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LIST OF WORKS TO DATE
BY ARNOLD BENNETT
NOVELS
Lilian
Mr. Prohack
The Roll-Call
The Pretty Lady
The Lion's Share
These Twain
Clayhanger
Hilda Lessways
The Old Wives' Tale
Denry the Audacious
The Old Adam
The Matador of the Five Towns
Helen with the High Hand
The Gates of Wrath
The Book of Carlotta
Buried Alive
A Great Man
Leonora
Whom God Hath Joined
A Man from the North
Anna of the Five Towns
The Glimpse
The City of Pleasure
The Grand Babylon Hotel
Hugo
POCKET PHILOSOPHIES
Self and Self-Management
Married Life
Friendship and Happiness
The Human Machine
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Literary Taste
Mental Efficiency
The Author's Craft
How to Make the Best of Life
PLAYS
The Love Match
Body and Soul
Sacred and Profane Love
Judith
The Title
The Great Adventure
Cupid and Commonsense
What the Public Wants
Polite Farces
The Honeymoon
_In Collaboration with_ Edward Knoblock
Milestones
MISCELLANEOUS
Our Women
Books and Persons
Paris Nights
The Truth About an Author
Liberty!
Over There: War Scenes
Things That Have Interested Me
Things That Have Interested Me (second series)
RICEYMAN STEPS
A NOVEL
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First published 1923
_Printed in Great Britain_
CONTENTS
_PART I_
PAGE
1. RICEYMAN STEPS 1
2. THE CUSTOMER 4
3. THE BOOKSELLER AT HOME 9
4. ELSIE 14
5. THE GIFT 21
6. MRS. ARB'S CASE 26
7. UNDER AN UMBRELLA 30
8. THE CARVING-KNIFE 33
9. SUNDAY MORNING 39
10. RICEYMAN SQUARE 43
11. ELSIE'S HOME 48
12. THE BENEFACTRESS 54
13. THE PASSION 58
14. A MAN'S PRIVATE LIFE 67
_PART II_
1. THE DAY BEFORE 77
2. ELSIE'S RETREAT 86
3. WAXWORKS 90
4. VACUUM 99
5. THE PRIESTESS 103
6. THE NEXT DAY 114
_PART III_
1. EARLY MORNING 123
2. AFTER BREAKFAST 127
3. INTERNATIONAL 135
4. AFTERNOON 140
5. TEA 146
6. EVENING 155
_PART IV_
1. AT THE WINDOW 169
2. ELSIE'S MOTIVE 176
3. CHARITY 182
4. NO VERDICT 191
5. MIDNIGHT 197
6. HENRY'S PLOT 201
7. THE NIGHT-CALL 205
8. ON THE LANDING 213
9. VIOLET'S VICTORY 221
10. DEPARTURE 227
_PART V_
1. THE PROMISE 235
2. THE REFUSAL 240
3. THE MESSAGE OF VIOLET 244
4. OUT OF THE RAIN 253
5. THE TWO PATIENTS 260
6. THE SECOND REFUSAL 264
7. MALARIA 270
8. A CLIMAX 274
9. THE KISS 290
10. THE SAFE 295
11. PRISON 300
12. ASLEEP 304
13. DISAPPEARANCE OF T. T.'S 308
RICEYMAN STEPS
PART I
I
RICEYMAN STEPS
On an autumn afternoon of 1919 a hatless man with a slight limp might
have been observed ascending the gentle, broad acclivity of Riceyman
Steps, which lead from King's Cross Road up to Riceyman Square, in the
great metropolitan industrial district of Clerkenwell. He was rather
less than stout and rather more than slim. His thin hair had begun to
turn from black to grey, but his complexion was still fairly good, and
the rich, very red lips, under a small greyish moustache and over a
short, pointed beard, were quite remarkable in their suggestion of
vitality. The brown eyes seemed a little small; they peered at near
objects. As to his age, an experienced and cautious observer of mankind,
without previous knowledge of this man, would have said no more than
that he must be past forty. The man himself was certainly entitled to
say that he was in the prime of life. He wore a neat dark-grey suit,
which must have been carefully folded at nights, a low, white, starched
collar, and a "made" black tie that completely hid the shirt-front; the
shirt-cuffs could not be seen. He was shod in old, black leather
slippers, well polished. He gave an appearance of quiet, intelligent,
refined and kindly prosperity; and in his little eyes shone the varying
lights of emotional sensitiveness.
Riceyman Steps, twenty in number, are divided by a half-landing into
two series of ten. The man stopped on the half-landing and swung round
with a casual air of purposelessness which, however, concealed,
imperfectly, a definite design. The suspicious and cynical, slyly
watching his movements, would have thought: "What's that fellow after?"
A man interested in a strange woman acquires one equine attribute--he
can look in two directions at once. This man could, and did, look in two
directions at once.
Below him and straight in front he saw a cobbled section of King's Cross
Road--a hell of noise and dust and dirt, with the County of London
tram-cars, and motor-lorries and heavy horse-drawn vans sweeping north
and south in a vast clangour of iron thudding and grating on iron and
granite, beneath the bedroom windows of a defenceless populace. On the
far side of the road were, conspicuous to the right, the huge, red Nell
Gwynn Tavern, set on the site of Nell's still huger palace, and
displaying printed exhortations to buy fruity Portuguese wines and to
attend meetings of workers; and, conspicuous to the left, red Rowton
House, surpassing in immensity even Nell's vanished palace, divided into
hundreds and hundreds of clean cubicles for the accommodation of the
defeated and the futile at a few coppers a night, and displaying on its
iron façade a newspaper promise to divulge the names of the winners of
horse-races. Nearer to the man who could look two ways lay the tiny open
space (not open to vehicular traffic) which was officially included in
the title "Riceyman Steps." At the south corner of this was a
second-hand bookseller's shop, and at the north an abandoned and
decaying mission-hall; both these abutted on King's Cross Road. Then, on
either hand, farther from the thoroughfare and nearer the steps, came a
few private houses with carefully curtained windows, and one other
shop--a confectioner's. And next, also on either hand, two business
"yards" full of lorries, goods, gear, and the hum of hidden machinery.
And the earth itself faintly throbbed; for, to the vibrations of traffic
and manufacture, the Underground Railway, running beneath Riceyman
Steps, added the muffled uproar of its subterranean electric trains.
While gazing full at the spectacle of King's Cross Road the man on the
steps peered downwards on his right at the confectioner's shop, which
held the woman who had begun to inflame him. He failed to descry her,
but his thoughts pleasantly held her image, and she held his thoughts.
He dreamed that one day he would share with her sympathetic soul his own
vision of this wonderful Clerkenwell in which he lived and she now
lived. He would explain to her eager ear that once Clerkenwell was a
murmuring green land of medicinal springs, wells, streams with mills on
their banks, nunneries, aristocrats, and holy clerks who presented
mystery-plays. Yes, he would tell her about the drama of Adam and Eve
being performed in the costume of Adam and Eve to a simple and unshocked
people. (Why not? She was a widow and no longer young.) And he would
point out to her how the brown backs of the houses which fronted on
King's Cross Road resembled the buttressed walls of a mighty fortress,
and how the grim, ochreish, unwindowed backs of the houses of Riceyman
Square (behind him) looked just like lofty, mediæval keeps. And he would
relate to her the story of the palace of Nell Gwynn, contemporary of
Louise de la Vallière, and dividing with Louise the honour of being the
first and most ingenuous of modern vampires. Never before had he had the
idea of unfolding his mind on these enthralling subjects to a woman.
Rain began to fall. It fell on the bargain-books exposed in a stand
outside the bookseller's shop. The man did not move. Then a swift
gentlemanly person stepped suddenly out of King's Cross Road into the
approach to the steps, and after a moment's hesitation entered the shop.
The man on the steps quietly limped down and followed the potential
customer into the shop, which was his own.
II
THE CUSTOMER
The shop had one window in King's Cross Road, but the entrance, with
another window, was in Riceyman Steps. The King's Cross Road window held
only cheap editions, in their paper jackets, of popular modern novels,
such as those of Ethel M. Dell, Charles Garvice, Zane Grey, Florence
Barclay, Nat Gould, and Gene Stratton Porter. The side window was set
out with old books, first editions, illustrated editions, and complete
library editions in calf or morocco of renowned and serious writers,
whose works, indispensable to the collections of self-respecting
book-gentlemen (as distinguished from bookmen), have passed through
decades of criticism into the impregnable paradise of eternal esteem.
The side window was bound to attract the attention of collectors and
bibliomaniacs. It seemed strangely, even fatally, out of place in that
dingy and sordid neighbourhood where existence was a dangerous and
difficult adventure in almost frantic quest of food, drink and shelter,
where the familiar and beloved landmarks were public-houses, and where
the immense majority of the population read nothing but sporting
prognostications and results, and, on Sunday mornings, accounts of
bloody crimes and juicy sexual irregularities.
Nevertheless, the shop was, in fact, well placed in Riceyman Steps. It
had a picturesque air, and Riceyman Steps also had a picturesque air,
with all its outworn shabbiness, grime and decay. The steps leading up
to Riceyman Square, the glimpse of the Square at the top, with its
church bearing a massive cross on the west front, the curious
perpendicular effects of the tall, blind, ochreish houses--all these
touched the imagination of every man who had in his composition any
unusually strong admixture of the universal human passion--love of the
past. The shop reinforced the appeal of its environment. The shop was in
its right appropriate place. To the secret race of collectors always
ravenously desiring to get something for much less than its real value,
the window in Riceyman Steps was irresistible. And all manner of people,
including book-collectors, passed along King's Cross Road in the course
of a day. And all the collectors upon catching sight of the shop
exclaimed in their hearts: "What a queer spot for a bookshop!
Bargains!..." Moreover, the business was of old date and therefore had
firmly established connexions quite extra-local. Scores of knowing
persons knew about it, and were proud of their knowledge. "What!" they
would say with affected surprise to acquaintances of their own tastes.
"You don't know Riceyman Steps, King's Cross Road? Best hunting-ground
in London!" The name "Riceyman" on a signboard, whose paint had been
flaking off for twenty years, also enhanced the prestige of the shop,
for it proved ancient local associations. Riceyman must be of the true
ancient blood of Clerkenwell.
The customer, with his hands behind him and his legs somewhat apart, was
staring at a case of calf-bindings. A short, carefully dressed man,
dapper and alert, he had the air neither of a bookman nor of a member of
the upper-middle class.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I just had to slip out, and I've nobody else
here," said the bookseller quietly and courteously, but with no trace of
obsequiousness.
"Not at all!" replied the customer. "I was very interested in the books
here."
The bookseller, like many shopkeepers a fairly sure judge of people,
perceived instantly that the customer must have acquired deportment from
somewhere after adolescence, together with the art of dressing. There
was abruptness in his voice, and the fact was that he had learnt manners
above his original station in a strange place--Palestine, under
Allenby.
"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a Shakspere in stock; I mean
a pretty good one?"
"What sort of a Shakspere? I've got a number of Shaksperes."
"Well, I don't quite know.... I've been thinking for a long time I ought
to have a Shakspere."
"Illustrated?" asked the bookseller, who had now accurately summed up
his client as one who might know something of the world, but who was a
simpleton in regard to books.
"I really haven't thought." The customer gave a slight good-humoured
snigger. "I suppose it would be nice to have pictures to look at."
"I have a good clean Boydell, and a Dalziel. But perhaps they'd be
rather big."
"Um!"
"You can't hold them, except on a desk or on your knee."
"Ah! That wouldn't do! Oh, not at all!" The customer, who was nonplussed
by the names mentioned, snatched at the opportunity given to decline
them.
"I've got a nice little edition in eight volumes, very handy, with
outline drawings by Flaxman, and nicely printed. You don't often see it.
Not like any other Shakspere I know of. Quite cheap too."
"Um!"
"I'll see if I can put my hand on it."
The shop was full of bays formed by bookshelves protruding at
right-angles from the walls. The first bay was well lighted and tidy;
but the others, as they receded into the gloomy backward of the shop,
were darker and darker and untidier and untidier. The effect was of
mysterious and vast populations of books imprisoned for ever in
everlasting shade, chained, deprived of air and sun and movement,
hopeless, resigned, martyrized. The bookseller stepped over piles of
cast books into the farthest bay, which was carpeted a foot thick with a
disorder of volumes, and lighted a candle.
"You don't use the electric light in that corner," said the client,
briskly following. He pointed to a dust-covered lamp in the grimy
ceiling.
"Fuse gone. They do go," the bookseller answered blandly; and the
blandness was not in the least impaired by his private thought that the
customer's remark came near to impudence. Searching, he went on: "We're
not quite straight here yet. The truth is, we haven't been straight
since 1914."
"Dear me! Five years!"
Another piece of good-humoured cheek.
"I suppose you couldn't step in to-morrow?" the bookseller suggested,
after considerable groping and spilling of tallow.
"Afraid not," said the customer with polite reluctance. "Very busy ... I
was just passing and it struck me."
"The Globe edition is very good, you know ... Standard text. Macmillans.
Nothing better _of the sort_. I could sell you that for three-and-six."
"Sounds promising," said the customer brightly.
The bookseller blew out the candle and dusted one hand with the other.
"Of course it's not illustrated."
"Oh, well, after all, a Shakspere's for _reading_, isn't it?" said the
customer, for whom Shakspere was a volume, not a man.
While the bookseller was wrapping up the green Globe Shakspere in a
creased bit of brown paper with an addressed label on it--he put the
label inside--the customer cleared his throat and said with a nervous
laugh:
"I think you employ here a young charwoman, don't you?"
The bookseller looked up in mild surprise, peering. He was startled and
alarmed, but his feelings seldom appeared on his face.
"I do." He thought: "What is this inquisitive fellow getting at? It's
not what I call manners, anyhow."
"Her name's Elsie, I think. I don't know her surname."
The bookseller went on with his packing and said naught.
"As I'm here I thought I might as well ask you," the customer continued
with a fresh nervous laugh. "I ought to explain that my name's Raste,
Dr. Raste, of Myddelton Square. Dare say you've heard of me. From _your_
name your family belongs to the district?"
"Yes," agreed the bookseller. "I do."
He was very proud of the name Riceyman, and he did not explain that it
was the name only of his deceased uncle, and that his own name was
Earlforward.
"I've got a lad in my service," the doctor continued. "Shell-shock case.
He's improving, but I find he's running after this girl Elsie. Quite
O.K., of course. Most respectable. Only it's putting him off his work,
and I just thought as I happened to be in here you wouldn't mind me
asking you about her. Is she a good girl? I'd like him to marry--if it's
the right sort. Might do him a lot of good."
"She's right enough," answered the bookseller calmly and indifferently.
"I've nothing against her."
"Had her long?"
"Oh, some time."
The bookseller said no more. Beneath his impassive and courteous
exterior he hid a sudden spasm of profound agitation. The next minute
Dr. Raste departed, but immediately returned.
"Afraid your books outside are getting a bit wet," he cried from the
doorway.
"Thank you. Thank you," said the bookseller mildly and unperturbed,
thinking: "He must be a managing and interfering kind of man. Can't I
run my own business?"
Some booksellers kept waterproof covers for their outside display, but
this one did not. He had found in practice that a few drops of rain did
no harm to low-priced volumes.
III
THE BOOKSELLER AT HOME
At the back of the rather spacious and sombre shop (which by reason of
the bays of bookshelves seemed larger than it really was) came a small
room, with a doorway, but no door, into the shop. This was the
proprietor's den. Seated at his desk therein he could see through a sort
of irregular lane of books to the bright oblong of the main entrance,
which was seldom closed. There were more books to the cubic foot in the
private room even than in the shop. They rose in tiers to the ceiling
and they lay in mounds on the floor; they also covered most of the flat
desk and all the window-sill; some were perched on the silent
grandfather's clock, the sole piece of furniture except the desk, a
safe, and two chairs, and a step-ladder for reaching the higher shelves.
The bookseller retired to this room, as to a retreat, upon the departure
of Dr. Raste, and looked about, fingering one thing or another in a
mild, amicable manner, and disclosing not the least annoyance,
ill-humour, worry, or pressure of work. He sat down to a cumbrous old
typewriter on the desk, and after looking at some correspondence,
inserted a sheet of cheap letter-paper into the machine. The printed
letter-head on the sheet was "T. T. Riceyman," but in fulfilment of the
new law the name of the actual proprietor "Henry Earlforward," had been
added (in violet, with an indiarubber stamp, and crookedly).
Mr. Earlforward began to tap, placidly and very deliberately, as one who
had the whole of eternity before him for the accomplishment of his task.
A little bell rang; the machine dated from the age when typewriters had
this contrivance for informing the operator that the end of a line
would be reached in two or three more taps. Then a great clatter
occurred at the window, and the room became dark. The blue-black blind
had slipped down, discharging thick clouds of dust.
"Dear, dear!" murmured Mr. Earlforward, groping towards the window. He
failed to raise the blind again; the cord was broken. As he coughed
gently in the dust, he could not recall that the blind had been once
drawn since the end of the war.
"I must have that seen to," he murmured, and turned on the electric
light over the desk.
The porcelain shade of the lamp wore a heavy layer of dust, which,
however, had not arrived from the direction of the blind, being the
product of slow, secular accumulation. Mr. Earlforward regretted to be
compelled to use electric current--and rightly, considering the
price!--but the occasion was quite special. He could not see to tap by a
candle. Many a time on winter evenings he had gently told an unimportant
customer in that room that a fuse had gone--and lighted a candle.
He was a solitary man, and content in his solitude; at any rate, he had
been content until the sight of the newly-come lady across the way began
to disturb the calm deep of his mind. He was a man of routine, and happy
in routine. Dr. Raste's remarks about his charwoman were seriously
upsetting him. He foresaw the possibility, if the charwoman should
respond to the alleged passion of her suitor, of a complete derangement
of his existence. But he was not a man to go out to meet trouble. He had
faith in time, which for him was endless and inexhaustible, and even in
this grave matter of his domesticity he could calmly reflect that if the
lady across the way (whom he had not yet spoken to) should favour him,
he might be in a position to ignore the vagaries of all charwomen. He
was, in fact, a very great practical philosopher, tenacious--it is
true--in his ideas, but, nevertheless, profoundly aware of the wisdom of
compromising with destiny.
Twenty-one years earlier he had been a placid and happy clerk in an
insurance office, anticipating an existence devoted wholly to
fire-risks. Destiny had sent him one evening to his uncle, T. T.
Riceyman, in Riceyman Steps, and into the very room where he was now
tapping. Riceyman took to him, seeing in the young man a resemblance to
himself. Riceyman began to talk about his well-loved Clerkenwell, and
especially about what was for him the marvellous outstanding event in
the Clerkenwell history--namely, the construction of the Underground
Railway from Clerkenwell to Euston Square. Henry had never forgotten the
old man's almost melodramatic recital, so full of astonishing and quaint
incidents.
The old man swore that exactly one thousand lawyers had signed a
petition in favour of the line, and exactly one thousand butchers had
signed another similar petition. All Clerkenwell was mad for the line.
But when the construction began all Clerkenwell trembled. The earth
opened in the most unexpected and undesirable places. Streets had to be
barred to horse traffic; pavements resembled switchbacks. Hundreds of
houses had to be propped, and along the line of the tunnel itself scores
of houses were suddenly vacated lest they should bury their occupants.
The sacred workhouse came near to dissolution, and was only saved by
inconceivable timberings. The still more sacred Cobham's Head
public-house was first shaken and torn with cracks and then inundated by
the bursting of the New River main, and the landlady died of shock. The
thousand lawyers and the thousand butchers wished they had never humbly
prayed for the accursed line. And all this was as naught compared to the
culminating catastrophe. There was a vast excavation at the mouth of the
tunnel near Clerkenwell Green. It was supported by enormous brick piers
and by scaffoldings erected upon the most prodigious beams that the wood
trade could produce. One night--a spring Sunday in 1862, the year of the
Second Great Exhibition--the adjacent earth was observed to be gently
sinking, and then some cellars filled with foul water. Alarm was raised.
Railway officials and metropolitan officers rushed together, and for
three days and three nights laboured to avert a supreme calamity. Huge
dams were built to strengthen the subterranean masonry; nothing was left
undone. Vain effort! On the Wednesday the pavements sank definitely. The
earth quaked. The entire populace fled to survey the scene of horror
from safety. The terrific scaffolding and beams were flung like firewood
into the air and fell with awful crashes. The populace screamed at the
thought of workmen entombed and massacred. A silence! Then the great
brick piers, fifty feet in height, moved bodily. The whole bottom of the
excavation moved in one mass. A dark and fetid liquid appeared, oozing,
rolling, surging, smashing everything in its resistless track, and
rushed into the mouth of the new tunnel. The crown of the arch of the
mighty Fleet sewer had broken. Men wept at the enormity and completeness
of the disaster.... But the Underground Railway was begun afresh and
finished and grandly inaugurated, and at first the public fought for
seats in its trains, and then could not be persuaded to enter its trains
because they were uninhabitable, and so on and so on....
Old fat Riceyman told his tale with such force and fire that he had a
stroke. In foolishly trying to lift the man Henry had slipped and hurt
his knee. The next morning Riceyman was dead. Henry inherited. A strange
episode, but not stranger than thousands of episodes in the lives of
plain people. Henry knew nothing of book-selling. He learnt. His
philosophic placidity helped him. He had assistants, one after another,
but liked none of them. When the last one went to the Great War, Henry
gave him no successor. He "managed"--and in addition did earnest,
sleep-denying work as a limping special constable. And now, in 1919,
here he was, an institution.
He heard a footstep, and in the gloom of his shop made out the
surprising apparition of his charwoman. And he was afraid, and lost his
philosophy. He felt that she had arrived specially--as she would, being
a quaint and conscientious young woman--to warn him with proper
solemnity that she would soon belong to another. Undoubtedly the breezy
and interfering Dr. Raste had come in, not to buy a Shakspere, but to
inquire about Elsie. Shakspere was merely the excuse for Elsie.... By
the way, that mislaid Flaxman illustrated edition ought to be hunted up
soon--to-morrow if possible.
IV
ELSIE
"Now, now, Elsie, my girl. What's this? What is it?"
Mr. Earlforward spoke benevolently but, for him, rather quickly and
abruptly. And Elsie was intimidated. She worked for Mr. Earlforward only
in the mornings, and to be in the shop in the darkening afternoon made
her feel quite queer and apologetic. It was almost as if she had never
been in the shop before and had no right there.
As the two approached each other the habitual heavenly kindness in the
girl's gaze seemed to tranquillize Mr. Earlforward, who knew intimately
her expression and her disposition. And though he was still disturbed by
apprehension he found, as usual, a mysterious comfort in her presence;
and this influence of hers exercised itself even upon his fear of losing
her for ever. A strange, exciting emotional equilibrium became
established in the twilight of the shop.
Elsie was a strongly-built wench, plump, fairly tall, with the striking
free, powerful carriage of one bred to various and hard manual labour.
Her arms and bust were superb. She had blue-black hair and dark blue
eyes, and a pretty curve of the lips. The face was square but soft. From
the constant drawing together of the eyebrows into a pucker of the
forehead, and the dropping of the corners of the large mouth, it could
be deduced that she was, if anything, over-conscientious, with a
tendency to worry about the right performance of her duty; but this
warping of her features was too slight to be unpleasant; it was, indeed,
a reassurance. She was twenty-three years of age; solitude, adversity
and deprivation made her look older. For four years she had been a
widow, childless, after two nights of marriage and romance with a youth
who went to the East in 1915 to die of dysentery. Her clothes were
cheap, dirty, slatternly and dilapidated. Over a soiled white apron she
wore a terribly coarse apron of sacking. This apron was an offence; it
was an outrage. But not to her; she regarded it as part of a uniform,
and such an apron was, in fact, part of the regular uniform of thousands
of women in Clerkenwell. If Elsie was slatternly, dirty, and without any
grace of adornment, the reason was that she had absolutely no inducement
or example to be otherwise. It was her natural, respectable state to be
so.
"It's for Mrs. Arb, sir," Elsie began.
"Mrs. Arb?" questioned Mr. Earlforward, puzzled for an instant by the
unfamiliar name. "Yes, yes, I know. Well? What have _you_ got to do with
Mrs. Arb?"
"I work for her in my afternoons, sir."
"But I never knew this!"
"I only began to-day, sir. She sent me across, seeing as I'm engaged
here, to see if you'd got a good, cheap, second-hand cookery-book."
Mr. Earlforward's demeanour reflected no change in his mood, but Elsie
had raised him into heaven. It was not to give him notice that she had
come! She would stay with him! She would stay for ever, or until he had
no need of her. And she would make a link with Mrs. Arb, the new
proprietress of the confectioner's shop across the way. Of course the
name of the new proprietress was Arb. He had not thought of her name. He
had thought only of herself. Even now he had no notion of her Christian
name.
"Oh! So she wants a cookery-book, does she? What sort of a
cookery-book?"
"She said she's thinking of going in for sandwiches, sir, and things,
she said, and having a sign put up for it. Snacks, like."
The word "snacks" gave Mr. Earlforward an idea. He walked across to what
he called the "modern side" of the shop. In the course of the war, when
food-rationed stay-at-homes really had to stay at home, and, having
nothing else to do while waiting for air-raids, took to literature in
desperation, he had done a very large trade in cheap editions of novels,
and quite a good trade in cheap cookery-books that professed to teach
rationed house-wives how to make substance out of shadow. Gently rubbing
his little beard, he stood and gazed rather absently at a shelf of small
paper-protected volumes, while Elsie waited with submission.
Silence within, but the dulled and still hard rumble of ceaseless motion
beyond the book-screened windows! A spell! An enchantment upon these two
human beings, both commonplace and both marvellous, bound together and
yet incurious each of the other and incurious of the mysteries in which
they and all their fellows lived! Mr. Earlforward never asked the
meaning of life, for he had a lifelong ruling passion. Elsie never asked
the meaning of life, for she was dominated and obsessed by a tremendous
instinct to serve. Mr. Earlforward, though a kindly man, had persuaded
himself that Elsie would go on charing until she died, without any
romantic recompense from fate for her early tragedy, and he was well
satisfied that this should be so. Because the result would inconvenience
him, he desired that she should not fall in love again and marry; he
preferred that she should spend her strength and youth and should grow
old for him in sterile celibacy. He had absolutely no eye for the
exciting effect of the white and the brown apron-strings crossing and
recrossing round her magnificent waist. And Elsie knew only that Mr.
Earlforward had material wants, which she satisfied as well as she
could. She did not guess, nor come within a hundred miles of guessing,
that he was subject to dreams and ideals and longings. That the universe
was enigmatic had not even occurred to her, nor to him; they were too
busy with their share in working it out.
"Now here's a book that ought to suit Mrs. Arb," said Mr. Earlforward,
picking a volume from the shelf and moving towards the entrance, where
the clear daylight was. "'Snacks and Titbits.' Let me see. Sandwiches."
He turned over leaves. "Sandwiches. There's nearly seven pages about
sandwiches."
"How much would it be, sir?"
"One shilling."
"Oh! She said she couldn't pay more than sixpence, sir, she said."
Mr. Earlforward looked up with a fresh interest. He was exhilarated,
even inspired, by the conception of a woman who, wishing to brighten her
business with a new line of goods, was not prepared to spend more than
sixpence on the indispensable basis of the enterprise. The conception
powerfully appealed to him, and his regard for Mrs. Arb increased.
"See here, Elsie. Take this over for Mrs. Arb to look at. And tell her,
with my compliments, that you can't get cookery-books--not any that are
any good--for sixpence in these days."
"Yes, sir."
Elsie put the book under her aprons and hurried off.
"She sends you _her_ compliments, and she says she can't pay more than
sixpence, sir. I'm that sorry, sir," Elsie announced, returning.
Mr. Earlforward blandly replaced the book on its shelf, and Elsie waited
in vain for any comment, then left.
"I say, Elsie," he recalled her. "It's not raining much, but it might
soon. As you're here, you'd better help me in with the stand. That'll
save me taking the books out before it's moved, and it'll save you
trouble in the morning."
"Yes, sir," Elsie eagerly agreed.
One at either end of it, they lugged within the heavy bookstand that
stretched along the length of the window on the flagstones outside the
shop. The books showed scarcely a trace of the drizzle.
"Thank you, Elsie."
"Don't mention it, sir."
Mr. Earlforward switched on one electric light in the middle of the
shop, switched off the light in his den, and lit a candle there. Then he
took a thermos flask, a cup, and two slices of bread on a plate from the
interior of the grandfather's clock, poured steaming tea into the cup,
and enjoyed his evening meal. When the bell of St. Andrew's jangled six,
he shut and darkened the shop. The war habit of closing early suited him
very well for several reasons. Then, blowing out the candle, he began
again to burn electricity in the den, and tapped slowly and moved to and
fro with deliberation, examining book-titles, tapping out lists, tapping
out addresses on envelopes, licking stamps, and performing other
pleasant little tasks of routine. And all the time he dwelt with
exquisite pleasure on the bodily appearance and astonishing moral
characteristics of Mrs. Arb. What a woman! He had been right about that
woman from the first glance. She was a woman in a million.
At a quarter to seven he put his boots on and collected his letters for
the post. But before leaving to go to the post he suddenly thought of a
ten-shilling Treasury note received from Dr. Raste, and took it from his
waistcoat pocket. It was a beautiful new note, a delicate object,
carefully folded by someone who understood that new notes deserve good
treatment. He put it, with other less brilliant cash, into the safe. As
he departed from the shop for the post office at Mount Pleasant, he
picked out "Snacks and Titbits" from its shelf again, and slipped it
into his side-pocket.
The rain had ceased. He inhaled the fresh, damp air with an innocent and
genuine delight. Mrs. Arb's shop was the sole building illuminated in
Riceyman Steps; it looked warm and feminine; it attracted. The church
rose darkly, a formidable mass, in the opening at the top of the steps.
The little group of dwelling-houses next to his own establishment showed
not a sign of life; they seldom did; he knew nothing of their tenants,
and felt absolutely no curiosity concerning them. His little yard
abutted on the yard of the nearest house, but the wall between them was
seven feet high; no sound ever came over it.
He turned into the main road. Although he might have dropped his
correspondence into the pillar-box close by, he preferred to go to the
mighty Mount Pleasant organism, with its terrific night-movement of vans
and flung mailbags, because it seemed surer, safer, for his letters.
Like many people who live alone, he had a habit of talking to himself in
the street. His thoughts would from time to time suddenly burst almost
with violence into a phrase. Then he would smile to himself. "Me at my
age!" ... "Yes, and of course there's _that_!" ... "Want some getting
used to!" ... He would laugh rather sheepishly.
The vanquished were already beginning to creep into the mazes of Rowton
House. They clicked through a turnstile--that was all he knew about
existence in Rowton House, except that there were plants with large
green leaves in the windows of the common-room. Some of the vanquished
entered with boldness, but the majority walked furtively. Just opposite
Rowton House the wisdom and enterprise of two railway companies had
filled a blank wall with a large poster exhibiting the question: "Why
not take a winter holiday where sunshine reigns?" etc. Beneath this
blank wall a newsman displayed the posters of the evening papers,
together with stocks of the papers. Mr. Earlforward always read the
placards for news. There was nothing much to-night. "Death of a
well-known statesman." Mr. Earlforward, as an expert in interpretation,
was aware that "well-known" on a newspaper placard meant exactly the
opposite of what it meant in any other place; it meant not well-known.
The placards always divided dead celebrities, genuine and false, into
three categories. If Blank was a supreme personage the placards said:
"Blank dead." Two most impressive words. If Blank was a real personage,
but not quite supreme, the placards said: "Death of Blank." Three words,
not so impressive. All others nameless were in the third category of
"well-knowns." Nevertheless, Mr. Earlforward walked briskly back as far
as the Free Library to glance at a paper--perhaps not because he was
disturbed about the identity of a well-known statesman, but because he
hesitated to carry out his resolution to enter Mrs. Arb's shop.
V
THE GIFT
Mrs. Arb was listening to a customer and giving change.
"'And when you've got children of your own,' she said, 'and when you've
got children of your own,' that was her remark," the customer, an
insecurely fat woman, was saying.
"Just so," Mrs. Arb agreed, handing the change and pushing a little
parcel across the counter. She ignored Mr. Earlforward completely. He
stood near the door, while the fat customer repeated once more what some
third person had remarked upon a certain occasion. The customer's accent
was noticeably vulgar in contrast with Mrs. Arb's. Mrs. Arb was indeed
very "well spoken." And she contrasted not merely with the customer but
with the shop.
There were dozens of such little shops in and near King's Cross Road.
The stock, and also the ornamentation, of the shop came chiefly from the
wholesalers of advertised goods made up into universally recognizable
packets. Several kinds of tea in large quantities, and picturesque,
bright tea-signs all around the shop. Several kinds of chocolate, in
several kinds of fancy polished-wood glazed stands. (But the chocolate
of one maker was in the stand of another.) All manner of patent foods,
liquid and solid, each guaranteed to give strength. Two competitors in
margarine. Scores of paper bags of flour. Some loaves; two hams, cut
into. A milk-churn in the middle of the shop. Tinned fruits. Tinned
fish. Tinned meats. And in the linoleum-lined window the cakes and
bon-bons which entitled the shop to style itself "confectioner's." Dirty
ceiling; uneven dark wood floor; frowsy, mysterious corners; a shabby
counter covered with linoleum in black-and-white check, like the bottom
of the window. One chair; one small, round, iron table. No cash-desk. No
writing apparatus of any sort. A smell of bread, ham and biscuits. A
poor little shop, showing no individuality, no enterprise, no
imagination, no potentiality of reasonable profits. A shop which saved
the shopkeeper from the trouble of thinking for himself. The inevitable
result of big advertising, and kept up to the average mark by the
constant visitation of hurried commercial travellers and collectors who
had the magic to extract money out of empty tills.
And Mrs. Arb, thin, bright, cheerful, with scintillating eyes; in a neat
check dress and a fairly clean white apron! Yes, she was bright, she was
cheerful, she had a keen face. Perhaps that was what had attracted Mr.
Earlforward, who was used to neither cheerfulness nor brightness. Yet he
thought: "It would have been just about the same if she'd been a gloomy
woman." Perhaps he had been attracted because she had life, energy,
downrightness, masterfulness.
"Good evening, Mr. Earlforward. And what can I do for you?" She greeted
him suddenly, vivaciously, as the fat customer departed.
She knew him, then! She knew his real name. She knew that his name did
not accord with the sign over his shop. Her welcoming smile inspired
him, as alcohol would have inspired him had he ever tasted it. He was
uplifted to a higher plane of existence. And also, secretly, he was a
little bit flurried; but his demeanour did not betray this. A clock
struck rapidly in some room behind the shop, and at the sound Mrs. Arb
sprang from behind the counter, shut and locked the shop door, and drew
down its blind for a sign to the world that business was over for the
day. She had a fine movement with her. In getting out of her way Mr.
Earlforward strove to conceal his limp as much as possible.
"I thought I'd just look in about that cookery-book you wanted," said
he.
"It's very kind of you I'm sure," said she. "But I really don't think I
shall need it."
"Oh!"
"No! I think I shall get rid of this business. There's no doing anything
with it."
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Mr. Earlforward. And he was.
"It isn't as if I didn't enjoy it--at first. Quite a pleasant change for
me to take something in hand. My husband died two years ago and left me
nicely off, and I've been withering up ever since, till this came along.
It's no life, being a widow at my age. But I couldn't stand this either,
for long. There's no _bounce_ to this business, if you understand what I
mean. It's like hitting a cushion."
"You've soon decided."
"I haven't decided. But I'm thinking about it.... You see, it's a
_queer_ neighbourhood."
"Queer?" He was shocked, perhaps a little hurt, but his calm tone
disclosed nothing of that. He had a desire to explain to Mrs. Arb at
great length that the neighbourhood was one of almost unique interest.
"Well, you know what I mean. You see, I come from Fulham--Chelsea you
might call it. I'm not saying that when I lived in this shop
before--eighteen years ago, is it?--I'm not saying I thought it was a
queer neighbourhood then. I didn't--and I was here for over a year, too.
But I do now."
"I must confess it hasn't struck me as _queer_."
"You know this King's Cross Road?" Mrs. Arb proceeded with increased
ardour. "You know it? You've walked all along it?"
"Yes."
"So have I. Oh! I've looked about me. Is there a single theatre in it?
Is there one music-hall? Is there one dance-hall? Is there one picture
theatre? Is there one nice little restaurant? Or a tea-shop where a nice
person could go if she'd a mind?... And yet it's a very important
street; it's full of people all day. And you can walk for miles round
here and see _nothing_. And the dirt and untidiness! Well, I thought
Fulham was dirty. Now look at this Riceyman Square place, up behind
those funny steps! I walked _through_ there. And I lay there isn't one
house in it--not one--without a broken window! The fact is, the people
about here don't want things nice and _kept_.... I'm not meaning
you--certainly not! But people in general. And they don't want anything
fresh, either. They only want all the nasty old things they've always
had, same as pigs. And yet I must say I admire pigs, in a way. Oh,
dear!" She laughed, as if at herself, a tinkling laugh, and looked down,
with her steady agreeable hand still on the door.
Twice before she had looked down. It was more than coyness, better than
coyness, more genuinely exciting. When she laughed her face crinkled up
very pleasantly. She had energy. All the time her body made little
movements. Her glance varied, scintillating, darkling. Her tone
ceaselessly varied. And she had authority. She was a masterful woman,
but masterful in a broad-minded, genial manner. She was experienced, and
had learnt from experience. She must be over forty.... And still,
somehow girlish! Best of all, she was original; she had a point of view.
She could see. Mr. Earlforward hated Clerkenwell to be damned. Yet he
liked her to damn it. ... And how natural she was, dignified, but not
ceremonious, willing to be friends at once! He repeated to himself that
from the first sight of her he had known her to be a highly remarkable
creature.
"I brought the book along," he said, prudently avoiding argument. She
took it amiably from him, and out of politeness inspected it again.
"You shall have it for ninepence. And you might be needing it after all,
you know."
With her face still bent towards "Snacks and Titbits" she raised her
eyes to his eyes--it seemed roguishly.
"I might! I might!" She shut the book with a smart snap. "But I won't go
beyond sixpence, thank you all the same. And not as I don't think it's
very kind of you to bring it over."
What a woman! What a woman! She was rapidly becoming the most brilliant,
attractive, competent, and comfortable woman on earth; and Mr.
Earlforward was rapidly becoming a hero, a knight, a madman capable of
sublime deeds. He felt an heroical impulse such as he had never felt. He
fought it, and was beaten.
"See here," he said quietly, and with unconscious grandeur. "We're
neighbours. I'll make you a present of the book."
Did she say, as a silly little creature would have said: "Oh, no! I
couldn't possibly. I really couldn't"? Not a bit. She said simply:
"It's most kind of you, Mr. Earlforward. It really is. Of course I
accept it with pleasure. Thank you."
And she looked down, like a girl who has received a necklace and clasped
it on her neck. Yes, she looked down. The moment was marvellous to Mr.
Earlforward.
"But I do think you're a little hard on Riceyman Square," he said, as
she unlocked the door for his departure.
She replied gaily and firmly: "Not one house without a broken pane!" She
insisted and held out her hand.
"Well, we must see one day," said he.
She nodded.
"And if there is," she said, "I shall pay you a shilling for the book.
That's fair."
She shook hands. Mr. Earlforward crossed the space between her shop and
his with perfect calmness, and as he approached his door he took from
his pocket with the mechanical movement of regular habit a shining key.
VI
MRS. ARB'S CASE
You would have thought, while Mrs. Arb was talking to Mr. Earlforward,
that the enigma of the universe could not exist in her presence. Yet as
soon as she was alone it was there, pervading the closed little shop. By
letting Mr. Earlforward out she had let the enigma in; she had relocked
the door too late. She stood forlorn, apprehensive, and pathetically
undecided in the middle of the shop, and gazed round at the miserable
contents of the shop with a dismayed disillusion. Brightness had fallen
from her. Impossible to see in her now the woman whose abundant
attractive vitality had vitalized Mr. Earlforward into a new and exalted
frame of mind!
She had married, raising herself somewhat, in her middle twenties, a
clerk of works, popular not only with architects, but with contractors.
Mr. Arb had been clerk of works to some of the very biggest erections of
the century. His vocation carried him here and there--wherever a large
building was being put up; it might be a provincial town hall, or a
block of offices in London, or a huge hydro on some rural country-side,
or an explosives factory in the middle of pasture land. And Mr. Arb's
jobs might last any length of time, from six months to three or four
years. Consequently he had had no fixed residence. As there were no
children his wife would always go about with him, and they would live in
furnished rooms. This arrangement was cheaper than keeping a permanent
home in London, and much more cheerful and stimulating. For Mr. Arb it
had the advantages (with the disadvantages) of living with a wife whose
sole genuine interest, hobby, and solicitude was her husband; all Mrs.
Arb's other social relations were bound to be transitory and lukewarm.
When Mr. Arb died he left a sum of money surprisingly large in view of
the fact that clerks of works do not receive high salaries. Architects,
hearing of the nice comfortable fortune, were more surprised than
contractors. A clerk of works has great power. A clerk of works may be
human.
Mrs. Arb found herself with an income but no home, no habit of home
life, and no masculine guidance or protection. She was heart-stricken,
and--what was worse--she was thoroughly disorganized. Her immense
vitality had no outlet. Time helped her, but she lived in suspense,
undecided what to do and not quite confident in her own unaided wisdom.
An incredible letter from a solicitor announcing that she had inherited
the confectioner's business and premises and some money in Riceyman
Steps shook and roused her. These pleasant and promising things had
belonged to her grandmother's much younger half-sister, whom she had
once helped by prolonged personal service in a great emergency. The two
had not met for many years, owing to Mrs. Arb's nomadic existence; but
they had come together at the funeral of Mr. Arb, and had quarrelled
magnificently, because of Mrs. Arb's expressed opinion that the old
lady's clothes showed insufficient respect for the angelic dead. The
next event was the solicitor's letter; the old lady had made a death-bed
repentance for the funeral costume. Mrs. Arb abandoned the furnished
rooms in Fulham, where she had been desiccating for two years, and flew
to Clerkenwell in an eager mood of adventure. She did not like
Clerkenwell, nor the look of the business, and she was beginning to be
disappointed, but at worst she was far happier and more alive than she
had ever been since Mr. Arb's death.
She had, nevertheless, a cancer--not a physical one: the secret abiding
terror lest despite all her outward assurance she might be incapable of
managing her possessions. The more she inherited, the more she feared.
She had a vision of the business going wrong, of her investments going
wrong, and of herself in poverty and solitude. This dread was absurd,
but not less real for that. It grew. She tried to counter it by the
practice of severe economy.
The demeanour of Mr. Earlforward, and his gift, had suddenly lightened
her horizon. But the moment he departed she began saying to herself that
she was utterly silly to indulge in such thoughts as she had been
thinking, that men were not "like that," that men knew what they were
about and what they wanted--and she looked gloomily in the fancy mirror
provided by a firm of cocoa manufacturers and adorned with their name at
the top and their address at the bottom.
She put pieces of gauze over the confectionery in the window and over
the two bony remnants of ham, placed the chair seat downwards on the
counter, and tilted the little table against the counter; then
extinguished the oil-lamp, which alone lit the shop, and went into the
back room, lighted by another similar oil-lamp. In this room, which was
a parlour-kitchen, and whose principal table had just been scrubbed,
Elsie, a helot withdrawn from the world and dedicated to secret toil,
was untying her sack apron preparatory to the great freedom of the
night.
"Oh, Elsie--you did say your name was Elsie, didn't you?"
"Yes'm."
"I should take it very kindly if you could stay a bit longer this
evening."
Elsie was dashed; she paused on the knot of the apron-string.
"It's a quarter of an hour past my time now, 'm," she said
apologetically and humbly.
"It is? So it is. Well, not quite."
"I had an engagement, 'm."
"Couldn't you put it off for this once? You see, I'm very anxious to get
straight after all this mess I've been in. I'm one that can't stand a
mess. I'll give you your supper--I'll give you a slice of ham--and
sixpence extra."
"I'm sure it's very kind of you, 'm, but----"
Mrs. Arb coaxed, and she could coax very effectively.
"Well, 'm, I always like to oblige." Elsie yielded, not grudgingly nor
with the air of conferring a favour, but rather with a mild and pure
kindliness. She added, coaxing in her turn: "But I must just run out
half a minute, if you'll let me."
"Oh, of course. But don't be long, will you? Look, here's your half-day
and the extra sixpence. Take it now. And while you're out I'll be
cutting the ham for you. It's a pity I've turned out the shop lamp, but
I dare say I can see if I leave this door open." She gave the girl some
silver.
"I'm sure it's very kind of you, 'm."
Mrs. Arb cut an exceedingly thin slice of ham quite happily. She had two
reasons for keeping Elsie; she wanted to talk to somebody, and she felt
that, whether she talked or not, she could not bear to be alone in the
place till bed-time. Her good spirits returned.
VII
UNDER AN UMBRELLA
The entrance-gates to the yard of Daphut, the builder and stonemason,
which lay between Mrs. Arb's shop and the steps proper, were set back a
little from the general frontage of the north side of Riceyman Steps, so
that there was a corner at that point sheltered from east and north-east
winds. In this corner stood a young man under an old umbrella; his
clothes were such as would have entitled him to the newspaper reporter's
description, "respectably dressed"--no better. His back was against the
blind wall of Mrs. Arb's. It was raining again, with a squally wind, but
the wind being in the north-east the young man was only getting spotted
with rain. A young woman ran out of Mrs. Arb's and joined him. She
placed herself close to him, touching him, breast to breast; it was the
natural and rational thing to do, and also she had to receive as much
protection as possible from the umbrella. The girl was wearing all
Elsie's clothes. Elsie's sack-apron covered her head and shoulders like
a bridal veil. But she was not Mrs. Arb's Elsie nor Mr. Earlforward's!
She was not the drudge. She had suddenly become a celestial visitant.
The attributes of such an unearthly being were in her shining face and
in the solace of her little bodily movements; and her extraordinary mean
and ugly apparel could not impair them in the least. The man, slowly,
hesitatingly, put one arm round her waist--the other was occupied with
the umbrella. She yielded her waist to him, and looked up at the man,
and he looked down at her. Not a word. Then he said in a deep voice:
"Where's your hat--and things?"
He said this as one who apprehended calamity.
"I haven't finished yet," she answered gently. "I'm that sorry."
"How long shall you be?"
"I don't know, Joe. She's all by herself, and she begged and prayed me
to stop on and help her. She's all by herself, and strange to it. And I
couldn't find it in my heart to refuse. You have to do what's right,
haven't you?"
The man's chin fell in a sort of sulky and despairing gloom; but he said
nothing; he was not a facile talker, even on his best days. She took the
umbrella from him without altering its position.
"Put both arms round me, and hold me tight," she murmured.
He obeyed, reluctantly, tardily, but in the end fiercely. After a long
pause he said:
"And my birthday and all!"
"I know! I know!" she cried. "Oh, Joe! It can't be helped!"
He had many arguments, and good ones, against her decision; but he could
not utter them. He never could argue. She just gazed up at him softly.
Tears began to run down his cheeks.
"Now, now!" she soothed him. With her free hand she worked up the tail
of her apron between them, and, while still fast in his clutch, wiped
his eyes delicately. She kissed him, keeping her lips on his. She kissed
him until she knew from the feel of his muscles everywhere that the warm
soft contact with her had begun to dissolve his resentment. Then she
withdrew her lips and kissed him again, differently. They stood
motionless in the dark corner under the umbrella, and the rain pattered
dully on the umbrella and dropped off the umbrella and round them, and
pattered with a brighter sound on the flagstones of Riceyman Steps. A
few people passed at intervals up and down the steps. But the clasped
pair ignored them; and the wayfarers did not look twice, nor even smile
at the lovers, who, in fact, were making love as honest love is made by
lovers whose sole drawing-rooms and sofas are the street.
"Look here, Joe," Elsie whispered. "I want you to go home now. But you
must call at Smithson's on yer way--they don't close till nine
o'clock--and get them braces as I'm giving you for a birthday present. I
see 'em still in the window this morning. I should have slipped in and
bought 'em then, but I was on an errand for Mr. Earlforward, and,
besides, I didn't like to, somehow, without you, and me with my apron on
too. But you must buy 'em to-night so as you can wear 'em to-morrow. I
want to say to myself to-morrow morning, 'He's wearing them braces.'
I've brought you the money." She loosed one of his hands from her waist,
got at the silver in her pocket, and inserted it into his breast pocket.
"You promise me, Joe? It's a fair and square promise?"
He made no reply.
"You promise me, darling Joe?" she insisted.
He nodded; he could not speak in his desolation and in his servitude to
her. She smiled her lovely thanks for his obedience.
"Now let me see ye start off," she cajoled him. "I know ye. I know what
_you'll_ do if I don't see you start with me own eyes."
"Then it's to-morrow night?" he said gruffly.
She nodded. They kissed again. Elsie pushed him away, and then stood
watching until he had vanished round the corner of the disused Mission
Hall into King's Cross Road. She stood watching, indeed, for some
moments after that. She was crying.
"My word!" said Mrs. Arb vivaciously. "I was beginning to wonder if you
meant to come back, after all. You've been that long your tea'll be
cold. Here's the ham, and very nice it is too."
VIII
THE CARVING-KNIFE
The two women were working together in a living-room over the shop. An
oil-lamp had been hung on a hook which would have held a curtain loop
had there been any curtains. The lamp, tilted slightly forward, had a
round sheltered reflector behind it. Thus a portion of the lower part of
the room was brilliantly lighted and all the rest of the room in shadow.
Elsie was scrubbing the floor in the full glare of the reflector. She
scrubbed placidly and honestly, with no eagerness, but with no sign of
fatigue. Mrs. Arb sat in the fireplace with her feet upraised out of the
damp on the rail of a chair, and cleaned the mantelpiece. She had worked
side by side with Elsie through the evening, silent sometimes,
vivaciously chatty sometimes--desirous generally of collecting useful
pieces of local information. Inevitably a sort of community had
established itself between the two women. Mrs. Arb would talk freely and
yet give nothing but comment. Elsie talked little and yet gave many
interesting facts.
"Let me see," said Mrs. Arb with a casual air. "It's that Mr.
Earlforward you say you work for in the mornings, isn't it?"
"But I told you I did when you sent me in about the book, 'm. And I told
you before that, too," Elsie answered, surprised at such forgetfulness.
"Oh, of course you did. Well, does he live all alone?"
"Oh, yes, 'm."
"And what sort of a gentleman is he?"
Elsie, instinctively loyal, grew cautious.
"He's a very nice gentleman, 'm."
"Treats you well, does he?"
"Well, of course, 'm, he has his ways. But he's always very nice."
"Nice and polite, eh?"
"Yes, 'm. And I'll say this, too: he never tries to take any liberties.
No, that he doesn't!"
"And so he has his ways. Is he eccentric?"
"Oh, _no_, 'm! At least, I don't know what you mean, 'm, I'm sure I
don't. He's very particular in some things; but, then, in plenty of
things he takes no notice of you, and you can do it or leave it _as_ you
choose." Elsie suspected and mildly resented a mere inquisitiveness on
the part of Mrs. Arb, and added quickly: "I think this floor's about
done."
She wrung a cloth out in the pail at her right hand. The clock below
struck its quick, wiry, reverberating note. It kept on striking.
"That's never eleven o'clock!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed, completely aware that
it was eleven o'clock. "How time flies when you're hard at it, doesn't
it?"
Elsie silently disagreed with this proposition. In her experience of
toil she had found that time lagged.
"Well, Elsie, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you. I can finish myself.
Don't you stay a minute longer."
"No, 'm," said Elsie, who had exchanged three hours' overtime for
sixpence and a slice of ham.
At this moment, and before Elsie had raised her damp knees from the damp
floor, a very sharp and imperious tapping was heard.
"My gracious! Who's that?"
"It's the shop door," said Elsie.
"I'll go." Mrs. Arb decided the procedure quite cheerfully. She was
cheerful because the living-room, with other rooms, was done, and in a
condition fit to be seen by possible purchasers of her premises and
business; she had no intention to live in the living-room herself. And
also she was cheerful because of a wild and silly, and yet not wholly
silly, idea that the rapping at the shop door came from Mr. Earlforward,
who had made for himself some absurd man-like excuse for calling again
that night. She had, even thus early, her notions about Mr. Earlforward.
The undying girl in her ran downstairs with a candle and unlocked the
shop door. As she opened it a man pushed forward roughly into the
shop--not Mr. Earlforward; a young man with a dangerous look in his
burning eyes, and gestures indicating dark excitement.
"What do you want?" she demanded, trying to control the situation firmly
and not succeeding.
The young man glanced at her. She perceived that he carried a torn
umbrella and that his clothes were very wet. She heard the heavy rain
outside.
"You can't come in here at this time of night," she added. "The shop's
closed."
She gave a sign for him to depart. She actually began to force him out;
mere temerity on her part. She thought:
"Why am I doing this? He might attack me."
Instead of departing the young man dropped his umbrella and sprang for
the big carving-knife which she had left on the counter after cutting
the slice of ham for Elsie. In that instant Mrs. Arb decided absolutely
and without any further vacillation that she would sell the place, sell
it at once, and for what it would fetch. Already she had been a little
alarmed by the sinister aspect of several of her customers. She
remembered the great Clerkenwell murder. She saw how foolish she had
been ever to come to Clerkenwell at all. The man waved the carving-knife
over his head and hers.
"Where's Elsie?" he growled savagely, murderously.
Mrs. Arb began dimly to understand.
"This comes of taking charwomen you don't know," she said pathetically
to herself. "And yet I could have sworn by that girl."
Then a strong light shone in the doorway leading to the back-room. Elsie
stood there holding the wall-lamp in her hand. As soon as he caught
sight of her the man, still brandishing the knife, ran desperately
towards her. She hesitated and then retreated a little. The man plunged
into the room and banged the door.
After that Mrs. Arb heard not a sound. She was nonplussed, helpless and
panic-stricken. Ah! If the late Mr. Arb had been alive, how he would
have handled the affair! Not by force, for he had never been physically
strong. But by skill, by adroitness, by rapid chicane. Only she could
not imagine precisely _what_ the late Mr. Arb would have done in his
unique and powerful sagacity. She was overwhelmed by a sudden and final
sense of the folly, the tragedy, of solitary existence for a woman like
her. She had wisdom, energy, initiative, moral strength, but there were
things that women could do and things that women could not do; and a
woman who was used to a man needed a man for all sorts of purposes, and
she resolved passionately that she would not live alone another day
longer than she could help.
This resolve, however, did not mitigate her loneliness in the candle-lit
shop with the shut door in front of her hiding dreadful matters and the
rain pelting on the flagstones of Riceyman Steps. She looked timidly
forth; a policeman might by Heaven's mercy be passing. If not, she must
run in the wet, as she was, to the police-station. She then noticed a
faint light in Mr. Earlforward's shop, and dashed across. Through the
window she could see Mr. Earlforward walking in his shop with a candle
in his hand. She tattooed wildly on the window. A tram-car thundered
down King's Cross Road, tremendously heedless of murders. After a brief,
terrible interval the lock of Mr. Earlforward's portal grated, and Mr.
Earlforward appeared blandly in the doorway holding the candle.
"Oh, Mr. Earlforward!" she cried, and stepped within, and clutched his
sleeve and told him what had occurred. And as she poured out the words,
and Mr. Earlforward kept apparently all his self-possession and bland
calm, an exquisite and intense feeling of relief filled her whole being.
"I'll come over," said Mr. Earlforward. "Rather wet, isn't it?"
He cut a fine figure in the eyes of Mrs. Arb. He owed his prestige at
that moment, however, not to any real ability to decide immediately and
courageously upon the right, effective course to follow, but to the
simple fact that his reactions were very slow. Mr. Earlforward was
always afraid after the event. He limped vigorously into the dangers of
Mrs. Arb's dwelling with his placidity undisturbed by the realization of
those dangers. And he had no conception of what he should do. Mrs. Arb
followed timorously.