The Price of Love | Page 6

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