The Price of Love | Page 4

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