carving-knife burnt on the white table there. Also the candle was still
burning in the shop, but the umbrella had vanished from the shop floor.
The back-room was empty. No symptom of murder, nor even of a struggle!
Only the brief, faint rumble of an Underground train could be heard and
felt in the silence.
"Perhaps he's chased her upstairs."
"I'll go and see. Anyhow, he's left the knife behind him." Mr.
Earlforward picked up the carving-knife, and thereby further impressed
Mrs. Arb.
"Take the lamp," said Mrs. Arb.
"Nobody up here!" he called from the first floor. Mrs. Arb ascended.
Together they looked into each room.
"She's taken her jacket!" exclaimed Mrs. Arb, noticing the empty peg
behind the door when they came down again to the back-room.
"Ah! That's better," Mr. Earlforward commented, expelling breath.
"I've left my candle lighted," he said a moment later. "I'll go and blow
it out."
"But----"
"Oh! I'm coming back. I'm coming back."
While he was gone Mrs. Arb had a momentary lapse into terror.
Suppose----! She glimpsed again the savage and primeval passion
half-disclosed in the gestures and the glance of the young man, hints of
forces uncontrollable, terrific and fatal.
"I expect he's that young fellow that's running after her," said Mr.
Earlforward when he returned. "Seems he's had shell-shock! So I heard.
She'll have to leave him alone--that's clear!" He was glad to think that
he had found a new argument to help him to persuade Elsie not to desert
him.
"She seemed to be so _respectable_!" observed Mrs. Arb.
"Well, she is!"
"Poor girl!" sighed Mrs. Arb; she felt a genuine, perturbing compassion
for Elsie. "Ought I to go and tell the police, Mr. Earlforward?"
"If I were you I shouldn't have the police meddling. It's all right."
"Well, anyhow, I can't pass the night here by myself. No, I can't. And
that's flat!" She smiled almost comically.
"You go off to bed," said Mr. Earlforward, with a magnificent wave of
the hand. "I'll make myself comfortable in this rocking-chair. I'll stop
till daylight."
Mrs. Arb said that she couldn't think of such a thing, and that he was
too kind. He mastered her. Then she said she would put a bit of coal on
the fire.
"You needn't." He stopped her. "I'll go across and get my overcoat and a
quilt, and lock up there. It'll be all right. It'll be all right."
He reappeared with his overcoat on and the quilt a little rain-spotted.
Mrs. Arb was wearing a long thick mantle.
"What's this?" he asked. "What's the meaning of this?"
"I couldn't leave you to sit up by yourself. I couldn't, really. I'm
going to sit up too."
IX
SUNDAY MORNING
"She never came to you this morning?" questioned Mr. Earlforward with
eager and cheerful interest.
"No. Did she to you?"
Mr. Earlforward shook his head, smiling.
"You seem to be quite the philosopher about it," said Mrs. Arb. "But it
must be _most_ inconvenient for a man."
"Oh, no! I can always manage, I can."
"Well, it's very wonderful of you--that's all I say."
This was Sunday morning, the third day after the episode of the
carving-knife.
"What's so funny," said Mrs. Arb, "is that she should come yesterday and
Friday, just as if nothing had happened, and yet she doesn't come
to-day! And yet it was settled plainly enough she _was_ to come--early,
an hour to you and an hour to me, wasn't it now? I do think she might
have sent round a message or something--even if she _is_ ill."
"Yes, but you see it never strikes them the inconvenience they're
causing. Not that she's a bad girl. She's a very good girl."
"They always work better for gentlemen," remarked Mrs. Arb with an air
vivacious and enigmatic.
Mr. Earlforward, strolling towards the steps, had chanced--if in this
world there is such a thing as chance--to see Mrs. Arb, all dressed,
presumably, for church--standing in her shop and regarding the same with
the owner's critical, appreciative eye. Mr. Earlforward had a good view
of her, as anybody else might have had, because only the blue blind of
the door was down, this being the recognized sufficient sign to the
public of a shut shop. The two small windows had blinds, but they were
seldom drawn, except to protect butter against sunshine. The pair had
exchanged smiles, Mrs. Arb had hospitably unlocked, and Mr. Earlforward
had entered. To him she presented a finely satisfactory appearance,
dressed in black, with vermilion flowers in her hat, good shoes on her
feet, and good uncreased gloves held in her ringed hand. She was
slim--Mr. Earlforward thought of her as _petite_--but she was imposing,
with all her keen restlessness of slight movements and her changing
glance. No matter how her glance changed it was always the glance of
authority and of intelligence.
On her part, Mrs. Arb beheld Mr. Earlforward with favour. His pointed
short beard, so well trimmed, seemed to give him the status of a pillar
of society. She still liked his full red lips and his fresh complexion.
And he was exceedingly neat. True, he wore the same black, shirt-hiding
tie as on weekdays, and his wristbands were still invisible; his hat and
overcoat were not distinguished! But he had on a distinguished new blue
suit; she was quite sure that he was inaugurating it that day. His
slight limp pleased and touched her. His unshakable calmness impressed
her. Oh! He was a man with reserves, both of character and of goods.
Secure in these reserves he could front the universe. He was
self-reliant without being self-confident. He was grave, but his little
eyes had occasionally a humorous gleam. She had noticed the gleam even
when he picked up the carving-knife on Thursday night. His demeanour in
that dreadful crisis had been perfect. In brief, Mr. Earlforward,
considered as an entity, was nearly faultless.
Mr. Earlforward, on the other hand, was still secretly trembling as he
realized more and more clearly the dangers which he had narrowly escaped
in the Thursday night affair; and he had not begun to tremble until
Friday morning!
"Rather early, isn't it, if you're going to church?" he suggested.
"I always like to be early if it's a strange church, and I've not been
in there at all yet."
"St. Andrew's?"
"I don't know what its name is. The one up the steps in the middle of
the Square."
"Yes. St. Andrew's, that is."
Without another word they then by a common impulse both moved out of the
shop, which Mrs. Arb smartly locked up. In spite of the upset caused by
Elsie's defection, and the prospect of future trouble and annoyance in
this connexion, they were very happy, and they had quite overlooked the
fact that their combined years amounted to ninety, or thereabouts. The
sun was feebly shining on the Sabbath scene. The bells of St. Andrew's
were jangling.
"I see you have some plant-pots on your top window-sill," observed Mrs.
Arb. "Do you ever water them?"
An implied criticism! Mr. Earlforward enjoyed it, for it proved that
they were getting intimate, as, indeed, became two people who had slept
(well) opposite one another in two chairs through the better part of a
coldish night.
"I do not," said Mr. Earlforward, waggishly, stoutly.
The truth was that for years he had seen the plant-pots without noticing
them. They were never moved, never touched. The unconquerable force of
nature was illustrated in the simple fact that one or two of the plants
still sturdily lived, displaying a grimy green.
"I love plants," said Mrs. Arb.
They passed up the steps, Mr. Earlforward a foot or so behind his
heroine.
"Now what I don't understand," said she, turning upon him and stopping,
"is why the Square should be so much higher than the road. It means that
all the carts and things, even the milk-carts, have to go all the way
round by Gilbert Street to get into the Square from the side. Why
couldn't they have had it all on the same level?"
Exquisitely feminine, he thought! "Why couldn't they have had it all on
the same level?" Absurd! Delicious! He adored the delicious, girlish
absurdity.
"Well," he said. "It's like this. You see, in the old days they used to
make tiles in Clerkenwell, and they scooped out the clay for the tiles
in large quantities--and this is the result."
With a certain eagerness he amplified the explanation.
"I should never have thought of that," said Mrs. Arb ingenuously but
archly. "What sort of church is St. Andrew's?"
"Oh! It was built in the 'thirties and cost £4,541. Cheap! I doubt if
you'd build it to-day for twenty thousand. Supposed to hold eleven
hundred people."
"Really! But I mean, is it High or Low, or Broad?"
"I haven't the least idea," answered Mr. Earlforward. "I did go in one
day to look at the reredos to oblige a customer, but I've never been to
a service." He spoke jauntily.
"D'you know why I go to church--when I do go?" said she. "Because it
makes me feel nice. It's a great comfort, especially when it's a foggy
day and you can't see very well, and there's not too many people. I
don't mean I like sermons. No. But what I say is, if you enjoy part of
the service the least you can do is to stay it out. Don't you agree?"
She looked up at him, as it were appealing for approval.
Wonderful moments for Mr. Earlforward, and for Mrs. Arb too!
He thought to himself:
"She has a vigorous mind. Not one woman in a hundred would have said
that. And so _petite_ and smart too. It doesn't really matter about her
being only a confectioner."
X
RICEYMAN SQUARE
St. Andrew's Church, of yellow bricks with freestone dressings, a blue
slate roof, and a red coping, was designed and erected in the brilliant
reign of William IV, whose Government, under Lord Grey, had a pious
habit, since lost by governments, of building additional churches in
populous parishes at its own expense. Unfortunately its taste in
architecture was less laudable than its practical interest in the
inculcation among the lowly of the Christian doctrine about the wisdom
and propriety of turning the other cheek. St. Andrew's, of a
considerably mixed Gothic character, had architecturally nothing
whatever to recommend it. Its general proportions, its arched windows,
its mullions, its finials, its crosses, its spire, and its buttresses,
were all and in every detail utterly silly and offensive. The eye could
not rest anywhere upon its surface without pain. And time, which is
supposed to soften and dignify all things, had been content in malice to
cover St. Andrew's with filth and ridicule. Out of the heights of the
ignoble temple came persistent, monotonous, loud sounds, fantastic and
nerve-racking, to match its architecture. The churchyard was a garden
flanked by iron rails and by plane trees, upon which brutal, terrifying
surgical operations had been performed. In the garden were to be seen
the withering and melancholy but still beautiful blossoms of asters and
tulips, a quantity of cultivated vegetables, dishevelled grass, some
heaps of rubble, and patches of unproductive brown earth. Nobody might
walk in the garden, whose gates were most securely padlocked.
Riceyman Square had been built round St. Andrew's in the hungry
'forties. It had been built all at once, according to plan; it had form.
The three-story houses (with areas and basements) were all alike, and
were grouped together in sections by triangular pediments with
ornamentations thereon in a degenerate Regency style. These pediments
and the window-facings, and the whole walls up to the beginning of the
first floor were stuccoed and painted. In many places the paint was
peeling off and the stucco crumbling. The fronts of the doorsteps were
green with vegetable growth. Some of the front-doors and window-frames
could not have been painted for fifteen or twenty years. All the
horizontal lines in the architecture had become curved. Long cracks
showed in the brickwork where two dwellings met. The fanlights and some
of the iron work feebly recalled the traditions of the eighteenth
century. The areas, except one or two, were obscene. The Square had once
been genteel; it ought now to have been picturesque, but was not. It was
merely decrepit, foul and slatternly. It had no attractiveness of any
sort. Evolution had swirled round it, missed it, and left it. Neither
electricity nor telephones had ever invaded it, and scores of windows
still had Venetian blinds. All men except its inhabitants and the
tax-collector, the rate-collector, and the school attendance officer had
forgotten Riceyman Square.
It lay now frowsily supine in a needed Sunday indolence after the week's
hard labour. All the upper windows were shut and curtained, and most of
the ground-floor windows. The rare glimpses of forlorn interiors were
desolating. Not a child played in the roadways. But here and there a
housewife had hung her doormats and canaries on the railings to take the
holy Sabbath air; and newspapers, fresh as newly gathered fruit, waited
folded on doorsteps for students of crime and passion to awake from
their beds in darkened and stifling rooms. Also little milk-cans with
tarnished brass handles had been suspended in clusters on the railings.
Cats only, in their elegance and their detached disdain, rose superior
to the terrific environment. The determined church bells ceaselessly
jangled.
"The church is rather nice," said Mrs. Arb. "But what did I tell you
about the Square?"
"Wait a moment! Wait a moment," replied Mr. Earlforward. "Let us walk
round, shall we?"
They began to walk round. Presently Mr. Earlforward stopped in front of
a house which had just been painted, to remind the spectator of the
original gentility of the hungry 'forties.
"No broken panes there, I think," he remarked triumphantly.
Mrs. Arb's glance searched the façade for even a cracked pane, and found
none. She owed him a shilling.
"Well," she said, somewhat dashed, but still briskly. "Of course there
was bound to be one house that was all right. Don't they say it's the
exception proves the rule?"
He understood that he would not receive his shilling, and he admired her
the more for her genial feminine unscrupulousness.
At the corner of Gilbert Street Mrs. Arb suddenly burst out laughing.
"I hadn't noticed we had any Savoys up here!" she said.
Painted over the door of the corner house were the words "Percy's
Hotel."
The house differed in no other detail from the rest of the Square.
"I wonder if they have any self-contained suites?"
Mr. Earlforward was about to furnish the history of this singular
historic survival, when they both, almost simultaneously, through a
large interstice of the curtains, noticed Elsie sitting and rocking
gently by the ground-floor window of a house near to Percy's Hotel. Her
pale face was half turned within the room, and its details obscure in
the twilight of the curtained interior; but there could be no mistake
about her identity.
"Is it here she lives?" said Mrs. Arb.
"I suppose so. I know she lives somewhere in the Square, but I never
knew the number."
The front-door of the house opened and Dr. Raste emerged, fresh, dapper,
prim, correct, busy, speeding without haste, the incarnation of the
professional. You felt that he would have emerged from Buckingham Palace
in just the same manner. To mark the Sabbath, which his ceaseless duties
forbade him to honour otherwise, he wore a silk hat. This hat he raised
on perceiving Mr. Earlforward and a lady; and he raised also, though
scarcely perceptibly, his eyebrows.
"You been to see my charwoman, doctor?" Mr. Earlforward urbanely stopped
him.
Dr. Raste hesitated a moment.
"Your charwoman? Ah, yes. I did happen to see her. Yes."
"Ah! Then she is unwell. Nothing serious, I hope?"
"No, no!" said the doctor, his voice rather higher than usual. "She'll
be all right to-morrow. A mere nothing. An excellent constitution, I
should imagine."
A strictly formal reply, if very courteous. Probably nobody in
Clerkenwell, except perhaps his man Joe, knew how Dr. Raste talked and
looked when he was not talking and looking professionally. Dr. Raste
would sometimes say with a dry, brief laugh, "we medicoes," thereby
proclaiming a caste, an order, a clan, separated by awful, invisible,
impregnable barriers from the common remainder of mankind; and he never
stepped beyond the barriers into humanity. In his case the secret life
of the brain was indeed secret, and the mask of the face, tongue and
demeanour made an everlasting privacy. He cleared his throat.
"Yes, yes.... By the way, I've been reading that Shakspere. Very fine,
very fine. I shall read it all one of these days. Good morning." He
raised his hat again and departed.
"I shall go in and see her, poor thing!" said Mrs. Arb with compassion.
"Shall you?"
"Well, I'm here. I think it would be nice if I did, don't you?"
"Oh, yes," Mr. Earlforward admiringly agreed.
XI
ELSIE'S HOME
The house which Mrs. Arb decided to enter had a full, but not an
extraordinary, share of experience of human life. There were three
floors of it. On the ground floor lived a meat-salesman, his wife and
three children, the eldest of whom was five years of age. Three rooms
and some minute appurtenances on this floor. The meat-salesman shouted
and bawled cheap bits of meat in an open-fronted shop in Exmouth Street
during a sixty-hour week which ended at midnight on Saturday. He
possessed enormous vocal power. All the children out of naughtiness had
rickets. On the first floor lived a french-polisher, his wife and two
children, the eldest of whom was three years of age. One child less than
the ground-floor family, but the first floor was about to get level in
numbers. Three rooms and some minute appurtenances on this floor. The
french-polisher worked only forty-four hours a week. His fingers wore
always the colour of rosewood, and he emitted an odour which often
competed not unsuccessfully with the characteristic house odour of stale
soapsuds. Out of ill-will for mankind he had an everlasting cough. On
the second floor lived a middle-aged dressmaker, alone. Three rooms and
some minute appurtenances on this floor. Nobody but an occasional
customer was ever allowed access to the second floor.
Elsie was a friend of the french-polisher's wife, and she slept in the
infinitesimal back-room of the first floor with the elder child of the
family. She paid three shillings a week for this accommodation, and also
helped with the charing and the laundry work of the floor--in her spare
time.
Except Elsie, the adult inhabitants of the house were always unhappy
save when drinking alcohol or making love. Although they had studied
Holy Scripture in youth, and there were at least three Bibles in the
house, they had failed to cultivate the virtue of Christian resignation.
They permitted trifles to annoy them. On the previous day the wife of
the meat-salesman had been upset because her "copper" leaked, and
because she could never for a moment be free of her own children, and
because it was rather difficult to turn her perambulator through the
kitchen doorway into an entrance-hall three feet wide, and because she
had to take all three children with her to market, and because the
eldest child, cleanly clad, had fallen into a puddle and done as much
damage to her clothes as would take a whole day to put right, and
because another child, teething, would persistently cry, and because the
landlord of the house was too poor to do necessary repairs, and because
she could not buy a shilling's worth of goods with sixpence, and because
her payments to the Provident Club were in arrear, and because the
sunshine made her hat look shabby, and for many other equally inadequate
reasons.
As for the french-polisher's wife, she moped and grew neurotic because
only three years ago she had been a pretty girl earning an independent
income, and because she was now about to bear another pledge of the
french-polisher's affection, and because she felt sick and frequently
was sick, and because she had no money for approaching needs, and
because she hated cooking and washing, and because her husband spent his
evenings and the purchase-money of his children's and his wife's food at
a political club whose aim was to overthrow the structure of society,
and because she hated her husband's cough and his affection, and because
she could see no end to her misery, and because she had prophetic
visions of herself as a hag with five hundred insatiable children
everlastingly in tears for something impossible to obtain for them.
The spinster on the second floor was profoundly and bitterly
dissatisfied for the mere reason that she was a spinster; whereas the
other two women would have sold their souls to be spinsters.
The centre of irritation in the house was the entrance-hall, or lobby,
which the first floor and ground floor had to keep clean in alternate
weekly spells. On the previous day one of the first-floor children had
dragged treacly fingers along the dark yellowish-brown wall. Further,
the first-floor perambulator had been brought in with muddy wheels, and
the marks had dried on the linoleum, which was already a palimpsest of
various unclean deposits. This perambulator was the origin of most of
the lobby trouble. The ground floor resented its presence there, and the
second floor purposely knocked it about at every passage through the
lobby; but the mistress of the first floor obstinately objected to
carrying it up and down stairs once or twice a day.
A great three-corner quarrel had arisen on the Saturday morning around
the first-floor perambulator and the entrance-hall, and when the
french-polisher arrived home for his dinner shortly after one o'clock he
had found no dinner, but a wife-helpmeet-cook-housekeeper-maidservant in
hysterics. Very foolishly he had immediately gone forth again with all
his wages. At eleven-thirty p.m. he had returned intoxicated and acutely
dyspeptic. At a quarter to twelve he had tried to fight Elsie. At
twelve-thirty the meat-salesman had come home to sleep, and had had to
listen to a loud sermon on the manners of the first-floor and his own
wife's manners delivered from the top of the second-floor stairs.
Subsequently he had had to listen to moans from the mistress of the
first floor and the eternal coughing of the master of the first
floor.... And all about nothing! Yet every one of the adults was well
acquainted with the admirable text which exhorted Christians to bear one
another's burdens. A strange houseful! But there were some scores of
such housefuls in Riceyman Square, and a £4,500 church in the midst.
Sunday morning always saw the adults of Elsie's household in a
paradisaical coma. Elsie alone was afoot. On this particular Sunday
morning she kept an eye on the two elder children, who were playing
quietly in the murky autumnal darkness of the walled backyard. Elsie had
herself summarily dressed them. The other three children had been
doped--or, as the advertisements phrased it, "soothed"--so that while
remaining in their beds they should not disturb the adults. The adults
slept. They embraced sleep passionately, voraciously, voluptuously.
Their sole desire in those hours was to find perfect unconsciousness and
rest. If they turned over they snatched again with terrible greed at
sleep. They wanted it more than love and more than beer. They would have
committed crimes for it. Even the prospective mother slept, in a
confusion of strange dreams.
There was a loud, heavy knocking on the warped and shabby door of the
house of repose. It shook the house. The children in the yard,
thunderstruck by the outrage, stopped playing. Elsie ran in alarm
through the back passage and the lobby and opened the front-door. Joe
stood there, the worried, mad look, which Elsie knew so well, on his
homely face. She was frightened, but held herself together, and shook
her head sadly and decisively. As a result of the episode of the
carving-knife she had banished him from her presence for one week, which
had yet by no means expired. It seemed odd that Elsie, everybody's
slave, should exercise an autocratic dominion over Joe; but she did. She
knew her power and divined that she must use it, if Joe was ever to get
well of his mysterious mental malady. And now, though she wished that
she had sentenced him to only three days' banishment instead of seven,
she would not yield and correct her error, for she felt that to do so
would impair her authority.
Moreover, Joe had no right to molest her at home. She had her reputation
to think of, and her reputation, in her loyal and ingenuous mind, was
his reputation also. Therefore, with woe in her heart she began to close
the door on Joe. Joe, rendered savage by a misery which he could not
define, put his foot in the aperture and then forced the door backwards
and lunged his desecrating body inside the sacred Sunday morning temple
of sleep. (A repetition of his procedure of the previous Thursday
night.) The two stood close together. He could not meet her fixed gaze.
His eyes glanced restlessly and wildly round, at the foul walls, the
gritty and soiled floor.
"Get out of this, my boy."
"Let me kiss you," he demanded harshly.
"Get out of it."
Losing what little remained of his self-control, he hit Elsie a strong
blow on the shoulder. She was not ready for it. In the idiom of the ring
her "foot-work" was bad, and she lost her balance, falling against the
french-polisher's perambulator, which crashed violently into the stairs
like an engine into a stationary buffer. Elsie's head caught the wheel
of the perambulator. A great shrill scream arose; the children had
followed Elsie out of the yard and witnessed the fall of their beloved
slave. Joe, appalled at the consequences of his passion, ran off,
banging the door behind him with a concussion which shook the house
afresh and still more awakeningly. Two mothers recognized the howls of
their children. The spinster on the second floor saw a magnificent
opportunity for preaching from a point of vantage her views on the state
of modern society. Two fathers, desperate with exasperation, but drawn
by the mighty attraction of a good row, jumped murderous from their warm
and fetid beds. Two half-clad figures appeared in the doorways of the
ground-floor rooms and three on the stairs.
Elsie sat up, dazed, and then stood up, then sank limply down again. One
mother smacked her child and a child which was not hers. The other
mother protested furiously from the stairs. The paradise of Sunday
morning lay shattered. The meat-salesman had sense, heart, and
initiative. He took charge of Elsie. The hellish din died down. A few
minutes later Elsie was seated in the rocking-chair by the window in his
front room. She wept apologetically. Little was said, but all understood
that Elsie's fantastic sweetheart had behaved disgracefully, and all
indicated their settled opinion that if she kept on with him he would
murder her one of these days. Three-quarters of an hour later Dr. Raste
calmly arrived. Joe had run to the surgery and shouted at him: "I've
killed her, sir." The meat-salesman, having himself lighted a bit of a
fire, left the room while the doctor examined the victim. The doctor
could find nothing but one bruise on the front of Elsie's left shoulder.
With a splendid gesture of devotion the meat-salesman's wife gave her
second child's warm milk to the reluctant Elsie. There happened to be no
other stimulant in the house. Peace was reestablished, and even slumber
resumed.
XII
THE BENEFACTRESS
The front door was opened to Mrs. Arb's quiet knock by the oldest child
in the house, an obstreperous boy of five, who was suddenly struck
sheepish and mute by the impressive lady on the doorstep. He said
nothing at all in reply to Mrs. Arb's request to see Elsie, but sidled
backwards along-the lobby and opened a door, looking up at her with the
most crude curiosity. As soon as she had gone into the room and the
inhibition was lifted, he ran off to the yard raising his heels high and
laughing boisterously.
The room in which Elsie had been installed was crowded and overcrowded
with the possessions of the meat-salesman and his wife. The walls were
covered from cornice to near the floor with coloured supplements from
Christmas numbers, either in maple-wood frames or unframed; a wonderful
exhibition of kindly sentiment: the innocence of children, the purity of
lovers, the cohesion of families, the benevolence of old age, immense
meals served in interiors of old oak, landscapes where snow lay in
eternal whiteness on church steeples, angels, monks, blacksmiths,
coach-drivers, souls awakening: indeed, a vast and successful effort to
convince the inhabitants of Riceyman Square that Riceyman Square was not
the only place on earth. The display undoubtedly unbent, diverted, and
cheered the mind. In between the chromatic prints were grey, realistic
photographs of people who really existed or had existed. The mantelpiece
was laden with ornaments miscalled "china," standing on bits of
embroidery. The floor was covered with oddments of carpet. There were
many chairs, unassorted; there was a sofa; there was a cradle; there was
a sewing-machine; there was a clothes-horse, on which a man's blue
apron with horizontal white stripes was spread out. There were several
tables, including a small walnut octagonal table, once a lady's
work-table, which stood in the window and upon which a number of
cloth-bound volumes of _Once a Week_ were piled carefully,
corkscrew-wise. And there was a wardrobe, also a number of kitchen
utensils. The place was encumbered with goods, all grimy as the walls
and ceilings, many of them cracked and worn like the woodwork and paint,
but proving triumphantly that the meat-salesman had no commerce with
pawnbrokers.
"I thought I should like to come round and see how you are, Elsie," said
Mrs. Arb kindly and forgivingly. "No, don't get up. I can see you aren't
well. I'll sit here."
Elsie blushed deeply.
"I've had a bit of trouble, 'm," she apologetically murmured.
Elsie's trouble was entirely due to Mrs. Arb's demand for overtime from
her on Thursday night. Mrs. Arb had not considered the convenience nor
the private life of this young woman whose services made daily existence
tolerable for her and for Mr. Earlforward. The young woman had
consequently found herself in a situation of the gravest difficulty and
of some danger. Hence the young woman was apologetic and Mrs. Arb
forgiving. Elsie admitted to herself a clear failure of duty with its
sequel of domestic embarrassment for her employers, and she dismissed as
negligible the excuses which she might have offered. Nor did she dream
of criticizing Mrs. Arb. She never consciously criticized anyone but
Elsie. And yet somewhere in the unexplored arcana of her mind lay hidden
a very just estimate of Mrs. Arb. Strange! No, not strange! A quite
common phenomenon in the minds of the humble and conscientious!
"Was the trouble over that young man?" asked Mrs. Arb. "Not that I want
to be inquisitive!"
Elsie began to cry. She nodded, unable for the moment to speak. The
sound of a snore came through the wall from the next room. There were
muffled noises overhead. Mrs. Arb grew aware that a child had peeped in
upon her and Elsie. The church bells, after a few single notes, ceased
to ring.
"I suppose you couldn't have sent somebody across to tell me you weren't
coming?" Mrs. Arb suggested. Elsie shook her head. "Shall you come
to-morrow?"
"Oh, yes, 'm. I shall come to-morrow--_and_ punctual."
"Well, Elsie, don't think I'm interfering, but don't you think you'd
better give him up? Two upsets in three days, you know." (Four days Mrs.
Arb ought to have said; but in these details she took the licence of an
artist.) "I haven't said a word to you about Thursday night, have I? I
didn't want to worry you. I knew you'd had worry enough. But I don't
mind telling you now that I was very much upset and frightened, as who
wouldn't be!... What do you want with men? They'll never be any good to
you--that is, if you value a quiet life and a good name. I'm telling you
for your own sake. I like you, and I'd like you to be happy and
respectable." Mrs. Arb seemed to have forgotten that she was addressing
a widow and not a young girl.
"Oh, 'm. I'm giving him up. I'll never have anything to do with him
again. Never!" Elsie burst out, with intense tragedy in her soul.
"That's right! I'm glad to hear it," said Mrs. Arb with placidity. "And
if you really mean it the people that employ you will be able to trust
and rely on you again. It's the only way."
"Oh, I'm so ashamed, 'm!" said Elsie, with the puckered brow of
conscientiousness. "'Specially seeing I couldn't let you know. Nor Mr.
Earlforward, either! But it won't occur again, 'm, and I hope you'll
forgive me."
"Please, please!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed magnanimously, protesting against
this excess of remorse and penitence. "I only thought I'd call to
inquire." After Mrs. Arb had gone out to dally with a man and to
reassure him with the news that everything would be all right and they
had nothing to fear, the boy crept into the front-room with a piece of
bread and jam in his sticky hand. He silently offered the morsel to
Elsie, who leaned forward as he held it up to her and bit off a corner
to please him. She smiled at him; then broke into a sob, and choked and
clutched him violently, bread and jam and all, and there was a dreadful
mess.
XIII
THE PASSION
"I think I've put _her_ straight," said Mrs. Arb very cheerfully to Mr.
Earlforward, out in the Square, and gave him an account of the
interview.
Mr. Earlforward's mind was much relieved. He admired Mrs. Arb greatly in
that moment. He himself could never have put Elsie straight. There were
things that a woman, especially a capable and forceful woman, could do
which no man could possibly do. "Forceful"! Perhaps a sinister adjective
to attach to a woman. Yes. But the curious point about this woman was
that she was also feminine. Forceful, she could yet (speaking
metaphorically) cling and look up. And also she could look down in a
most enchanting and disturbing way. She had done it a number of times to
Mr. Earlforward. Now Mr. Earlforward, from the plenitude of his
inexperience of women, knew them deeply. He knew their characteristic
defects and shortcomings. And it seemed to him that Mrs. Arb was
remarkably free from such. It seemed to him, as it has seemed to
millions of men, that he had had the luck to encounter a woman who
miraculously combined the qualities of two sexes, and the talent to
recognize the miracle on sight. He would not go so far as to assert that
Mrs. Arb was unique (though he strongly suspected that she must be), but
there could not be many Mrs. Arbs on earth. He was very happy in
youthful dreams of a new and idyllic existence. His sole immediate fear
was that he would be compelled to go to church with her. He knew them;
they were queer on religious observances. Of course it was because, as
she had half admitted, they liked to feel devotional. But you could do
nothing with a woman in church. And he could not leave her to go to
church alone.... He was unhappy.
"I'm afraid that service of yours has begun," said he. "I saw quite a
number of people going in while you were talking to Elsie."
"I'm afraid it has," she replied. He saw a glint of hope.
"It's a nice fresh morning," said he daringly. "And what people like you
and me need is fresh air. I suppose you wouldn't care for me to show you
some bits of Clerkenwell?"
"I think I should," said she. "I could go to service to-night, couldn't
I?"
Triumph! Undoubtedly she was unique.
Both quite forgetting once more that they would never again see forty,
they set off with the innocent ardour of youth.
"You know," said Mrs. Arb, returning to the great subject, "I told her
plainly she'd be much better off if she kept off men. And so she will!"
"They never know when they _are_ well off," said Mr. Earlforward.
"No ... I expect this Square used to belong to your family," Mrs. Arb
remarked with deference.
"Oh! I shouldn't say that," answered Mr. Earlforward modestly. "But it
was named after my grandfather's brother."
"It must have been very nice when it was new," said Mrs. Arb, tactfully
adopting towards the Square a more respectful attitude than aforetime.
Clearly she desired to please. Clearly she had a kind heart. "But when
the working-class get a hold on a place, what are you to do?"
"You'd scarcely think it," said Mr. Earlforward with grim resignation,
"but this district was very fashionable once. There used to be an
archery ground where our steps are." (He enjoyed saying "our steps," the
phrase united him to her.)
"Really!"
"Yes. And at one time the Duke of Newcastle lived just close by. Look
here. I'll show you something. It's quite near."
In a few minutes they were at the corner of a vast square--you could
have put four Riceymans into it--of lofty reddish houses, sombre and
shabby, with a great railed garden and great trees in the middle, and a
wide roadway round. With all its solidity, in that neighbourhood it
seemed to have the unreal quality of a vision, a creation of some djinn,
formed in an instant and destined as quickly to dissolve; it seemed to
have no business where it was.
"Look at that!" said Mr. Earlforward eagerly, pointing to the sign,
"Wilmington Square." "Ever heard of it before?"
Mrs. Arb shook her astonished head.
"No. And nobody has. But it's here. That's London, that is! Practically
every house has been divided up into tenements. Used to be very
well-to-do people here, you know!"
Mrs. Arb gazed at him sadly.
"It's tragic!" she said sympathetically, her bright face troubled.
"She understands!" he thought.
"Now I'll show you another sort of a square," he went on aloud. "But
it's over on the other side of Farringdon Road. Not far! Not far! No
distances here!"
He limped quickly along.
Coldbath Square easily surpassed even Riceyman Square in squalor and
foulness; and it was far more picturesque and deeper sunk in antiquity,
save for the huge, awful block of tenements in the middle. The glimpses
of interiors were appalling. At the corners stood sinister groups of
young men, mysteriously well dressed, doing nothing whatever, and in
certain doorways honest-faced old men with mufflers round their necks
and wearing ancient pea-jackets.
"I don't like this _at all_," said Mrs. Arb, as it were sensitively
shrinking.
"No! This is a bit too much, isn't it? Let's go on to the Priory
Church."
"Yes. That will be better," Mrs. Arb agreed with relief at the prospect
of a Priory Church.
"Oh! There's a _News of the World_!" she exclaimed. "Now I wonder----"
They were passing through a narrow, very short alley of small houses
which closed the vista of one of the towering congeries of modern
tenement-blocks abounding in the region. The alley, christened a hundred
years earlier, "Model Cottages," was silent and deserted, in strange
contrast to the gigantic though half-hidden swarming of the granite
tenements. The front-doors abutted on the alley without even the
transition of a raised step. The _News of the World_ lay at one of the
front-doors. It must have been there for hours, waiting for its
subscriber to awake, and secure in the marvellous integrity of the
London public.
"I did want just to look at a _News of the World_," said Mrs. Arb,
stopping.
They had seen various newsvendors in the streets; in fact, newspapers
were apparently the only articles of commerce at that hour of the Sunday
morning; but she had no desire to buy a paper. Glancing round fearfully
at windows, she stooped and picked up the folded _News of the World_.
Mr. Earlforward admired her, but was apprehensive.
"Yes. Here it is!" she said, having rapidly opened the paper. Over her
shoulder Mr. Earlforward nervously read: "_Provisions. Confec. Busy W.C.
district. £25 wkly. Six rooms. Rent £90. £200 everything. Long lease, or
will sell premises. Delay dangerous. Chance lifetime. 7, Riceyman Steps,
W.C.1._"
"Then you've decided!" murmured Mr. Earlforward, suddenly gloomy.
"Oh! Quite! I told you," said Mrs. Arb, dropping back the newspaper
furtively like a shameful accusing parcel, and walking on with a
wonderful air of innocence.
"I wasn't altogether sure if you'd decided finally."
"You see," Mrs. Arb continued. "Supposing the business failed. Supposing
I lost my money. I've got to think of my future. No risks for me, I say!
I only want a little, but I want it certain. And I've got a little."
"It's a very clever advertisement."
"I didn't know _how_ to put it. Of course it's called a confectioner's.
But it isn't really, seeing I buy all the cakes from Snowman's. The
whole stock in the shop isn't worth £25, but you see, I count the rest
of the price asked as premium for the house. That's how I look at
it--and it's quite fair, don't you think?"
"Perfectly."
They stood talking in front of a shut second-hand shop, where old blades
of aeroplane propellers were offered at 3s. 6d. each. Mr. Earlforward
said feebly "Yes" and "No" and "Hm" and "Ha." His brain was occupied
with the thought: "Is she going to slip through my fingers? Suppose she
went to live in the country?" His knee began to ache. His body and his
mind were always reacting upon one another. "Why should my knee ache
because I'm bothered?" he thought, and could give no answer. But in
secret he was rather proud of these mysterious inconvenient reactions;
they gave him distinction in his own eyes. In another environment he
would have been known among his acquaintances as "highly strung" and
"highly nervously organized." And yet outwardly so calm, so serene, so
even-tempered!
They got to the quarter of the great churches.
"Would you care to go in?" he asked her in front of St. James's. For he
desired beyond almost anything to sit down.
"I think it's really too late now," she replied. "It wouldn't be quite
nice to go in just at the end of the sermon, would it? Too conspicuous."
There were seats in the churchyard, but all were occupied, despite the
chilliness of the morning, by persons who, for private reasons, had
untimely left their beds. Moreover, he felt that Mrs. Arb, whose
niceties he much admired, would not like to sit in a churchyard with
service proceeding in the church. He had begun to understand her. There
were no seats round about St. John's. Mr. Earlforward stood on one leg
while Mrs. Arb deciphered the tablet on the west front:
"'The Priory Church of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, consecrated
by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 10th March, 1185.' Fancy that,
now! It doesn't look _quite_ that old. Fancy them knowing the day of the
month too!"
He was too preoccupied and tortured to instruct her. He would have led
her home then; but she saw in the distance at the other side of St.
John's Square a view of St. John's Gate, the majestic relic of the
Priory. Quite properly she said that she must see it close. Quite
properly she thanked him for a most interesting promenade, most
interesting.
"And me living in London off and on all my life! They do say you can't
see the wood for the trees, don't they?"
But the journey across the huge irregular Square cut in two by a great
avenue was endless to Mr. Earlforward. Then she must needs go under the
gateway into a street that seemed to fascinate her. For there was an
enormous twilit shoeing-forge next door to the Chancery of the Order of
St. John of Jerusalem, and though it was Sunday morning the air rang
with the hammering of a blacksmith who held a horse's hind leg between
his knees. Then she caught the hum of unseen machinery and inquired
about it. Then the signs over the places of business attracted her; she
became charmingly girlish.
"'Rouge. Wholesale only.' 'Glass matchers to the trade.' 'I want five
million moleskins and ten million rabbitskins. Do not desert your old
friend. Cash on the nail.' And painted too, on a board! Not just
written! 'Gorgonzola cheese manufacturers.' Oh! The mere thought of it!
No, I shall never touch Gorgonzola again after this! I couldn't! But, of
course, I see there _must_ be places like these in a place like London.
Only it's too funny seeing them all together. 'Barclay's Bank.' Well,
it would be! Those banks are everywhere in these days. I do believe
there are more banks than A.B.C. shops and Lyonses. You look at any nice
corner site, and before you can say knife there's a bank on it. I
mistrust those banks. They do what they like. When I go into my bank
somehow they make me feel as if I'd done something wrong, or at least,
I'd better mind what I was about; and they look at you superior as if
you were asking a favour. Oh, very polite! But so condescending."
A shrewd woman! A woman certainly not without ideas! And he perceived,
dimly through the veil of his physical pain, that their intimacy was
developing on the right lines. He would have been joyous but for the
apprehension of her selling the business and vanishing from him, and but
for the pain. The latter was now the worst affliction. Riceyman Steps
seemed a thousand miles off, through a Sabbath-enchanted desert of stone
and asphalt.
When they returned into St. John's Square a taxicab with its flag up
stood terribly inviting. Paradise, surcease from agony, for one shilling
and perhaps a two-penny tip! But he would not look at it. He could not.
He preferred the hell in which he was. The grand passion which had
rendered all his career magnificent, and every hour of all his days
interesting and beautiful, demanded and received an intense, devotional
loyalty; it recompensed him for every ordeal, mortification, martyrdom.
He proudly passed the taxicab with death in his very stomach. Nowhere
was there a chance of rest! Not a seat! Not a rail! Mrs. Arb had
inveighed against the lack of amenities in the parish and district. No
cinemas, no theatre, no music-halls, no cafés! But Mr. Earlforward
realized the ruthless, stony, total inhospitality of the district far
more fully than Mrs. Arb could ever have done. He was like a weakening
bird out of sight of land above the surface of the ocean.
He led Mrs. Arb down towards the nearest point of Farringdon Road,
though this was not the shortest way home. The tram-cars stopped at the
corner. Every one of them would deposit him at his own door. Paradise
for one penny! No, twopence; because he would have to pay for Mrs. Arb!
He had thought to defeat his passion at this corner. He was mistaken. He
could not. He had, after all his experience, misjudged the power of his
passion. He was as helpless as the creatures who were beginning to
gather at the iron-barred doors of the public-houses, soon to open for a
couple of too short hours; and also he had the secret ecstasy which they
had. He could scarcely talk now, and each tram that passed him in his
slow and endless march gave him a spasm of mingled bitterness and
triumph. His fear now was lest his grand passion should on this occasion
be overcome by bodily weakness. He did not desire it to be overcome. He
desired it to conquer even if it should kill him.
"I'm afraid I've walked you too far," said Mrs. Arb.
"Why?"
"I thought you were limping a bit."
"Oh no! I always limp a bit. Accident. Long time ago." And he smartened
his gait.
They reached Riceyman Steps in silence. He had done it! His passion had
forced him to do it! His passion had won! There were two Mr.
Earlforwards: one splendidly uplifted, the other ready to faint from
pain and fatigue. The friends disappeared, each into the solitude of his
own establishment. In the afternoon Mr. Earlforward heard a sharp knock
on his front-door; it was repeated before he could get downstairs; and
when he opened the door he opened it to nobody; but Mrs. Arb was just
entering her shop. He called out, and she returned.
"I was a bit anxious about your leg," she said, so brightly and kindly,
"so I thought I'd step across and inquire."
"Quite all right again now, thank you." (An exaggeration.)
How delightful of her! How feminine! He could hardly believe it! He was
tremendously flattered. She could not after all slip through his
fingers, whatever happened! They chatted for a few moments, and then
each disappeared a second time into the recondite, inviolate solitude of
his own establishment.
XIV
A MAN'S PRIVATE LIFE
One morning in November, at a little past eight o'clock, Mrs. Arb,
watching from behind the door of her yet unopened shop, saw Mr.
Earlforward help Elsie to carry out the empty bookstand and set it down
in front of the window, and then, with overcoat, muffler and umbrella,
depart from Riceyman Steps on business. Mrs. Arb immediately unlocked
her door, went out just as she was--hatless, coatless, gloveless,
wearing a white apron--locked her door, and walked across to Mr.
Earlforward's. Elsie had already begun to fill the bookstand with books
which overnight had been conveniently piled near the entrance of the
shop.
"Good morning, Elsie. Dull morning, isn't it? Is master up yet?" said
Mrs. Arb vivaciously, rubbing her hands in the chilly, murky dawn, and
brightening the dawn.
"Oh, 'm! He's gone out. I don't expect him back till eleven. It's one of
his buying mornings, ye see."
"Oh, _dear_, dear!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed, with cheerful resignation. "And
I've only got ten minutes. Well, I haven't really got that. Shop ought
to be open now. But I thought I'd let 'em wait a bit this morning."
She glanced anxiously at her own establishment to see whether any
customer had come down the steps from the square. But, in truth, as she
had now sold the business, and the premises, and was to give possession
in a few weeks, she was not genuinely concerned about the possible loss
of profit on an ounce or two ounces of tea. She wandered with apparent
aimlessness into Mr. Earlforward's shop.
"Did you want to see him particular, 'm?"
"I won't say so particular as all that. So you look after the shop when
Mr. Earlforward is out, Elsie?"
"It's like this, 'm. All the books is marked inside, and some outside.
If anybody comes in that looks respectable, I ask 'em to look round for
themselves, and if they take a book they pay me, and I ask 'em to write
down the name of it on a bit of paper." She pointed to some small
memorandum sheets prepared from old unassorted envelopes which had been
cut open and laid flat, with pencil close by. "If it's some regular
customer like, that _must_ see Mr. Earlforward himself, I ask 'em to
write their names down. And if I don't like the look of anybody, I tell
'em I don't know anything, and out they go."
"What a good arrangement!" said Mrs. Arb approvingly. "But if you have
to attend to the shop, how can you do the cleaning and so on?"
Elsie's ingenuous, kind face showed distress; her dark-blue eyes
softened in solicitude.
"Ah, 'm! There you've got me. I can't. I can only clean the shop these
mornings, and not much of that neither, because I must keep my hands dry
for customers."
Mrs. Arb, vaguely smiling to herself, trotted to and fro in the gloomy
shop, which had the air of a crypt, except that in these days crypts are
usually lighted by electricity, and the shop was lighted by nature alone
on this dark morning. She peered, bending forward, into the dark spaces
between the bays, and descried the heaps of books on the floor. The dirt
and the immense disorder almost frightened her. She had not examined the
inside of the shop before--had, indeed, previously entered it only once,
when she was in no condition to observe. Mr. Earlforward had never
seized an occasion to invite her within.
"This will want some putting straight," she said, "if ever it is put
straight."
"And well you may say it, 'm," Elsie replied compassionately. "He's
always trying to get straight, 'specially lately, 'm. We did get one
room straight upstairs, but it meant letting all the others go. Between
you and me, he'll never get straight. But he has hopes, and it's no use
saying anything to him."
"I suppose you can do this room, too, on his buying mornings," said Mrs.
Arb, peeping into Mr. Earlforward's private back-room from which the
shop and the shop-door could be kept under observation.
"Oh, 'm! He wouldn't let me. He won't have anything touched in that
room."
"Then who does it?"
"He does it himself, 'm--when it is done."
"Does he!" murmured Mrs. Arb in a peculiar tone.
The bookshelves went up to the ceiling on every side. The floor was
thickly strewn with books, the table also. Chairs also. The blind lay
crumpled on the book-covered window-sill. The window was obscured by
dirt. The ceiling was a blackish-grey. A heavy deposit of black dust
covered all things. The dreadful den expressed intolerably to Mrs. Arb
the pathos of the existence of a man who is determined to look after
himself. It convicted a whole sex of being feckless, foolish, helpless,
infantile, absurd. Mrs. Arb and Elsie exchanged glances. Elsie blushed.
"Yes. I'm that ashamed of it, 'm!" said Elsie. "But you know what they
are!"
Mrs. Arb gave two short nods. She moved her hand as if to plumb the
layer of dust with one feminine finger, but refrained; she dared not.
"And do you do his cooking, too?" she asked.
"Well, 'm. He gets his own breakfast, and he makes his own bed--it's
always done before I come of a morning--and he cleans his own boots. I
begin his dinner, but, seeing as I go at twelve, he finishes it. He gets
his own tea. I must say he isn't what you call a big eater."
"Seems to me it's all very cleverly organized."
"Oh, it is, 'm! There's not many gentlemen could manage as he does. But
it's a dreadful pity. Makes me fair cry sometimes. And him so clean and
neat himself, too."
"Yes," said Mrs. Arb, agreeing that the contrast between the master and
his home was miraculous, awful, and tragic.
"I suppose I'd better not go upstairs as he isn't here, Elsie?"
The two women exchanged more glances. Elsie perfectly comprehended the
case of Mrs. Arb, and sympathized with her. Mrs. Arb was being courted.
Mrs. Arb had come to no decision. Mrs. Arb desired as much information
as possible before coming to a decision. Women had the right to look
after themselves against no matter what man. Women were women, and men
were men. The Arb-Earlforward affair was crucial for both parties.
"Oh! I think you might, 'm. But I can't go with you." Sex-loyalty had
triumphed over a too-strict interpretation of the duty of the employed
to the employer. A conspiracy had been set up.
Mrs. Arb had to step over hummocks of books in order to reach the foot
of the stairs. The left-hand half of every step of the stairs was
stacked with books--cheap editions of novels in paper jackets, under
titles such as "Just a Girl," "Not Like Other Girls," "A Girl Alone."
Weak but righteous and victorious girls crowded the stairs from top to
bottom, so that Mrs. Arb could scarcely get up. The landing also was
full of girls. The front-room on the first floor was, from the evidence
of its furniture, a dining-room, though not used as such. The massive
mahogany table was piled up with books, as also the big sideboard, the
mantelpiece, various chairs. The floor was carpeted with books. Less
dust than in the den below, but still a great deal. The Victorian
furniture was "good"; it was furniture meant to survive revolutions and
conflagrations and generations; it was everlasting furniture; it would
command respect through any thickness of dust.
The back-room, with quite as large a number of books as the front-room,
but even less dust, was a bedroom. The very wide bed had been neatly
made. Mrs. Arb turned down the corner of the coverlet; a fairly clean
pillow-slip, no sheets, only blankets! She drew open drawers in a great
mahogany chest. Two of them were full of blue suits, absolutely new. In
another drawer were at least a dozen quite new grey flannel shirts. A
wardrobe was stuffed with books.
Coming out of the bedroom, she perceived between it and the stairs a
long, narrow room. Impossible to enter this room because of books; but
Mrs. Arb did the impossible, and after some excavation with her foot
disclosed a bath, which was full to the brim and overflowing with books.
Now Mrs. Arb was pretty well accustomed to baths; she was not aware of
the extreme rarity of baths in Clerkenwell, and hence she could not
adequately appreciate the heroism of a hero who, possessing such a
treasure, had subdued it to the uses of mere business. Nevertheless, her
astonishment and amaze were sufficiently noticeable, and she felt,
disturbingly and delightfully, the thrill of surprising clandestinely
the secrets of a man's intimate personal existence.
Then she caught the sound of dropping water; it was on the second-floor,
in a room shaped like the bathroom, a room with two shelves, a gas-ring,
and a sink. The water was dropping with a queer reverberation on to the
sink from a tap above. There were a few plates, cups, saucers, jugs,
saucepans, dishes; half a loaf of bread, a slice of cooked bacon; there
was no milk, no butter. His kitchen and larder! One gas-ring! No
fireplace! Mrs. Arb was impressed.
The other rooms on the second-floor were full of majestic furniture,
books and dust. One of them had recently been cleaned and tidied, but
dozens of books still lay on the floor. She picked up a book, a large,
thick volume, for no other reason than that the cover bore a
representation of a bird. It was a heavy book, with many coloured
pictures of birds. She thought it was quite a pretty thing to look at.
By accident she noticed the price pencilled inside the front cover.
£40. She was not astonished nor amazed--she was staggered. Mrs. Arb had
probably not read ten books since girlhood. To her, reading was a refuge
from either idleness or life. She was never idle, and she loved life.
Thus she condescended towards books. That any book, least of all a
picture-book of birds, could be worth £40 had not occurred to her mind.
(And this one lying on the floor!) Instantly, in spite of her
commonsense, she thought for a brief space of all the books in the
establishment as worth £40 apiece! Before returning down the
book-encumbered stairs, she paused on the top landing. Her throat was
coated with the dust which she had displaced in her passage through the
house. Her hands were very dirty and very cold--they shone with cold. No
fire could have burnt in any of those rooms for years. She dared not
touch the handrail of the staircase, even with her fingers all dirty.
She paused because she was disconcerted and wanted to arrange the
perplexing confusion of her thoughts. The more she reflected the better
she realized how strange and powerful and ruthless a person was Mr.
Earlforward. She admired, comprehended, sympathized, and yet was
intimidated. The character of the man was displayed beyond any
misunderstanding by the house with its revelations of his daily life;
but there was no clue to it in his appearance and deportment. She was
more than intimidated--she was frightened. Withal, the terror--for it
amounted to terror--fascinated her. She went down gingerly, hesitating
at every step.... At the bottom of the lower flight she heard, with new
alarm, the bland voice of Mr. Earlforward himself. He was talking with a
customer in his den.
"I'll slip out," she very faintly whispered to Elsie, who was sweeping
near the stairs. Elsie nodded--like a conspirator. But at the same
moment Mr. Earlforward and his customer emerged from the back room, and
Mrs. Arb was trapped.
"I didn't notice you come in," said the bookseller most amiably. "What
can I do for you?"
"Oh, thank you, but I only stepped across to speak to Elsie about
something."
The lie, invented on the instant, succeeded perfectly. And Elsie, the
honestest soul in Clerkenwell, gave it the support of her silence in the
great cause of women against men.
"I'm glad to see you in here," said Mr. Earlforward gently, having
dismissed the customer. "It's a bit of luck. I'd gone off for
Houndsditch, but I happened to meet someone on the road, and nothing
would do but I must come back with him. Come in here."
He drew her by the attraction of his small eyes into the back room.
Books had been tipped off one of the chairs on to the floor. She sat
down. Surely Mr. Earlforward was the most normal being in the world, the
mildest, the quietest, the easiest! But the bath, the kitchen, the
blankets, the filth, the food, the £40 book, and all those new suits and
new shirts! She had never even conceived such an inside of a house! She
could hardly credit her senses.
"I've wanted to see you in here, in this room," said Mr. Earlforward in
a warm voice. And then no more.
She could not withstand his melting glance. She knew that their
intimacy, having developed gradually through weeks, was startlingly on
the point of bursting into a new phase. The sense of danger with her, as
with nearly all women, was intermittent. The man was in love with her.
He was in her hands. What could she not do with him? Could she not
accomplish marvels? Could she not tame monsters? And she understood his
instincts; she shared them. And he was a rock of defence, shelter,
safety!... The alternative: solitude, celibacy, spinsterishness, eternal
self-defence, eternal misgivings about her security; horrible!
"I must be opening my shop," she said nervously.
"And I must be getting away again, too," he said, and put on his hat and
began to button his overcoat. Nothing more. But at the door he added:
"Maybe I'll come across and see you to-night, if it isn't intruding."
"You'll be very welcome, I'm sure," she answered, modestly smiling.
She was no better than a girl, then. She knew she had uttered the
deciding word of her fate. She trembled with apprehension and felicity.
He was a wonderful man and an enigma. He inspired love and dread. As the
day passed her feeling for him became intense. At closing time her
ecstatic heart was liquid with acquiescence. And she had, too, a bright,
adventurous valour, but shot through with forebodings.