PART IV

I

AT THE WINDOW

Elsie was cleaning the upper windows of T. T. Riceyman's, and she had

arrived at the second-floor spare-room, which had two windows, one on

King's Cross Road and the other on Riceyman Steps. (A third window, on

Riceyman Steps, had been bricked up, like two first-floor windows on

King's Cross Road, in the prehistoric ages of the house.) Two-thirds of

her body was dangerously projected over King's Cross Road, above the

thunder of the trams and the motor-lorries and the iron trotting of

cart-horses; the inferior third dangled within the room. She clung with

one powerful arm to woodwork or brickwork, while with the other she

wiped and rubbed the panes; the window-sill was the depository of a tin

can, a leather, and a cloth, each of which had to be manipulated with

care, lest by falling any of them should baptize or injure the

preoccupied passers-by whose varied top-knots and shoulders Elsie

glimpsed when she happened to look down. The windows of the house were

all sashed; to clean the upper half was fairly easy, but the lower half

could only be done by lifting it bit by bit into the place of the upper

half and pulling the latter down on to Elsie's legs. A difficult

operation, this cleaning, in addition to being risky to limb or even to

life. Elsie performed it with the exactest conscientiousness in the

dusty and cold north wind that swept through the canyon of King's Cross

Road.

She could see everything within the room. The orderly piles of books

ranged on the floor, and the array of provisional shelves which she and

her mistress had built upon odd volumes (still unsold) of _The

Illustrated, London News_. The top or covering plank had disappeared,

having been secretly removed, during the master's absence, and sawn and

chopped up for firewood in the cellar; for the master had decisively

discountenanced the purchase of more firewood, holding that somehow or

other the women could "manage"; they had managed. Elsie saw the door

open and her mistress enter with a plant-pot in either hand. Violet, all

aproned and wearing a renovated check frock, gave a start at the sight

of Elsie's legs.

"So here you are!" Elsie heard her voice coming weakly through the glass

into the uproar of the street. "And I've been looking for you

everywhere!"

That Elsie had been engaged upon the windows for quite three-quarters of

an hour was proof that a servant might go her own ways without

attracting the attention even of an employer who flattered herself on

missing nothing. Elsie wormed her body back within the room.

"Didn't you see me cleaning the outside of the shop windows, 'm?" she

asked, sedately benevolent. (She could clean the inside of the shop

windows only by special arrangement with the proprietor.)

"No, I did not. It's true I've had other matters to think about this

morning. Yes, it is! And why must you choose this morning for your

windows? You know it's your afternoon out, and there's a lot to do. But

perhaps you aren't going out, Elsie?"

"Well, 'm, I was thinking of going out," Elsie answered, bringing in the

tin can. "But I thought they looked so dirty."

Here Elsie was deceitful, or at best she was withholding part of the

truth. Mrs. Earlforward would not have guessed in a million guesses

Elsie's real reason for cleaning the windows on just that morning. The

real reason was that the vanished Joe had been famous for the

super-excellence of his window-cleaning. This day was the anniversary of

his disappearance. Elsie had no genuine expectation that he would

reappear. The notion of his return after precisely a year was merely

silly. She admitted it. And yet he might come back! If he did he would

find her in half an hour by inquiry, and if he did find her she could

not tolerate that he should find "her" windows dirty. He had an eye for

windows, and windows must shine for him. Thus mysteriously, mystically,

poetically, passionately did Elsie's devotion express itself.

"Now don't _shut_ the window!" Violet admonished her sharply. "You know

I want to put these plants out."

Elsie's eyes grew moist.

"How touchy the girl is this morning!" thought Violet. "If she had to

put up with what I have----"

And perhaps Violet was to be excused. How could she, with all her

commonsense and experience of mankind, divine that stodgy Elsie's

equanimity was at the mercy of any gust that windy morning? She could

not.

She established the plant-pots on the window-sill. She had bought bulbs

with the ten shillings so startlingly given to her by her husband, and

with his reluctant approval. She had scrubbed the old plant-pots,

stirred the soil in them, and embedded the bulbs. She put the pots out

in the day-time and brought them in at night; she watered them when

necessary in the bathroom. She tended them like a family of children.

All unseen, they were the romance of her daily existence, her refuge

from trouble, the balm of her anxieties. The sight of the clean,

symmetrically arranged pots on the sills might have given the idea that

a new era had set in for T. T. Riceyman's, that the terror of the curse

of its vice had been exorcized by the secret workings within those ruddy

pots. Violet hoped that it was so. But it was not so, and Elsie, in the

primeval quality of her instincts, knew that it was not so. The bulbs

were not pushing upwards to happiness; they were pushing upwards to

sinister consummations, the approach of which rendered them absurd. And

Elsie felt this too.

"Were you wanting me for anything particular, 'm?" Elsie asked, rather

contrite about her windows and eager to appease.

"Yes, I should think I _was_ wanting you for something! How dare you

give me this money you put on my dressing-table?" She spoke with nervous

exasperation, and produced from her pocket some coins wrapped in the bit

of paper in which Elsie had wrapped them an hour or two earlier--the

price of the ruined double saucepan, now replaced by Violet. "Take it

back. You ought to have known I should never let you pay for it."

This after she had most positively insisted that Elsie should repair out

of her resources the consequence of her unparalleled stupidity! The fact

was that Violet, unsentimental and hard as she could be, and generally

was, in "practical" matters, had been somewhat moved at the sight of the

poor little coins in the dirty paper, deposited in the bedroom dumbly,

without a word written or spoken. Also she happened that morning to be

in a frame of mind favourable to emotion of certain sorts. She sniffed

ominously, glancing at Elsie's face and glancing away. She could not

bear to think that the lovable, loyal, silly creature had seriously

intended to settle for the saucepan out of her wages.

Elsie, astonished and intimidated, took the money back as dumbly as she

had paid it out.

"I'm that sorry, 'm," she murmured simply.

The little episode was closed. And yet Violet sniffed again, and her

features slowly suffered distortion, and she began to cry. She was one

who "never cried," and this was her third crying within a week! In truth

it was not about the money at all that she had wanted to speak to Elsie.

She said indistinctly through her tears:

"He's not gone out this morning, Elsie; and he's not going out. He's

missing the sale. He says himself he's not well enough; that just means

not strong enough. And now he's sitting in the office trying to type,

and customers just have to come to _him_."

The secret that was no secret was suddenly out. There was in Elsie's

ingenuous dark-blue eyes such devotion, such reliability, such an

offering of soft comfort as Violet could not resist. The deep-rooted

suspiciousness which separates in some degree every woman from every

other woman dissolved away, and with it Violet's pride in her superior

station and Violet's self-sufficiency. The concealed yet notorious fact

that Violet lived in torment about her husband, that all was not well in

the placid household, was now openly admitted. In an instant Elsie,

ardently yielding herself to another's woe, quite forgot the rasping

harshness of Violet's recent onslaught. She was profoundly flattered.

And she was filled with an irrational gratitude because Violet had given

her the shelter of a sure, respectable home which knew not revolutions,

altercations, penury, debauchery, nor the heart-rending stridency of

enervated mothers and children.

"He's not himself, master isn't," she said gently.

"What do you mean--he's not himself?"

"I mean, he's not well, 'm."

"He'd be all right if he'd eat more--you know that as well as I do."

"Perhaps he hasn't got no appetite, 'm."

"Why shouldn't he have an appetite? He's never suffered from indigestion

in all his life; he says so himself."

"Yes, 'm. Not till lately."

"All this talk about saving ...!" said Violet, shrugging her shoulders

and wiping her eyes.

It was a curious thing to say, because there had never been any talk

about saving, and, even if there had been, clearly Elsie ought not to

have heard it. Nevertheless, she received the remark as of course,

nodding her head.

"What's the use of saving if you're killing yourself to do it?" Violet

proceeded impatiently.

Violet was referring, and Elsie knew that she was referring, to the

master's outburst on communism, with all its unspoken implications. They

had both been impressed at the time; Mr. Earlforward had convicted them

of sin. But now they were both femininely scornful of the silent

argument of the illogical male. What, indeed, was the use of fatally

depriving yourself now in order not to have to deprive yourself later

on? There was something wrong in the master's mysterious head.

"If you could get somebody to talk to him, 'm, _somebody from outside_."

Elsie stressed these last three words, thereby proving that her

simplicity had led her straight to the heart of the matter. The

atmosphere of the sealed house was infected by the strangeness of the

master, who himself, in turn, was influenced by it. Fresh air, new

breath, a great wind, was needed to dispel the corruption. The house was

suffocating its owners. An immense deterioration had occurred,

unperceived till now. Violet was afraid; she was aghast; she realized

the change, not fully, but sufficiently to frighten her. The gravity of

the danger dried up her tears.

"Yes," she assented.

"The doctor--Dr. Raste."

"But do you think he'd let me send for the doctor--for one moment! And

if I did send, do you think he'd see him! It's out of the question!"

"You might have the doctor for yourself, 'm. You might send me for him,

and then he could see master by accident like."

"But I'm not ill, my girl," Violet protested, though she was impressed

by the kind creature's resourcefulness.

"Oh, _mum_! Why, you've been ill for weeks!"

Violet blushed like a culprit.

"What in the name of goodness are you talking about?" she demanded. "Of

course, I'm not ill!" They were all the same, servants. They never

understood that familiarity from an employer should not be answered by

familiarity.

"Sorry, 'm," said Elsie meekly, but still with a very slight benevolent

obstinacy, as one who would withdraw and wouldn't withdraw.

Violet stared half a moment at her, and then abruptly walked out of the

room. The interview was getting to be too much for her. She could not

stand any more of it--not one more word of it. She foresaw the

probability of a complete humiliating breakdown if she tried herself too

far. A few seconds later she popped her head in at the door again and

said firmly but quite pleasantly:

"Now, Elsie, you'd better be coming downstairs. There's nothing else up

here to keep you."

As a fact, Elsie was dawdling, in reflection.

II

ELSIE'S MOTIVE

There was only one exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises--through the

shop. Once a door had given direct access to King's Cross Road, but so

long ago that the new bricks which had bricked it up were now scarcely

distinguishable from the surrounding bricks. No one could have guessed

at a glance that the main façade of the building had been shifted round,

for some reason lost in antiquity, from King's Cross Road to Riceyman

Steps; or that the little oblong, railing-enclosed strip of grass, which

was never cut nor clipped nor trodden by human foot, had once been a

"front garden." The back parts of T. T. Riceyman's provided no escape

save through a little yard, over high brick walls, into the back parts

of other properties inhabited by unknown and probably pernickety persons

and their children.

As there was only the shop exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises, it

could not be concealed from the powers that Elsie went forth that same

afternoon dressed in her best. Unusual array, for the girl generally

began half-holidays by helping her friends, to whom she was very

faithful, in Riceyman Square, either by skilled cleansing labour in the

unclean dirty house or, as occasion might demand, by taking children out

for an excursion into the more romantic leafy regions of Clerkenwell up

towards the north-east, such as Myddelton Square, where there was room

to play and opportunity for tumbling about in pleasant outdoor dirt.

Mrs. Earlforward nodded to Elsie as she departed, and Elsie blushed,

smiling. But Mrs. Earlforward asked no curious question, friendly or

inquisitive. She knew her place, as Elsie knew Elsie's. She knew that

it was not "wise" to meddle. Servants must do what they liked with their

own; they were mighty independent, even the best of them, these days.

Not a word, save on household matters, had passed between the two women

since the scene of the morning. Mr. Earlforward was still dealing with

customers in the office; his voice, rather enfeebled, seemed blander

than ever.

"I hope it will be fine for you," Violet called after Elsie at the

shop-door. Wonderful, the implications in the tone of that

briefly-expressed amiability! It was as if Violet had said: "I know

you're up to something out of the ordinary. I don't know what it is, and

I don't seek to inquire. I believe in people minding their own business.

But you might have given me a hint, and anyhow I can see through you,

though you mayn't think it. Anyhow, in spite of the cold wind and the

big moving clouds, I hope you won't be inconvenienced in your very

private affairs by the weather."

Elsie comprehended all that Violet had not said, and her blushes flared

out again.

No sooner had she turned the corner into the King's Cross Road than she

ceased to be the "general" at T. T. Riceyman's, and became the image of

the wife of a superior artisan with a maternal expression indicating a

small family left at home, a sense of grave responsibilities, an ability

to initiate and execute, considerable dignity. She had put her gloves

on. She carried her umbrella. She had massiveness, and looked more than

her age; indeed, she looked close on thirty. If she had blushed to

Violet, it was because of her errand, which, had Violet known of it,

would have set up serious friction. Elsie was going to see Dr. Raste

about the state of health of T. T. Riceyman's. An impossible errand, of

course! Fancy a servant interfering thus in the most intimate affairs of

her employers. But the welfare of her employers was as dear to Elsie as

her own. Her finest virtue was benevolence, and she was quite ready to

affront danger to a benevolent end. At the same time it has to be

admitted that Elsie's motive in going to Myddelton Square, without a

train of children, to see Dr. Raste, was not a single motive. Probably

in human activity there is no such a thing as a single motive. For Elsie

this day was not chiefly the day on which Mrs. Earlforward had so

piteously broken down before her as to Mr. Earlforward's physical and

mental condition--it was chiefly the anniversary of Joe's disappearance.

The fact of the anniversary filled all the horizon of Elsie's thoughts,

and at intervals it surged inwards upon her from every quarter of the

compass and overwhelmed her--and then it would recede again. Joe had

been in the service of Dr. Raste. He had lived at Dr. Raste's.

Therefore, it would be natural for him, if he reappeared, to reappear

first at Dr. Raste's. He would not reappear; it was inconceivable that

he should reappear. This anniversary notion of hers, as she had often

said to herself, was ridiculous. Much more likely that Joe had married

some other girl by this time, for Elsie knew that he was not a man

capable of doing without women. He had probably settled down somewhere.

Where? Where could he be?... And yet he _might_ reappear. The

anniversary notion might not be so ridiculous after all. You never knew.

And herein was part of her motive for going to Dr. Raste's.

The doctor's house--or, rather, the house of which he occupied the lower

part--was one of the larger houses in the historic Myddelton Square, and

stood at the corner of the Square and New River Street. The clock of St.

Mark's showed two minutes to the hour, but already patients had

collected in the ante-room to the surgery in the side-street. Elsie

hesitated exactly at the corner. From detailed and absorbing talks about

nothing with Joe, she knew the doctor's habits pretty well. The doctor

was due to be entering his surgery for the afternoon session. And there

he was--it seemed almost a miracle--approaching from the eastward! A

little girl, all thin legs and thin arms, was trotting by his side, and

the retinue consisted of a fox-terrier, who was joyfully chasing a few

selected leaves among the thousands blown across the square by the

obstreperous wind. The doctor and his little girl stopped at their

front-door.

"Very well," Elsie heard the doctor say, "you can give Jack his bath,

but you must change your frock first, and if there's any mess of any

sort I shan't take your part when mummy comes home."

The dog stood still, listening, and the doctor turned to him and

ejaculated loudly and mischievously:

"Bath! Bath!"

Jack's tail dropped, and in deep sulks he walked off towards the

railings in the middle of the square.

"Come here, sir" commanded the doctor firmly.

"Come here, sir!" shrieked the little girl in imitation.

Jack obeyed, totally disillusioned about the interestingness of dead

leaves, and slipped in a flash down the area steps, the child after him.

Dr. Raste moved towards the surgery, and saw Elsie in his path.

"No! No!" he said to her, kindly, humanly, for he had not yet had time

to lose his fatherhood. "This won't do, you know. You must take your

turn with the rest." He raised his hand in protest. He was acquainted

with all the wiles of patients who wanted illicitly to forestall other

patients.

"It isn't for myself, sir," said Elsie, with puckered brow, very

nervous. "It's for Mr. Earlforward--at least, Mrs. Earlforward."

"Oh!" The doctor halted.

"You don't remember me, sir. Mrs. Sprickett, sir. Elsie, sir."

"Yes, of course." He ought to have proceeded: "By the way, Elsie, Joe's

come back to-day." It would have been too wonderful if he had said that.

But he didn't. He merely said: "Well, what's it all about?" somewhat

impatiently, for at that moment the clock struck.

"Mr. Earlforward's that bad, sir. Can't fancy his food. And Mrs.

Earlforward's bad too----"

"Mrs. Earlforward? Is he married, then?"

"Oh, yes, sir. He married Mrs. Arb, as was; she kept that

confectioner's shop opposite in the Steps. But she sold it. And I'm the

servant, sir, now. It'll soon be a year ago, sir."

"Really, really! All right. I'll look in--some time before six. Tell

them I'll look in."

"Well, sir," said Elsie, hesitating and blushing very red, "missis

didn't exactly send me, in a manner of speaking. She says master won't

have a doctor, she says. But I was thinking if you could----"

"Do you mean to say you've come up here to tell me about your master and

mistress without orders?"

"Well, sir----"

"But--but--but--but--but," Dr. Raste spluttered with the utmost

rapidity, startled for once out of his inhuman imperturbability by this

monstrous act of Elsie's. He had no child nor dog now. He was the medico

chemically pure. "Did you suppose that I can come like that without

being called in? I never heard of such a thing. What next, I wonder?"

"He's very bad, sir, master is."

The slim little man stood up threateningly against Elsie's mighty

figure.

"What do I care? If people need a doctor, they must send for him."

Dr. Raste walked off down New River Street, but after a few steps turned

again.

"Haven't they got any friends you could speak to?" he asked in a tone

still hard, but with a touch of comprehending friendliness in it. This

touch brought tears to Elsie's silly eyes.

"No, sir."

"No friends?"

"No, sir."

"Nobody ever calls?"

"No, sir."

"And they never go out?"

"No, sir."

"Not even to the cinema, and so on?"

"Oh, never, sir."

"Well, I'm very sorry, but I can't do anything." He left her and leapt

up his surgery steps.

Not a word about Joe. Not a word, even, of inquiry! And yet he knew that

Joe and she had been keeping company! And he had been so fond of Joe. He

had thought the world of Joe. He might, at least, have said: "Seen

anything of poor Joe lately?" But nothing! Nothing! Joe might never have

existed for all the interest the doctor showed in him. It was

desolating. She was a fool. She was a fool to try to get the doctor to

call without a proper summons, and she was thrice a fool to have hoped

or fancied that Joe would turn up again, on either the anniversary of

his vanishing or any other day. The reaction from foolish hope to

despair was terrible. She had known that it would be. The whole sky fell

down on her and overwhelmed her in choking folds of night, and there was

not a gleam anywhere. No glimmer for T. T. Riceyman's. No glimmer for

herself. ... And then she did detect a pin-point of light. The day was

not yet finished. Joe might still ... Renewal of utter foolishness!

III

CHARITY

A dramatic event occurred that same afternoon at the shop. Violet and

Henry were together in the office, where the electricity had just been

turned on; the shop itself was still depending on nature for light, and

lay somewhat obscure in the dusk. Husband and wife were in an

affectionate mood, for Violet as usual had been beaten by the man's

extraordinary soft obstinacy. She had had more than one scene of

desperation with him about his health and his treatment of himself, but

nobody can keep on fighting a cushion for ever. Henry had worn her down

into a good temper, into a condition of reassurance and even optimism.

He had, in fact, by patience convinced her that his indisposition was

temporary and such as none can hope to escape; and that he undoubtedly

possessed a constitution of iron. The absence of Elsie helped the

intimacy of the pair; they enjoyed being alone, unobserved, free from

the constraint of the eyes of a third person who was here, there and

everywhere. The trouble was that as soon as the affectionate mood had

been established Violet wanted to begin her tactics and her antics all

over again.

"You know, darling," she said, playful and serious, sitting on the edge

of the desk by his side in a manner most unmatronly. "Either you eat

to-morrow, or I shall have the doctor in. Oh! I shall have the doctor

in! It's for you to decide, but I've made up my mind. You must

admit----"

And then the shop door opened and someone entered. Violet sprang off the

desk to the switches, illuminated the shop, and beheld Dr. Raste. Henry

also beheld Dr. Raste. Although a perfectly innocent woman, Violet's

face at once changed to that of a wicked conspirator who has been caught

in the act. Try as she would she could not get rid of that demeanour of

guilt, and the more she tried the less she succeeded. She dared not look

at Henry. Certainly she could not murmur to Henry; "I swear to you I

didn't send for him. His coming's just as much a surprise to me as it is

to you." She thought: "This is that girl Elsie's doing." And she was

angry and resentful against Elsie, and yet timorously glad that Elsie

had been interfering. What Henry was thinking no one could guess.

Henry's mind to him a kingdom was, and a kingdom never invaded. All that

could be positively stated of Henry was that the moment he recognized

the doctor he rose vigorously from his chair and limped about with

vivacity to prove that he was not an invalid, or in any way in need of

any doctor. And, strange to say, he really felt quite well. Dr. Raste

startled Violet by offering to shake hands.

"Ha! How d'ye do, Mrs. Earlforward," said he, in his sprightly,

professional, high-voiced style. "Not seen you for a long time."

Violet recalled the Sunday morning in Riceyman Square when he had spoken

to Henry on the pavement. She was happy then, and expectant of

happiness. She was girlish then, exuberant, dominating, self-willed,

free. None could withstand her. A year ago! The change in twelve months

suddenly presented itself to her with a sinister significance; but she

imagined that the change was confined to her circumstances, and that an

unchanged Violet had survived.

The doctor with his fresh eyes saw a shrunken woman, subject to some

kind of neurosis which he could not diagnose. He greeted the oncoming

Mr. Earlforward, and shook a hand of parchment. Mr. Earlforward's

appearance indeed astonished him, and he said to himself that perhaps he

had done well to call, and that anyhow Elsie had not exaggerated her

report, Mr. Earlforward was worse than shrunken--he was emaciated; his

jaws were hollowed, his little eyes had receded, his complexion was

greyish, his lips were pale and dry--the lower lip had lost its heavy

fullness; his ears were nearly white. And there he was moving nervously

about in the determination to be in excellent health in the presence of

the doctor. Amazing, thought Dr. Raste, that Mrs. Earlforward had not

summoned medical assistance weeks earlier! But then Mrs. Earlforward saw

her husband every day and nearly all day. Amazing that no customer had

dropped a word of alarm! But then Mr. Earlforwaid's amiable and bland

relations with customers were not such as to permit any kind of

intimacy. You got a certain distance with Mr. Earlforward, but you never

got any further.

"You remember I bought a Shakspere here last year," Dr. Raste began

cheerily, and somewhat loudly. (He often spoke more loudly than he need:

result of imposing himself on the resistant stupidity of the

proletariat.) Relief spread through the shop like a sweet odour. The

professional man's visit was a pure coincidence after all. Violet ceased

to look guilty. Henry ceased to ape the person of vigorous health.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Earlforward; and to his wife: "Just reach down that

'Shakspere with Illustrations,' will you?"

"Shakspere with Illustrations" was the shop's title for the work

(Valpy's edition of Shakspere's plays and poems), because these three

words were the only words on the binding.

"You don't mean to say you've not sold it yet--a year, isn't it?" cried

Dr. Raste.

And Mr. Earlforward recalled from their previous interview in the shop

an impression that the doctor was apt to be impudent. What right had the

man to express surprise at the work not having been sold? Mr.

Earlforward had in stock books bought ten years ago, fifteen years ago.

"I could have sold it," said he. "But the truth is I've been keeping it

for you. I felt sure you'd be looking in one of these days. I meant to

drop you a postcard to say I'd found it; but somehow----"

All this was true. For at least ten months Mr. Earlforward had intended

to drop the postcard, and had never dropped it. Yet his conviction that

one day he would drop it had remained fresh and strong throughout the

period.

"Here! It's up in that corner, my dear," said Mr. Earlforward.

"Yes, I know. I'm just going to get the steps."

"Where are they? They ought to be here."

"I don't know. Elsie must have had them for her windows, and forgotten

to bring them back."

"Tut, tut!" Mr. Earlforward blandly expostulated.

"Shakspere's been having considerable success in my house," Dr. Raste

went on, when the two men were alone, with an arch smile at his own

phrasing. "You'd scarcely believe it, but my little daughter simply

devours him. And as it's her birthday next week I thought I'd give her

my Globe edition for herself, and get another one with a wee bit larger

type for myself. My eyes aren't what they were.... Simply devours him!

Scarcely believe it, would you?" The doctor was growing human. His eyes

sparkled with ingenuous paternal pride. Then he checked himself.

"I notice your old clock isn't going," said he, in a more conventional,

a conversation-making tone, and glanced at his wrist.

"No," Mr. Earlforward quietly admitted, thinking: "What's it got to do

with you--my 'old clock' not going?" The clock had not gone for months.

Violet, who had further illuminated the shop as she passed out, was

rather long in returning, partly because she had had to hunt for the

steps, and partly because she had popped into the bedroom to see that it

was in order. Dr. Raste gallantly took the volumes from her as she stood

half-way up the steps.

"Fifteen volumes--that's right," said Mr. Earlforward. "I told you there

were eight, didn't I?"

"Did you?" said Dr. Raste, wondering at the bookseller's memory.

"Yes. I was mixing it up with another edition. Easy to make a mistake of

that kind. Well, just look at it. Biography. Notes. Beautiful clear

type. Nice, modest binding, in very good taste. Light and handy to hold.

Clean as a pin. Nearly two hundred illustrations--from the Boydell

edition. I told you Flaxman's illustrations, didn't I? Yes, I did. That

was wrong. I somehow got the idea they were Flaxman's because they're in

outline. But I see there's quite a selection of artists." He peered at

the names engraved in microscopic characters under the illustrations,

and passed on volume after volume to the prospective customer. "Pretty

edition."

A silence. Violet stood attendant--an acolyte, submissive,

watchful--while Henry did business.

"I'm afraid it'll be too dear for my purse," said the doctor, affrighted

by the thought of nearly two hundred illustrations from Boydell.

"Twenty-five shillings."

"I'd better take it," said the doctor, looking up from the books into

Mr. Earlforward's little eyes; he was startled at the lowness of the

price, and immediately counted out the money--two notes and two new

half-crowns, which Mr. Earlforward gazed at passionately, and in a

bravura of self-control left lying on the desk.

"Make them up into two parcels, will you?" said the doctor. "I'll carry

them home myself. I suppose you wouldn't be able to deliver to-night?

Too late?"

"Yes. Too late to-night, I'm afraid," answered Mr. Earlforward calmly,

well aware that he had long since ceased to deliver any goods under any

circumstances. "My dear, some nice brown paper and string. Oh! The

string's here, isn't it?" He bent down to a drawer of the desk, and drew

out a tangle of all manner of pieces of string.

Violet now became important in the episode, and took charge of the

wrapping; her mien showed a conviction that she could make up a parcel

as well as her husband.

"Hospitals are getting in a bad way," said Dr. Raste, and Mr.

Earlforward thought to himself that the doctor was one of those

distressing persons who from nervousness could not endure a silence.

"Yes?"

"Yes. Haven't you read about it in the papers?"

"Well, I may have seen something about it," said Mr. Earlforward. But he

had not seen anything about it, nor did he care anything about it. He

held the common view that hospitals were maintained by magic, or if not

by magic, then by the cheques of millionaires in great houses in the

West End who paid subscriptions as they paid their rates and taxes.

"Yes. The London Hospital--our largest hospital--unparalleled work in

the East End, you know--the London's thinking of closing a hundred beds.

A calamity, but there seems to be no alternative. My wife's interesting

herself in Lord Knutsford's special effort to save the beds; she used to

be on the staff. I was just wondering whether you'd care to give me

something for her list. ... I thought I might mention it--as I'm not

here professionally. Here as a customer, you see." He gave one of his

little, nervous laughs.

Mr. Earlforward perceived that the doctor had not been merely breaking a

silence. He perceived also that Violet, mysteriously excited by the name

of the legendary subscription-collecting peer who directed the London

Hospital, was "willing" him to practise charity on this occasion. He

keenly regretted, as the doctor developed his subject, that he had left

the price of the Shakspere on the desk. There it lay, waiting to be

given, asking to be given! There it lay and could not be ignored. The

doctor was, of course, being impudent again; but there the money lay.

Half a crown? Too little. Two half-crowns, those bright and lovely

objects? Too little--or at any rate too little so long as the notes lay

beside them. A note? Impossible! Fantastic! The situation was

desperate, and Mr. Earlforward in agony. He could not in decency

refuse--he a Londoner, fond of London and its institutions--he an

established tradesman; neither could he part with his money. He was

about to martyrize himself; his hand, each finger separately suffering,

hovered over one of the notes, when deliverance occurred to him.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said he, and picked up a thin, tattered,

quarto volume that was lying on the desk. "I'll make you a sporting

offer. Here's one of the earliest collected editions of Gray's Poems."

"Gray? Gray?" reflected the doctor, and aloud: "Elegy in a Country

Churchyard sort of thing?"

"Yes. This is the Glasgow edition, and I can't remember now whether it

or the London edition was the first--the first collected edition, I

mean. They are both dated 1768. I'll give you this for your hospital.

You take it to Sotherans or Bain, and see what it'll fetch."

The doctor opened the book.

"'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

And waste its sweetness on the desart air.'"

he read. "Funny way of spelling 'desert,' _a_, r, t. But this is very

interesting. 'Full many a flower----' So that's Gray, is it? Very

interesting." He was quite uplifted by the sight of familiar words in an

old book. "It's very clean _in_side. Suppose it's worth a lot of money.

I'm sure you're very generous, very generous indeed." Violet paused in

making up the second parcel.

"Well," said Mr. Earlforward, uplifted in his turn by reason of the

epithet "generous" applied to him. "I don't know without inquiring just

what it _is_ worth. That's the sporting offer."

"I wouldn't mind giving a couple of pounds for it myself. I should like

it.

"'Far from the madding crowd----,'

"Well, well! And one of the earlier editions, you say?"

"Not earliest of the Elegy. Earliest of the collected poems."

"Just so! Just so! Two pounds a fair price?"

"I'm afraid it's worth more than that, at the worst," said Mr.

Earlforward, suddenly grieved. He saw to what an extent he was making a

fool of himself--losing pounds in order to save a ten-shilling note!

Ridiculous! Idiotic! Mad! True, he had bought the book for ten

shillings, and he strove to regard the transaction from the angle of his

own disbursement. But he could not deny that he was losing pounds. Yes,

pounds and pounds. Still, he could not have let the ten-shilling note

go. A ten-shilling note was a treasure, whereas a book was only a book.

Illogical, but instinct was more powerful than logic.

"Ah!" said the doctor. "If it's worth more than two pounds I must sell

it. You're generous. Mr. Earlforward, you're generous. Thank you."

Violet rearranged the second parcel, including the Gray in it, while Dr.

Raste expanded further in gratitude.

"That type won't strain anybody's eyes," Mr. Earlforward commented on

the Gray as it disappeared within brown paper.

"No."

"I'm thankful to say _my_ eyesight doesn't give me any trouble now."

"Um!" said the doctor, gazing at the bookseller, and taking the chance

to feel his way towards the matter which had brought him into the shop.

"I shouldn't say you were looking _quite_ the man you were when I saw

you last."

"No, he is not!" Violet put in eagerly.

"Oh! I'm all right," Mr. Earlforward, defending himself against yet

another example of the doctor's impudence. "All I want is more exercise,

and I can't get that because of my knee, you know."

"Yes," said the doctor. "I've always noticed you limp. You ought to go

to Barker. I shouldn't be surprised if he could put you right in ten

minutes. Not a qualified man, of course; but wonderful cures!... You

might never limp again."

"But he charges very heavy, doesn't he? I've heard of fifty pounds."

"I don't know. Supposing he does? Well worth it, isn't it, to be cured?

What's money?"

Mr. Earlforward made no reply to this silly question. Fifty pounds, or

anything like it, for just pulling your knee about! "What was money,"

indeed! He seized the money on the table. The doctor understood himself

to have been definitely repulsed. Being a philosopher, he felt resigned.

He had done what he could at an expense of twenty-five shillings. He

lodged one of the parcels under his left arm and he took the other in

his left hand and assumed a demeanour, compulsory in a gentleman, to

indicate to the world that the parcels were entirely without weight, and

that he was carrying them out of caprice and not from necessity.

"Here, doctor," Violet most unexpectedly exclaimed. "As you are here I

think I'll consult you."

"Not about me! Not about me!" Mr. Earlforward protested plaintively,

imploringly, and yet implacably.

Violet leaned over him with an endearment.

"No, darling, not about you," she cooed. "About myself."

"I didn't know there was anything particular wrong with you."

"Didn't you?" said Violet in a strange tone at once dry and

affectionate. "Elsie did. Will you come upstairs, doctor?" She was no

longer the packer of books. She had initiative, authority, dominion.

Horribly suspecting her duplicity, Henry watched her leave the office in

front of the doctor, who had set down his parcels. Never, never, would

he have a doctor!

IV

NO VERDICT

"What do you think of Mr. Earlforward's health?" Violet demanded

peremptorily, in the bedroom. Her features were alive with urgent

emotion. She almost intimidated the doctor.

"Ha!" he retorted defensively, with an explosive jerk. "I haven't

examined him. I have--not--examined him. He strikes me as

under-nourished."

"And he is. He refuses food."

"But why does he refuse food? There must be some cause."

"It's because he's set on being economical. He's got drawers full of

money, and so have I--at least, I've got a good income of my own. But

there you are. He won't eat, he won't eat. He won't eat enough, do

_what_ I will."

"Is that the only reason?"

"Of course it is. He's never had indigestion in his life."

"Um! Your maid, what's her name, seems to be pretty well nourished, at

all events."

"Have you been seeing her?" Violet inquired sharply, her suspicion

leaping up.

The doctor appreciated his own great careless indiscretion, and answered

with admirable deceitful nonchalance:

"I noticed her one day last week in passing. At least, I took it to be

her."

Violet left the point there.

The electric light blazed down upon them; it had no shade; not a single

light in the house had a shade. It showed harshly, realistically, Violet

half leaning against the foot of the bed, and Dr. Raste, upright as when

in uniform he used to give orders in Palestine, on the rag hearthrug.

Violet's baffled energy raged within her. She had at hand all the

materials for tranquil happiness--affection, money, temperament,

sagacity, an agreeable occupation--and they were stultified by the

mysterious, morbid, absurd, inexcusable and triumphant volition of her

loving husband. Instead of happiness she felt doom--doom closing in on

her, on him, on the sentient house.

"My husband is a miser. I've encouraged him for the sake of peace. And

so now you know, doctor!"

An astounding confession to a stranger, a man to whom she had scarcely

spoken before! But it relieved her. She made it with gusto, with

passion. She had begun candour with Elsie in the morning; she was

growing used to it. The domestic atmosphere itself had changed within

six hours. That which had been tacitly denied for months was now

admitted openly. Truth had burst out. A few minutes earlier--vain

chatter about hospitals, trifling and vain commercial transactions,

make-believes, incredible futilities, ghastly nothings! And now, the

dreadful reality exposed! And at that very moment Henry in his office,

to maintain to himself the frightful pretence, was squandering the

remains of his vitality in the intolerably petty details of business.

"Well," said Dr. Raste primly--the first law of his actions was

self-preservation--"there isn't a great deal to be done until you can

persuade him to have professional advice.... And you? What is it with

you? You don't look much better than your husband."

"Oh, doctor!" Violet cried, suddenly plaintive. "I don't know. You must

examine me. Perhaps I ought to have come to you before."

At this point the light went out and they were in darkness.

"Oh, dear!"--a sort of despair in Violet's voice now "I knew that lamp

would be going soon." The fact was that the lamps in the house generally

had begun to go. All of them had passed their allotted span of a

thousand burning hours. Two in the shop had failed. Henry possessed no

reserve of lamps, and he would not buy, and Violet had not yet wound

herself up to the resolve of buying in defiance of him. Once a fuse had

melted. For two days they had managed mainly with candles. Violet,

irritated, went forth secretly to buy fuse wire. She returned, and with

a half-playful, half-resentful gesture threw the wire almost in his

face; but it had happened that during her absence he had inserted a new

fuse made from a double thickness of soda-water-bottle wire which he had

picked up from somewhere. His reproaches, though unspoken, were hard for

her to bear.

The doctor promptly struck a match, and Violet lit the candle on the

night-table.

"I'm afraid I can't examine you by _that_ light," said the doctor.

"Oh, _dear_!" She nearly wept, then masterfully took hold of herself. "I

know!" She rushed to the bathroom, stood on the orange-box, and detached

the bathroom lamp, and returned with it to the bedroom. "Here! This will

do."

The doctor climbed on to a chair. As soon as he had fixed the new lamp

Violet economically blew out the candle; and then, quaking, she yielded

up her body, in the glacial chill of the room, for the trial and verdict

which would reassure or agonize her. However, she was neither reassured

or agonized; there was no verdict.

When Dr. Raste redescended the dark stairs the shop lay in darkness and

the bookseller was wheeling in the bookstand. The doctor entered the

still lighted office to get his two parcels, which he arranged on his

left side exactly as before.

"Oh?" said Mr. Earlforward, approaching him. It was an interrogation.

"I should prefer not to say anything at present," the doctor announced

in loud, prim, clearly articulated syllables. "There may be nothing

abnormal, nothing at all. At any rate, it is quite impossible to judge

under existing conditions. I shall call again in a week or ten

days--perhaps earlier. No immediate cause for anxiety."

He had been but little more communicative than this to Violet herself.

He was inhuman again--for his patients. Within him, however, glowed the

longing to see his child's eyes kindle when he presented her with the

Globe Shakspere for her very own.

That night, contrary to custom, Henry went to bed earlier than Violet.

He stated that he felt decidedly better, but that he had finished all

his book-keeping and oddments of work, and that it would be a pity to

keep the office fire alive for nothing. Violet, in her mantle, had to

darn a curtain in the front-room. When she went into the bedroom and

switched on the light she saw him, with the counterpane well up to his

chin, lying flat on his back, eyes shut, but not asleep. He had the

pallor of a corpse, and the corpse-like effect was enhanced by the

indications of his straight, thin body under the clothes. She stood bent

by the side of the bed and looked at him, as it were passionately, but

vainly trying by the intensity of her gaze to wrench out and drag up

from hidden depths the inaccessible secrets of his mind.

Though saying little to her about her trouble he had behaved to her

through the evening with the most considerate kindliness. He had

caressed her with his voice. And about her trouble she had not expected

him to say much. He had a very inadequate conception of the physical

risks which women by nature are condemned to run. And she had never

talked much in such directions, for not only was he a strangely modest

man, but she deliberately practised the reserve which he himself

practised. She argued, somewhat vindictively: "He tells me nothing. I

will tell him nothing." Moreover, the doctor's calm non-committal

attitude had given Henry an exceptional occasion to exercise his great

genius for postponement. Never would Henry go half-way to meet an ordeal

of any sort. Lastly, his reactions were generally slow. Fear, anxiety,

seemed to come late to him.

He opened his eyes. She gave him one of the long kisses which he loved.

Could he guess (she wondered) that her kiss was absent-minded that

night, perfunctory, a kiss that emerged inattentive to him from the

dark, virginal fastnesses of her being, which neither he nor any other

would or could invade. With intention she pressed her lips on his.

"Come to bed," he murmured gently, "and get that light out."

Half undressed she looked carefully at herself in the mirror of the

perfectly made, solid, everlasting Victorian wardrobe. Yes, her face

showed evidence of illness; it frightened her. No, she was merely

indisposed; she was frightening herself. She had no pain, or extremely

little. She thought, as she regarded herself in the glass, how

inscrutable, how enigmatic, how feminine she was, and how impossible it

was for him to comprehend her. She felt superior to him, as a complex

mind to a simple one. She thought that she, far better than he, could

appreciate the significance of the terrible day. She was overwhelmed by

it. Situations were evolving one out of another. Nothing had happened,

and yet all was changed. The night was twenty years away from the

morning.

"Do you know about that girl?" he asked with soft weariness when she had

slipped into bed and the light was out.

"No. Elsie? What?"

"She's eaten two-thirds of the cheese in the cage--at least two-thirds.

Must have eaten it before she went out."

The "cage" was the wire-netted larder hung outside the kitchen window.

Henry had taken to buying cheese, because it was as nourishing as meat,

and cheaper. He had "discovered" cheese as a food--especially a food for

servants. Violet said no word, but she sighed. She was staggered, deeply

discouraged, by this revelation of Elsie's incredible greed and guile;

it was a blow that somehow finished her off.

"Yes," Henry went on, and his mild voice passed through the darkness

into Violet's ear with an uncanny effect. "I happened to go up into the

kitchen just before I came to bed." (And he had not rushed back to tell

her of the calamity. He had characteristically kept it to ripen in his

brain. And how characteristic of him to wander ferreting into the

kitchen! Naught could escape his vigilance.) "Did you see her when she

came home?"

"Yes. She went straight to bed."

A silence.

"Something will have to be done about that girl," he said at length.

"What does he mean?" thought Violet, alarmed anew. "Does he mean we must

get rid of her? No, that would be too much." But she was not afraid of

the extra work for herself which getting rid of Elsie would entail. She

was afraid of being left to live all alone with Henry. She trembled at

such a prospect.

V

MIDNIGHT

Elsie, straight from the street, sat down on the edge of her creaking

bed on the second-floor and looked at her best boots, which had lost

their polish during the course of the afternoon and were covered with

dust. She had paid various brief calls, and in her former home in

Riceyman Square she had taken off her jacket and put on a pinafore-apron

and vigorously helped with housework in arrear. But most of the time she

had spent in walking certain streets. Though she ought to have been

tired--what with the morning's labour, the calls, the episode in the

pinafore, the long walking--she had almost no sensation of bodily

fatigue. Her mind, however, was exhausted by the monotony of thinking

one importunate thought, which refused to be dismissed, and which indeed

she did not sincerely want to dismiss.

When, on her way upstairs, she had spoken to Mrs. Earlforward at the

door of the dining-room, she had hoped that her employer would say:

"There's someone been inquiring for you," or, "Elsie, _that man_ has

come pestering again." But no! Nothing but a colourless, preoccupied

"Good night." An absurd hope, naturally! She knew it was an absurd

hope--and yet would not let it go. She had had the same silly hope upon

entering each of the houses which she had visited. She had had it

constantly as she walked the streets, examining every distant male

figure. The silence of Dr. Raste had nearly killed it, but it could not

be killed; it had more lives than a cat.

She had been sitting on the bed for a century when a church clock

struck. Eleven! Still another hour! Why exactly an hour? Well, midnight

was midnight. She must give him till twelve. An hour was an enormous

period, full of chances. Suddenly she bent to take off her boots. They

were not comfortable, never had been, but she took them off for another

reason: so that she might move about noiselessly. She extinguished the

candle and passed into the empty front-room, and after some struggles

with the front window posted herself at the side window. It was

unfortunate that the window giving on to Riceyman Steps simply would not

open on just this night, for if Joe came he would probably come by way

of the steps, having first called at the house in the Square to get news

of her. Nevertheless, he might come along King's Cross Road _en route_

for the Square.

King's Cross Road was preparing to go to sleep for the night. No

lorries. Not a taxi--even in the day-time taxies were few in King's

Cross Road. A tram-car, two tram-cars crammed with passengers. A few

footfarers, mostly couples. The Nell Gwynn Tavern was dark, save for a

window in the top storey where the barmaids slept. Down to the left a

cold, vague glare showed the locality of the loading yard of the big

post office. She could not see the pavement beneath the window; thus she

might miss him. Cautiously and silently she opened the window wider. The

bulb-pots were on the sill. Mrs. Earlforward had forgotten to bring them

in. Elsie brought them in. (A transient, sympathetic thought for Mrs.

Earlforward in her trouble.) She leaned her body out of the window, and

felt the modest feather of her hat brush against the window-frame. She

could see everything perfectly now--north and south. No wanderer could

escape her vision. At intervals, not a sign of either vehicle or

footfarers! The road would be utterly deserted, and the street lamps

seemed to be wasted. Then a policeman; he never looked up, never

suspected that Elsie had her eye on him. Then a tram-car, empty save for

a few woeful figures, a vast waste of tram-car.

She fancied she saw him approaching from the direction of the

police-station. No, not a bit like him. She fancied she heard a sound

in the room behind her. Incredible that her first notion should be that

Joe had somehow entered the house and meant to surprise her with a long

hug; and that the far more obvious explanation of surveillance by Mr. or

Mrs. Earlforward should come to her only second! But so it was. Neither

was correct. In the excited tension of her nerves she had merely

imagined the sound. This delusion made her ashamed of her infatuated

vigil. She had withdrawn into the room, but after a moment, despite

shame, she resumed her post.

The night was calm and not very cold, but no frost would have driven her

inside. The sky was thickly clouded; she did not raise her eyes to it.

Weather did not exist for her. Another tram-car thundered past; she did

not hear it--only saw it. And, as a fact, nobody in the house ever heard

the tram-cars nor felt, save rarely, the vibrations which they caused.

Elsie was far gone now in her madness, and yet more sane every minute.

She felt herself in Joe's arms, heard herself murmuring to him--and he

mute and passionate; and at the same time she well realized that she was

merely indulging herself in foolishness. She was happy in the

expectation of bliss, and wretched in the assurance of its

impossibility.

The church clock began to strike. Could a whole hour have gone by? It

seemed more like a quarter of an hour. She had her great sorrow, and

superimposed on it a childish regret that the expectant watching was

over; she had enjoyed the vigil, and it appeared now that no balm

whatever remained to her. Reluctantly she drew in her body and shut the

window softly, shutting out the last vestige of hope, and carrying with

her, as she padded back to her bedroom, the full sense of her

unbelievable silliness. Her mind swerved round to Mrs. Earlforward's

ordeal; her heart overflowed with benevolence towards Mrs. Earlforward,

and with a sublime determination to stand by Mrs. Earlforward in any

crisis that might arise. She forgot herself for a space, and became

tranquil and cheerful and uplifted.

Then she felt hungry. Since midday she had eaten little, having refused

offers of meals on her visits, and accepted only snacks, lest she might

deplete larders already very inadequate. She took the candle into the

kitchen cautiously, but also with a certain domination; for at nights

the entire second-floor was her realm. She opened the kitchen window and

the cage, and procured for herself more of the diminished cheese and one

or two cold potatoes and a piece of bread crust. Then she arranged the

side-flap of sacking on the cage to protect it against possible rain.

She ate slowly, enjoying with deliberation each morsel. After all, she

had one positive pleasure in life. She knew she was wicked; she knew she

was a thief; she did not defend herself by subtle arguments. Of late she

had been stealing more and more, and had received no reproach. She

thought "they" had given up taking stock of the larder. She was becoming

a hardened criminal.

VI

HENRY'S PLOT

When Violet awoke the next morning at the appointed time for waking, and

heard the familiar muffled sounds of Elsie's activity, she was tempted

to stay in bed; she had not had a good night, and she felt quite

disturbingly unwell; indeed, her physical sensations, although not those

of acute pain, alarmed her by a certain fundamental quality involving

the very basis of her vitality. But she resisted the temptation,

apprehensive of the results, on herself and on the household organism,

of any change of habit. The upset would be terrible if she failed in her

daily rôle; Henry would maintain his calm, but beneath the calm "what a

state he would be in!" She knew him (she said to herself). "I shall be

better on my feet, and I shall worry less." So she arose to the cold

room and to the cold water. Henry was quite bland and cheerful, and said

that he had slept well. It was his custom to get up as soon as Violet

had washed. He did not get up.

"Aren't you going to get up? I've finished here." She was folding the

towel.

"I think I shall stay where I am for a bit," he announced with

tranquillity.

It was just as if he had given her a dizzying blow. This, then, was the

beginning of the end. She crossed the room to the bed, and gazed at him

aghast.

"Now, Vi!" he admonished her, pulling at his short beard. "Now, Vi!"

There was so much affection, so much loving banter, in his queer tone,

that her glance fell before his, as it had not fallen for months. She

covered her exposed throat with her cold, damp hands.

"I shall send for the doctor at once," she announced with vivacity, all

her body tingling in sudden energy.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," he said. "I've told you I'm all right.

But I'll promise you one thing. Next time the medicine-man comes to see

you he shall see me as well, if you like.... Now"--he changed his tone

to the practical--"you can attend to everything in the shop. Surely it

can manage without me for a day or two."

"'A day _or two_'!" she thought. "Is he taking to his bed permanently?

Is that it?"

"And I shall save a clean shirt," he said reflectively.

"But, darling, if you're all right, why must you stay in bed? Please,

please, do be open with me. You never are--if you know what I mean." She

spoke with a plaintive and eager appeal, as it were girlishly. Her face,

with an almost forgotten mobility, showed from moment to moment the

varying moods of her emotion; tears hung in her eyes; and she was less

than half-dressed. She looked as if she might sob, shriek, and drop in a

hysterical paroxysm to the floor.

"Something has to be done about that thief of an Elsie," Henry very

calmly explained. "Of course, I could put a lock on the cage, but that

might seem stingy, miserly, and I should be sorry if anybody thought we

were that. Besides, she's a good sort in some ways. She's got to be

frightened; she's got to be impressed. You send her in to me. You can

talk to her yourself as much as you like afterwards, but send her in to

me first. I'll teach her a lesson."

"How? What are you going to say to her?"

"I shall tell her we've had the doctor, and make out I'm very ill

indeed. And we'll see if that won't shake her up! We'll see if she'll

keep on picking and stealing after that! That ought to sober her down.

And it will, too. Something must be done."

Violet was amazed at this revelation of his mentality. She had a new

source of alarm now. No doubt the plan would work; but what a plan! How

_funny_! (She meant morbid.) Could she cross him? Could she deride the

plan? She dared not. She dared not trifle with a man in his condition.

And the worst was that he might, after all, be only pretending to

pretend he was very ill. He might really be very ill.

"Elsie," she said shortly in the kitchen, "go to your master. He wants

to speak to you."

"Is he in the office already, 'm?"

"No, he isn't in the office already. He's in bed. Now run along, do!"

As soon as Elsie was gone, Violet examined the hanging larder. The

ravage was appalling. Where in heaven's name did the girl stow the food?

Well might the doctor say that she was well nourished. A good thing if

she _was_ to be frightened! She deserved it.... Ah! Violet did not know

which way to turn in the moil of Henry's illness, Henry's morbidity, her

own unnamed malady, and Elsie's shocking and incredible vice.

Elsie entered the bedroom with extreme apprehension, as for an

afflicting solemnity. She thanked God she had had the wit to remove her

working apron. Mr. Earlforward was staring at the ceiling. Nothing of

him moved except his eyelids, and he appeared not to notice her

presence. She waited, twitching her great, red hands. Violet had seemed

like a girl before him. But here was the genuine girl. Elsie's hard

experience of life and disaster fell away from her. She was simple and

intimidated. Youthfulness was her chief characteristic as she stood

humbly waiting. Her candid youthfulness accused the room of age, decay

and distemper.

"Elsie, has Mrs. Earlforward told you anything?"

"No, sir."

"Listen." He still did not shift his eyes from the ceiling. "We had the

doctor in yesterday afternoon." Elsie's heart thumped. Had the doctor

betrayed her meddling? "He came to buy a book, and we kept him." Elsie

thought the worst was over. "I'm very ill, Elsie, and I shall probably

never get up again. Do you think it's right of you to go on stealing

food as you do, with a dying man in the house?" He spoke very gently.

Elsie gave a sob; she was utterly overwhelmed.

"Now you must go. I can't do with any fuss, Elsie!" He stopped her at

the door. "Do we give you enough to eat? Tell me at once if we don't."

"Yes, yes. Quite enough!" Elsie cried, almost in a shriek, hiding her

face in her hands. Her condition was so desperate that she had omitted

the ceremonial "sir." The rushing tears ran between her fingers as she

escaped. She sat a long time in the kitchen sobbing, sobbing for guilt

and sobbing for sorrow at her master's fate.

VII

THE NIGHT-CALL

"Here," said Mrs. Earlforward frigidly to Elsie, handing her two coins.

"Slip out now and buy half a pound of bacon and the same quantity as

before of that cheese. And please hurry back so as you can take your

turn in the shop. Not that you're in a state to be in charge of any

shop. You're a perfect sight and a fright. However, they do say it's an

ill-wind that blows nobody any good."

Mrs. Earlforward called Elsie a perfect sight and a fright because of

her countenance, swollen and blotched with violent weeping. She had not

deigned to share with Elsie her fearful anxieties. Elsie was unworthy to

share them. She had indeed said not a single word to Elsie about the

condition of the sick man. She rarely confided in a servant; servants

could not appreciate a confidence, could not or would not understand

that it amounted to an honour.... Do Elsie good to believe for a bit

that her master was dying! Serve her right! (And supposing Henry really

_was_ dying!) Nevertheless, Mrs. Earlforward could not be, did not

desire to be, too harsh with a girl of Elsie's admirable character.

Elsie, even when convicted of theft, inspired respect, willing or

unwilling. She had never read the Sermon on the Mount, but without

knowing what she was doing she practised its precepts. No credit to her,

of course; she had not reasoned her conduct out; it was instinctive; she

had little consciousness of being righteous, and much consciousness of

sin; and the notion of behaving in such and such a way in order to get

to heaven simply had not occurred to her.

It was humiliating for her to go shopping with such a woe-puffed face as

she had. But she went, and the mission was part of her penance. The

shop-keeping community of the neighbourhood, though they held Mr. and

Mrs. Earlforward in scorn, and referred to them with contumely and even

detestation, were friendly to Elsie, and privately sympathized with her

because she had to do Mr. and Mrs. Earlforward's dirty little errands.

Not that Elsie was ever in the slightest degree disloyal to her master

and mistress! On the contrary, her loyalty touched the excessive.

"Anything wrong?" the cheesemonger's assistant murmured to her in a

compassionate tone, as he was cutting the bacon.

Elsie did not take the inquiry amiss. But unfortunately in her blushing

answer she lapsed from entire honesty. She ought to have said: "I've

been crying partly because I'm a thief, and partly because Mr.

Earlforward is very seriously ill." But with shameful suppression of

truth she replied in these words:

"Master's that ill!"

And her tears fell anew.

Within an hour the district had heard that the notorious old skinflint

Earlforward of Riceyman Steps was dying at last!

Elsie ate no dinner. She tried to eat but could not. Then it was that

she devised an expiatory scheme for fasting until the total amount of

her thefts should be covered. She had admitted to Mr. Earlforward that

she got enough to eat. She could not possibly deny that her employers

allowed her more food, or at any rate more regular food, than many of

her acquaintances managed to exist on from day to day. With an empty

stomach and a tight throat she toiled upon her routine conscientiously,

and more than conscientiously, because she felt herself in the presence

of final calamity. For her the house and shop had become "the pale court

of kingly death"; though she was as ignorant of the mighty phrase as of

the Sermon on the Mount, and even less capable of understanding it. The

bedroom was sealed against her. Mrs. Earlforward herself went out to

purchase special light food. Afterwards she cooked some of the light

food and carried it into the bedroom--and carried it out again

untouched. Only towards evening did Mrs. Earlforward leave the

mysterious and terrible bedroom with an empty basin. Elsie could not

comprehend why the doctor had not come, or why, not having come, he had

not been fetched. And she dared not ask. No! And she dared not ask how

Mr. Earlforward was going on. And Mrs. Earlforward vouchsafed nothing.

This withholding of news was Violet's punishment for Elsie. She wore a

mask, which announced to Elsie all the time that Elsie was for the

present outside the pale of humanity. Elsie had an intense desire to

share fully Violet's ordeal, to suffer openly with her; she admitted

that the frustration of this desire was no more than her deserts.

At five o'clock, in a clean apron, she was put into the shop. The stove

was black out. The shop was full of the presence and intimidation of

death. Customers seemed to have avoided it that day, as if they had been

magically warned to keep away. Business had been negligible. Elsie hoped

much that none would come in the last hour. She had lost the habit of

serving in the shop, and was uncertain of her capability to handle the

humblest customer without making a fool of herself. Then an old

gentleman entered and stood silent, critically surveying her and the

shop.

"Yes, sir? What can I----"

The old gentleman saw a fat, fairly sensible face, and young, timid,

kind eyes, and was rather attracted and mollified by the eyes; but he

did not allow Elsie's gaze to soften more than a very little his just

resentment at the spectacle of an aproned charwoman, or at best a

general servant, in charge of a bookshop.

"You can't!" he said sharply, moving his ancient head slowly from side

to side in a firm negative. "I see Mr. Earlforward."

"The master isn't very well, sir."

"Oh! Then Mrs. Earlforward."

"Missis is looking after master, sir."

"You don't mean to say he's ill?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ill in bed?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good God! I've known him for over twenty years, and never knew him ill

yet. What's the matter? What's the matter with him?"

"I couldn't exactly say, sir."

"What do you mean--you couldn't exactly say?"

"He's very ill indeed, sir."

"Not seriously ill?"

Elsie drooped her head and showed signs of crying.

"Not in danger?"

Elsie replied with a sob:

"He'll never get up again, sir."

"Good God! Good God! What next? What next? Er--I--er--I'm sorry to hear

this. I'm--er--tell him, tell Mrs. Earlforward, I----" And, murmuring to

himself, he walked rapidly out of the dim shop. He was at an age when

the distant shuffling and rumbling of death could positively frighten.

In an instant he had seen the folly, the futility, of collecting books.

You could not take first editions with you when you--went. Death loomed

enormous over him, like a whole firmament threatening to fall.

Elsie heard a footfall on the stairs, and Mrs. Earlforward came with

deliberation down to such light as there was, her fixed eyes glinting

and blazing on the sinner submissive in disgrace. Elsie stood tremulous

before those formidable eyes. She could scarcely believe that they were

the same eyes which had melted in confidences to her on the previous

morning. And they were not the same eyes. They were the eyes of an old

woman with harsh, implacable features, petrified and incapable of

mobility.

"What were you saying to that gentleman?"

"I was only telling him he couldn't see you or master because master was

ill, 'm."

"But didn't I hear you say your master would never get up again?"

Elsie quivered and made no response, no defence.

"What do you mean by saying such a thing? How dare you say such a thing?

It isn't true; it isn't true! And even if it was true, do you suppose I

want everybody to know about our private affairs? You must have gone out

of your mind!"

She waited for an answer from Elsie. None came. Elsie could not

articulate. Then Mrs. Earlforward finished, abrupt and tyrannical:

"Shut the shop!"

Elsie found speech:

"It's only a quarter to six, 'm. There's a quarter of an hour yet," she

said weakly, but bravely.

"Shut the shop, I tell you!"

Elsie went outside and began to wheel in the bookstand. A vision of Joe

leaped up in her mind, and she gazed east and west to see if by chance

he might be arriving a day late at that moment. The vision of Joe

vanished from her mind. She thought: "This will be the last time I shall

ever wheel in the bookstand." Then, from habit, she raked down the ashes

from the stove.

"What's the good of raking the stove when you know it's out!" Mrs.

Earlforward exclaimed. "Nothing can burn away if it's out. Where are

your brains, wasting time?" Mrs. Earlforward marched across the shop,

banged the door to, and fastened it violently, definitely. And Elsie

thought: "That door'll never open for master's customers again."

"Get upstairs!" ordained Mrs. Earlforward. Within ten seconds the shop

and the office were in darkness.

That evening Elsie had none but strictly official communication with

Mrs. Earlforward, who never once removed her mask, nor by any sign

invited Elsie to come back within the warm pale of humanity. The girl

did not even know whether she was at liberty to retire to bed, or

whether, in the exceptional circumstances, she ought to stay up on the

chance of being needed. At last, in the soundless house, her common

sense told her to go to her room. If she was required she could dress in

a minute, and it would be just as easy for Mrs. Earlforward to call her

in the bedroom as in the kitchen. She had certainly no clear intention,

as she closed the bedroom door, of disturbing the ashes of her passion

for Joe; and it was almost mechanically, or subconsciously, that she got

his letter from its safety in a drawer. Of late she had not been reading

it so often. The envelope was no longer an envelope, but two separate

pieces of paper held together only by the habit of association. The

letter itself was very dirty and worn out at all the creases, some of

which were no longer creases but rents. As she held it gingerly in her

hands, one of the squares into which the creases divided it fell off

from the main body, and sank with flutters to the floor. For weeks she

had feared that this would happen. Necessarily she took it for an omen.

Something had to be done at once if destiny was to be countered. Her

thoughts ran down to the office for aid. But the office was two floors

away, and in the night, off duty, she had no right to leave the

top-floor. Still less had she the right to leave the top-floor in order

to commit a theft. And she might be heard by the sharp, exasperated ears

of her mistress and caught. But the letter was so pathetic that she

could not resist its appeal. She seized the candle, and in stockinged

feet, slowly and with every precaution against noise, descended the

stairs like the thief she was.

On the desk in the office was a small cardboard box in which somebody at

some time in history had once received false teeth from a dentist. This

box was the receptacle for stamp-paper. In the shadowy and reproachful

and menacing office Elsie slid open the box and stole from it quite six

good inches of stamp-paper. Contrition for sin had perished in her. She

was the hardened sinner. She could not learn from experience. It seemed

to her that she sinned nightly now. Here her master was dying, her

mistress ill and in misery, and she was thieving stamp-paper! She

arrived upstairs again without discovery. Her nerves were as shaken as

if she had crossed Niagara on a tight-rope.

Mr. Earlforward could do marvels of repair with stamp-paper, but Elsie

had not his skill. Working on the emptied toilet-table, she did little

but make the letter adhere to the surface of the table. Then through a

too brusque movement she seriously tore the letter, and not in the line

of a crease either. The paper was worn out by use, and had no virtue

left. This was too much for Elsie's self-control. She had stood

everything, but she could not stand the trifling accident. She scrunched

the pieces of the letter in her powerful hand. Why should she keep the

letter? She was a perfect fool to keep the letter, reminding her and

reminding her.... She held the ball of paper to the candle. It lit

slowly, but it lit. The paper spread a little with the heat. She could

read: "I know I shall get better." She dropped the burning letter, and

it smoked and blackened and writhed on the floor, and nothing survived

of it save some charred corners, a lot of smoke, and a strong smell of

fire.

Elsie now had the sensation of being alone in the world. The reaction

was hunger. Hunger swept over her like a visitation. For twenty-four

hours she had not eaten enough to satisfy a cat, to say nothing of a

robust and active young woman. Her fancy could taste the lovely taste of

bacon. She thought of all other lovely tastes, and there were many. She

thought obscurely, perhaps not in actual words: "Eating is my only joy

now. All else is vain, but eating is real." She thought of the cage and

its contents. But Mr. Earlforward was dying, and Mrs. Earlforward in

misery. And death was waiting to spring out from some dark corner of the

house. The house was peopled with the mysterious harbingers of death.

Still, the idea of the bacon bewitched her.

She raised the candlestick again. She passed out of the bedroom and

crept, guilty and afraid, towards the kitchen. She knew the full

enormity of her offence, could never, afterwards, offer the excuse that

she did not realize it. On the other hand, she was helpless in the grip

of the tyrannical appetite which drove her on. At the open door of the

narrow kitchen she listened intently, with a guilty and fearful eye on

the shadowy staircase, trying to see what was not there. Not a sound.

Not a vibration. The last tram-car and the last Underground train had

gone. She entered the kitchen, closed the door softly, and shut herself

up with her sin. "I will not do it. I cannot do it!" she thought, but

she knew that she would do it, and that she was appointed to do it. Her

mouth watered; her stomach ravened within her like a tiger.

Ten minutes later the door opened suddenly. Mrs. Earlforward, a mantle

over her night-dress, stood in the doorway. In the flickering light of

the candle Mrs. Earlforward caught the gluttonous, ecstatic expression

on Elsie's face and the curve of her pretty lips before the corners of

the lips fell to dismay, and the rapt expression changed to despairing

delinquency. Mr. Earlforward's grand bluff had failed after all.

Apparently not the atmosphere of death could cure Elsie of her vice.

Mrs. Earlforward, on the top of her other thrilling woes, was horrified

to see Elsie not merely eating bacon, but eating bacon raw. But in this

particular Mrs. Earlforward was unreasonable. The girl could not cook

the bacon. To do so would have caused throughout the house a smell to

wake even the dead. She had no alternative but to eat the bacon raw.

Moreover, it was very nice raw. Mrs. Earlforward tried to speak about

the bacon, but failed. Elsie, with her mouth full and no chance of

emptying it, could not speak either. The tap, dripping much faster now

than aforetime, talked alone. At last Mrs. Earlforward gasped:

"You're dressed. Run for the doctor."

VIII

ON THE LANDING

During the day Henry had asked several times for bulletins as to Elsie's

consumption of food, and he received them with satisfaction, but also

with a certain sardonic air new in Violet's experience of him. This

demeanour was one of the things that disquieted Violet. Another was

that, contrary to his habit of solicitude for her, he made absolutely no

inquiry as to her own health, though he surely ought to have been ever

so little disturbed about it. And another was that he no longer showed

his customary quiet pleasure in being worried over her. After taking

some soft food he demanded a toothpick, and had employed himself with it

in the most absurd way for quite an hour. In answer to her questions he

said blandly again and again that he was all right. Soon after nightfall

he insisted that the electricity should be switched off. Violet refused,

as she was determined to watch him carefully. He said that the light

hurt his eyes. She took the paper lining from a tray in her wardrobe and

fashioned a shade for the lamp--the first shade ever known in that

house.

At ten o'clock, feeling cold and ill, she undressed and got into bed,

but kept the light burning. Henry was perfectly tranquil. The trams

seemed to make a tremendous uproar. She could not sleep, but Henry

apparently dozed at intervals. Then she had a severe shock. He was

violently sick.

"What's this? What's this?" he murmured feebly and sadly.

He did not know what it was; but Violet, who had witnessed a deal of

physical life during her peregrinations with the clerk of the works,

knew what it was. It was what Violet's varied acquaintances had commonly

called, in tones of awe on account of its seriousness, the

"coffee-grounds vomit." It was, indeed, a sinister phenomenon.

Henry had dropped back exhausted. His forehead was wet, and his hair

damp with perspiration. Also he seemed to be terrorized--he who was

never afraid until hours or days after the event! At this point it was

that Violet went out of the bedroom to send Elsie for the doctor.

As soon as Elsie was gone Violet dressed. She still felt very cold and

ill. The minutes dragged. Henry lay inert. His aspect had considerably

worsened. The facial emaciation was accentuated, and the pallor of the

ears and the lips, and even his beard and hair were limp as if from

their own fatigue. Elsie's greed was now an infinitesimal thing in

Violet's mind, and the importance attached to it struck her as wildly

absurd. Yet she had a strange, cruel desire (which she repressed) to say

to Henry: "Your bluff has failed! Your bluff has failed! And look at

you!" She thought of the approaching Christmas, for which she had

secretly been making plans for merriment; she had meant to get Elsie's

aid, because she knew that Elsie had in her the instincts of fancy and

romance. Pathetic! She thought of her anger at Elsie's indiscretion in

telling a customer that the master would never get up again. Ridiculous

anger! He never _would_ get up again; and what did it matter if all

Clerkenwell knew in advance? The notion of Henry spending money on the

cure of his damaged knee seemed painfully laughable. His dread, genuine

or affected, of communism, seemed merely grotesque. She saw a funeral

procession, consisting of a hearse and one coach, leave Riceyman Steps.

The coffin would have to be carried across the space from the shop-door

to the main road, as no vehicle could come right to the door. Crowds!

Crowds of gapers!

Then she heard a noise below. Elsie, who had run all the way to

Myddelton Square and all the way back, tapped with tremulous eagerness.

"He's coming, 'm." She was panting.

Dr. Raste arrived, but only after an interval of nearly half an hour,

which seemed to Violet like half a night. The fact was that, despite

much practice, he could not dress in less than about twenty minutes; nor

was it his habit to run to his patients, whatever their condition. He

came with the collar of his thick overcoat turned up. Violet met him on

the landing; she had shut the bedroom door behind her. He was calm; he

yawned; and his demeanour hovered between the politely indifferent and

the politely inimical. He spoke vaguely, but in his loud tone, in reply

to Violet's murmur: "I was afraid you weren't coming, doctor."

Violet had by this time lost her sense of proportion. She was incapable

of bearing in mind that the doctor lived daily and nightly among disease

and death, and that he was more accustomed to sick people than to

healthy. She did not suspect that in the realism of his heart he

regarded sick people and their relations in the mass as persons

excessive in their fears, ruthless in their egotism, and cruel in their

demands upon himself. She had no conception that to him a night-call was

primarily a grievance and secondarily an occasion to save life or pacify

pain. She might have credited that fifty per cent. of his night-calls

were unnecessary, but she could never have guessed that he had already

set down this visit to Riceyman Steps as probably the consequence of a

false, foolish, feminine alarm. She began to explain to him at length

the unique psychology of the sufferer, as though the doctor had never

before encountered an unwilling and obstinate patient. The doctor grew

restless.

"Yes. Just so. Just so. I'd better have a look at him."

"I haven't dared to tell him I've sent for you," said Violet piteously,

reproachful of the doctor's inhumanity.

"Tut-tut!" observed the doctor, and opened the bedroom door.

He sniffed on entering, glanced placidly at Henry, then at the

fireplace, and then went to the window and drew the curtains and blind

aside.

"I should advise you to have a fire lighted at once, and we'll open the

window a bit."

He put his hat carefully on the chest of drawers, but did not even

unbutton his overcoat or turn down his collar. Then he removed his

gloves and rubbed his hands. At last to Henry:

"Well, Mr. Earlforward, what's this I hear?"

No diplomacy with the patient! No ingenious excusing of his presence!

The patient just had to accept his presence; and the patient, having no

alternative, did accept it.

"Shall I light the fire now, 'm?" asked Elsie timidly at the door.

"Yes," said the doctor shortly, including both the women in his glance.

"But won't she be disturbing you while you're ..." Violet suggested

anxiously. She was afraid that this unprecedented proceeding would

terribly upset Henry and so make him worse.

"Not at all."

"I don't think we've ever had this fire lighted," said Violet, to which

the doctor deigned no reply.

"Run along, Elsie. Take your things off and be quick. The doctor wants a

fire immediately."

Before the doctor, changed now from an aggrieved human being into a

scrupulously conscientious professional adviser, had finished his

examination, the room was half full of smoke. Violet could not help

looking at Elsie reproachfully as if to say: "Really, Elsie, you should

be able to control the chimney better than this--and your master so

ill!"

The patient coughed excessively, but everyone knew that the coughing was

merely his protest against the madness of lighting a fire.

"I'm too hot," he muttered. "I'm too hot."

And such was the power of auto-suggestion that he did in fact feel too

hot, though the fire had not begun to give out any appreciable heat. He

privately determined to have the fire out as soon as the doctor had

departed; a limit must be set to folly after all. However, Henry was at

once faced with a great new crisis which diminished the question of the

fire to a detail.

"I can't come to any conclusion without washing out the stomach," said

Dr. Raste, turning to Violet, and then turning back quickly to Henry:

"You say you've no pain there? You're sure?" And he touched a particular

point on the chest.

"None," replied Henry.

"The fellow is lying," thought the doctor. "It's amazing how they will

lie. I bet anything he's lying. Why do they lie?"

Nevertheless, the doctor could not be quite sure. And he had a general

preference for not being quite sure; he liked to postpone judgment.

"_I_ don't mind having my stomach washed out," Henry murmured blandly.

"No, of course not. I'll telephone to the hospital early to-morrow, and

Mrs. Earlforward will take you round there in a cab." And to Violet:

"You'll see he's well covered, won't you?"

"I will," Violet weakly agreed.

"But I don't want to go to any hospital," was Henry's second protest.

"Why can't you do the business here?"

"Impossible in a house!" the doctor announced. "You can only do that

sort of thing where you've got all the apparatus and conveniences. But

I'll make it all smooth for you."

"Oh, no! Oh, no! Not to a hospital!"

The doctor said callously:

"I doubt whether you realize how ill you are, my friend."

"I'm not _that_ ill. When should I come out again?"

"The moment you are better."

"Oh, no! No hospital for me. There's two of them here to nurse me."

"Your wife is not in a condition to nurse you. You must remember that,

please.... Better get him there by eleven o'clock. I shall probably be

there first. I'll give you the order--to let you in."

Henry ceased to cough; he ceased to feel hot. His condition suddenly

improved in a marvellous way. He had been ill. He admitted now that he

had been chronically ill. (He had first begun to feel ill either just

before or soon after the eating of the wedding-cake on his bridal

night.) But he was now better, much better. He was aware of a wonderful

amelioration, which surprised even himself. At any rate, he would not go

into a hospital. The enterprise was too enormous and too perilous. Once

in, when would he get out again? And nurses were frightful bullies. He

would be helpless in a hospital. And his business? It would fall to

ruin. Everything would get askew. And the household? Astounding

foolishness would be committed in the house if he lost his grip on it.

He could manage his business and he could manage his household; and

nobody else could. Besides, there was no sound reason for going into a

hospital. As for washing out his stomach, if that was all, give him some

mustard and some warm water, and he would undertake to do the trick in

two minutes. The doctor evidently desired to make something out of

nothing. They were all the same. And women were all the same, too. He

had imagined that Violet was not like other women. But he had been

mistaken! She had lost her head--otherwise she would never have sent for

the doctor in the middle of the night. The doctor would undoubtedly

charge double for a night visit. And the fire, choking and roasting him!

He saw himself in the midst of a vast general lunacy and conspiracy, and

he alone maintaining ordinary common sense and honesty. He felt the

whole world against him; but he could fight the whole world. He had

perfect confidence in the fundamental hard strength of his nature.

Then he observed that the other two had left the room. Yet he did not

remember seeing them go. Elsie came back, her face smudged, to watch

the progress of the fire, which was no longer smoking.

"Where's your mistress, my girl?"

"She's talking to the doctor on the landing, sir."

"You see," the doctor was saying in a low voice to Violet, "it may be

cancer at the cardiac end of the stomach. I don't say it is. But it may

be. That would account for the absence of appetite--and for other

symptoms." In the moonlight he saw Violet wiping her eyes. "Come, come,

Mrs. Earlforward, you mustn't give way."

"It's not that," Violet spluttered, who was crying at the thought that

she had consistently misjudged Henry for many months past. Not from

miserliness, but from illness, had he been refusing to eat. He _could_

not eat normally. He was a stricken man, and to herself she had been

accusing him of the meanest avarice and the lowest stupidity. She now in

a flash acquitted him on every charge, and made him perfect. His

astounding secretiveness as to his condition she tried to attribute to a

regard for her feelings.

"What are we to do? What am I to do?"

"Oh!" said Dr. Raste. "Don't let that worry you. We'll get him away all

right to-morrow morning. I'll come myself and fetch him."

At the same moment they both saw the bedroom door open and the lank

figure of the patient in his blue-grey nightshirt emerge. The light was

behind him, and threw his shadow across them. Elsie stood scared in the

background.

"It's not the slightest use you two standing chattering there," Henry

murmured bitterly. "I'm not going into a hospital, so you may as well

know it."

"Oh, Henry!"

"Better get back to bed, Mr. Earlforward," said the doctor rather grimly

and coldly.

"I'm going back to bed. I don't need you or anybody else to tell me I

oughtn't to be out here. I'm going back to bed." And he limped back to

bed triumphant.

Dr. Raste, who thought that he had nothing to learn about the strange

possibilities of human behaviour, discovered that he had been mistaken.

He could not hide that he was somewhat impressed. He again assured

Violet that it would be all right in the morning, but he was not very

convincing. As for Violet, since Dr. Raste was a little man, she did not

consider that he had much chance, morally, against her husband, who was

unlike all other men, and, indeed, the most formidable man on earth.

IX

VIOLET'S VICTORY

"How do you feel, my girl?" Henry asked.

They lay again in bed together. Before leaving the doctor had given,

with casualness, certain instructions, not apparently important, which

Violet had carried out, having understood that there was no immediate

danger to her husband and also that there was nothing immediately to be

done. Dr. Raste's final remarks, as he departed, had had a sardonic

tone, almost cynical, which had at first abraded Violet's sensitiveness;

but later she had said to herself: "After all, with a patient like

Henry, what _can_ you expect a doctor to do?" And she had accepted, and

begun to share, the doctor's attitude. A patient might be very seriously

ill, he might be dying of cancer, and yet by his callous and stupid

obstinacy alienate your sympathies from him. Human sympathies were as

precarious as that! She admitted it. A few minutes earlier she had

lifted Henry to a pedestal of perfection. Now she dashed him down from

it. "I know I oughtn't to feel as I do, but I _do_ feel as I do." And

she even confirmed herself in harshness. She had sent Elsie to bed for

the few remaining hours of the night. She had undressed once more and

got into bed herself.

The light of the fire played faintly at intervals on the astonished

ceiling, and sometimes shafts of moonlight could be discerned through an

aperture in the thick, drawn curtains. Behind the curtains the blind

could be heard now and then answering restlessly to the north breeze.

The room was so warm that the necessity to keep the bedclothes over the

shoulders and up to the chin had disappeared. Violet had a strange

sense of luxury. "And why shouldn't we have a fire _every_ night?" she

thought, and added, somewhat afraid of the extravagance of the

proposition: "Well, anyhow, _some_ nights--when it's very cold." She

gave no reply to Henry's question about her health.

Henry felt much better. He had scarcely any pain at the spot which the

doctor had indicated; he was as sure as ever that he had done right in

refusing to enter a hospital, and as determined as ever that he never

would enter a hospital. None the less, he was disturbed; he was a bit

frightened of trouble in the bed. He had noted his wife's face before

she turned the light out, and seen rare and unmistakable signs in it.

His illness was not now the important matter, nor her illness either.

The important matter was their sentimental relations. He knew that he

had estranged her. Convinced of the justice of his own cause and of the

folly of doctors and wives, he was yet apprehensive and had somehow a

quite illogical conviction of guilt. Violet had wanted to act against

his best interests, and yet he must try to appease her! It was more

important to appease her than to get well!

Dr. Raste, or anybody else, looking at the couple lying beneath Violet's

splendid eiderdown (which still by contrast intensified the dowdiness

and shabbiness of the rest of the room) would have seen merely a

middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman with haggard faces worn by

illness, fatigue, privations and fear. But Henry did not picture himself

and Violet thus; nor Violet herself and Henry. Henry did not feel

middle-aged. He did not feel himself to be any particular age. His

interest in life and in his own existence had not diminished during the

enormous length of time which had elapsed since he first came into

Riceyman Steps as a young man. In his heart he felt no older than on

that first night. He did not feel that he now in the least corresponded

to his youthful conception of a middle-aged man. He did not feel that he

was as old as other men whom he knew to be of about his own age. He

thought that he alone had mysteriously remained young among his

generation. For him his grey hairs had no significance; they were an

accident. Then in regard to his notion of Violet. He knew that all women

were alike, but with one exception--Violet. Women were women, and Violet

was thrice a woman. He was aware of her age arithmetically, for he had

seen her birth-certificate. But in practice she was a girl--well,

perhaps a little more than a girl, but not much more. And she had for

him a romantic quality perceptible in no other woman. He admired certain

efficiencies in her, but he could not have said why she was so important

to him, nor why he was vaguely afraid of her frown--why it was so urgent

for him to stand well with her. He could defeat her in battle. He had

more common sense than she had, more authority, a surer grasp of things;

he could see farther; he was more straightforward. In fact, a superior

being! Further, she had crossed him, sided with the doctor against him,

made him resentful. Therefore, if justice reigned, she ought to be

placating him. Instead, he was anxious to placate her.

And, on her part, Violet saw in Henry a man not of any age, simply a

man: egotistic, ruthless, childish, naughty, illogical, incalculable,

the supreme worry of her life; a destroyer of happiness; a man

indefensible for his misdeeds, but very powerful and inexplicably

romantic, different from all other men whatsoever. She hated him; her

resentment against him was very keen, and yet she wanted to fondle him,

physically and spiritually; and this desire maintained itself not

without success in opposition to all her grievances, and, compared to

it, her sufferings and his had but a minor consequence.

"Well, how do you feel?" he repeated.

The repetition aroused Violet's courage. She paused before speaking, and

in the pause she matured a magnificent, a sublime enterprise of attack.

She had a feeling akin to inspiration. She flouted his illness, his

tremendous power, her own weakness and pain. She did not care what

happened. No risk could check her.

"You don't care how I am!" she began quietly and bitterly. "Did you show

the slightest in me all yesterday? Not one bit. You thought only of

yourself. You pretended you were ill. Well, if you weren't, why couldn't

you think about me? But you were ill. Not that that excuses you! However

ill I was, I should be thinking about you all the time. But I say you

were ill, and I say it again. You only told me a lot of lies about

yourself, one lie after another. Why _do_ you keep yourself to yourself?

It's an insult to me, all this hiding, and you know it. I suppose you

think I'm not good enough to be told! I can tell you one thing, and I've

said it before, and this is the last time I ever shall say it--you've

taught me to sew my mouth up, too; that's what you've done with your

everlasting secrecy. I always said you're the most selfish and cruel man

that ever was. You're ill, and the doctor says you ought to go to a

hospital--and you won't. Why? Doesn't everybody go into a hospital some

time or another? A hospital's not good for you--that's it. It suits you

better to stop here and be nursed night and day by your wife. Don't

matter how ill _I_ am! I've got to nurse you _and_ look after the shop

as well. It'll kill me; but a fat lot you care about that. And if you

hadn't deceived me and told me a lot of lies you might have been all

right by this time, because I should have had the doctor in earlier, and

we should have known where we were then. But how was I to know how ill

you are? How was I to know I'd married a liar besides a miser?"

Henry interjected quietly:

"I told you long ago that the reason I didn't eat was because I'd got

indigestion. But you wouldn't believe me."

Violet's voice rose:

"Oh, you did, did you? Yes, you did tell me once. You needn't think I

don't remember. It was that night I cooked a beautiful bit of steak for

you, and you wouldn't touch it. Yes, you did tell me, and it _was_ the

truth, and I didn't believe it. And you were glad I didn't believe it.

You didn't want me to believe it. You're very knowing, Henry, aren't

you? You say a thing once, and then it's been said, it's finished with.

And then afterwards you can always say: 'But I told you.' And you're

always so polite! As if that made any difference! I wish to God often

you weren't so polite. My first husband wasn't very polite, and I've

known the time when he's laid his hand on me, knocked me about--yes, and

more than once. I was young then. Disgusting, _you_'d call it. And I've

never told a soul before; not likely. But what I say is I'd sooner be

knocked about a bit and know what my man's really thinking about than

live with a locked-up, cast-iron safe like you! Yes, a hundred times

sooner. There's worse things than a blow, and every woman knows it.

Well, you won't go to the hospital! That's all right. You won't go and

you won't go. But I shall go to the hospital! The doctor'll tell me to

go, and the words won't be out of his mouth before I shall be gone. I

can feel here what's coming to me. I shall go, and I shall leave you

with your Elsie, that eats you out of house and home. She was here

before I came. I'm only a stranger. You pretend to be very stiff and all

that with her, but you and her understand each other, and I'm only a

stranger coming between you. Are you asleep?"

"No."

Violet rose up and slipped out of bed. Henry heard the sound of her

crying. She seemed to rush at the fire. She poked it furiously, not

because it needed poking, but because she needed relief.

"Come back to bed, Vi," said Henry kindly.

She dropped the poker with a clatter on the fender, and Henry saw her, a

white creature, moving towards him round by his side of the bed. She

bent over him.

"Why should I come back to bed?" she asked angrily, her voice thickened

and obscured by sobs. "Why should I come back to bed? You're ill. You've

got no strength, and haven't had for weeks. What do you want me to come

back to bed for?"

He felt her fingers digging into the softness of his armpits. He felt

her face nearer his. She mastered herself.

"Listen to me, Henry Earlforward," she said in a low, restrained,

trembling voice: "You'll go into that hospital to-morrow morning. You'll

go into that hospital. You'll _go_ into it when the doctor comes to

fetch you. Or, if you don't, I'll--I'll--I'll----"

He felt her lips on his in a savage, embittered and passionate kiss. She

was heroical; he a pigmy--crushed by her might. He was afraid and

enchanted.

"No," he thought, "there never was another like her."

"Will you, will you, will you, will you?" she insisted ruthlessly, and

her voice was smothered in his lips.

"Very well. I'll go."

Her body fell limp upon his. She was not sobbing now, but feebly and

softly weeping. With a sudden movement she stood upright, then ran to

the door, just as she was, fumbled for the knob in the darkness, and

rushed out of the room, banging the door after her with a noise that

formidably resounded through the whole house. Her victory was more than

she could bear.

X

DEPARTURE

In the morning Dr. Raste, unusually interested in the psychological

aspect of the Earlforward affair, arrived at about ten o'clock in a

taxicab, prepared and well-braced to make good his word to Violet. He

remembered vividly his own rather cocksure phrase: "We'll get him away

all right to-morrow." He was tired and overstrung, and therefore

inclined to be violent and hasty in endeavour. He had his private

apprehensions. He asked the driver to wait, meaning to have Henry

captive and downstairs in quite a few minutes. His tactic was to take

the patient by storm. He had disorganized his day's work in order to

deal with the matter, and for the maintenance of self-respect he was

bound to deal with it effectively. Further, he had arranged by telephone

for a bed at the hospital.

The front of the shop dashed him. The shop had not been opened. The

milk-can had not been brought within. There it stood, shockingly out of

place at ten A.M., proof enough that something very strange had happened

or was happening at T. T. Riceyman's. He tried to open the door; it was

locked. Then he noisily shook the door, and he decided to adopt the more

customary course of knocking. He knocked and knocked. Little Mr.

Belrose, the proprietor of the confectioner's opposite, emerged to watch

the proceedings with interest, and two other people from the houses

farther along the steps also observed. Evidently Riceyman Steps was agog

for strange and thrilling events. Dr. Raste grew self-conscious under

the gaze of Clerkenwell. No view of the interior of the shop could be

had through the book-filled windows, and only a narrow slit of a view

between the door-blind and the frame of the door. Dr. Raste peered

through this and swore in a whisper. At length he saw Elsie approaching.

"Isn't it about time you took your milk in?" he greeted her calmly,

presenting her with the can when she opened the door. Elsie accepted the

can in silence; the doctor entered the shop; Elsie shut and bolted the

door. The morning's letters lay unheeded on the unswept floor at her

feet. The doctor had the sensation of being imprisoned with her in the

sombre and chilly shop. A feeling of calamity weighed upon him. The

stairs in the thick gloom at the back of the shop seemed to be leading

upwards to terrible affairs. He thought of the taximeter ticking away

threepences.

"Well?" he inquired impatiently of the still silent Elsie. "Well? How's

he getting on?"

Elsie answered:

"Missis must have been took bad in the night, sir. When I came down this

morning, she was lying on the sofa in the parlour, and I thought she was

dead. Yes, I did, sir. She was that cold you wouldn't believe. Not a

stitch on her but her night-things. And she _was_ in a state, too!"

"I hope you got her back to bed at once," said the doctor.

"I got her up to my bed, sir, and I half-carried her. She wouldn't go to

their bedroom for fear of frightening master, and him so bad, too!"

"Of course, you couldn't send for me because you'd no one to send, had

you?" The doctor began to move towards the stairs.

"Oh, I could have sent someone, sir. There's several about here could

have gone. But I understood you were coming, and I said to myself half

an hour more or less, like, that can't make much difference. And missis

didn't want me to send anyone else, either; she didn't want it to get

about too much, sir. Not that that would have stopped me, sir. Soon as I

see her really ill, I says _I'm_ responsible now, I says--of course,

under you, sir, and I shouldn't have listened to her. No, sir."

The doctor was very considerably impressed, and relieved, by Elsie's

dignity, calm and power. An impassible common sense had come to life in

the sealed house. She was tidy, too; no trace on her of a disturbed

night and morning, and she was even wearing a clean apron. No wearisome

lamentation about the shop having to be closed! Elsie had instinctively

put the shop into its place of complete unimportance.

As they passed the shut door of the principal bedroom the doctor,

raising his eyebrows, gave an inquiring jerk.

"I did knock, sir. There was no answer, so I took the liberty of looking

in. He seemed to be asleep."

"You're sure he was _asleep_?"

"Well, sir," said Elsie, stolidly and yet startlingly, "he wasn't dead.

I'll say that."

They passed to the second floor. There lay the mistress on the servant's

narrow bed, covered with Elsie's half-holiday garments on the top of the

bedclothes. That Violet was extremely ill and in pain was obvious from

the colours of her complexion and the sharp, defeated, appealing

expression on her face. The doctor saw Elsie smile at her; it was a

smile beaming out help and pure benevolence, and it actually brought

some sort of a transient smiling response into the tragic features of

the patient; it was one of the most wonderful things that the doctor had

ever seen. Nobody could have guessed that only thirty-six hours before

Elsie had been a thief convicted of stealing and eating raw bacon. And,

indeed, the memory of the deplorable episode was erased as completely

from Elsie's mind as from her mistress's.

"I shall take you to the hospital at once, Mrs. Earlforward," the doctor

said in his prim, gentle tone, after the briefest examination. He added

rather abruptly: "I've got a taxi waiting. I think you've borne up

marvellously." In a few moments he had changed his plans to meet the new

developments, and he was now wondering whether he might not have

difficulty in securing a bed for Mrs. Earlforward.

"I shall see properly to master, 'm," Elsie put in. "I mean if he

doesn't go to the hospital himself."

Violet nodded acquiescence. She did not want to waste her strength in

speech, or she might have told them of Henry's promise to her to go into

hospital. Moreover she was suffering too acutely to feel any strong

interest in either Henry or anybody else.

"We'll carry you to the cab," said the doctor, and to Elsie: "She must

be dressed, somehow--doesn't matter how."

Violet murmured:

"I'd sooner walk to the cab, doctor, if you know what I mean. I can."

"Well, if you _can_----" he concurred in order not to upset her.

When the summary dressing was done, Elsie having made two journeys to

her employer's bedroom to fetch garments and hat, the doctor said to her

confidentially:

"We shall want some money. Have you any? Where is the money kept?"

Experience had taught him never to disburse money for patients; and he

had a very clear vision of the threepences ticking up outside in King's

Cross Road.

"My purse. On chest of drawers," whispered Violet, who had heard.

Elsie made a third journey to the state-bedroom. Oblivious of the

proprieties, she had not knocked before, and she did not knock now. On

the previous occasion Mr. Earlforward had merely watched her with

apparently dazed, indifferent eyes. But the instant she picked up the

purse from the chest of drawers he exclaimed:

"Here! Where are you going with that purse?"

"Missis sent me for it," Elsie replied.

From prudence she would give him no more news than that of the

situation. No knowing what he might attempt to do if he was fully

apprised!

Violet was carried downstairs and through the shop, and at the shop

door she was set on her insecure feet, and Dr. Raste held her while

Elsie unbolted. And she managed to walk, under the curious glances of a

few assembled quidnuncs, along the steps to the taxi, Dr. Raste on one

side of her and Elsie on the other. She had foretold that the moment the

doctor ordered her to the hospital she would go to the hospital. She had

foretold true. She was gone. The taxi made a whir and moved. She was

gone.

"I'll call this afternoon!" the doctor shouted from the departing

vehicle.

In the shop again, the encouraging smile with which she had speeded her

mistress still not yet expired from her round, fat face, Elsie picked up

the milk-can. The letters on the floor were disdained. She thought of

her presentiment of the previous evening but one: "This will be the last

time I shall ever wheel in the bookstand." And she had a firm conviction

that in that presentiment she had by some magical power seen acutely

into the future.