Chapter 5. News Of The Night

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_ CHAPTER V. NEWS OF THE NIGHT

I

The next morning, Mrs. Tarns, the charwoman whom Rachel had expressly included in the dogma that all charwomen are alike, was cleaning the entranceway to Mrs. Maldon's house. She had washed and stoned the steep, uneven flight of steps leading up to the front door, and the flat space between them and the gate; and now, before finishing the step down to the footpath, she was wiping the grimy ledges of the green iron gate itself.

Mrs. Tarns was a woman of nearly sixty, stout and--in appearance--untidy and dirty. The wet wind played with grey wisps of her hair, and with her coarse brown apron, beneath which her skirt was pinned up. Human eye so seldom saw her without a coarse brown apron that, apronless, she would have almost seemed (like Eve) to be unattired. It and a pail were the insignia of her vocation.

She was accomplished and conscientious; she could be trusted; despite appearances, her habits were cleanly. She was also a woman of immense experience. In addition to being one of the finest exponents of the art of step-stoning and general housework that the Five Towns could show, she had numerous other talents. She was thoroughly accustomed to the supreme spectacles of birth and death, and could assist thereat with dignity and skill. She could turn away the wrath of rent-collectors, rate-collectors, school-inspectors, and magistrates. She was an adept in enticing an inebriated husband to leave a public-house. She could feed four children for a day on sevenpence, and rise calmly to her feet after having been knocked down by one stroke of a fist. She could go without food, sleep, and love, and yet thrive. She could give when she had nothing, and keep her heart sweet amid every contagion. Lastly, she could coax extra sixpences out of a pawnbroker. She had never had a holiday, and almost never failed in her duty. Her one social fault was a tendency to talk at great length about babies, corpses, and the qualities of rival soaps. All her children were married. Her husband had gone in a box to a justice whose anger Mrs. Tam's simple tongue might not soothe. She lived alone. Six half-days a week she worked about the house of Mrs. Maldon from eight to one o'clock, for a shilling per half-day and her breakfast. But if she chose to stay for it she could have dinner--and a good one--on condition that she washed up afterwards. She often stayed. After over forty years of incessant and manifold expert labour she was happy and content in this rich reward.

A long automobile came slipping with noiseless stealth down the hill, and halted opposite the gate, in silence, for the engine had been stopped higher up. Mrs. Tams, intimidated by the august phenomenon, ceased to rub, and in alarm watched the great Thomas Batchgrew struggle unsuccessfully with the handle of the door that imprisoned him. Mrs. Tams was a born serf, and her nature was such that she wanted to apologize to Thomas Batchgrew for the naughtiness of the door. For her there was something monstrous in a personage like Thomas Batchgrew being balked in a desire, even for a moment, by a perverse door-catch. Not that she really respected Thomas Batchgrew! She did not, but he was a member of the sacred governing class. The chauffeur--not John's Ernest, but a professional--flashed round the front of the car and opened the door with obsequious haste. For Thomas Batchgrew had to be appeased. Already a delay of twenty minutes--due to a defective tire and to the inexcusable absence of the spanner with which the spare wheel was manipulated--had aroused his just anger.

Mrs. Tarns pulled the gate towards herself and, crushed behind it, curtsied to Thomas Batchgrew. This curtsy, the most servile of all Western salutations, and now nearly unknown in Five Towns, consisted in a momentary shortening of the stature by six inches, and in nothing else. Mrs. Tams had acquired it in her native village of Sneyd, where an earl held fast to that which was good, and she had never been able to quite lose it. It did far more than the celerity of the chauffeur to appease Thomas Batchgrew.

Snorting and self-conscious, and with his white whiskers flying behind him, he stepped in his two overcoats across the narrow, muddy pavement and on to Mrs. Tarn's virgin stonework, and with two haughty black footmarks he instantly ruined it. The tragedy produced no effect on Mrs. Tams. And indeed nobody in the Five Towns would have been moved by it. For the social convention as to porticoes enjoined, not that they should remain clean, but simply that they should show evidence of having been clean at some moment early in each day. It mattered not how dirty they were in general, provided that the religious and futile rite of stoning had been demonstrably performed during the morning.

Mrs. Tams adroitly moved her bucket, aside, though there was plenty of room for feet even larger than those of Thomas Batchgrew, and then waited to be spoken to. She was not spoken to. Mr. Batchgrew, after hesitating and clearing his throat, proceeded up the steps, defiling them. As he did so Mrs. Tams screwed together all her features and clenched her hands as if in agony, and stared horribly at the open front door, which was blowing to. It seemed that she was trying to arrest the front door by sheer force of muscular contraction. She did not succeed. Gently the door closed, with a firm click of its latch, in face of Mr. Batchgrew.

"Nay, nay!" muttered Mrs. Tarns, desolated.

And Mr. Batchgrew, once more justly angered, raised his hand to the heavy knocker.

"Dunna' knock, mester! Dunna' knock!" Mrs. Tarns implored in a whisper. "Missis is asleep. Miss Rachel's been up aw night wi' her, seemingly, and now her's gone off in a doze like, and Miss Rachel's resting, too, on th' squab i' th' parlor. Doctor was fetched."

Apparently charging Mrs. Tarns with responsibility for the illness, Mr. Batchgrew demanded severely--

"What was it?"

"One o' them attacks as her has," said Mrs. Tarns with a meekness that admitted she could offer no defence, "only wuss!"

"Hurry round to th' back door and let me in."

"I doubt back door's bolted on th' inside," said Mrs. Tarns with deep humility.

"This is ridiculous," said Mr. Batchgrew, truly. "Am I to stand here all day?" And raised his hand to the knocker.

Mrs. Tarns with swiftness darted up the steps and inserted a large, fat, wet hand between the raised knocker and its bed. It was the sublime gesture of a martyr, and her large brown eyes gazed submissively, yet firmly, at Mr. Batchgrew with the look of a martyr. She had nothing to gain by the defiance of a great man, but she could not permit her honoured employer to be wakened. She was accustomed to emergencies, and to desperate deeds therein, and she did not fail now in promptly taking the right course, regardless of consequences. Somewhat younger than Mr. Batchgrew in years, she was older in experience and in wisdom. She could do a thousand things well; Mr. Batchgrew could do nothing well. At that very moment she conquered, and he was beaten. Yet her brown eyes and even the sturdy uplifted arm cringed to him, and asked in abasement to be forgiven for the impiety committed. From her other hand a cloth dripped foul water on to the topmost step.

And then the door yielded. Thomas Batchgrew and Mrs. Tarns both abandoned the knocker. Rachel, pale as a lily, stern, with dilated eyes, stood before them. And Mr. Batchgrew realized, as he looked at her against the dark, hushed background of the stairs, that Mrs. Maldon was indeed ill. Mrs. Tams respectfully retired down the steps. A mightier than she, the young, naive, ignorant girl, to whom she could have taught everything save possibly the art of washing cutlery, had relieved her of responsibility.

"You can't see her," said Rachel in a low tone, trembling.

"But--but--" Thomas Batchgrew spluttered, ineffectively. "D'you know I'm her trustee, miss? Let me come in."

Rachel would not take her hand off the inner knob.

There was the thin, far-off sound of an electric bell, breaking the silence of the house. It was the bell in Rachel's bedroom, rung from Mrs. Maldon's bedroom. And at this mysterious signal from the invalid, this faint proof that the hidden sufferer had consciousness and volition, Rachel started and Thomas Batchgrew started.

"Her bell!" Rachel exclaimed, and fled upstairs.

In the large bedroom Mrs. Maldon lay apparently at ease.

"Did they waken you?" cried Rachel, distressed.

"Who is there, dear?" Mrs. Maldon asked, in a voice that had almost recovered from the weakness of the night, Rachel was astounded.

"Mr. Batchgrew."

"I must see him," said the old lady.

"But--"

"I must see him at once," Mrs. Maldon repeated. "At once. Kindly bring him up." And she added, in a curiously even and resigned tone, "I've lost all that money!"

 

II

"Nay," said Mrs. Maldon to Thomas Batchgrew, "I'm not going to die just yet."

Her voice was cheerful, even a little brisk, and she spoke with a benign smile in the tranquil accents of absolute conviction. But she did not move her head; she waited to look at Thomas Batchgrew until he came within her field of vision at the foot of the bed. This quiescence had a disconcerting effect, contradicting her voice.

She was lying on her back, in the posture customary to her, the arms being stretched down by the sides under the bed-quilt. Her features were drawn slightly askew; the skin was shiny; the eyes stared as though Mrs. Maldon had been a hysterical subject. It was evident that she had passed through a tremendous physical crisis. Nevertheless, Rachel was still astounded at the change for the better in her, wrought by sleep and the force of her obstinate vitality.

The contrast between the scene which Thomas Batchgrew now saw and the scene which had met Rachel in the night was so violent as to seem nearly incredible. Not a sign of the catastrophe remained, except in Mrs. Maldon's face, and in some invalid gear on the dressing-table, for Rachel had gradually got the room into order. She had even closed and locked the wardrobe.

On answering Mrs. Maldon's summons in the night, Rachel had found the central door of the wardrobe swinging and the sacred big drawer at the bottom of that division only half shut, and Mrs. Maldon in a peignoir lying near it on the floor, making queer inhuman noises, not moans, but a kind of anxious, inarticulate entreaty, and shaking her head constantly to the left--never to the right. Mrs. Maldon had recognized Rachel, and had seemed to implore with agonized intensity her powerful assistance in some nameless and hopeless tragic dilemma. The sight--especially of the destruction of the old woman's dignity--was dreadful to such an extent that Rachel did not realize its effect on herself until several hours afterwards. At the moment she called on the immense reserves of her self-confidence to meet the situation--and she met it, assisting her pride with the curious pretence, characteristic of the Five Towns race, that the emergency was insufficient to alarm in the slightest degree a person of sagacity and sang-froid.

She had restored Mrs. Maldon to her bed and to some of her dignity. But the horrid symptoms were not thereby abated. The inhuman noises and the distressing, incomprehensible appeal had continued. Immediately Rachel's back was turned Mrs. Maldon had fallen out of bed. This happened three times, so that clearly the sufferer was falling out of bed under the urgency of some half-conscious purpose. Rachel had soothed her. And once she had managed to say with some clearness the words, "I've been downstairs." But when Rachel went back to the room from dispatching Louis for the doctor, she was again on the floor. Louis' absence from the house had lasted an intolerable age, but the doctor had followed closely on the messenger, and already the symptoms had become a little less acute. The doctor had diagnosed with rapidity. Supervening upon her ordinary cardiac attack after supper, Mrs. Maldon had had, in the night, an embolus in one artery of the brain. The way in which the doctor announced the fact showed to Rachel that nothing could easily have been more serious. And yet the mere naming of the affliction eased her, although she had no conception of what an embolus might be. Dr. Yardley had remained until four o'clock, when Mrs. Maldon, surprisingly convalescent, dropped off to sleep. He remarked that she might recover.

At eight o'clock he had come back. Mrs. Maldon was awake, but had apparently no proper recollection of the events of the night, which even to Rachel had begun to seem unreal, like a waning hallucination. The doctor gave orders, with optimism, and left, sufficiently reassured to allow himself to yawn. At a quarter past eight Louis had departed to his own affairs, on Rachel's direct suggestion. And when Mrs. Tams had been informed of the case so full of disturbing enigmas, while Rachel and she drank tea together in the kitchen, the daily domestic movement of the house was partly resumed, from vanity, because Rachel could not bear to sit idle nor to admit to herself that she had been scared to a standstill.

And now Mrs. Maldon, in full possession of her faculties, faced Thomas Batchgrew for the interview which she had insisted on having. And Rachel waited with an uncanny apprehension, her ears full of the mysterious and frightful phrase, "I've lost all that money."

 

III

Mrs. Maldon, after a few words had passed as to her illness, used exactly the same phrase again--"I've lost all that money!"

Mr. Batchgrew snorted, and glanced at Rachel for an explanation.

"Yes. It's all gone," proceeded Mrs. Maldon with calm resignation. "But I'm too old to worry. Please listen to me. We lost my serviette and ring last evening at supper. Couldn't find it anywhere. And in the night it suddenly occurred to me where it was. I've remembered everything now, almost, and I'm quite sure. You know you first told me to put the money in my wardrobe. Now before you said that, I had thought of putting it on the top of the cupboard to the right of the fireplace in the back room downstairs. I thought that would be a good place for it in case burglars _did_ come. No burglar would ever think of looking there."

"God bless me!" Mr. Batchgrew muttered, scornfully protesting.

"It couldn't possibly be seen, you see. However, I thought I ought to respect your wish, and so I decided I'd put part of it on the top of the cupboard, and part of it underneath a lot of linen at the bottom of the drawer in my wardrobe. That would satisfy both of us."

"Would it!" exclaimed Mr. Batchgrew, without any restraint upon his heavy, rolling voice.

"Well, I must have picked up the serviette and ring with the bank-notes, you see. I fear I'm absent-minded like that sometimes. I know I went out of the sitting-room with both hands full. I know both hands were occupied, because I remember when I went into the back room I didn't turn the gas up, and I pushed a chair up to the cupboard with my knee, for me to stand on. I'm certain I put some of the notes on the top of the cupboard. Then I came upstairs. The window on the landing was rattling, and I put the other part of the money on the chair while I tried to fasten the window. However, I couldn't fasten it. So I left it. And then I thought I picked up the money again off the chair and came in here and hid it at the bottom of the drawer and locked the wardrobe."

"You thought!" said Thomas Batchgrew, gazing at the aged weakling as at an insane criminal. "Was this just after I left?"

Mrs. Maldon nodded apologetically.

"When I woke up the first time in the night, it struck me like a flash: Had I taken the serviette and ring up with the notes? I _am_ liable to do that sort of thing. I'm an old woman--it's no use denying it." She looked plaintively at Rachel, and her voice trembled. "I got up. I was bound to get up, and I turned the gas on, and there the serviette and ring were at the bottom of the drawer, but no money! I took everything out of the drawer, piece by piece, and put it back again. I simply cannot tell you how I felt! I went out to the landing with a match. There was no money there. And then I went downstairs in the dark. I never knew it to be so dark, in spite of the street-lamp. I knocked against the clock. I nearly knocked it over. I managed to light the gas in the back room. I made sure that I must have left _all_ the notes on the top of the cupboard instead of only part of them. But there was nothing there at all. Nothing! Then I looked all over the sitting-room floor with a candle. When I got upstairs again I didn't know what I was doing. I knew I was going to be ill, and I just managed to ring the bell for dear Rachel, and the next thing I remember was I was in bed here, and Rachel putting something hot to my feet--the dear child!"

Her eyes glistened with tears. And Rachel too, as she pictured the enfeebled and despairing incarnation of dignity colliding with grandfather's clocks in the night and climbing on chairs and groping over carpets, had difficulty not to cry, and a lump rose in her throat. She was so moved by compassion that she did not at first feel the full shock of the awful disappearance of the money.

Mr. Batchgrew, for the second time that morning unequal to a situation, turned foolishly to the wardrobe, clearing his throat and snorting.

"It's on one of the sliding trays," said Mrs. Maldon.

"What's on one of the sliding trays?"

"The serviette."

Rachel, who was nearest, opened the wardrobe and immediately discovered the missing serviette and ring, which had the appearance of a direct dramatic proof of Mrs. Maldon's story.

Mr. Batchgrew exclaimed, indignant--

"I never heard such a rigmarole in all my born days." And then, angrily to Rachel, "Go down and look on th' top o' th' cupboard, thee!"

Rachel hesitated.

"I'm quite resigned," said Mrs. Maldon placidly. "It's a punishment on me for hardening my heart to Julian last night. It's a punishment for my pride."

"Now, then!" Mr. Batchgrew glared bullyingly at Rachel, who vanished.

In a few moments she returned.

"There's nothing at all on the top of the cupboard."

"But th' money must be somewhere," said Mr. Batchgrew savagely. "Nine hundred and sixty-five pun. And I've arranged to lend out that money again, at once! What am I to say to th' mortgagor? Am I to tell him as I've lost it?... No! I never!"

Mrs. Maldon murmured--

"Nay, nay! It's no use looking at me. I thought I should never get over it in the night. But I'm quite resigned now."

Rachel, standing near the door, could observe both Mrs. Maldon and Thomas Batchgrew, and was regarded by neither of them. And while, in the convulsive commotion of her feelings, her sympathy for and admiration of Mrs. Maldon became poignant, she was thrilled by the most intense scorn and disgust for Thomas Batchgrew. The chief reason for her abhorrence was the old man's insensibility to the angelic submission, the touching fragility, the heavenly meekness and tranquillity, of Mrs. Maldon as she lay there helpless, victimized by a paralytic affliction. (Rachel wanted to forget utterly the souvenir of Mrs. Maldon's paroxysm in the night, because it slurred the unmatched dignity of the aged creature.) Another reason was the mere fact that Mr. Batchgrew had insisted on leaving the money in the house. Who but Mr. Batchgrew would have had the notion of saddling poor old Mrs. Maldon with the custody of a vast sum of money? It was a shame; it was positively cruel! Rachel was indignantly convinced that he alone ought to be made responsible for the money. And lastly, she loathed and condemned him for the reason that he was so obviously unequal to the situation. He could not handle it. He was found out. He was disproved, He did not know what to do. He could only mouth, strut, bully, and make rude noises. He could not even keep decently around him the cloak of self-importance. He stood revealed to Mrs. Maldon and Rachel as he had sometimes stood revealed to his dead wife and to his elder children and to some of his confidential, faithful employees. He was an offence in the delicacy of the bedroom. If the rancour of Rachel's judgment had been fierce enough to strike him to the floor, assuredly his years would not have saved him! And yet Mrs. Maldon gazed at him with submissive and apologetic gentleness! Foolish saint! Fancy _her_ (thought Rachel) hardening her heart to Julian! Rachel longed to stiffen her with some backing of her own harsh common sense. And her affection for Mrs. Maldon grew passionate and half maternal.

 

IV

Thomas Batchgrew was saying--

"It beats me how anybody in their senses could pick up a serviette and put it way for a pile o' bank-notes." He scowled. "However, I'll go and see Snow. I'll see what Snow says. I'll get him to come up with one of his best men--Dickson, perhaps."

"Thomas Batchgrew!" cried Mrs. Maldon with sudden disturbing febrile excitement. "You'll do no such thing. I'll have no police prying into this affair. If you do that I shall just die right off."

And her manner grew so imperious that Mr. Batchgrew was intimidated.

"But--but--"

"I'd sooner lose all the money!" said Mrs. Maldon, almost wildly.

She blushed. And Rachel also felt herself to be blushing, and was not sure whether she knew why she was blushing. An atmosphere of constraint and shame seemed to permeate the room.

Mr. Batchgrew growled--

"The money must be in the house. The truth is, Elizabeth, ye don't know no more than that bedpost where ye put it."

And Rachel agreed eagerly--

"Of course it _must_ be in the house! I shall set to and turn everything out. Everything!"

"Ye'd better!" said Thomas Batchgrew.

"That will be the best thing, dear--perhaps," said Mrs. Maldon, indifferent, and now plainly fatigued.

Every one seemed determined to be convinced that the money was in the house, and to employ this conviction as a defence against horrible dim suspicions that had inexplicably emerged from the corners of the room and were creeping about like menaces.

"Where else should it be?" muttered Batchgrew, sarcastically, after a pause, as if to say, "Anybody who fancies the money isn't in the house is an utter fool."

Mrs. Maldon had closed her eyes.

There was a faint knock at the door. Rachel turned instinctively to prevent a possible intruder from entering and catching sight of those dim suspicions before they could be driven back into their dark corners. Then she remembered that she had asked Mrs. Tams to bring up some Revalenta Arabica food for Mrs. Maldon as soon as it should be ready. And she sedately opened the door. Mrs. Tams, with her usual serf-like diffidence, remained invisible, except for the hand holding forth the cup. But her soft voice, charged with sensational news, was heard--

"Mrs. Grocott's boy next door but one has just been round to th' back to tell me as there was a burglary down the Lane last night."

As Rachel carried the food across to the bed, she could not help saying, though with feigned deference, to Mr. Batchgrew--

"You told us last night that there wouldn't _be_ any more burglaries, Mr. Batchgrew."

The burning tightness round the top of her head, due to fatigue and lack of sleep, seemed somehow to brace her audacity, and to make her careless of consequences.

The trustee and celebrity, though momentarily confounded, was recovering himself now. He determined to crush the pert creature whose glance had several times incommoded him. He said severely--

"What's a burglary down the Lane got to with us and this here money?"

"Us and the money!" Rachel repeated evenly. "Nothing, only when I came downstairs in the night the greenhouse door was open." (The scullery was still often called the greenhouse.) "And I'd locked it myself!"

A troubling silence followed, broken by Mr. Batchgrew's uneasy grunts as he turned away to the window, and by the clink of the spoon as Rachel helped Mrs. Maldon to take the food.

At length Mr. Batchgrew asked, staring through the window--

"Did ye notice the dust on top o' that cupboard? Was it disturbed?"

Hesitating an instant, Rachel answered firmly, without turning her head--

"I did ... It was ... Of course."

Mrs. Maldon made no sign of interest.

Mr. Batchgrew's boots creaked to and fro in the room.

"And what's Julian got to say for himself?" he asked, not addressing either woman in particular.

"Julian wasn't here. He didn't stay the night. Louis stayed instead," answered Mrs. Maldon, faintly, without opening her eyes.

"What? What? What's this?"

"Tell him, dear, how it was," said Mrs. Maldon, still more faintly.

Rachel obeyed, in agitated, uneven tones. _

Read next: Chapter 6. Theories Of The Theft

Read previous: Chapter 4. In The Night

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