Chapter XII: Part V: I (1)

THE PROMISE

Elsie was forgetting to fasten the shop door. With a little start at her own negligence she secured both the bolt and the lock. She thought suddenly of the days--only a year away, yet far, far off in the deceiving distances of time--when Mr. Earlforward and she had the place to themselves. Mrs. Earlforward had come, and Mrs. Earlforward had gone, and now Elsie had sole charge--had far more responsibility and more power than ever before. The strangeness of quite simple events awed her. Nor did the chill of the thin brass handle of the milk-can in her hand protect her against the mysterious spell of the enigma of life.

She "knew" that the shop would never open again as T. T. Riceyman's. She "knew" that either Mr. or Mrs. Earlforward would die, and perhaps both; and she was very sad because she felt sorry for them, not because she felt sorry for herself. In the days previous to the amazing advent of Mrs. Earlforward Elsie had had Joe. Joe was definitely vanished from her existence. Nothing else in her own existence greatly mattered to her. She would probably lose a good situation; but she was well aware, beneath her diffidence and modesty, that by virtue of the knowledge which she had acquired from Mrs. Earlforward she could very easily get a fresh situation, and from the material point of view a better one. Professionally she had one secret ambition, to be able to say to a prospective employer that she could "wait at table." There would be something grand about that, but she saw no chance of learning such an intricate and rare business. She had never seen anybody wait at table. In the little pewed eating-houses to which once or twice Joe had taken her, or she had taken Joe, the landlady or a girl brought the food to you and took your plate away, and whisked crumbs on to the floor and asked you what else you wanted; but she felt sure that that was not waiting at table, nor anything like it.... So the ideas ran on in her mind--scores of them following one another in the space of a few seconds, until she shut off the stream with a murmured: "I'm a nice one, I am!" The solitary dæmonic figure of Mr. Earlforward, fast in bed, was drawing her upstairs. And the shop was keeping her in the shop. And the plight of Mrs. Earlforward was pulling her away towards St. Bartholomew's Hospital. And there she stood like a regular hard-faced silly, thinking about waiting at table! She must go to Mr. Earlforward instantly, and tell him what had happened.

When she reached the first-floor she said to herself that she might as well take the milk into the kitchen first, and when she reached the kitchen she remembered poor Mrs. Earlforward's bulbs. The precious bulbs had been neglected. Out of kindness to Mrs. Earlforward she went at once and watered the soil in which they were buried, and put the pots out on the window-sill. It was an act of piety, not of faith, for Elsie had no belief in the future of those bulbs. Indeed, she counted them among the inexplicable caprices of employers. If you wanted a plant, why not buy one that you could see, instead of interring an onion in a lot of dirt? Still, for Mrs. Earlforward's sake, she took great pains over the supposed welfare of the bulbs. And yet--it must be admitted, however reluctantly--her motive in so meticulously cherishing the bulbs was by no means pure. She was afraid of the imminent interview with Mr. Earlforward, and was delaying it. If she had been sure of herself in regard to Mr. Earlforward, she would not have spent one second on the bulbs; she would have disdained them utterly.

Mr. Earlforward was somewhat animated.

"I didn't sleep much the first part of the night," he said, "but I must have had some good sleeps this morning."

Elsie thought he was a little better, but he still looked very ill indeed. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes confessed that he knew he was very ill. He was forlorn in the disordered and soiled bed; and the untidy room, with its morsel of dying fire, was forlorn.

"Well," said Elsie nervously, in a tone as if she was repeating a fact with which both of them were familiar, "well, so missis has gone to the hospital!"

She had told him. She trembled for his exclamation and his questions. He made no sound, no movement. Elsie felt extremely uncomfortable. She would have preferred any reply to this silence. She was bound to continue.

"Yes. Missis was that ill that when doctor came for you he took _her_ off instead. I told her I'd see after you properly till you was fetched too, sir." She gave no further details. "I'm that sorry, sir," she said.

Mr. Earlforward maintained his silence. He did not seem to desire any details. He just lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The expression on his hollowed face, now the face of a man of seventy, drew tears to Elsie's eyes, and she had difficulty in restraining a sob. The aspect of her employer and of the room, the realization of the emptiness of the rest of the house, the thought of Mrs. Earlforward snatched away into the mysterious and formidable interior of the legendary hospital, were intolerable to Elsie, who horribly surmised that "they" must be cutting up the unconscious form of her once lively and impulsive mistress. To relieve the tension which was overpowering her Elsie began to straighten the rumpled eiderdown.

"I'll run and make you some of that arrowroot, sir," she said. "You must have something, so it's no use you----"

Mr. Earlforward said nothing; then his head dropped on one side, and his eyes met hers.

"Elsie," he murmured plaintively, "you won't desert me?"

"Of course not, sir. But the doctor's coming for you."

"Never!" Mr. Earlforward insisted, ignoring her last sentence. "You'll never desert me?"

"Of course not, sir." His weakness gave her strength.

In order to continue in activity, she went to mend the fire.

"Let it out," said Mr. Earlforward. "I'm too hot."

She desisted, well knowing that he was not too hot, but that he hated to see good coal consumed in a grate where it had never been consumed before. From pity she must humour him. What did it matter whether the fire was in or out?--the doctor would be coming for him very soon. Then a flicker of thought for herself: after the departure of Mr. Earlforward, would she have to stay and mind the place till something else happened, or would she be told to go, and let the place mind itself? Very probably she would be told to stay. She opened the door.

"Where are you going now?"

"I was just going to make your arrowroot, sir. That was what missis was giving you. At least, it looks like arrowroot."

"Come here. I want to talk to you. Have you opened the shop?"

"No, sir."

A long pause.

"Bring me up the letters, and let me have my glasses."

He had accepted, in his practical, compromising philosophy, the impressive fact that the shop had not been and would not be opened.

Without saying anything Elsie went downstairs into the shadowy shop. A dozen or so letters lay on the floor. "I'll give him two or three to quiet him," she thought, counting him now as a baby. She picked up three envelopes at random. "He'd better not have them all," she thought. The others she left lying. She had no concern whatever as to the possible business importance of any of the correspondence. Her sole concern, apart from the sick-room, was the condition of the shop. Ought she to clean it, or ought she to "let it go"? She wanted to clean it, because it was obviously fast returning to its original state of filth. On the other hand, while cleaning it she might be neglecting her master. None but herself had the power to decide which course should be taken. She perceived that she was mistress. Naïvely she enjoyed the strange sensation of authority, but the responsibility of authority dismayed her.

"Are these all?" Mr. Earlforward asked indifferently, as she put the three letters into his limp, shiny hand.

"Yes, sir," she said without compunction.

He allowed the letters to slip out of his hand on to the eiderdown. She was just a little afraid of being alone with him.

II

THE REFUSAL

In the early dusk of the afternoon, about four o'clock, there was a banging on the shop-door, and the short bark of a dog, who evidently considered himself entitled to help in whatever affair was afoot. Elsie was upstairs. During the morning several persons, incapable of understanding that when a shop is shut it is shut, had banged on the door, and at last Elsie, by means of two tin tacks, had affixed to the door--without a word to her master--a dirty old card on which she had scrawled in large pencilled letters the succinct announcement, "Closed." This had put an end to banging. But now more banging!

"The doctor!" Elsie exclaimed, and ran down.

Not the doctor, but a lanky and elegant little girl accompanied by a fox-terrier, stood at the door. As soon as the door opened and she saw Elsie the little girl blushed. The fact was that this was her very first entry into the world of affairs, and she felt both extremely nervous and extremely anxious not to show her nervousness to a servant. The dog, of course, suffered.

"Be quiet, sir!" she said very emphatically to the restless creature, addressing him as a gentleman, and the next minute catching him a clout on his hard head. "Papa can't come, and he told me to say----"

"Will you please step inside, Miss Raste?" Elsie suggested.

Nobody was about, but Elsie with a servant's imitativeness had acquired her mistress's passion for keeping private business private. The little girl, reassured by the respectful formality of her reception, stepped inside with some dignity, and the dog, too tardily following, got himself nipped in the closing door and yelped.

"Serves you right!" said Miss Raste; and to apologetic Elsie: "Oh, not at all! It's all his own fault.... Papa says he's so busy he can't come himself, but you are to get Mr. Earlforward ready to go to the hospital, and wrap him up well; and while you're doing that I am to walk towards King's Cross and get a taxi for you. I may have to go all the way to King's Cross," Miss Raste added proudly and eagerly. "But it will be all right. I got a taxi for papa yesterday; it was driving towards our Square, but I stopped it and got in, and told the chauffeur to drive me to our house--not _very_ far, of course. Papa said I should be quite all right, and he's teaching me to be self-reliant and all that." Miss Raste gave a little snigger. "Jack! You naughty boy!"

Jack was examining in detail the correspondence which Elsie had neglected and told lies about. At his mistress's protest he ran off into the obscure hinterland of the shop to stake out a claim there.

"And after I've got you the taxi I am to walk home. Oh, and papa said I was to say you were to tell Mr. Earlforward that Mrs. Earlforward will have an operation to-morrow morning."

Miss Raste was encouraged to be entirely confidential, to withhold nothing even about herself, by the confidence-inspiring and kindly aspect of Elsie's face. She thought almost ecstatically to herself: "How nice it would be to have _her_ for a servant! She's heaps nicer than Clara." But she had some doubt about the correctness of Elsie's style in aprons.

"Oh dear! Oh dear!" Elsie murmured.

"And they'll be expecting Mr. Earlforward at Bart's. It's all arranged."

Having impinged momentarily upon a drab tragedy of Clerkenwell and taken a considerable fancy to Elsie, and having imperiously summoned her dog, Miss Raste, who was being educated to leave Clerkenwell one day and disdain it, departed on her mission with a demeanour in which the princess and the filly were mingled.

"What's the matter? What have you turned the light on for?" Mr. Earlforward demanded when Elsie, much agitated, entered the bedroom. "What _is_ the matter?"

Elsie tried to compose her face.

"How do you feel now, sir?" she asked, serpent-like in spite of her simplicity and nervousness.

"I feel decidedly better. In fact, I was almost thinking of getting up."

"Oh! That's good. Because the doctor's sending a taxi for you, and I am to take you to the hospital at once. Here's all your things." She fingered a loaded chair. "And while you're putting 'em on I'll just run upstairs and get my things."

"Is the doctor here?" Henry cautiously inquired.

"No, sir. He says he's too busy. But he's sent his little girl."

"Well, I'm not going to the hospital. Why should I go to the hospital?" Mr. Earlforward exclaimed with peevish, rather shrill obstinacy.

She had "known" he would refuse to go to the hospital. She was beaten from the start.

"But you said you _would_ go to the hospital, sir."

"When did I say I would go to the hospital?"

"You said so to missis, sir."

"And who told _you_?"

"Missis, sir."

"Yes, but I didn't know then that your mistress would have to go. The place can't be left without both of us. You aren't expecting I should leave _this_ place in your charge. Besides, I'm not really ill. Hospital! I never heard of such a thing. I should like to know what I've got--to be packed off to a hospital! I should feel a perfect fool there. I'm not going. And you can tell everybody I'm not going." He rolled over and hid his face from Elsie, and kept on muttering, feeble-fierce. He had no weapon of defence except his irrational obstinacy; but it was sufficient, and he knew it was sufficient, against the entire organized world. If he had had an infectious disease the authorities would have had the right to carry him off by force; but he had no infectious disease, and therefore was impregnable.

"Now, it's no use you standing there, Elsie. I'm not going. You think because I'm ill you can do what you like, do you? I'll show you!"

Elsie could see the perspiration on his brow. He looked desperate. He was a child, a sick man, a spoilt darling, a martyr to anguish and pain, a tiger hunted and turning ferociously on his pursuers. His mind as much as his body was poisoned. Elsie said quietly:

"Missis is to have an operation to-morrow morning, sir."

A silence. Then, savagely:

"Is she? Then more fool her!"

Elsie extinguished the light, shut the door and descended the stairs, wondering what brilliant people, clever people, people of resource and brains, would have done in her place.

When Miss Raste came back with the taxi in the gathering night, having accomplished a marvellous Odyssey and pretending grandly that what she had done was nothing at all, it was Elsie who blushed in confusion.

"I can't get him to go to the hospital, Miss Raste. No, I can't!"

"Oh!" observed Miss Raste uncertainly. "Well, shall I tell papa that?"

"Yes, please.... Do _what_ I will!"

"I'm afraid the taxi will have to be paid. I've left Jack in it. He's so naughty. A shilling I saw on the dial. But, of course, there's the tip."

Elsie hurried upstairs to her own room and brought down one and twopence of her own money. Another minute and she had locked herself up alone once again with her master.

III

THE MESSAGE TO VIOLET

"I'm raging in my heart! I'm raging in my heart!" Elsie said to herself. "It makes me gnash my teeth!" And she did gnash her teeth all alone in the steadily darkening shop. "I'm that _ashamed_!" she said out loud.

The origin of her expostulation was Mr. Earlforward's obstinacy. She was humiliated on his behalf by his stupidity, and on her own behalf by her failure to get him to the hospital. The incident would certainly become common knowledge, and ignominy would fall upon T. T. Riceyman's. What preoccupied her was less the danger to her employer's health, and perhaps life, than the moral and social aspects of the matter. She would have liked to give her master a good shaking. She was losing her fear of the dread Mr. Earlforward; she was freely criticizing and condemning him, and, indeed, was almost ready to execute him--she who, under the continuous suggestion of Mrs. Earlforward, had hitherto fatalistically and uncritically accepted his decrees and decisions as the decrees and decisions of Almighty God. He had argued with her; he had defended himself against her; he had shown tiny glimpses of an apprehension that she might somehow be capable of forcing him to go to the hospital against his will. He had lifted her to be nearly equal with him. The relations between them could never be the same again. Elsie had a kind of intoxication.

"Well, anyway, something's got to be done," she said, with a violent gesture.

She rushed for her tools and utensils, she found a rough apron and tied it tightly with a hard, viciously-drawn knot over her white one, and began to clean the shop. If seen by nobody else the shop was seen by her, and she could no longer stand the sight of its filth. She ranged about like a beast of prey. She picked up the letters from the floor and ran with them into the office and dashed them on to the desk. And at that moment a postman outside inconsiderately dropped several more letters through the flap. "Of course you _would_!" Elsie angrily protested, and picked them up and ran with them into the office and dashed them on to the desk.

"Oh! This is no use!" she muttered, after a minute or so of sweeping in the gloom, and she turned on the electric lights. Only two sound lamps were now left in the shop, and one in the office. She turned them all on--the one in the office from sheer naughtiness. "I'll see about his electric light!" she said to herself. "I'll burn his electric light for him--see if I don't!" She was punishing him as she cleaned the shop with an energy and a thoroughness unexampled in the annals of charing. This was the same woman who a short while ago had trembled because she had eaten a bit of raw bacon without authority. And when, having finished the shop, she assaulted the office, she drowned the floor in dust-laying water, and she rubbed his desk and especially his safe with a ferocity calculated to flay them. For there was not only his obstinacy and his stupidity--there was his brutality. "Then more fool her!" he had exclaimed about his wife, soon to be martyrized by an "operation." And he had said nothing else.

Then Elsie began to think of Dr. Raste. Of course, she had been mistaken about Dr. Raste. On the pavement in front of his house he had been very harsh, with his rules about what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. And before that, long before that, when he had given a careless look at her in the house in Riceyman Square upon the occasion of Joe's attack on her--well, he hadn't seemed very human. A finicking sort of man--that was what she called him--stand-offish, stony. And yet he had got out of bed in the middle of the night for the old miser, and he must have known he could never screw much money out of him. And fancy the doctor coming with a taxi himself to take away the master! Elsie had never heard of such a thing. And him taking the mistress instead! It was wonderful. And still more wonderful was the arrival of his little girl--a little queen she was, and knew her way about. And he'd arranged things at the hospital, too. (Oh! As she reflected, her humiliation at the failure to "manage" Mr. Earlforward was intensified. She could scarcely bear to think of it.) No doubt at all she had been mistaken about Dr. Raste. Joe had always praised Dr. Raste, and she had been putting Joe down for a simpleton, as indeed he was; but in this matter Joe had been right and she wrong. In repentance, or in penance, she extinguished the two lights in the shop, which she was not using; her mind worked in odd ways, but it had practical logic. The cleaning done, she doffed the rough apron.

She was somewhat out of breath, and she seated herself in the master's chair at his desk. An audacious proceeding, but who could say her nay? She looked startlingly out of place in the sacred chair as she gazed absently at the sacred desk. The mere fact that nobody could say her nay filled her with sadness. Tragedy pressed down upon her. Life was incomprehensible, and she saw no relief anywhere in the world. That man upstairs might be dying, probably was dying. And no one knew what was his disease, and no one could help him without his permission. He lay over the shop-ceiling there, and there was nothing to be done. As for mistress, the case of her mistress touched her even more closely. Mistress was a woman, and she was a woman. She had known a dozen such cases. Women fought their invisible enemy for a time. Then they dropped, and they were swept off to a hospital, and the next thing you heard they were dead.... Mrs. Earlforward alone in a hospital--all rules and regulations! And her husband very ill in bed at home here! Nobody to say a word to Mrs. Earlforward about home, and she fretting her heart away because of master, and the operation to-morrow morning and all! _He_ was very ill, and people were often queer while they were ill. They weren't rightly responsible; you couldn't really blame them, could you? He must be terribly worried about everything. It was a pity he was obstinate, but there you were. Elsie was overwhelmed with affliction, misery, anguish. Her features were most painfully decomposed under the lamp.

But when Mr. Earlforward, answering her tap at the bedroom-door, roused himself to make a fresh and more desperate defence against a powerful antagonist who was determined to force him to act contrary to his inclination and his judgment, he saw, as soon as his eyes had recovered from the dazzle of the sudden light, a smiling, kind and acquiescent face. His relief was intense, and it flowered into gratitude. He thought: "She promised she would never desert me, and she won't." He was weak from his malady and from lack of nourishment; he was in pain; he had convinced himself that he was better, but he could not deny that he was still very ill--and Elsie was all he had. She could make his existence heaven or hell; he perceived that she meant to make it as nearly heaven as she could. She was not going to bully him. She had no intention of disputing his decision about the hospital business. She had accepted her moral defeat, and accepted it without reserve and without ill will. She was bringing liquid food for him, in an attractive white basin. He had, as usual, little desire for food, but the sight of the basin and the gleaming spoon on the old lacquer tray tempted him, and he reflected that even an abortive attempt at a meal would provide a change in the awful monotony of his day. Moreover, he wanted to oblige her.

As, angelically smiling, she walked round the bed to his side and stood close to him, a veil fell from his eyes, and for the first time he saw her, not as a charwoman turned servant, but as a girl charged with energetic life; and her benevolence had rendered her beautiful. He envied her healthy vigour. He relied on it. The moment was delicious in the silent and curst house.

"I'll try," he said pleasantly, raising his body up and gazing at her.

"Why!" she exclaimed. "If you haven't been making your bed!"

No disapproval in her voice. No warning as to the evil consequences of this mad escapade of making his bed.

"Any more letters?" he inquired, after he had swallowed a mouthful.

"I believe there was one," she answered vivaciously. "Shall I run and get it for you?" Down she ran and picked up a letter at random off the desk in the office. And she brought back also a sheet of notepaper and an envelope, a millboard portfolio and a pencil.

"What's all that?" he asked mildly, opening the letter.

"Well, you want to write to missis, don't you?"

"Um?" he murmured as he read the letter, affecting not to have heard her. He was ashamed and self-conscious because he had not himself had the idea of writing to Violet.

"You'll be sending a note to missis at the hospital. It'll give her a good lift-up to hear from you."

"Yes," he said. "I was going to write."

"Here! I'll take that letter. You can do with some of this food. I shouldn't like you to let it get cold." She stayed near him and held a corner of the insecure tray firmly. "You can't take any more? All right."

She removed the tray, and replaced it by the portfolio which was to serve as a writing-desk on the bed. It was always marvellous to Elsie to see the ease with which her master wrote. She admired. And she was almost happy because she had resolved to smile cheerfully and give in to him and do the best she could for him on his own lines and be an angel.

"Shall I read you what I've written?" he suggested, with a sudden upward glance.

"Oh, sir!"

The astounding, the incredible flattery overthrew her completely. He would read to her what he had written to the mistress, doubtless for her approval. She blushed.

"'My dear Wife,--As you may guess, I am torn with anxiety about
you. It was a severe shock when Elsie told me the doctor had
taken you off to the hospital without a moment's delay.
However, I know you are very brave and have an excellent
constitution, and I feel sure that before a week is out you
will be feeling better than you have done for months. And, of
course, the hospital is a very good one, one of the best in
London, if not the best. It has been established for nearly
eight hundred years. If it was only to be under the same roof
as you I should have come to the hospital myself to-day, but I
feel so much better that really it is not necessary, and I feel
sure that if you were here to see me you would agree with me.
There is the business to be thought of. I am glad to say that
Elsie is looking after me splendidly, but, of course, that does
not surprise me. Now, my dear Violet, you must get better
quickly for my sake as well as your own. Be of good courage and
do not worry about me. My little illness is nothing. It is your
illness that has made me realize that.--Your loving Husband, H.
EARLFORWARD.'"

He read the letter in a calm and even but weak voice, addressed the envelope, and then lay back on the pillows. (He was now--since he had made the bed--using Violet's pillow as well as his own.) He did not finish his food. He left Elsie to fold the letter, stick it in the envelope, and lick and fasten the envelope. She did these things with a sense of the honour bestowed upon her. It was a wonderful letter, and he had written it right off. No hesitation. And it was so nice and thoughtful; and how it explained everything. She had to believe for a moment that her master really was better. The expressions about herself touched her deeply, and yet somehow she would have preferred them not to be there. What touched her most, however, was the mere thought of the fact that once, and not so long ago either, her master had been a solitary single man, never troubling himself about women and no prospect of such; and here he was wrapped up in one, and everything so respectable and nice.... But he was very ill. His lips and cheeks were awful. Elsie recalled vividly the full rich red lips he once had.

She had moved away from the bed, taking the basin and putting it on the chest of drawers. The contents of her master's pockets were on the chest of drawers, where he laid them every night, in order better to fold his carefully creased clothes.

"I do fancy I haven't got any money," she said diffidently, after a little while.

"Why, it isn't your wages day--you don't mean?"

"Oh, no, sir."

She had deposited nearly all her cash in the Post Office Savings Bank during her afternoon out, and the bit kept in hand had gone to pay for the unused taxi.

"Why, Elsie! You must be a rich woman," said Mr. Earlforward. "What with your wages and your pension!" He spoke without looking at her, in a rather dreamy tone, but certainly interested.

"Well, sir," Elsie replied, "it's like this. I give my pension to my mother. She's a widow, same as me, and she can't fend for herself."

"All of it? Your mother?"

"Yes, sir."

"How much is your pension?"

"Twenty-eight shillings and elevenpence a week, sir."

"Well, well." Mr. Earlforward said no more. He had often thought about her war pension, but never about any possible mother or other relative. He had never heard mention of her mother. He thought how odd it was that for years she had been giving away a whole pension and nobody knew about it in Riceyman Steps.

"Could you let me have sixpence, sir?" Elsie meekly asked, coming to the point of her remark concerning money.

"Sixpence? What do you want sixpence for? You surely aren't thinking of buying food to-night!" Mr. Earlforward, who had been lying on his right side, turned with a nervous movement on to his back and frowned at Elsie.

"I wanted it to give to Mrs. Perkins's boy in the Square to take your letter down to missis at the hospital." In spite of herself she felt guilty of a betrayal of Mr. Earlforward's financial interests.

"What next?" he said firmly. "You must run down with it yourself. Won't take you long. I shall be all right."

"I don't like leaving you, sir. That's all."

"You get off with it at once, my girl."

She was reduced to the servant again, she who had just been at the high level of a confidante. The invalid turned again to his right side and pushed his nose into the pillow, shutting his eyes to indicate that he had had enough of words and desired to sleep. His keys were on the chest of drawers and several other things, including three toothpicks, but not money. He seldom went to bed with money in his pockets.

Elsie, with a swift gesture, silently picked up the bunch of keys and left the room, a criminal; she had no intention of taking the letter to the hospital herself. She went downstairs quite cheerful; she still felt happier because she had been smiling and benevolent and yielding after her mood of revolt, and because the letter to Mrs. Earlforward was her own idea. In the office she knelt in front of Mr. Earlforward's safe. No fear accompanied the sense of power which she felt. There was nobody to spy upon her, to order her to do one thing, to forbid her to do another. Her omnipotence outside the bedroom could not be disputed.

Although she was handling the bunch of keys for the first time, she knew at once which of the keys was the safe-key and how to open the safe, from having seen Mr. Earlforward open and close it. He would have been extremely startled to learn the extent of her knowledge, not only about the safe, but about many other private matters in the life of the household; for Elsie, like most servants, was full of secret domestic information, unused, but ready at any time for use. She unlocked the safe and swung open the monumental door of it and pulled out a drawer--and drew back, alarmed, almost blinded. The drawer was full of gold coins--full! Her domestic information had not comprised this dazzling hoard. In all her life Elsie had scarcely ever seen a sovereign. Years ago, in the early part of the war, she had seen a half-sovereign now and then. She shut the drawer quickly. Then she looked round, scared of possible spies after all. She thought she could hear creepings on the stairs and stirrings in the black corners of the mysterious shop. Not even when caught in the act of eating stolen raw bacon had she had such a terrifying sense of monstrous guilt. Her impulse was to shut the safe, lock it, double-lock it, treble-lock it, and try to erase the golden vision utterly from her memory. She would not on any account have pulled out another drawer.

But, lying on the ledge above the nest of drawers, she saw a canvas bag. This bag was familiar to her; it held silver. She loosened its string and drew forth sixpence. Then she rose, tore the wrapper off a circular among the correspondence on the table, wrote on the inside of the wrapper "6d.," and put it in the bag. Such was her poor, her one feasible, inadequate precaution against the tremendous wrath to come. She had done a deed unspeakable, and she could perfectly imagine what the consequences of it might be.

She was still breathing rapidly when she unlocked the shop-door. Rain was falling--rather heavy rain. Securing the door again, she ran upstairs to get her umbrella, which lay under her bed wrapped in newspaper. She had to grope for it in the dark. Roughly she tore off the newspaper. Downstairs again she could not immediately find the door-key and decided to risk leaving the door unlocked. She would be back from the Square in a minute, and nobody would dream of breaking in. She ran off and up the Steps towards the Square.

IV

OUT OF THE RAIN

Mrs. Perkins's boy, who lived with Mrs. Perkins in the house next door to Elsie's old home in Riceyman Square, and who had a chivalric regard for Elsie, fortunately happened to be out in the Square. In the darkness he was engaged in amorous dialectic with a girl of his own age--fourteen or fifteen--and they were both imperfectly sheltering under the eve of an outhouse (church property) at the north-east corner of the churchyard. Their voices were raised from time to time, and Elsie recognized his as she approached the house. Mrs. Perkins's boy wore over his head a sack which he had irregularly borrowed for the night from the express parcel company in the tails of whose vans he spent about twelve hours a day hanging on to a piece of string suspended from the van roof. That he had energy left in the evening to practise savagely-delicate sentimental backchat in the rain was proof enough of a somewhat remarkable quality of "brightness."

Elsie had chosen him for her mission because he was hardened to the world and thoroughly accustomed to the enterprise of affronting entrance-halls and claiming the attention of the guardians thereof. She now called to him across the roadway in an assured, commanding tone which indicated that she knew him to be her slave and that, in spite of her advanced years, she could more than hold her own with him against any chit in the Square. There was an aspect of Elsie's individuality which no living person knew except Mrs. Perkins's boy. He went hurrying to her.

"I want you to run down to the hospital with this letter and be sure to tell the porter it is to be given to Mrs. Earlforward to-night. She's in there. And here's sixpence for you, and I'll lend you my umbrella and I'll get it again from your mammy to-morrow morning; but you must just walk to the Steps with me first because I don't want to get wet."

"Right-o, Elsie!" he agreed in his rough, breaking voice, and louder: "So long, Nell!"

"Put it in your pocket now," Elsie said, handing him the letter. "No; don't take the keys." She was still carrying Mr. Earlforward's bunch of keys.

The boy insisted on taking the umbrella, which gave him almost as much happiness as the sixpence. Never before had he had the opportunity to show off with an umbrella. He wished that he could get rid of the sack, which did not at all match the umbrella's glory.

"Here, hold on!" He stopped her and threw the sack over the railings into his mother's area. They walked together towards the Steps.

"Your Joe's been asking for you to-night," he said suddenly.

"My Joe!" She stood still, then leaned against the railings.

"Here! Come _on_!" he adjured her, nervously sniggering in a cheeky way to hide the emotion in him caused by hers.

Elsie obeyed.

"How do you know?"

"Nell just told me. It's all about."

"Where d'e call?"

"Hocketts's."

"What'd they tell him?"

"Told him where you was living, I suppose."

"D'you know when he was inquiring?"

"Oh, some time to-night, I s'pose."

"Now you hurry with that letter, Jerry," she said at the shop-door. Mrs. Perkins's boy sailed round the corner into King's Cross Road with the umbrella on high.

Elsie had the feeling that she had not herself spoken to Jerry at all, but that she had heard someone else speaking to him with her voice. And she was quite giddy between the influences of fear and of happiness. Her hands and feet were very cold. All kinds of memories and hopes which she had murdered in cold blood and buried deep came rushing and thronging out of their graves, intensely alive, and overwhelmed her mind. The anarchy within her was such that she had to think painfully before she could even command her fingers to open the shop-door.

Entering from the street, you had to cross the full length of the shop to the wall between it and the office in order to turn on the electric light. As Elsie passed gropingly between the bays of shelves she thought that she heard a sound of movement, and then the question struck and shook her: "Was the door latched or unlatched when I opened it?" She could not be sure, so uncertain and clumsy had been her hands. She dared not, for a moment, light the shop lest she should see something sinister or something that she wanted too much to see.

Turning the switch at last, she looked and explored with apprehensive eyes all of the shop that could be seen from the office doorway. Nothing! But the recesses of the bays nearest the front of the shop were hidden from her. She listened. Not a sound within the shop, and outside only the customary sounds which she never noticed unless attentively listening. She would go upstairs. She would extinguish the light and go upstairs. No! She could not, anyhow, leave the shop. She must wait. She must open the door and look forth at short intervals to see if Joe was coming. She must even leave the door ajar for him. He was bound to come sooner or later. He knew where she was, and it was impossible that he should not come. She heard a very faint noise, which sounded through the shop and in her ears like the discharge of a gun or the herald of an earthquake. Then a silence equally terrifying! The faint noise appeared to come from the bay at the end of which was the window giving on King's Cross Road. She could see about half, perhaps more, of this bay, but not all. She must go and look. Her skin crept and tingled. The shop was now for her peopled with invisible menaces. Mr. Earlforward was so forgotten that he might have been dead a hundred years. She must go and look. She did go and look. Her heart faltered horribly. There was indeed a heap of something lying under the side-window.

"Joe!" she cried, but in a whisper, lest by some infernal magic Mr. Earlforward up in his bedroom should overhear.

Joe was a lump of feeble life enveloped in loose, wet garments. His hat had fallen on the floor and was wetting it. He had grown a thin beard. Elsie knelt down by him and took his head in her arms and kissed his pale face; her rich lips found his dry and shrivelled up. He recognized her without apparently looking at her. She knew this by the responsiveness of his lips.

"I'm very thirsty," he murmured in his deep voice, which to hear again thrilled her. (Strange that, wet to the skin, he should be thirsty!)

Though she knew that he was ill, and perhaps very ill, she felt happier in that moment than she had ever felt. Happiness, exultant and ecstatic, rushed over her, into her, permeating and surrounding her. She cared for nothing save that she had him. She had no curiosity as to what he had been doing, what sufferings he had experienced, how his illness had come about, what his illness was. She lived exclusively in the moment. She did not even trouble about his thirst. Then gradually a poignant yet sweet remorse grew in her because, a year ago, before his vanishing, she had treated him harshly. She had acted for the best in the interests of his welfare, but was it right to be implacable, as she had been implacable, towards a victim such as he unquestionably was? Would it not have been better to ruin and kill him with kindness and surrender? For Elsie kindness had a quality which justified it for its own sake, whatever the consequences of it might be. And then she began to regret keenly that she had destroyed his letter; she would have liked to be able to show it to him to prove her constancy. Supposing he were to ask her if she had received it, what she had done with it. Could she endure the shame of answering: "I burnt it"?

"I'm so thirsty," he repeated. He was a man of one idea.

"Stay there," she whispered softly, squeezing him, and damping her dress and cheeks before loosing him.

She ran noiselessly upstairs and came back with a small jug of cold water from the kitchen. As seemingly he could not clasp the handle, she held the jug to his lips. He swallowed the water in large, eager gulps.

"Wait a bit now," she said, when he had drunk half of it, and pulled the jug away from him. After twenty or thirty seconds he drank the rest and sighed.

"Can you walk, Joe? Can you stand?"

He shook his head slowly.

"I dropped down giddy.... Door was unlatched. I came in out of the rain and dropped down giddy."

She ran upstairs again, lit her candle, and set it on the floor by her bedroom door. When she had descended once more she saw that the candle threw a very faint light all the way down the two flights of stairs to the back of the shop. She seized Joe in her arms--she was very strong from continual hard manual labour, and he was very thin--and carried him up to her room, and, because he was wet, put him on the floor there. Breathless for a minute, she brought in the candle and closed and locked the door. (She locked it against nobody, but she locked it.)

She was nurse now, and he her patient. She began to undress him, and then stopped and hurried down to the bathroom, where Mr. Earlforward's weekly clean grey flannel shirt lay newly ironed. She stole the shirt. Then, having secured her door again, she finished undressing the patient, taking every stitch off him, and rubbing him dry with her towel, and rubbed the ends of his hair nearly dry, and got the shirt over his shoulders, and turned down the bed, and lifted him into her bed, and covered him up, and threw on the bedclothes the very garments which in the early morning she had used for Mrs. Earlforward's comforting. There he lay in her bed, and nobody on earth except those two knew that he was in her room with the door locked to keep out the whole world. It was a wondrous, palpitating secret, the most wonderful secret that any woman had ever enjoyed in the history of love. She knelt by the bed and kissed him again and again. He smiled; then a spasm of pain passed over his face.

"What's the matter with you, Joe, darling? What is it you've got?" she asked gently, made blissful by his smile and alarmed by his evident discomfort.

"I ache--all over me. I'm cold." His voice was extremely weak.

She ran over various diseases in her mind and thought of rheumatic fever. She had not the least idea what rheumatic fever was, but she had always understood that it was exceedingly serious.

"I shall light a fire," she said, announcing this terrific decision as though it was quite an everyday matter for a servant, having put a "follower" in her own room, to light a fire for him and burn up her employer's precious coal.

On the way downstairs to steal a bucket of coal she thought: "I'd better just make sure of the old gentleman," and went into the principal bedroom and turned on the light. Mr. Earlforward seemed to be neither worse nor better. She was reassured as to him. He looked at her intently, but could not see through her body the glowing secret in her heart.

"You all right, sir?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Going to bed?"

"Oh, no! Not yet!" she smiled easily. "Not for a long time."

"What's all that wet on your apron, Elsie?"

She was not a bit disconcerted.

"Oh, that's nothing, sir," she said, and turned out the light before departing.

"Here! I say, Elsie!"

"Can't stop now, sir. I'm that busy with things." She spoke to him negligently, as a stronger power to a weaker--it was very queer!--and went out and shut the door with a smart click.

The grate and flue in her room were utterly unaccustomed to fires; it is conceivable that they had never before felt a fire. But they performed their functions with the ardour of neophytes, and very soon Mr. Earlforward's coal was blazing furiously in the hearth and the room stiflingly, exquisitely hot--while Mr. Earlforward, all unconscious of the infamy above, kept himself warm by bedclothes and the pride of economy alone. And a little later Elsie was administering to Joe her master's invalid food. The tale of her thefts was lengthening hour by hour.

V

THE TWO PATIENTS

Towards four o'clock in the morning Joe woke up from a short sleep and suddenly put questions to Elsie about his safety in that strange house, and also he inquired whose bed he was in.

"You're in my bed, Joe," she answered, kneeling again by the bedside, so as to have her face close to his and to whisper more intimately; and she told him the situation of the household and how her mistress had been carried to the hospital for an operation, and how her master was laid up with an unascertained disease, and how she alone had effective power in the house.

Then Joe began excitedly to talk of his adventures in the past twelve months, and she perceived that a change for the worse had come over him and that he was very ill. Both his voice and his glance indicated some development of the malady.

"Don't tell me now, Joe dear," she stopped him. "I want to hear it all, but you must rest now. To-morrow, after you've had another good sleep. I must just go and look at Mr. Earlforward for a minute."

She offered him a drink of water and left him, less to look at Mr. Earlforward than in order to give him an opportunity to calm himself, if that was possible. She knew that in certain moods solitude was best for him, ill or well. And she went down the dark stairs to the other bedroom, which was nearly as cold as the ice-cold stairs.

Mr. Earlforward also was worse. He seemed to be in a fever, yet looked like a corpse. Her arrival clearly gave him deep relief; he upbraided her for neglecting him; but somewhat timidly and cautiously, as one who feels himself liable to reprisals which could not be resisted. Elsie stayed with him and tended him for a quarter of an hour, and then went to the kitchen, which the extravagant gas-ring was gently keeping warm, while it warmed water and tried to dry Joe's miserable clothes.

Elsie had to think. Both men under her charge were seriously ill, and she knew not what was the matter with either of them. Supposing that one of them died on her hands before the morning, or that both of them died! All her bliss at the reappearance of Joe had vanished. She had horrible thoughts, thoughts of which she was ashamed but which she could not dismiss. If anyone was to die she wanted it to be Mr. Earlforward. More, she could not help wishing that Mr. Earlforward would in any case die. She had solemnly promised Mr. Earlforward never to desert him, and a promise was a promise. If he lived, and "anything happened" to Mrs. Earlforward, she was a prisoner for life. And if Joe lived Mr. Earlforward would never agree to her marrying him and having him in the house with her, as would assuredly be necessary, having regard to Joe's health. Whereas with Mr. Earlforward out of the way she would be her own mistress and could easily assume full charge of Joe. Strange that so angelically kind and unselfish a creature could think so murderously; but think thus she did.

Further, the double responsibility which impulsively she had assumed weighed upon her with a crushing weight. Never had that always anxious brow been so puckered up with anxiety and hesitancy as now. Ought the doctor to be instantly summoned? But she could not fetch him herself; she dared not even leave her patients long enough to let her run over to the Square and rouse one of her friends there. And, moreover, she had a curious compunction about disturbing the doctor two nights in succession, and this compunction somehow counted in the balance against even men's lives! She simply did not know what to do. She desperately needed counsel, and could not get it. On the whole she considered that the doctor should be sent for. Many scores, perhaps hundreds, of people were sleeping within a hundred yards of her. Was there not one among them to whom she could appeal? She returned to Joe. He was talking in his sleep. She went to the window, opened it, and gazed out.