Chapter X: Part IV: I (2)

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 She had withdrawn into the room, but after a moment, despite shame, she resumed her post.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.