CHAPTER I

THE PRICE OF LOVE

A Tale

by

ARNOLD BENNETT

1914

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. MONEY IN THE HOUSE

II. LOUIS' DISCOVERY

III. THE FEAST

IV. IN THE NIGHT

V. NEWS OF THE NIGHT

VI. THEORIES OF THE THEFT

VII. THE CINEMA

VIII. END AND BEGINNING

IX. THE MARRIED WOMAN

X. THE CHASM

XI. JULIAN'S DOCUMENT

XII. RUNAWAY HORSES

XIII. DEAD-LOCK

XIV. THE MARKET

XV. THE CHANGED MAN

XVI. THE LETTER

XVII. IN THE MONASTERY

XVIII. MRS. TAMS'S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR

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.

The exhortation was ill-considered, and Rachel controlled a gesture of

amicable impatience. For she had not paused after closing the drawer;

she was already on her way across the room to the window when Mrs.

Maldon said, "Now the blinds, my dear!" The fact was that Mrs. Maldon

measured the time between the lighting of gas and the drawing down of

blinds by tenths of a second--such was her fear lest in that sinister

interval the whole prying town might magically gather in the street

outside and peer into the secrets of her inculpable existence.

II

When the blinds and curtains had been arranged for privacy, Mrs.

Maldon sighed securely and picked up her crocheting. Rachel rested her

hands on the table, which was laid for a supper for four, and asked in

a firm, frank voice whether there was anything else.

"Because, if not," Rachel added, "I'll just take off my pinafore and

wash my hands."

Mrs. Maldon looked up benevolently and nodded in quick agreement.

It was such apparently trifling gestures, eager and generous, that

endeared the old lady to Rachel, giving her the priceless sensation

of being esteemed and beloved. Her gaze lingered on her aged employer

with affection and with profound respect. Mrs. Maldon made a striking,

tall, slim figure, sitting erect in tight black, with the right side

of her long, prominent nose in the full gaslight and the other heavily

shadowed. Her hair was absolutely black at over seventy; her eyes were

black and glowing, and she could read and do coarse crocheting

without spectacles. All her skin, especially round about the eyes, was

yellowish brown and very deeply wrinkled indeed; a decrepit, senile

skin, which seemed to contradict the youth of her pose and her glance.

The cast of her features was benign. She had passed through desolating

and violent experiences, and then through a long, long period of

withdrawn tranquillity; and from end to end of her life she had

consistently thought the best of all men, refusing to recognize evil

and assuming the existence of good. Every one of the millions of her

kind thoughts had helped to mould the expression of her countenance.

The expression was definite now, fixed, intensely characteristic after

so many decades, and wherever it was seen it gave pleasure and by

its enchantment created goodness and goodwill--even out of their

opposites. Such was the life-work of Mrs. Maldon.

Her eyes embraced the whole room. They did not, as the phrase is,

"beam" approval; for the act of beaming involves a sort of ecstasy,

and Mrs. Maldon was too dignified for ecstasy. But they displayed a

mild and proud contentment as she said--

"I'm sure it's all very nice."

It was. The table crowded with porcelain, crystal, silver, and

flowers, and every object upon it casting a familiar curved shadow on

the whiteness of the damask toward the window! The fresh crimson and

blues of the everlasting Turkey carpet (Turkey carpet being the _ne

plus ultra_ of carpetry in the Five Towns, when that carpet was

bought, just as sealskin was the _ne plus ultra_ of all furs)!

The silken-polished sideboard, strange to the company, but worthy

of it, and exhibiting a due sense of its high destiny! The sombre

bookcase and corner cupboard, darkly glittering! The Chesterfield

sofa, broad, accepting, acquiescent! The flashing brass fender

and copper scuttle! The comfortably reddish walls, with their

pictures--like limpets on the face of precipices! The new-whitened

ceiling! In the midst the incandescent lamp that hung like the moon

in heaven!... And then the young, sturdy girl, standing over the

old woman and breathing out the very breath of life, vitalizing

everything, rejuvenating the old woman!

Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room had a considerable renown among her

acquaintance, not only for its peculiar charm, which combined and

reconciled the tastes of two very different generations, but also for

its radiant cleanness. There are many clean houses in the Five Towns,

using the adjective in the relative sense in which the Five Towns is

forced by chimneys to use it. But Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room (save for

the white window-curtains, which had to accept the common grey fate of

white window-curtains in the district) was clean in the country-side

sense, almost in the Dutch sense. The challenge of its cleanness

gleamed on every polished surface, victorious in the unending battle

against the horrible contagion of foul industries. Mrs. Maldon's

friends would assert that the state of that sitting-room "passed"

them, or "fair passed" them, and she would receive their ever-amazed

compliments with modesty. But behind her benevolent depreciation she

would be blandly saying to herself: "Yes, I'm scarcely surprised it

passes you--seeing the way you housewives let things go on here."

The word "here" would be faintly emphasized in her mind, as no native

would have emphasized it.

Rachel shared the general estimate of the sitting-room. She

appreciated its charm, and admitted to herself that her first vision

of it, rather less than a month before, had indeed given her a new and

startling ideal of cleanliness. On that occasion it had been evident,

from Mrs. Maldon's physical exhaustion, that the housemistress had

made an enormous personal effort to _dazzle_ and inspire her new

"lady companion," which effort, though detected and perhaps scorned by

Rachel, had nevertheless succeeded in its aim. With a certain presence

of mind Rachel had feigned to remark nothing miraculous in the

condition of the room. Appropriating the new ideal instantly, she

had on the first morning of her service "turned out" the room before

breakfast, well knowing that it must have been turned out on the

previous day. Dumbfounded for a few moments, Mrs. Maldon had at length

said, in her sweet and cordial benevolence, "I'm glad to see we think

alike about cleanliness." And Rachel had replied with an air at once

deferential, sweet, and yet casual, "Oh, of course, Mrs. Maldon!" Then

they measured one another in a silent exchange. Mrs. Maldon was aware

that she had by chance discovered a pearl--yes, a treasure beyond

pearls. And Rachel, too, divined the high value of her employer, and

felt within the stirrings of a passionate loyalty to her.

III

And yet, during the three weeks and a half of their joint existence,

Rachel's estimate of Mrs. Maldon had undergone certain subtle

modifications.

At first, somewhat overawed, Rachel had seen in her employer the Mrs.

Maldon of the town's legend, which legend had travelled to Rachel

as far as Knype, whence she sprang. That is to say, one of the

great ladies of Bursley, ranking in the popular regard with

Mrs. Clayton-Vernon, the leader of society, Mrs. Sutton, the

philanthropist, and Mrs. Hamps, the powerful religious bully. She had

been impressed by her height (Rachel herself being no lamp-post), her

carriage, her superlative dignity, her benevolence of thought, and

above all by her aristocratic Southern accent. After eight-and-forty

years of the Five Towns, Mrs. Maldon had still kept most of that

Southern accent--so intimidating to the rough, broad talkers of the

district, who take revenge by mocking it among themselves, but for

whom it will always possess the thrilling prestige of high life.

And then day by day Rachel had discovered that great ladies are, after

all, human creatures, strangely resembling other human creatures. And

Mrs. Maldon slowly became for her an old woman of seventy-two,

with unquestionably wondrous hair, but failing in strength and in

faculties; and it grew merely pathetic to Rachel that Mrs. Maldon

should force herself always to sit straight upright. As for Mrs.

Maldon's charitableness, Rachel could not deny that she refused to

think evil, and yet it was plain that at bottom Mrs. Maldon was not

much deceived about people: in which apparent inconsistency there hid

a slight disturbing suggestion of falseness that mysteriously fretted

the downright Rachel.

Again, beneath Mrs. Maldon's modesty concerning the merits of her

sitting-room Rachael soon fancied that she could detect traces of an

ingenuous and possibly senile "house-pride," which did more than fret

the lady companion; it faintly offended her. That one should be proud

of a possession or of an achievement was admissible, but that one

should fail to conceal the pride absolutely was to Rachel, with her

Five Towns character, a sign of weakness, a sign of the soft South.

Lastly, Mrs. Maldon had, it transpired, her "ways"; for example, in

the matter of blinds and in the matter of tapers. She would actually

insist on the gas being lighted with a taper; a paper spill, which was

just as good and better, seemed to ruffle her benign placidity: and

she was funnily economical with matches. Rachel had never seen a taper

before, and could not conceive where the old lady managed to buy the

things.

In short, with admiration almost undiminished, and with a rapidly

growing love and loyalty, Rachel had arrived at the point of feeling

glad that she, a mature, capable, sagacious, and strong woman, was

there to watch over the last years of the waning and somewhat peculiar

old lady.

Mrs. Maldon did not see the situation from quite the same angle. She

did not, for example, consider herself to be in the least peculiar,

but, on the contrary, a very normal woman. She had always used tapers;

she could remember the period when every one used tapers. In her

view tapers were far more genteel and less dangerous than the untidy,

flaring spill, which she abhorred as a vulgarity. As for matches,

frankly it would not have occurred to her to waste a match when fire

was available. In the matter of her sharp insistence on drawn blinds

at night, domestic privacy seemed to be one of the fundamental

decencies of life--simply that! And as for house-pride, she considered

that she locked away her fervent feeling for her parlour in a manner

marvellous and complete.

No one could or ever would guess the depth of her attachment to that

sitting-room, nor the extent to which it engrossed her emotional life.

And yet she had only occupied the house for fourteen years out of the

forty-five years of her widowhood, and the furniture had at intervals

been renewed (for Mrs. Maldon would on no account permit herself to

be old-fashioned). Indeed, she had had five different sitting-rooms in

five different houses since her husband's death. No matter. They were

all the same sitting-room, all rendered identical by the mysterious

force of her dreamy meditations on the past. And, moreover, sundry

important articles had remained constant to preserve unbroken the

chain that linked her to her youth. The table which Rachel had so

nicely laid was the table at which Mrs. Maldon had taken her first

meal as mistress of a house. Her husband had carved mutton at it, and

grumbled about the consistency of toast; her children had spilt jam on

its cloth. And when on Sunday nights she wound up the bracket-clock on

the mantelpiece, she could see and hear a handsome young man in a long

frock-coat and a large shirt-front and a very thin black tie winding

it up too--her husband--on Sunday nights. And she could simultaneously

see another handsome young man winding it up--her son.

Her pictures were admired.

"Your son painted this water-colour, did he not, Mrs. Maldon?"

"Yes, my son Athelstan."

"How gifted he must have been!"

"Yes, the best judges say he showed very remarkable promise. It's

fading, I fear. I ought to cover it up, but somehow I can't fancy

covering it up--"

The hand that had so remarkably promised had lain mouldering for a

quarter of a century. Mrs. Maldon sometimes saw it, fleshless, on a

cage-like skeleton in the dark grave. The next moment she would see

herself tending its chilblains.

And if she was not peculiar, neither was she waning. No!

Seventy-two--but not truly old! How could she be truly old when she

could see, hear, walk a mile without stopping, eat anything whatever,

and dress herself unaided? And that hair of hers! Often she was still

a young wife, or a young widow. She was not preparing for death; she

had prepared for death in the seventies. She expected to live on

in calm satisfaction through indefinite decades. She savoured life

pleasantly, for its daily security was impregnable. She had forgotten

grief.

When she looked up at Rachel and benevolently nodded to her, she saw

a girl of line character, absolutely trustworthy, very devoted, very

industrious, very capable, intelligent, cheerful--in fact, a splendid

girl, a girl to be enthusiastic about! But such a mere girl! A girl

with so much to learn! So pathetically young and inexperienced

and positive and sure of herself! The looseness of her limbs, the

unconscious abrupt freedom of her gestures, the waviness of her auburn

hair, the candour of her glance, the warmth of her indignation against

injustice and dishonesty, the capricious and sensitive flowings of

blood to her smooth cheeks, the ridiculous wise compressings of

her lips, the rise and fall of her rich and innocent bosom--these

phenomena touched Mrs. Maldon and occasionally made her want to cry.

Thought she: "_I_ was never so young as that at twenty-two! At

twenty-two I had had Mary!" The possibility that in spite of having

had Mary (who would now have been fifty, but for death) she had as a

fact been approximately as young as that at twenty-two did not ever

present itself to the waning and peculiar old lady. She was glad that

she, a mature and profoundly experienced woman, in full possession

of all her faculties, was there to watch over the development of the

lovable, affectionate, and impulsive child.

IV

"Oh! Here's the paper, Mrs. Maldon," said Rachel, as, turning away to

leave the room, she caught sight of the extra special edition of

the _Signal_, which lay a pale green on the dark green of the

Chesterfield.

Mrs. Maldon answered placidly--

"When did you bring it in? I never heard the boy come. But my

hearing's not quite what it used to be, that's true. Open it for me,

my dear. I can't stretch my arms as I used to."

She was one of the few women in the Five Towns who deigned to read

a newspaper regularly, and one of the still fewer who would lead the

miscellaneous conversation of drawing-rooms away from domestic chatter

and discussions of individualities, to political and municipal topics

and even toward general ideas. She seldom did more than mention a

topic and then express a hope for the best, or explain that this

phenomenon was "such a pity," or that phenomenon "such a good thing,"

or that about another phenomenon "one really didn't know what to

think." But these remarks sufficed to class her apart among her sex as

"a very up-to-date old lady, with a broad outlook upon the world,"

and to inspire sundry other ladies with a fearful respect for her

masculine intellect and judgment. She was aware of her superiority,

and had a certain kind disdain for the increasing number of women

who took in a daily picture-paper, and who, having dawdled over its

illustrations after breakfast, spoke of what they had seen in the

"newspaper." She would not allow that a picture-paper was a newspaper.

Rachel stood in the empty space under the gas. Her arms were stretched

out and slightly upward as she held the _Signal_ wide open and

glanced at the newspaper, frowning. The light fell full on her coppery

hair. Her balanced body, though masked in front by the perpendicular

fall of the apron as she bent somewhat forward, was nevertheless the

image of potential vivacity and energy; it seemed almost to vibrate

with its own consciousness of physical pride.

Left alone, Rachel would never have opened a newspaper, at any rate

for the news. Until she knew Mrs. Maldon she had never seen a woman

read a newspaper for aught except the advertisements relating to

situations, houses, and pleasures. But, much more than she imagined,

she was greatly under the influence of Mrs. Maldon. Mrs. Maldon made

a nightly solemnity of the newspaper, and Rachel naturally soon

persuaded herself that it was a fine and a superior thing to read the

newspaper--a proof of unusual intelligence. Moreover, just as she

felt bound to show Mrs. Maldon that her notion of cleanliness was as

advanced as anybody's, so she felt bound to indicate, by an appearance

of casualness, that for her to read the paper was the most customary

thing in the world. Of course she read the paper! And that she should

calmly look at it herself before handing it to her mistress proved

that she had already established a very secure position in the house.

She said, her eyes following the lines, and her feet moving in the

direction of Mrs. Maldon--"Those burglaries are still going on ...

Hillport now!"

"Oh, dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Maldon, as Rachel spread the newspaper

lightly over the tea-tray and its contents. "Oh, dear, dear! I do

hope the police will catch some one soon. I'm sure they're doing their

best, but really--!"

Rachel bent with confident intimacy over the old lady's shoulder, and

they read the burglary column together, Rachel interrupting herself

for an instant to pick up Mrs. Maldon's ball of black wool which had

slipped to the floor. The _Signal_ reporter had omitted none of

the classic _clichés_ proper to the subject, and such words

and phrases as "jemmy," "effected an entrance," "the servant, now

thoroughly alarmed," "stealthy footsteps," "escaped with their booty,"

seriously disquieted both of the women--caused a sudden sensation of

sinking in the region of the heart. Yet neither would put the secret

fear into speech, for each by instinct felt that a fear once uttered

is strengthened and made more real. Living solitary and unprotected

by male sinews, in a house which, though it did not stand alone, was

somewhat withdrawn from the town, they knew themselves the ideal prey

of conventional burglars with masks, dark lanterns, revolvers, and

jemmies. They were grouped together like some symbolic sculpture, and

with all their fortitude and common sense they still in unconscious

attitude expressed the helpless and resigned fatalism of their sex

before certain menaces of bodily danger, the thrilled, expectant

submission of women in a city about to be sacked.

Nothing could save them if the peril entered the house. But they would

not say aloud: "Suppose they came _here_! How terrible!" They

would not even whisper the slightest apprehension. They just briefly

discussed the matter with a fine air of indifferent aloofness,

remaining calm while the brick walls and the social system which

defended that bright and delicate parlour from the dark, savage

universe without seemed to crack and shiver.

Mrs. Maldon, suddenly noticing that one blind was half an inch

short of the bottom of the window, rose nervously and pulled it down

farther.

"Why didn't you ask me to do that?" said Rachel, thinking what a

fidgety person the old lady was.

Mrs. Maldon replied--"It's all right, my dear. Did you fasten the

window on the upstairs landing?"

"As if burglars would try to get in by an upstairs window--and on

the street!" thought Rachel, pityingly impatient. "However, it's her

house, and I'm paid to do what I'm told," she added to herself, very

sensibly. Then she said, aloud, in a soothing tone--

"No, I didn't. But I will do it."

She moved towards the door, and at the same moment a knock on the

front door sent a vibration through the whole house. Nearly all

knocks on the front door shook the house; and further, burglars do

not generally knock as a preliminary to effecting an entrance.

Nevertheless, both women started--and were ashamed of starting.

"Surely he's rather early!" said Mrs. Maldon with an exaggerated

tranquillity.

And Rachel, with a similar lack of conviction in her calm gait, went

audaciously forth into the dark lobby.

V

On the glass panels of the front door the street lamp threw a faint,

distorted shadow of a bowler hat, two rather protruding ears, and

a pair of long, outspreading whiskers whose ends merged into broad

shoulders. Any one familiar with the streets of Bursley would have

instantly divined that Councillor Thomas Batchgrew stood between the

gas-lamp and the front door. And even Rachel, whose acquaintance

with Bursley was still slight, at once recognized the outlines of the

figure. She had seen Councillor Batchgrew one day conversing with Mrs.

Maldon in Moorthorne Road, and she knew that he bore to Mrs. Maldon

the vague but imposing relation of "trustee."

There are many--indeed perhaps too many--remarkable men in the Five

Towns. Thomas Batchgrew was one of them. He had begun life as a small

plumber in Bursley market-place, living behind and above the shop, and

begetting a considerable family, which exercised itself in the back

yard among empty and full turpentine-cans. The original premises

survived, as a branch establishment, and Batchgrew's latest-married

grandson condescended to reside on the first floor, and to keep a

motor-car and a tri-car in the back yard, now roofed over (in a manner

not strictly conforming to the building by-laws of the borough).

All Batchgrew's sons and daughters were married, and several of his

grandchildren also. And all his children, and more than one of the

grandchildren, kept motor-cars. Not a month passed but some Batchgrew,

or some Batchgrew's husband or child, bought a motor-car, or sold one,

or exchanged a small one for a larger one, or had an accident, or

was gloriously fined in some distant part of the country for illegal

driving. Nearly all of them had spacious detached houses, with gardens

and gardeners, and patent slow-combustion grates, and porcelain

bathrooms comprising every appliance for luxurious splashing. And,

with the exception of one son who had been assisted to Valparaiso in

order that he might there seek death in the tankard without outraging

the family, they were all teetotallers--because the old man, "old

Jack," was a teetotaller. The family pyramid was based firm on the

old man. The numerous relatives held closely together like an alien

oligarchical caste in a conquered country. If they ever did quarrel,

it must have been in private.

The principal seat of business--electrical apparatus, heating

apparatus, and decorating and plumbing on a grandiose scale--in

Hanbridge, had over its immense windows the sign: "John Batchgrew

& Sons." The sign might well have read: "John Batchgrew & Sons,

Daughters, Daughters-in-law, Sons-in-law, Grandchildren, and

Great-grandchildren." The Batchgrew partners were always tendering

for, and often winning, some big contract or other for heating

and lighting and embellishing a public building or a mansion or a

manufactory. (They by no means confined their activities to the Five

Towns, having an address in London--and another in Valparaiso.) And

small private customers were ever complaining of the inaccuracy

of their accounts for small jobs. People who, in the age of Queen

Victoria's earlier widowhood, had sent for Batchgrew to repair a burst

spout, still by force of habit sent for Batchgrew to repair a burst

spout, and still had to "call at Batchgrew's" about mistakes in the

bills, which mistakes, after much argument and asseveration, were

occasionally put right. In spite of their prodigious expenditures, and

of a certain failure on the part of the public to understand "where

all the money came from," the financial soundness of the Batchgrews

was never questioned. In discussing the Batchgrews no bank-manager and

no lawyer had ever by an intonation or a movement of the eyelid hinted

that earthquakes had occurred before in the history of the world and

might occur again.

And yet old Batchgrew--admittedly the cleverest of the lot,

save possibly the Valparaiso soaker--could not be said to attend

assiduously to business. He scarcely averaged two hours a day on

the premises at Hanbridge. Indeed the staff there had a sense of

the unusual, inciting to unusual energy and devotion, when word went

round: "Guv'nor's in the office with Mr. John." The Councillor was

always extremely busy with something other than his main enterprise.

It was now reported, for example, that he was clearing vast sums out

of picture-palaces in Wigan and Warrington. Also he was a religionist,

being Chairman of the local Church of England Village Mission Fund.

And he was a politician, powerful in municipal affairs. And he was a

reformer, who believed that by abolishing beer he could abolish the

poverty of the poor--and acted accordingly. And lastly he liked to

enjoy himself.

Everybody knew by sight his flying white whiskers and protruding ears.

And he himself was well aware of the steady advertising value of

those whiskers--of always being recognizable half a mile off. He met

everybody unflinchingly, for he felt that he was invulnerable at all

points and sure of a magnificent obituary. He was invariably treated

with marked deference and respect. But he was not an honest man. He

knew it. All his family knew it. In business everybody knew it except

a few nincompoops. Scarcely any one trusted him. The peculiar fashion

in which, when he was not present, people "old Jacked" him--this alone

was enough to condemn a man of his years. Lastly, everybody knew that

most of the Batchgrew family was of a piece with its head.

VI

Now Rachel had formed a prejudice against old Batchgrew. She had

formed it, immutably, in a single second of time. One glance at him

in the street--and she had tried and condemned him, according to

the summary justice of youth. She was in that stage of plenary and

unhesitating wisdom when one not only can, but one must, divide the

whole human race sharply into two categories, the sheep and the goats;

and she had sentenced old Batchgrew to a place on the extreme left.

It happened that she knew nothing against him. But she did not require

evidence. She simply did "not like _that man_"--(she italicized

the end of the phrase bitingly to herself)--and there was no appeal

against the verdict. Angels could not have successfully interceded

for him in the courts of her mind. He never guessed, in his aged

self-sufficiency, that his case was hopeless with Rachel, nor even

that the child had dared to have any opinion about him at all.

She was about to slip off the pinafore-apron and drop it on to the

oak chest that stood in the lobby. But she thought with defiance: "Why

should I take my pinafore off for him? I won't. He shan't see my nice

frock. Let him see my pinafore. I am an independent woman, earning my

own living, and why should I be ashamed of my pinafore? My pinafore is

good enough for him!" She also thought: "Let him wait!" and went off

into the kitchen to get the modern appliance of the match for lighting

the gas in the lobby. When she had lighted the gas she opened the

front door with audacious but nervous deliberation, and the famous

character impatiently walked straight in. He wore prominent loose

black kid gloves and a thin black overcoat.

Looking coolly at her, he said--

"So you're the new lady companion, young miss! Well, I've heard rare

accounts on ye--rare accounts on ye! Missis is in, I reckon?"

His voice was extremely low, rich, and heavy. It descended on the

silence like a thick lubricating oil that only reluctantly abandons

the curves in which it falls.

And Rachel answered, faintly, tremulously--"Yes."

No longer was she the independent woman, censorious and scornful, but

a silly, timid little thing. Though she condemned herself savagely for

school-girlishness, she could do nothing to arrest the swift change in

her. The fact was, she was abashed, partly by the legendary importance

of the renowned Batchgrew, but more by his physical presence. His

mere presence was always disturbing; for when he supervened into

an environment he had always the air of an animal on a voyage of

profitable discovery. His nose was an adventurous, sniffing nose, a

true nose, which exercised the original and proper functions of a nose

noisily. His limbs were restless, his boots like hoofs. His eyes were

as restless as his limbs, and seemed ever to be seeking for something

upon which they could definitely alight, and not finding it. He

performed eructations with the disarming naturalness of a baby. He was

tall but not stout, and yet he filled the lobby; he was the sole fact

in the lobby, and it was as though Rachel had to crush herself against

the wall in order to make room for him.

His glance at Rachel now became inquisitive, calculating, It seemed to

be saying: "One day I may be able to make use of this piece of goods."

But there was a certain careless good-humour in it, too. What he saw

was a naïve young maid, with agreeable features, and a fine, fresh

complexion, and rather reddish hair. (He did not approve of the

colour of the hair.) He found pleasure in regarding her, and in the

perception that he had abashed her. Yes, he liked to see her timid and

downcast before him. He was an old man, but like most old men--such as

statesmen--who have lived constantly at the full pressure of following

their noses, he was also a young man. He creaked, but he was not

gravely impaired.

"Is it Mr. Batchgrew?" Rachel softly murmured the unnecessary

question, with one hand on the knob ready to open the sitting-room

door.

He had flopped his stiff, flat-topped felt hat on the oak chest, and

was taking off his overcoat. He paused and, lifting his chin--and his

incredible white whiskers with it--gazed at Rachel almost steadily for

a couple of seconds.

"It is," he said, as it were challengingly--"it is, young miss."

Then he finished removing his overcoat and thrust it roughly down on

the hat.

Rachel blushed as she modestly turned the knob and pushed the door so

that he might pass in front of her.

"Here's Mr. Batchgrew, Mrs. Maldon," she announced, feebly

endeavouring to raise and clear her voice.

"Bless us!" The astonished exclamation of Mrs. Maldon was heard.

And Councillor Batchgrew, with his crimson shiny face, and the

vermilion rims round his unsteady eyes, and his elephant ears, and

the absurd streaming of his white whiskers, and his multitudinous

noisiness, and his black kid gloves, strode half theatrically past

her, sniffing.

To Rachel he was an object odious, almost obscene. In truth, she

had little mercy on old men in general, who as a class struck her as

fussy, ridiculous, and repulsive. And beyond all the old men she had

ever seen, she disliked Councillor Batchgrew. And about Councillor

Batchgrew what she most detested was, perhaps strangely, his loose,

wrinkled black kid gloves. They were ordinary, harmless black kid

gloves, but she counted them against him as a supreme offence.

"Conceited, self-conscious, horrid old brute!" she thought, discreetly

drawing the door to, and then going into the kitchen. "He's interested

in nothing and nobody but himself." She felt protective towards Mrs.

Maldon, that simpleton who apparently could not see through a John

Batchgrew!... So Mrs. Maldon had been giving him good accounts of the

new lady companion, had she!

VII

"Well, Lizzie Maldon," said Councillor Batchgrew as he crossed the

sitting-room, "how d'ye find yourself?... Sings!" he went on, taking

Mrs. Maldon's hand with a certain negligence and at the same time

fixing an unfriendly eye on the gas.

Mrs. Maldon had risen to welcome him with the punctilious warmth due

to an old gentleman, a trustee, and a notability. She told him as

to her own health and inquired about his. But he ignored her smooth

utterances, in the ardour of following his nose.

"Sings worse than ever! Very unhealthy too! Haven't I told ye and told

ye? You ought to let me put electricity in for you. It isn't as if it

wasn't your own house.... Pay ye! Pay ye over and over again!"

He sat down in a chair by the table, drew off his loose black gloves,

and after letting them hover irresolutely over the encumbered table,

deposited them for safety in the china slop-basin.

"I dare say you're quite right," said Mrs. Maldon with grave urbanity.

"But really gas suits me very well. And you know the gas-manager

complains so much about the competition of electricity. Truly it does

seem unfair, doesn't it, as they both belong to the town! If I gave

up gas for electricity I don't think I could look the poor man in the

face at church. And all these changes cost money! How is dear Enid?"

Mr. Batchgrew had now stretched out his legs and crossed one over the

other; and he was twisting his thumbs on his diaphragm.

"Enid? Oh! Enid! Well, I did hear she's able to nurse the child

at last." He spoke of his grand-daughter-in-law as of one among a

multiplicity of women about whose condition vague rumours reached him

at intervals.

Mrs. Maldon breathed fervently--"I'm so thankful! What a blessing

that is, isn't it?"

"As for costing money, Elizabeth," Mr. Batchgrew proceeded, "you'll

be all right now for money." He paused, sat up straight with puffings,

and leaned sideways against the table. Then he said, half fiercely--

"I've settled up th' Brougham Street mortgage."

"You don't say so!" Mrs. Maldon was startled.

"I do!"

"When?"

"To-day."

"Well--"

"That's what I stepped in for."

Mrs. Maldon feebly murmured, with obvious emotion--

"You can't imagine what a relief it is to me!" Tears shone in her

dark, mild eyes.

"Look ye!" exclaimed the trustee curtly.

He drew from his breast pocket a bank envelope of linen, and then,

glancing at the table, pushed cups and saucers abruptly away to make a

clear space on the white cloth. The newspaper slipped rustling to the

floor on the side near the window. Already his gloves were abominable

in the slop-basin, and now with a single gesture he had destroyed the

symmetry of the set table. Mrs. Maldon with surpassing patience smiled

sweetly, and assured herself that Mr. Batchgrew could not help it. He

was a coarse male creature at large in a room highly feminized. It was

his habit thus to pass through orderly interiors, distributing havoc,

like a rough soldier. You might almost hear a sword clanking in the

scabbard.

"Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty," he began in his heavily

rolling voice to count out one by one a bundle of notes which he had

taken from the envelope. He generously licked his thick, curved-back

thumb for the separating of the notes, and made each note sharply

click, in the manner of a bank cashier, to prove to himself that it

was not two notes stuck together. "... Five-seventy, five-eighty,

five-ninety, six hundred. These are all tens. Now the fives: Five,

ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five." He counted up to three hundred and

sixty-five. "That's nine-sixty-five altogether. The odd sixty-five's

arrear of interest. I'm investing nine hundred again to-morrow, and

th' interest on th' new investment is to start from th' first o' this

month. So instead of being out o'pocket, you'll be in pocket, missis."

The notes lay in two irregular filmy heaps on the table.

Having carefully returned the empty envelope to his pocket, Mr.

Batchgrew sat back, triumphant, and his eye met the delighted yet

disturbed eye of Mrs. Maldon, and then wavered and dodged.

Mr. Batchgrew with all his romantic qualities, lacked any perception

of the noble and beautiful in life, and it could be positively

asserted that his estimate of Mrs. Maldon was chiefly disdainful. But

of Mrs. Maldon's secret opinion about John Batchgrew nothing could be

affirmed with certainty. Nobody knew it or ever would know it. I doubt

whether Mrs. Maldon had whispered it even to herself. In youth he

had been the very intimate friend of her husband. Which fact would

scarcely tally with Mrs. Maldon's memory of her husband as the most

upright and perspicacious of men--unless on the assumption that John

Batchgrew's real characteristics had not properly revealed themselves

until after his crony's death; this assumption was perhaps admissible.

Mrs. Maldon invariably spoke of John Batchgrew with respect and

admiration. She probably had perfect confidence in him as a trustee,

and such confidence was justified, for the Councillor knew as well

as anybody in what fields rectitude was a remunerative virtue, and in

what fields it was not.

Indeed, as a trustee his sense of honour and of duty was so nice that

in order to save his ward from loss in connection with a depreciating

mortgage security, he had invented, as a Town Councillor, the

"Improvement" known as the "Brougham Street Scheme." If this was not

said outright, it was hinted. At any rate, the idea was fairly current

that had not Councillor Batchgrew been interested in Brougham Street

property, the Brougham Street Scheme, involving the compulsory

purchase of some of that property at the handsome price naturally

expected from the munificence of corporations, would never have come

into being.

Mrs. Maldon knew of the existence of the idea, which had been

obscurely referred to by a licensed victualler (inimically prejudiced

against the teetotaller in Mr. Batchgrew) at a Council meeting

reported in the _Signal_. And it was precisely this knowledge

which had imparted to her glance the peculiar disturbed quality that

had caused Mr. Batchgrew to waver and dodge.

The occasion demanded the exercise of unflinching common sense, and

Mrs. Maldon was equal to it. She very wisely decided that she ought

not to concern herself, and could not concern herself, with an aspect

of the matter which concerned her trustee alone. And therefore she

gave her heart entirely up to an intense gladness at the integral

recovery of the mortgage money.

For despite her faith in the efficiency of her trustee, Mrs. Maldon

would worry about finance; she would yield to an exquisitely painful

dread lest "anything should happen"--happen, that is, to prevent her

from dying in the comfortable and dignified state in which she had

lived. Her income was not large--a little under three hundred pounds

a year--but with care it sufficed for her own wants, and for gifts,

subscriptions, and an occasional carriage. There would have been a

small margin but for the constant rise in prices. As it was, there was

no permanent margin. And to have cut off a single annual subscription,

or lessened a single customary gift, would have mortally wounded her

pride. The gradual declension of property values in Brougham Street

had been a danger that each year grew more menacing. The moment had

long ago come when the whole rents of the mortgaged cottages would not

cover her interest. The promise of the Corporation Improvement Scheme

had only partially reassured her; it seemed too good to be true. She

could not believe without seeing. She now saw, suddenly, blindingly.

And her relief, beneath that stately deportment of hers, was pathetic

in its simple intensity. It would have moved John Batchgrew, had he

been in any degree susceptible to the thrill of pathos.

"I doubt if I've seen so much money all at once before," said Mrs.

Maldon, smiling weakly.

"Happen not!" said Mr. Batchgrew, proud, with insincere casualness,

and he added in exactly the same tone: "I'm leaving it with ye

to-night."

Mrs. Maldon was aghast, but she feigned sprightliness as she

exclaimed--

"You're not leaving all this money here to-night?"

"I am," said the trustee. "That's what I came for. Evans's were three

hours late in completing, and the bank was closed. I have but just got

it. I'm not going home." (He lived eight miles off, near Axe.) "I've

got to go to a Church meeting at Red Cow, and I'm sleeping there.

John's Ernest is calling here for me presently. I don't fancy driving

over them moors with near a thousand pun in my pocket--and colliers

out on strike--not at my age, missis! If you don't know what Red Cow

is, I reckon I do. It's your money. Put it in a drawer and say nowt,

and I'll fetch it to-morrow. What'll happen to it, think ye, seeing

as it hasn't got legs?" He spoke with the authority of a trustee. And

Mrs. Maldon felt that her reputation for sensible equanimity was worth

preserving. So she said bravely--

"I suppose it will be all right."

"Of course!" snapped the trustee patronizingly.

"But I must tell Rachel."

"Rachel? Rachel? Oh! _Her_! Why tell any one?" Mr. Batchgrew

sniffed very actively.

"Oh! I shouldn't be easy if I didn't tell Rachel," insisted Mrs.

Maldon with firmness.

Before the trustee could protest anew she had rung the bell.

VIII

It was another and an apronless Rachel that entered the room, a Rachel

transformed, magnificent in light green frock with elaborate lacy

ruchings and ornamentations, and the waist at the new fashionable

height. Her ruddy face and hands were fresh from water, her hair very

glossy and very neat: she was in high array. This festival attire

Mrs. Maldon now fully beheld for the first time. It, indeed, honoured

herself, for she had ordained a festive evening: but at the same

time she was surprised and troubled by it. As for Mr. Batchgrew, he

entirely ignored the vision. Stretched out in one long inclined plane

from the back of his chair down to the brass fender, he contemplated

the fire, while picking his teeth with a certain impatience, and still

sniffing actively. The girl resented this disregard. But, though she

remained hostile to the grotesque old man with his fussy noises,

the mantle of Mrs. Maldon's moral protection was now over Councillor

Batchgrew, and Rachel's mistrustful scorn of him had lost some of its

pleasing force.

"Rachel--"

Mrs. Maldon gave a hesitating cough.

"Yes, Mrs. Maldon?" said Rachel questioningly deferential, and smiling

faintly into Mrs. Maldon's apprehensive eyes. Against the background

of the aged pair she seemed dramatically young, lithe, living, and

wistful. She was nervous, but she thought with strong superiority:

"What are those old folks planning together? Why do they ring for me?"

At length Mrs. Maldon proceeded--"I think I ought to tell you, dear,

Mr. Batchgrew is obliged to leave this money in my charge to-night."

"What money?" asked Rachel.

Mr. Batchgrew put in sharply, drawing up his legs--"This!... Here,

young miss! Step this way, if ye please. I'll count it. Ten, twenty,

thirty--" With new lickings and clickings he counted the notes

all over again. "There!" When he had finished his pride had become

positively naïve.

"Oh, my word!" murmured Rachel, awed and astounded.

"It is rather a lot, isn't it?" said Mrs. Maldon, with a timid laugh.

At once fascinated and repelled, the two women looked at the money as

at a magic. It represented to Mrs. Maldon a future free from financial

embarrassment; it represented to Rachel more than she could earn in

half a century at her wage of eighteen pounds a year, an unimaginable

source of endless gratifications; and yet the mere fact that it was

to stay in the house all night changed it for them into something dire

and formidable, so that it inspired both of them--the ancient dame and

the young girl--with naught but a mystic dread. Mr. Batchgrew eyed the

affrighted creatures with satisfaction, appearing to take a perverse

pleasure in thus imposing upon them the horrid incubus.

"I was only thinking of burglars;" said Mrs. Maldon apologetically.

"There've been so many burglaries lately--" She ceased, uncertain of

her voice. The forced lightness of her tone was almost tragic.

"There won't be any more," said Mr. Batchgrew condescendingly.

"Why?" demanded Mrs. Maldon with an eager smile of hope. "Have they

caught them, then? Has Superintendent Snow--"

"They have their hands on them. To-morrow there'll be some arrests,"

Mr. Batchgrew answered, exuding authority. For he was not merely a

Town Councillor, he was brother-in-law to the Superintendent of the

Borough Police. "Caught 'em long ago if th' county police had been a

bit more reliable!"

"Oh!" Mrs. Maldon breathed happily. "I knew it couldn't be Mr. Snow's

fault. I felt sure of that. I'm so glad."

And Rachel also was conscious of gladness. In fact, it suddenly seemed

plain to both women that no burglar, certain of arrest on the morrow,

would dare to invade the house of a lady whose trustee had married

the sister of the Superintendent of Police. The house was invisibly

protected.

"And we mustn't forget we shall have a man sleeping here to-night,"

said Rachel confidently.

"Of course! Of course! I was quite overlooking that!" exclaimed Mrs.

Maldon.

Mr. Batchgrew threw a curt and suspicious question--"What man?"

"My nephew Julian--I should say my grand-nephew." Mrs. Maldon's proud

tone rebuked the strange tone of Mr. Batchgrew. "It is his birthday.

He and Louis are having supper with me. And Julian is staying the

night."

"Well, if you take my advice, missis, ye'll say nowt to nobody. Lock

the brass up in a drawer in that wardrobe of yours, and keep a still

tongue in your head."

"Perhaps you're right," Mrs. Maldon agreed--"as a matter of general

principle, I mean. And it might make Julian uneasy."

"Take it and lock it up," Mr. Batchgrew repeated.

"I don't know about my wardrobe--" Mrs. Maldon began.

"Anywhere!" Mr. Batchgrew stopped her.

"Only," said Rachel with careful gentleness, "please don't forget

where you _have_ put it."

But her precaution of manner was futile. Twice within a minute she had

employed the word "forget." Twice was too often. Mrs. Maldon's memory

was most capriciously uncertain. Its lapses astonished sometimes even

herself. And naturally she was sensitive on the point. She nourished

the fiction, and she expected others to nourish it, that her memory

was quite equal to younger memories. Indeed, she would admit every

symptom of old age save an unreliable memory.

Composing a dignified smile, she said with reproving blandness--

"I am not in the habit of forgetting where I put valuables, Rachel."

And her prominently veined fingers, clasping the notes as a

preliminary to hiding them away, seemed in their nervous primness to

be saying to Rachael: "I have deep confidence in you, and I think that

to-night I have shown it. But oblige me by not presuming. I am Mrs.

Maldon and you are Rachel. After all, I have not yet known you for a

month."

IX

A very loud rasping noise, like a vicious menace, sounded from the

street, shivering instantaneously the delicate placidity of Mrs.

Maldon's home. Mrs. Maldon gave a start.

"That'll be John's Ernest with the car," said Mr. Batchgrew, amused;

and he began to get up from the chair. As soon as he was on his feet

his nose grew active again. "You've nothing to be afraid of, missis,"

he added in a tone roughly reassuring and good-natured.

"Oh no! Of course not!" concurred Mrs. Maldon, further enforcing

intrepidity on herself. "Of course not! I only just mentioned burglars

because they're so much in the paper." And she stooped to pick up the

_Signal_ and folded it carefully, as if to prove that her mind

was utterly collected.

Councillor Batchgrew, leaning over the table, peered into various

vessels in search of his gloves. At length he took them finickingly

from the white slop-basin as though fishing them out of a puddle. He

began to put them on, and then, half-way through the process, abruptly

shook hands with Mrs. Maldon.

"Then you'll call in the morning?" she asked.

"Aye! Ye may count on me. I'll relieve ye on [of] it afore ten

o'clock. It'll be on my way to Hanbridge, ye see."

Mrs. Maldon ceremoniously accompanied her trustee as far as the

sitting-room door, where she recommended him to the careful attention

of Rachel. No woman in the Five Towns could take leave of a guest

with more impressive dignity than old Mrs. Maldon, whose fine Southern

accent always gave a finish to her farewells. In the lobby Mr.

Batchgrew kept Rachel waiting with his overcoat in her outstretched

hands while he completed the business of his gloves. As, close behind

him, she coaxed his stiff arms into the overcoat, she suddenly

felt that after all he was nothing but a decrepit survival; and his

offensiveness seemed somehow to have been increased--perhaps by the

singular episode of the gloves and the slop-basin. She opened the

front door, and without a word to her he departed down the steps.

Two lamps like lighthouses glared fiercely along the roadway, dulling

the municipal gas and giving to each loose stone on the macadam a

long shadow. In the gloom behind the lamps the low form of an open

automobile showed, and a dim, cloaked figure beside it. A boyish voice

said with playful bullying sharpness, above the growling, irregular

pulsation of the engine--"Here, grandad, you've got to put this on."

"Have I?" demanded uncertainly the thick, heavy voice of the old man.

"Yes, you have--on the top of your other coat. If I don't look after

you I shall get myself into a row!... Here, let me put your fist in

the armhole. It's your blooming glove that stops it.... There! Now, up

with you, grandad!... All right! I've got you. I sha'n't drop you."

A door snapped to; then another. The car shot violently forward,

with shrieks and a huge buzzing noise, and leaped up the slope of the

street. Rachel, still in the porch, could see Mr. Batchgrew's head

wagging rather helplessly from side to side, just above the red speck

of the tail-lamp. Then the whole vision was swiftly blotted out, and

the warning shrieks of the invisible car grew fainter on the way to

Red Cow. It pleased Rachel to think of the old man being casually

bullied and shaken by John's Ernest.

She leaned forward and gazed down the street, not up it. When she

turned into the house Mrs. Maldon was descending the stairs, which,

being in a line with the lobby, ended opposite the front door. Judging

by the fixity of the old lady's features, Rachel decided that she was

not yet quite pardoned for the slight she had put upon the memory of

her employer. So she smiled pleasantly.

"Don't close the front door, dear," said Mrs. Maldon stiffly. "There's

some one there."

Rachel looked round. She had actually, in sheer absent-mindedness

or negligence or deafness, been shutting the door in the face of the

telegraph-boy!

"Oh, dear! I do hope--!" Mrs. Maldon muttered as she hastily tugged at

the envelope.

Having read the message, she passed it on to Rachel, and at the

same time forgivingly responded to her smile. The excitement of the

telegram had sufficed to dissipate Mrs. Maldon's trifling resentment.

Rachel read--

"Train hour late. Julian."

The telegraph boy was dismissed: "No answer, thank you."

X

During the next half-hour excitement within the dwelling gradually

increased. It grew out of nothing--out of Mrs. Maldon's admirable calm

in receiving the message of the telegram--until it affected like an

atmospheric disturbance the ground floor--the sitting-room where

Mrs. Maldon was spending nervous force in the effort to preserve an

absolutely tranquil mind, the kitchen where Rachel was "putting back"

the supper, the lobby towards which Rachel's eye and Mrs. Maiden's

ear were strained to catch any sign of an arrival, and the unlighted,

unused room behind the sitting-room which seemed to absorb and even

intensify the changing moods of the house.

The fact was that Mrs. Maldon, in her relief at finding that Julian

was not killed or maimed for life in a railway accident, had begun by

treating a delay of one hour in all her arrangements for the evening

as a trifle. But she had soon felt that, though a trifle, it was

really very upsetting and annoying. It gave birth to irrational yet

real forebodings as to the non-success of her little party. It

meant that the little party had "started badly." And then her other

grand-nephew, Louis Fores, did not arrive. He had been invited for

supper at seven, and should have appeared at five minutes to seven

at the latest. But at five minutes to seven he had not come; nor at

seven, nor at five minutes past--he who had barely a quarter of a

mile to walk! There was surely a fate against the party! And Rachel

strangely persisted in not leaving the kitchen! Even after Mrs. Maldon

had heard her fumbling for an interminable time with the difficult

window on the first-floor landing, she went back to the kitchen

instead of presenting herself to her expectant mistress.

At last Rachel entered the sitting-room, faintly humming an air. Mrs.

Maldon thought that she looked self-conscious. But Mrs. Maldon also

was self-conscious, and somehow could not bring her lips to utter

the name of Louis Fores to Rachel. For the old lady had divined a

connection of cause and effect between Louis Fores and the apparition

of Rachel's superlative frock. And she did not like the connection; it

troubled her, and offended the extreme nicety of her social code.

There was a constrained silence, which was broken by the lobby clock

striking the first quarter after seven. This harsh announcement on the

part of the inhuman clock seemed to render the situation intolerable.

Fifteen minutes past seven, and Louis not come, and not a word of

comment thereon! Mrs. Maldon had to admit privately that she was in a

high state of agitation.

Then Rachel, bending delicately to sweep the hearth with the

brass-handled brush proper to it, remarked with an obvious affectation

of nonchalance--

"Your other guest's late too."

If Mrs. Maldon had not been able to speak his name, neither could

Rachel! Mrs. Maldon read with painful certainty all the girl's

symptoms.

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Maldon.

"It's like as if what must be!" Rachel murmured, employing a local

phrase which Mrs. Maldon had ever contemned as meaningless and

ungrammatical.

"Fortunately it doesn't matter, as Julian is late too," said Mrs.

Maldon insincerely, for it was mattering very much. "But still--I

wonder--"

Rachel broke out upon her hesitation in a very startling manner--

"I'll just see if he's coming."

And she abruptly quitted the room, almost slamming the door.

Mrs. Maldon was dumbfounded. Scared and attentive, she listened in a

maze for the sound of the front door. She heard it open. But was it

possible that she heard also the creak of the gate? She sprang to the

bow window with surprising activity, and pulled aside a blind, one

inch.... There was Rachel tripping hatless and in her best frock

down the street! Inconceivable vision, affecting Mrs. Maldon with

palpitation! A girl so excellent, so lovable, so trustworthy, to be

guilty of the wanton caprice of a minx! Supposing Louis were to see

her, to catch her in the brazen act of looking for him! Mrs. Maldon

was grieved; and her gentle sorrow for Rachel's incalculable lapse was

so dignified, affectionate, and jealous for the good repute of human

nature that it mysteriously ennobled instead of degrading the young

creature.

XI

Going down Bycars Lane amid the soft wandering airs of the September

night, Rachel had the delicious and exciting sensation of being

unyoked, of being at liberty for a space to obey the strong, free

common sense of youth instead of conforming to the outworn and

tiresome code of another age. Mrs. Maldon's was certainly a house that

put a strain on the nerves. It did not occur to Rachel that she was

doing aught but a very natural and proper thing. The non-appearance

of Louis Fores was causing disquiet, and her simple aim was to shorten

the period of anxiety. Nor did it occur to her that she was impulsive.

Something had to be done, and she had done something. Not much longer

could she have borne the suspense. All that day she had lived forward

towards supper-time, when Louis Fores would appear. Over and over

again she had lived right through the moment of opening the front door

for him at a little before seven o'clock. The moments between

seven o'clock and a quarter past had been a crescendo of torment,

intolerable at last. His lateness was inexplicable, and he was so

close to that not to look for him would have been ridiculous.

She was apprehensive, and yet she was obscurely happy in her fears.

The large, inviting, dangerous universe was about her--she had escaped

from the confining shelter of the house. And the night was about

her. It was not necessary for her to wear three coats, like the gross

Batchgrew, in order to protect herself from the night! She could go

forth into it with no precaution. She was young. Her vigorous and

confident body might challenge perils.

When she had proceeded a hundred yards she stopped and turned to look

back at the cluster of houses collectively called Bycars.

The distinctive bow-window of Mrs. Maldon's shone yellow. Within the

sacred room was still the old lady, sitting expectant, and trying to

interest herself in the paper. Strange thought!

Bycars Lane led in a north-easterly direction over the broad hill

whose ridge separates the lane from the moorlands honeycombed with

coal and iron mines. Above the ridge showed the fire and vapour of

the first mining villages, on the way to Red Cow, proof that not all

colliers were yet on strike. And above that pyrotechny hung the

moon. The municipal park, of which Bycars Lane was the north-western

boundary, lay in mysterious and forbidden groves behind its spiked

red wall and locked gates, and beyond it a bright tram-car was leaping

down from lamp to lamp of Moorthorne Road towards the town. Between

the masses of the ragged hedge on the north side of the lane there was

the thin gleam of Bycars Pool, lost in a vague, unoccupied region of

shawdrucks and dirty pasture--the rendezvous of skaters when the frost

held, Louis Fores had told her, and she had heard from another source

that he skated divinely. She could believe it, too.

She resumed her way more slowly. She had only stopped because, though

burned with the desire to see him, she yet had an instinct to postpone

the encounter. She was almost minded to return. But she went on. The

town was really very near. The illuminated clock of the Town Hall

had dominion over it; the golden shimmer above the roofs to the left

indicated the electrical splendour of the new Cinema in Moorthorne

Road next to the new Primitive Methodist Chapel. He had told her about

that, too. In two minutes, in less than two minutes, she was among

houses again, and approaching the corner of Friendly Street. He would

come from the Moorthorne Road end of Friendly Street. She would peep

round the corner of Friendly Street to see if he was coming....

But before she reached the corner, her escapade suddenly presented

itself to her as childish madness, silly, inexcusable; and she thought

self-reproachfully, "How impulsive I am!" and sharply turned back

towards Mrs. Maldon's house, which seemed to be about ten miles off.

A moment later she heard hurried footfalls behind her on the narrow

brick pavement, and, after one furtive glance over her shoulder, she

quickened her pace. Louis Fores in all his elegance was pursuing her!

Nothing had happened to him. He was not ill; he was merely a little

late! After all, she would sit by his side at the supper-table! She

had a spasm of shame that was excruciating. But at the same time she

was wildly glad. And already this inebriating illusion of an ingenuous

girl concerning a common male was helping to shape monstrous events.