The Price of Love. Arnold BennettЧитать онлайн книгу.
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.