IX

A very loud rasping noise, like a vicious menace, sounded from the street, shivering instantaneously the delicate placidity of Mrs. Maldon’s home.  Mrs. Maldon gave a start.

“That’ll be John’s Ernest with the car,” said Mr. Batchgrew, amused; and he began to get up from the chair.  As soon as he was on his feet his nose grew active again.  “You’ve nothing to be afraid of, missis,” he added in a tone roughly reassuring and good-natured.

“Oh no!  Of course not!” concurred Mrs. Maldon, further enforcing intrepidity on herself.  “Of course not!  I only just mentioned burglars because they’re so much in the paper.”  And she stooped to pick up the Signal and folded it carefully, as if to prove that her mind was utterly collected.

Councillor Batchgrew, leaning over the table, peered into various vessels in search of his gloves.  At length he took them finickingly from the white slop-basin as though fishing them out of a puddle.  He began to put them on, and then, half-way through the process, abruptly shook hands with Mrs. Maldon.

“Then you’ll call in the morning?” she asked.

“Aye!  Ye may count on me.  I’ll relieve ye on [of] it afore ten o’clock.  It’ll be on my way to Hanbridge, ye see.”

Mrs. Maldon ceremoniously accompanied her trustee as far as the sitting-room door, where she recommended him to the careful attention of Rachel.  No woman in the Five Towns could take leave of a guest with more impressive dignity than old Mrs. Maldon, whose fine Southern accent always gave a finish to her farewells.  In the lobby Mr. Batchgrew kept Rachel waiting with his overcoat in her outstretched hands while he completed the business of his gloves.  As, close behind him, she coaxed his stiff arms into the overcoat, she suddenly felt that after all he was nothing but a decrepit survival; and his offensiveness seemed somehow to have been increased—­perhaps by the singular episode of the gloves and the slop-basin.  She opened the front door, and without a word to her he departed down the steps.

Two lamps like lighthouses glared fiercely along the roadway, dulling the municipal gas and giving to each loose stone on the macadam a long shadow.  In the gloom behind the lamps the low form of an open automobile showed, and a dim, cloaked figure beside it.  A boyish voice said with playful bullying sharpness, above the growling, irregular pulsation of the engine—­“Here, grandad, you’ve got to put this on.”

“Have I?” demanded uncertainly the thick, heavy voice of the old man.

“Yes, you have—­on the top of your other coat.  If I don’t look after you I shall get myself into a row!...  Here, let me put your fist in the armhole.  It’s your blooming glove that stops it....  There!  Now, up with you, grandad!...  All right!  I’ve got you.  I sha’n’t drop you.”