Part 55 (1/2)

”Why did you keep supper for me?” he mumbled.

”I thought you might find you weren't well enough to travel,” she answered thoughtfully, with her face still bent over the work which she was spoiling with every clumsy, feverish st.i.tch.

This surprising and ingenious untruth came from her without the slightest effort. It seemed to invent itself.

”Well,” said Louis, ”I don't happen to want any supper.” His accent was slightly but definitely inimical. He perceived that he had an advantage, and he decided to press it.

Rachel also perceived this, and she thought resentfully: ”How cruel he is! How mean he is!” She hated and loved him simultaneously. She foresaw that peace must be preceded by the horrors of war, and she was discouraged. Though determined that he should not escape from the room unreconciled, she was ready to inflict dreadful injuries on him, as he on her. They now regarded each other askance, furtively, as dire enemies.

Louis, being deficient in common sense, thought of nothing but immediate victory. He well knew that, in case of trouble with Jim Horrocleave, he might be forced to humble himself before his wife, and that present arrogance would only intensify future difficulties. Also, he had easily divined that the woman opposite to him was a softer Rachel than the one he had left, and very ready for pacific compromise. Nevertheless, in his polite, patient way, he would persist in keeping the att.i.tude of an ill-used saint with a most clear grievance. And more than this, he wanted to appear absolutely consistent, even in coming home again. Could he have recalled the precise terms of his letter, he would have contrived to interpret them so as to include the possibility of his return that night. He fully intended to be the perfect male.

Drawing his cigarette-case and match-box from his hip pocket, by means of the silver cable which attached them to his person, he carefully lit a cigarette and rose to put the spent match in the fire. While at the hearth he looked at his plastered face in the gla.s.s, critically and dispa.s.sionately, as though he had nothing else in the world to do.

Then his eye caught some bits of paper in the fender--fragments of his letter which Rachel had cast into the fire and on to the hearth. He stooped, picked up one white piece, gazed at it, dropped it, picked up another, gazed at it, dropped it fastidiously.

”Hm!” he said faintly.

Then he stood again at his full height and blew smoke profusely about the mantelpiece. He was very close to Rachel, and above her. He could see the top of her bent, mysterious head; he could see all the changing curves of her breast as she breathed. He knew intimately her frock, the rings on her hand, the buckle on her shoe. He knew the whole feel of the room--the buzz of the gas, the peculiarities of the wall-paper, the thick curtain over the door to his right, the folds of the table-cloth. And in his infelicity and in his resentment against Rachel he savoured it all not without pleasure. The mere inviolable solitude with this young, strange, provocative woman in the night beyond the town stimulated him into a sort of zest of living.

There was a small sound from the young woman; her breathing was checked; she had choked down a dry sob. This signal, so faint and so dramatic in the stillness of the parlour, at once intimidated and encouraged him.

”What have you done with that money?” he asked, in a cold voice.

”What money?” Rachel replied, low, without raising her head. Her hand had ceased to move the needle.

”You know what money.”

”I took it to Julian, of course.”

”Why did you take it to Julian?”

”We agreed I should, last week--you yourself said so--don't you remember?” Her tones acquired some confidence.

”No, I don't remember. I remember something was said about letting him have half of it. Did you give him half or all of it?”

”I gave him all of it.”

”I like that! I like that!” Louis remarked sarcastically. ”I like your nerve. You do it on the sly. You don't say a word to me; and not content with that, you give him all of it. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you ask me for the money?”

Rachel offered no answer.

Louis proceeded with more vivacity. ”And did he take it?”

”I made him.”

”What? All of it? What reason did you give? How did you explain things?”

”I told him you'd had the rest of the money, of course, so it was all right. It wouldn't have been fair to him if some one hadn't told him.”

Louis now seriously convinced himself that his grievance was tremendous, absolutely unexampled in the whole history of marriage.

”Well,” said he, with high, gloomy dignity, ”it may interest you to know that I didn't have the rest of the money.... If I'd had it, what do you suppose I've done with it?... Over five hundred pounds, indeed!”