The Price of Love | Page 9

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,