The Price of Love Part 48

Rachel blushed, partly because he was suddenly so close to her, partly because she disapproved of the cunning expression on his red, seamed face and was afraid he might divine her thoughts, and partly because she recalled the violent things she had said against him to Louis. But as soon as Thomas Batchgrew caught sight of her the expression of his faced changed in an instant to one of benevolence and artless joy; the change in it was indeed dramatic.

And Rachel, pleased and flattered, said to herself, almost startled--

"He really admires me. And I do believe he always did."

And since admiration is a sweet drug, whether offered by a rascal or by the pure in heart, she forgot momentarily the horror of her domestic dilemma.

II

"Eh, la.s.s!" Thomas Batchgrew was saying familiarly, after he had inquired about Louis, "I'm rare glad for thy sake it was no worse."

His frank implication that he was glad only for her sake gratified and did not wound her as a wife.

The next moment he had dismissed the case of Louis and was displaying to her the volume which he carried. It was a folio Bible, printed by the Cornishman Tregorthy in the town of Bursley, within two hundred yards of where they were standing, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century--a bibliographical curiosity, as Thomas Batchgrew vaguely knew, for he wet his gloved thumb and, resting the book on one raised knee, roughly turned over several pages till he came to the t.i.tle-page containing the word "Bursley," which he showed with pride to Rachel. Rachel, however, not being in the slightest degree a bibliophile, discerned no interest whatever in the t.i.tle-page.

She merely murmured with politeness, "Oh, yes! Bursley," while animadverting privately on the old man's odious trick of wetting his gloved thumb and leaving marks on the pages.

"The good old Book!" he said. "I've been after that volume for six months and more. I knew I should get it, but he's a stiff un--yon is,"

jerking his shoulder in the direction of the second-hand bookseller.

Then he put the folio under his arm, delighted at the souvenir of having worsted somebody in a bargain, and repeated, "The good old Book!"

Rachel reflected--

"You unspeakable old sinner!"

Still, she liked his att.i.tude towards herself. In addition to the book he insisted on carrying a small white parcel of hers which she had not put into the reticule. They climbed the steps out of the covered market and walked along the market-place together. And Rachel unmistakably did find pleasure in being seen thus with the great and powerful, if much criticized, Thomas Batchgrew, him to whom several times, less than a year earlier, she had scathingly referred as _that man_. His escort in the thoroughfare, and especially his demeanour towards herself, gave her a standing which she could otherwise scarcely have attained. Moreover, people might execrate him in private, but that he had conquered the esteem of their secret souls was well proved by their genuine eagerness to salute him as he walked sniffing along. He counted himself one of the seven prides of the district, and perhaps he was not far out.

"Come in a minute, la.s.s," he said in a low, confidential voice, as they reached his branch shop, just beyond Malkin's. "I'll--" He paused.

A motor, apparently enormous, was buzzing motion-less in the wide entry by the side of the shop. It very slowly moved forward, crossed the footpath and half the street opposite the Town Hall, impeding a tram-car, and then curved backward into a position by the kerbstone.

John's Ernest was at the steering-wheel. Councillor Batchgrew stood still with his mouth open to watch the manoeuvre.

"This is John's Ernest--my son John's eldest. Happen ye know him?"

said Batchgrew to Rachel. "He's a good lad."

John's Ernest, a pleasant-featured young man of twenty-five, blushed and raised his hat. And Rachel also blushed as she nodded. It was astonis.h.i.+ng that old Batchgrew could have a grandson with so honest a look on his face, but she had heard that son John, too, was very different from his father.

"Dunna go till I've seen thee," said Mr. Batchgrew to John's Ernest, and to Rachel, "Come in, Mrs. Fores."

John's Ernest silenced the car, and extricated himself with practised rapidity from the driver's seat.

"Where are ye going?" asked his grandfather.

"I'm going to lock the garage doors," said John's Ernest, with a humorous smile which seemed to add, "Unless you'd like them to be left open all Sat.u.r.day afternoon." Rachel vividly remembered the playful, boyish voice which she had heard one night when the motor-car had called to take Mr. Batchgrew to Red Cow.

The councillor nodded.

In the small, untidy, disagreeable, malodorous shop, which in about half a century had scarcely altered its aspect, Thomas Batchgrew directed Rachel to a corner behind the counter and behind a part.i.tion, with a view of a fragment of the window. As she pa.s.sed she saw one of the Batchgrew women (the wife of another grandson) and three little girls of various sizes flash in succession across an open doorway at the back. The granddaughter-in-law, who had an abode full of costly wedding-presents over the shop, had been one of her callers, but when they flashed across that doorway the Batchgrew women made a point of ignoring all phenomena in the shop.

"Has Louis decided about them debentures?" Thomas Batchgrew asked, still in a very low and confidential tone, as the two stood together in the corner. He had put the Book and the parcel down on a very ragged blotting-pad that lay on a chipped and ink-stained deal desk, and began to finger a yellow penholder. There was n.o.body else in the shop.

Rachel had foreseen his question.

She answered calmly: "Yes. He's quite decided that on the whole it'll be better if he doesn't put his money into debentures."

There was no foundation whatever for this statement; yet, in uttering the lie, she was clearly conscious of a feeling of lofty righteousness. She faced Thomas Batchgrew, though not with a tranquillity perfectly maintained, and she still enjoyed his appreciation of her, but she did not seem to care whether he guessed that she was lying or not.

"I'm sorry, la.s.s!" he said simply, sniffing. "The lad's a fool. It isn't as if I've got to go hawking seven per cent. debentures to get rid of 'em--and in a concern like that, too! They'd never ha' been seven per cent if it hadna been for me. But it was you as I was thinking of when I offered 'em to Louis. I thought I should be doing ye a good turn."

The old man smiled amid his loud sniffs. He was too old to have retained any save an artistic interest in women. But an artistic interest in them he certainly had; and at an earlier period he had acquainted himself with life, as his eye showed. Rachel blushed a third time that morning, and more deeply than before. He was seriously nattering her now. Endearing qualities that had expired in him long ago seemed to be resuscitated and to animate his ruined features.

Rachel dimly understood how it was that some woman had once married him and borne him a lot of children, and how it was that he had been so intimate and valued a friend of the revered husband of such a woman as Mrs. Maldon. She was, in the Five Towns phrase, "fl.u.s.tered." She almost believed what Thomas Batchgrew had said. She did believe it.

She had misjudged him on the Thursday night when he spread the lure of the seven per cent. in front of Louis. At any rate, he a.s.suredly did not care, personally, whether Louis accepted the debentures or not.

"However," the councillor went on, "he's got to know his own business best. And I don't know as it's any affair o' mine. But I was just thinking of you. When the husband has a good investment, th' wife generally comes in for something.... And what's more, it 'ud ha'

stopped him from doing anything silly with his bra.s.s! _You_ know."

"Yes," she murmured.

"I'm talking to ye because I've taken a fancy to ye," said the councillor. "I knew what you were the first time I set eyes on ye. Oh, I don't mind telling ye now--what harm is there in it? I'd a sort of a fancy as one day you and John's Ernest might ha' hit it off. I had it in my mind like."

A crude compliment, possibly in bad taste, possibly offensive; but Rachel was singularly moved by the revelation thus made. Before she could find a reply John's Ernest came into the shop, followed by an ap.r.o.ned a.s.sistant.

III

Then she was sitting by John's Ernest's side in the big motor-car, with her possessions at her feet. The enthronement had happened in a few moments. John's Ernest was going to Hanbridge.

"Ye can run Mrs. Fores up home on yer way," Thomas Batchgrew had suggested.

"But Bycars Lane is miles out of your way!" Rachel had cried.

Both men had smiled. "Won't make a couple of minutes' difference in the car," John's Ernest had modestly murmured.

She had been afraid to get into the automobile--afraid with a sort of stage-fright; afraid, as she might have been had she been called upon to sing at a concert in the Town Hall. She had imagined that all Bursley was gazing at her as she climbed into the car. Over the face of England automobiles are far more common than cuckoos, and yet for the majority, even of the proud and solvent middle cla.s.s, they still remain as unattainable, as glitteringly wondrous, as a t.i.tle. Rachel had never been in an automobile before; she had never hoped to be in an automobile. A few days earlier, and she had been regarding a bicycle as rather romantic! Louis had once mentioned a motor-cycle and side-carriage for herself, but she had rebuffed the idea with a shudder.

The whole town slid away behind her. The car was out of the market-place and crossing the top of Duck Bank, the scene of Louis'

accident, before she had settled her skirts. She understood why the men had smiled at her; it was no more trouble for the car to go to Bycars than it would be for her to run upstairs. The swift movement of the car, silent and arrogant, and the occasional deep ba.s.s mysterious menace of its horn, and the grace of John's Ernest's gestures on the wheel as he curved the huge vehicle like a phantom round lumbering obstacles--these things fascinated and exalted her.

In spite of the horrible secret she carried all the time in her heart, she was somehow filled with an instinctive joy. And she began to perceive changes in her own perspective. The fine Louis, whom she had regarded as the summit of mankind, could never offer her an automobile; he existed entirely in a humbler world; he was, after all, a young man in a very small way of affairs. Batchgrew's automobile would swallow up, week by week, more than the whole of Louis' income.

And further, John's Ernest by her side was invested with the mighty charm of one who easily and skilfully governs a vast and dangerous organism. All the glory of the inventors and perfecters of automobiles, and of manufacturing engineers, and of capitalists who could pay for their luxurious caprices, was centred in John's Ernest, merely because he directed and subjugated the energy of the miraculous machine.

And John's Ernest was so exquisitely modest and diffident, and yet had an almost permanent humorous smile. But the paramount expression on his face was honesty. She had never hitherto missed the expression of honesty on Louis' face, but she realized now that it was not there....

And she had been adjudged worthy of John's Ernest! The powerful of the world had had their eyes on her! Not Louis alone had noted her! Had Fate chosen, and had she herself chosen, that very motor-car might have been hers, and she at that instant riding in it as the mistress thereof! Strange thoughts, which intensely flattered and fostered her self-esteem. But she still had the horrible secret to carry with her.

When the car stopped in front of her gate, she forced open the door and jumped down with almost hysterical speed, said "Good-bye" and "Thank you" to John's Ernest, who becomingly blushed, and ran round the back of the car with her purchases. The car went on up the lane, the intention of John's Ernest being evident to proceed along Park Road and the Moorthorne ridge to Hanbridge rather than turn the car in the somewhat narrow lane. Rachel, instead of entering the house, thrust her parcels frantically on to the top step against the front door, and rushed down the steps again and down the lane. In a minute she was overtaking a man.

"Louis!" she cried.