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 mult.i.tudinous 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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 enc.u.mbered 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 compet.i.tion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 surpa.s.sing patience smiled sweetly, and a.s.sured herself that Mr. Batchgrew could not help it. He was a coa.r.s.e male creature at large in a room highly feminized. It was his habit thus to pa.s.s 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 n.o.ble and beautiful in life, and it could be positively a.s.serted 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. n.o.body 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 a.s.sumption that John Batchgrew"s real characteristics had not properly revealed themselves until after his crony"s death; this a.s.sumption 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 rect.i.tude 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 rea.s.sured 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 ap.r.o.nless 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 bra.s.s 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.