The Price of Love | Page 3

but also for its
radiant cleanness. There are many clean houses in the Five Towns,
using the adjective in the relative sense in which the Five Towns is
forced by chimneys to use it. But Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room (save for
the white window-curtains, which had to accept the common grey fate
of white window-curtains in the district) was clean in the country-side
sense, almost in the Dutch sense. The challenge of its cleanness
gleamed on every polished surface, victorious in the unending battle
against the horrible contagion of foul industries. Mrs. Maldon's friends
would assert that the state of that sitting-room "passed" them, or "fair
passed" them, and she would receive their ever-amazed compliments
with modesty. But behind her benevolent depreciation she would be
blandly saying to herself: "Yes, I'm scarcely surprised it passes
you--seeing the way you housewives let things go on here." The word
"here" would be faintly emphasized in her mind, as no native would
have emphasized it.
Rachel shared the general estimate of the sitting-room. She appreciated
its charm, and admitted to herself that her first vision of it, rather less
than a month before, had indeed given her a new and startling ideal of
cleanliness. On that occasion it had been evident, from Mrs. Maldon's
physical exhaustion, that the housemistress had made an enormous
personal effort to dazzle and inspire her new "lady companion," which
effort, though detected and perhaps scorned by Rachel, had
nevertheless succeeded in its aim. With a certain presence of mind

Rachel had feigned to remark nothing miraculous in the condition of
the room. Appropriating the new ideal instantly, she had on the first
morning of her service "turned out" the room before breakfast, well
knowing that it must have been turned out on the previous day.
Dumbfounded for a few moments, Mrs. Maldon had at length said, in
her sweet and cordial benevolence, "I'm glad to see we think alike
about cleanliness." And Rachel had replied with an air at once
deferential, sweet, and yet casual, "Oh, of course, Mrs. Maldon!" Then
they measured one another in a silent exchange. Mrs. Maldon was
aware that she had by chance discovered a pearl--yes, a treasure beyond
pearls. And Rachel, too, divined the high value of her employer, and
felt within the stirrings of a passionate loyalty to her.

III
And yet, during the three weeks and a half of their joint existence,
Rachel's estimate of Mrs. Maldon had undergone certain subtle
modifications.
At first, somewhat overawed, Rachel had seen in her employer the Mrs.
Maldon of the town's legend, which legend had travelled to Rachel as
far as Knype, whence she sprang. That is to say, one of the great ladies
of Bursley, ranking in the popular regard with Mrs. Clayton-Vernon,
the leader of society, Mrs. Sutton, the philanthropist, and Mrs. Hamps,
the powerful religious bully. She had been impressed by her height
(Rachel herself being no lamp-post), her carriage, her superlative
dignity, her benevolence of thought, and above all by her aristocratic
Southern accent. After eight-and-forty years of the Five Towns, Mrs.
Maldon had still kept most of that Southern accent--so intimidating to
the rough, broad talkers of the district, who take revenge by mocking it
among themselves, but for whom it will always possess the thrilling
prestige of high life.
And then day by day Rachel had discovered that great ladies are, after
all, human creatures, strangely resembling other human creatures. And
Mrs. Maldon slowly became for her an old woman of seventy-two,

with unquestionably wondrous hair, but failing in strength and in
faculties; and it grew merely pathetic to Rachel that Mrs. Maldon
should force herself always to sit straight upright. As for Mrs. Maldon's
charitableness, Rachel could not deny that she refused to think evil, and
yet it was plain that at bottom Mrs. Maldon was not much deceived
about people: in which apparent inconsistency there hid a slight
disturbing suggestion of falseness that mysteriously fretted the
downright Rachel.
Again, beneath Mrs. Maldon's modesty concerning the merits of her
sitting-room Rachael soon fancied that she could detect traces of an
ingenuous and possibly senile "house-pride," which did more than fret
the lady companion; it faintly offended her. That one should be proud
of a possession or of an achievement was admissible, but that one
should fail to conceal the pride absolutely was to Rachel, with her Five
Towns character, a sign of weakness, a sign of the soft South. Lastly,
Mrs. Maldon had, it transpired, her "ways"; for example, in the matter
of blinds and in the matter of tapers. She would actually insist on the
gas being lighted with a taper; a paper spill, which was just as good and
better, seemed to ruffle her benign placidity: and she was funnily
economical with matches. Rachel had never