Part 34 (1/2)

”Yes, of course,” Louis replied politely.

She did not like that ”of course.”

”Shall I have to be?”

”I don't know.”

”Well,” said she, ”I can tell you one thing--I shan't be.”

IV

Rachel went on--

”You aren't really going to throw your money away on those debenture things of Mr. Batchgrew's, are you?”

Louis now knew the worst, and he had been suspecting it. Rachel's tone fully displayed her sentiments, and completed the disclosure that ”the little thing” was angry and aggressive. (In his mind Louis regarded her at moments, as ”the little thing.”) But his own politeness was so profoundly rooted that practically no phenomenon of rudeness could overthrow it.

”No,” he said, ”I'm not going to 'throw my money away' on them.”

”That's all right, then,” she said, affecting not to perceive his drift. ”I thought you were.”

”But I propose to put my money into them, subject to anything you, as a financial expert, may have to say.”

Nervously she had gone to the window and was pretending to straighten a blind.

”I don't think you need to make fun of me,” she said. ”You think I don't notice when you make fun of me. But I do--always.”

”Look here, young 'un,” Louis suddenly began to cajole, very winningly.

”I'm about as old as you are,” said she, ”and perhaps in some ways a bit older. And I must say I really wonder at you being ready to help Mr. Batchgrew after the way he insulted me in the cinema.”

”Insulted you in the cinema!” Louis cried, genuinely startled, and then somewhat hurt because Rachel argued like a woman instead of like a man. In reflecting upon the excellences of Rachel he had often said to himself that her unique charm consisted in the fact that she combined the attractiveness of woman with the powerful commonsense of man. In common with a whole enthusiastic army of young husbands he had been convinced that his wife was the one female creature on earth to whom you could talk as you would to a male. ”Oh!” he murmured.

”Have you forgotten it, then?” she asked coldly. To herself she was saying: ”Why am I behaving like this? After all, he's done no harm yet.” But she had set out, and she must continue, driven by the terrible fear of what he might do. She stared at the blind. Through a slit of window at one side of it she could see the lamp-post and the iron kerb of the pavement.

”But that's all over long ago,” he protested amiably. ”Just look how friendly you were with him yourself over supper! Besides--”

”Besides what? I wasn't friendly. I was only polite. I had to be.

n.o.body's called Mr. Batchgrew worse names than you have. But you forget. Only I don't forget. There's lots of things I don't forget, although I don't make a song about them. I shan't forget in a hurry how you let go of my bike without telling me and I fell all over the road. I know I'm lots more black and blue even than I was.”

If Rachel would but have argued according to his rules of debate, Louis was confident that he could have conducted the affair to a proper issue. But she would not. What could he say? In a flash he saw a vista of, say, forty years of conjugal argument with a woman incapable of reason, and trembled. Then he looked again, and saw the lines of Rachel's figure in her delightful short skirt and was rea.s.sured. But still he did not know what to say. Rachel spared him further cogitation on that particular aspect of the question by turning round and exclaiming, pa.s.sionately, with a break in her voice--

”Can't you see that he'll swindle you out of the money?”

It seemed to her that the security of their whole future depended on her firmness and strong sagacity at that moment. She felt herself to be very wise and also, happily, very vigorous. But at the same time she was afflicted by a kind of despair at the thought that Louis had indeed been, and still was, ready to commit the disastrous folly of confiding money to Thomas Batchgrew for investment. And as Louis had had a flas.h.i.+ng vision of the future, so did Rachel now have such a vision. But hers was more terrible than his. Louis foresaw merely vexation. Rachel foresaw ruin doubtfully staved off by eternal vigilance on her part and by nothing else--an instant's sleepiness, and they might be in the gutter and she the wife of a ne'er-do-well.

She perceived that she must be reconciled to a future in which the strain of intense vigilance could never once be relaxed. Strange that a creature so young and healthy and in love should be so pessimistic, but thus it was! She remembered in in spite of herself the warnings against Louis which she had been compelled to listen to in the previous year.

”Odd, of course!” said Louis. ”But I can't exactly see how he'll swindle me out of the money! A debenture is a debenture.”