps I'd better go back to the archway and knock at the office door." III In the inner office, among art-lustre ware, ink-stained wood, dusty papers, and dirt, Jim Horrocleave banged down a petty-cash book on to Louis' desk His hat was at the back of his head, and his eyes blazed at Louis, who stood somewhat limply, with a hesitant, foolish, faint smile on his face "That's enough!" said Horrocleave fiercely "I haven't had patience to go all through it But that's enough I needn't tell ye I suspected ye last year, but ye put me off And I was too busy to take the trouble to go into it However, I've had a fair chance while you've been away." He gave a sneering laugh "I'll tell ye what put me on to ye again, if you've a mind to know The weekly expenses went down as soon as ye thought I had suspicions Ye weren't clever enough to keep 'em up Well, what have ye got to say for yeself, seeing ye are on yer way to America?" "I never meant to go to America," said Louis "Why should I go to America?" "Ask me another Then ye confess?" "I don't," said Louis "Oh! Ye don't!" Horrocleave sat down and put his hands on his outstretched knees "There may be mistakes in the petty-cash book I don't say there aren't Any one who keeps a petty-cash book stands to lose If he's too busy at the moment to enter up a payment, he may forget it—and there you are! He's out of pocket Of course," Louis added, with a certain loftiness, "as you're making a fuss about it I'll pay up for anything that's wrong whatever the sum is If you make it out to be a hundred pounds I'll pay up." Horrocleave growled: "Oh, so ye'll pay up, will ye? And suppose I won't let ye pay up? What shall ye do then?" Louis, now quite convinced that Horrocleave was only bullying retorted, calmly: "It's I that ought to ask you that question." The accuser was exasperated "A couple o' years in quod will be about your mark, I'm thinking," he said Whereupon Louis was suddenly inspired to answer: "Yes And supposing I was to begin to talk about illicit commissions?" Horrocleave jumped up with such ferocious violence that Louis drew back, startled The recent Act of Parliament, making a crime of secret commissions to customers' employees, had been a blow to the trade in art-lustre ware, and it was no secret in the inner office that Horrocleave, resenting its interference with the natural course of business, had more than once discreetly flouted it, and thus technically transgressed the criminal law Horrocleave used to defend and justify himself by the use of that word "technical." Louis' polite and unpremeditated threat enraged him to an extreme degree He was the savage infuriate He cared for no consequences, even consequences to himself He hated Louis because Louis was spick and span, and quiet, and because Louis had been palmed off on him by Louis' unscrupulous respectable relatives as an honest man "Now thou'st done for thyself!" he cried, in the dialect "Thou'st done for thyself! And I'll have thee by the heels for embezzlement, and blackmail as well." He waved his arms "May God strike me if I give thee any quarter after that! I'll—" He stopped with open mouth, disturbed by the perception of a highly strange phenomenon beyond the window He looked and saw Rachel in the yard For a moment he thought that Louis had planned to use his wife as a shield in the affair if the worst should come to the worst But Rachel's appearance simultaneously showed him that he was wrong She was the very mirror of happy confidence And she seemed so young, and so obviously just married; and so girlish and so womanish at the same time; and her frock was so fresh, and her hat so pert against the heavy disorder of the yard, and her eyes were unconsciously so wistful—that Horrocleave caught his breath He contrasted Rachel with Mrs Horrocleave, her complete antithesis, and at once felt very sorry for himself and very scornful of Mrs Horrocleave, and melting with worshipful sympathy for Rachel "Yer wife's in the yard," he whispered in a different tone "My wife!" Louis was gravely alarmed; all his manner altered "Hast told her anything of this?" "I should think I hadn't." "Ye must pay me, and I'll give ye notice to leave," said Horrocleave, quickly, in a queer, quiet voice The wrath was driven out of him The mere apparition of Rachel had saved her husband A silence Rachel had disappeared Then there was a distant tapping Neither of the men spoke nor moved They could hear the outer door open and light footfalls in the outer office "Anybody here?" It was Rachel's voice, timid "Come in, come in!" Horrocleave roared She entered, blushing, excusing herself, glancing from one to the other, and by her spotless Easter finery emphasizing the squalor of the den In a few minutes Horrocleave was saying to Rachel, rather apologetically— "Louis and I are going to part company, Mrs Fores I can't keep him on His wages are too high for me It won't run to it Th' truth is, I'm going to chuck this art business It doesn't pay Art, as they call it, 's no good in th' pottery trade." Rachel said, "So that's what you wanted to see him about on a Sunday morning, is it, Mr Horrocleave?" She was a little hurt at the slight on her husband, but the wife in her was persuaded that the loss would be Mr Horrocleave's She foresaw that Louis would now want to use his capital in some commercial undertaking of his own; and she was afraid of the prospect Still, it had to be faced, and she would face it He would probably do well as his own master During a whole horrible week her judgment on him had been unjustly severe, and she did not mean to fall into the same sin again She thought with respect of his artistic gifts, which she was too inartistic to appreciate Yes, the chances were that he would succeed admirably She walked him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory good-bye And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St Luke's, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her passion stealthily with the sight True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left to think of others besides She hoped that John's Ernest would find a suitable mate She remembered that she had Julian's curtains to attend to She continued to think kindly of Thomas Batchgrew, and she chid herself for having thought of him in her distant inexperienced youth, of six months earlier, as that man And, regretting that Mrs Tams—at her age, too!—could be so foolish, she determined to look after Mrs Tams also, if need should arise But these solicitudes were mere downy trifles floating on the surface of her profound absorption in Louis And in the depths of that absorption she felt secure, and her courage laughed at the menace of life (though the notion of braving a church full of people did intimidate the bride) Yet she judged Louis realistically and not sentimentally She was not conspicuously blind to any aspect of his character; nor had the tremendous revulsion of the previous night transformed him into another and a more heavenly being for her She admitted frankly to herself that he was not blameless in the dark affair of the bank-notes She would not deny that in some ways he was untrustworthy, and might be capable of acts of which the consequences were usually terrible His irresponsibility was notorious And, being impulsive herself, she had no mercy for his impulsiveness As for his commonsense, was not her burning of the circular addressed to Mrs Maldon a sufficient commentary on it? She was well aware that Louis' sins of omission and commission might violently shock people of a certain temperament—people of her own temperament in particular These people, however, would fail to see the other side of Louis If she herself had merely heard of Louis, instead of knowing him, she would probably have set him down as undesirable But she knew him His good qualities seemed to her to overwhelm the others His charm, his elegance, his affectionateness, his nice speech, his courtesy, his quick wit, his worldliness— she really considered it extraordinary that a plain, blunt girl, such as she, should have had the luck to please him It was indeed almost miraculous If he had faults—and he had—she preferred them (proudly and passionately) to the faults of scores of other women's husbands He was not a brute, nor even a boor nor a savage—thousands of savages ranged free and terror-striking in the Five Towns Even when vexed and furious he could control himself It was possible to share his daily life and see him in all his social moods without being humiliated He was not a clodhopper; watch him from the bow-window of a morning as he walked down the street! He did not drink; he was not a beast He was not mean He might scatter money, but he was not mean In fact, except that one sinister streak in his nature, she could detect no fault There was danger in that streak Well, there was danger in every man She would accept it; she would watch it Had she not long since reconciled herself to the prospect of an everlasting vigil? She did not care what any one said, and she did not care! He was the man she wanted; the whole rest of the world was nothing in comparison to him He was irresistible She had wanted him, and she would always want him, as he was She had won him and she would keep him, as he was, whatever the future might hold The past was the past; the opening chapter of her marriage was definitely finished and its drama done She was ready for the future One tragedy alone could overthrow her—Louis' death She simply could not and would not conceive existence without him She would face anything but that Besides, he was not really untrustworthy—only weak! She faltered and recovered "He's mine and I wouldn't have him altered for the world I don't want him perfect If anything goes wrong, well, let it go wrong! I'm his wife I'm his!" And as, slightly raising her confident chin in the street, she thus undertook to pay the price of love, there was something divine about Rachel's face ***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRICE OF LOVE*** ******* This file should be named 12912-h.txt or 12912-h.zip ******* This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/9/1/12912 Updated editions will replace the previous one the old editions will be renamed Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you 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E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE PRICE OF LOVE A TALE... CHAPTER I MONEY IN THE HOUSE CHAPTER II LOUIS' DISCOVERY CHAPTER III THE FEAST CHAPTER IV IN THE NIGHT CHAPTER V NEWS OF THE NIGHT CHAPTER VI THEORIES OF THE THEFT CHAPTER VII THE CINEMA CHAPTER VIII... which, instead of being in the centre of the floor under the gas, had a place near the bow-window —advantageous in the murky daytime of the Five Towns, and inconvenient at night The table might