MRS. TAMS’S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR

I

In the house at Bycars, where he arrived tardily after circuitous wanderings, Louis first of all dropped the parcel from Faulkner’s into the oak chest, raising and lowering the lid without any noise.  Once, in the train in Bleakridge tunnel, he had almost thrown the parcel out of the carriage on to the line, as though it were in some subtle way a piece of evidence against him; but, aided by his vanity, he had resisted the impulse.  Why, indeed, should he be afraid of a parcel of linen?  Had he not the right to buy linen when and how he chose?  Then he removed his hat and coat, hung them carefully in their proper place, smoothed his hair, and walked straight into the parlour.  He had a considerable gift of behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened when the contrary was the case.  Nobody could have guessed from his features that he was calculating and recalculating the chances of immediate imprisonment, and that each successive calculation disagreed with the previous one; at one moment the chances were less than one in a hundred, less than one in a million; at another they increased and multiplied themselves into tragic certainty.

When Rachel heard him in the lobby her sudden tears were tears of joy and deliverance.  She did not try to restrain them.  As she stole back to her chair she ignored all her reasonings against him, and lived only in the fact that he had returned.  And she was triumphant.  She thought:  “Now that he is in the house, he is mine.  I have him.  He cannot escape me.  In a caress I shall cancel all the past since his accident.  So long as I can hold him I don’t care.”  Her soul dissolved in softness towards him; even the body seemed to melt also, till, instead of being a strong, sturdy girl, she was a living tentacular endearment and naught else.

But when, with disconcerting quickness, he came into the room, she hardened again in spite of herself.  She simply could not display her feelings.  Upbringing, habit, environment were too much for her, and spontaneity was checked.  Had she been alone with a dog she would have spent herself passionately on the dog, imaginatively transforming the dog into Louis; but the sight of Louis in person congealed her, so that she became a hard mass with just a tiny core of fire somewhere within.

“Why cannot I jump up and fall on his neck?” she asked herself angrily.  But she could not.

She controlled her tears, and began to argue mentally whether Louis had come home because he could not keep away from her, or for base purposes of his own.  She was conscious of a desire to greet him sarcastically with the remark, “So you’ve come back, after all!” It was a wilful, insensate desire; but there it was.  She shut her lips on it, not without difficulty.

“I’ve kept some supper for you,” she said, with averted head.  She wanted to make her voice kind, but it would not obey her.  It was neither kind nor unkind.  There were tears in it, however.