Chapter IX: Part IV: I (1)

AT THE WINDOW

Elsie was cleaning the upper windows of T. T. Riceyman's, and she had arrived at the second-floor spare-room, which had two windows, one on King's Cross Road and the other on Riceyman Steps. (A third window, on Riceyman Steps, had been bricked up, like two first-floor windows on King's Cross Road, in the prehistoric ages of the house.) Two-thirds of her body was dangerously projected over King's Cross Road, above the thunder of the trams and the motor-lorries and the iron trotting of cart-horses; the inferior third dangled within the room. She clung with one powerful arm to woodwork or brickwork, while with the other she wiped and rubbed the panes; the window-sill was the depository of a tin can, a leather, and a cloth, each of which had to be manipulated with care, lest by falling any of them should baptize or injure the preoccupied passers-by whose varied top-knots and shoulders Elsie glimpsed when she happened to look down. The windows of the house were all sashed; to clean the upper half was fairly easy, but the lower half could only be done by lifting it bit by bit into the place of the upper half and pulling the latter down on to Elsie's legs. A difficult operation, this cleaning, in addition to being risky to limb or even to life. Elsie performed it with the exactest conscientiousness in the dusty and cold north wind that swept through the canyon of King's Cross Road.

She could see everything within the room. The orderly piles of books ranged on the floor, and the array of provisional shelves which she and her mistress had built upon odd volumes (still unsold) of _The Illustrated, London News_. The top or covering plank had disappeared, having been secretly removed, during the master's absence, and sawn and chopped up for firewood in the cellar; for the master had decisively discountenanced the purchase of more firewood, holding that somehow or other the women could "manage"; they had managed. Elsie saw the door open and her mistress enter with a plant-pot in either hand. Violet, all aproned and wearing a renovated check frock, gave a start at the sight of Elsie's legs.

"So here you are!" Elsie heard her voice coming weakly through the glass into the uproar of the street. "And I've been looking for you everywhere!"

That Elsie had been engaged upon the windows for quite three-quarters of an hour was proof that a servant might go her own ways without attracting the attention even of an employer who flattered herself on missing nothing. Elsie wormed her body back within the room.

"Didn't you see me cleaning the outside of the shop windows, 'm?" she asked, sedately benevolent. (She could clean the inside of the shop windows only by special arrangement with the proprietor.)

"No, I did not. It's true I've had other matters to think about this morning. Yes, it is! And why must you choose this morning for your windows? You know it's your afternoon out, and there's a lot to do. But perhaps you aren't going out, Elsie?"

"Well, 'm, I was thinking of going out," Elsie answered, bringing in the tin can. "But I thought they looked so dirty."

Here Elsie was deceitful, or at best she was withholding part of the truth. Mrs. Earlforward would not have guessed in a million guesses Elsie's real reason for cleaning the windows on just that morning. The real reason was that the vanished Joe had been famous for the super-excellence of his window-cleaning. This day was the anniversary of his disappearance. Elsie had no genuine expectation that he would reappear. The notion of his return after precisely a year was merely silly. She admitted it. And yet he might come back! If he did he would find her in half an hour by inquiry, and if he did find her she could not tolerate that he should find "her" windows dirty. He had an eye for windows, and windows must shine for him. Thus mysteriously, mystically, poetically, passionately did Elsie's devotion express itself.

"Now don't _shut_ the window!" Violet admonished her sharply. "You know I want to put these plants out."

Elsie's eyes grew moist.

"How touchy the girl is this morning!" thought Violet. "If she had to put up with what I have----"

And perhaps Violet was to be excused. How could she, with all her commonsense and experience of mankind, divine that stodgy Elsie's equanimity was at the mercy of any gust that windy morning? She could not.

She established the plant-pots on the window-sill. She had bought bulbs with the ten shillings so startlingly given to her by her husband, and with his reluctant approval. She had scrubbed the old plant-pots, stirred the soil in them, and embedded the bulbs. She put the pots out in the day-time and brought them in at night; she watered them when necessary in the bathroom. She tended them like a family of children. All unseen, they were the romance of her daily existence, her refuge from trouble, the balm of her anxieties. The sight of the clean, symmetrically arranged pots on the sills might have given the idea that a new era had set in for T. T. Riceyman's, that the terror of the curse of its vice had been exorcized by the secret workings within those ruddy pots. Violet hoped that it was so. But it was not so, and Elsie, in the primeval quality of her instincts, knew that it was not so. The bulbs were not pushing upwards to happiness; they were pushing upwards to sinister consummations, the approach of which rendered them absurd. And Elsie felt this too.

"Were you wanting me for anything particular, 'm?" Elsie asked, rather contrite about her windows and eager to appease.

"Yes, I should think I _was_ wanting you for something! How dare you give me this money you put on my dressing-table?" She spoke with nervous exasperation, and produced from her pocket some coins wrapped in the bit of paper in which Elsie had wrapped them an hour or two earlier--the price of the ruined double saucepan, now replaced by Violet. "Take it back. You ought to have known I should never let you pay for it."

This after she had most positively insisted that Elsie should repair out of her resources the consequence of her unparalleled stupidity! The fact was that Violet, unsentimental and hard as she could be, and generally was, in "practical" matters, had been somewhat moved at the sight of the poor little coins in the dirty paper, deposited in the bedroom dumbly, without a word written or spoken. Also she happened that morning to be in a frame of mind favourable to emotion of certain sorts. She sniffed ominously, glancing at Elsie's face and glancing away. She could not bear to think that the lovable, loyal, silly creature had seriously intended to settle for the saucepan out of her wages.

Elsie, astonished and intimidated, took the money back as dumbly as she had paid it out.

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

The little episode was closed. And yet Violet sniffed again, and her features slowly suffered distortion, and she began to cry. She was one who "never cried," and this was her third crying within a week! In truth it was not about the money at all that she had wanted to speak to Elsie. She said indistinctly through her tears:

"He's not gone out this morning, Elsie; and he's not going out. He's missing the sale. He says himself he's not well enough; that just means not strong enough. And now he's sitting in the office trying to type, and customers just have to come to _him_."

The secret that was no secret was suddenly out. There was in Elsie's ingenuous dark-blue eyes such devotion, such reliability, such an offering of soft comfort as Violet could not resist. The deep-rooted suspiciousness which separates in some degree every woman from every other woman dissolved away, and with it Violet's pride in her superior station and Violet's self-sufficiency. The concealed yet notorious fact that Violet lived in torment about her husband, that all was not well in the placid household, was now openly admitted. In an instant Elsie, ardently yielding herself to another's woe, quite forgot the rasping harshness of Violet's recent onslaught. She was profoundly flattered. And she was filled with an irrational gratitude because Violet had given her the shelter of a sure, respectable home which knew not revolutions, altercations, penury, debauchery, nor the heart-rending stridency of enervated mothers and children.

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

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

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

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

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

"Why shouldn't he have an appetite? He's never suffered from indigestion in all his life; he says so himself."

"Yes, 'm. Not till lately."

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

It was a curious thing to say, because there had never been any talk about saving, and, even if there had been, clearly Elsie ought not to have heard it. Nevertheless, she received the remark as of course, nodding her head.

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

Violet was referring, and Elsie knew that she was referring, to the master's outburst on communism, with all its unspoken implications. They had both been impressed at the time; Mr. Earlforward had convicted them of sin. But now they were both femininely scornful of the silent argument of the illogical male. What, indeed, was the use of fatally depriving yourself now in order not to have to deprive yourself later on? There was something wrong in the master's mysterious head.

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

Elsie stressed these last three words, thereby proving that her simplicity had led her straight to the heart of the matter. The atmosphere of the sealed house was infected by the strangeness of the master, who himself, in turn, was influenced by it. Fresh air, new breath, a great wind, was needed to dispel the corruption. The house was suffocating its owners. An immense deterioration had occurred, unperceived till now. Violet was afraid; she was aghast; she realized the change, not fully, but sufficiently to frighten her. The gravity of the danger dried up her tears.

"Yes," she assented.

"The doctor--Dr. Raste."

"But do you think he'd let me send for the doctor--for one moment! And if I did send, do you think he'd see him! It's out of the question!"

"You might have the doctor for yourself, 'm. You might send me for him, and then he could see master by accident like."

"But I'm not ill, my girl," Violet protested, though she was impressed by the kind creature's resourcefulness.

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

Violet blushed like a culprit.

"What in the name of goodness are you talking about?" she demanded. "Of course, I'm not ill!" They were all the same, servants. They never understood that familiarity from an employer should not be answered by familiarity.

"Sorry, 'm," said Elsie meekly, but still with a very slight benevolent obstinacy, as one who would withdraw and wouldn't withdraw.

Violet stared half a moment at her, and then abruptly walked out of the room. The interview was getting to be too much for her. She could not stand any more of it--not one more word of it. She foresaw the probability of a complete humiliating breakdown if she tried herself too far. A few seconds later she popped her head in at the door again and said firmly but quite pleasantly:

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

As a fact, Elsie was dawdling, in reflection.

II

ELSIE'S MOTIVE

There was only one exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises--through the shop. Once a door had given direct access to King's Cross Road, but so long ago that the new bricks which had bricked it up were now scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding bricks. No one could have guessed at a glance that the main façade of the building had been shifted round, for some reason lost in antiquity, from King's Cross Road to Riceyman Steps; or that the little oblong, railing-enclosed strip of grass, which was never cut nor clipped nor trodden by human foot, had once been a "front garden." The back parts of T. T. Riceyman's provided no escape save through a little yard, over high brick walls, into the back parts of other properties inhabited by unknown and probably pernickety persons and their children.

As there was only the shop exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises, it could not be concealed from the powers that Elsie went forth that same afternoon dressed in her best. Unusual array, for the girl generally began half-holidays by helping her friends, to whom she was very faithful, in Riceyman Square, either by skilled cleansing labour in the unclean dirty house or, as occasion might demand, by taking children out for an excursion into the more romantic leafy regions of Clerkenwell up towards the north-east, such as Myddelton Square, where there was room to play and opportunity for tumbling about in pleasant outdoor dirt. Mrs. Earlforward nodded to Elsie as she departed, and Elsie blushed, smiling. But Mrs. Earlforward asked no curious question, friendly or inquisitive. She knew her place, as Elsie knew Elsie's. She knew that it was not "wise" to meddle. Servants must do what they liked with their own; they were mighty independent, even the best of them, these days. Not a word, save on household matters, had passed between the two women since the scene of the morning. Mr. Earlforward was still dealing with customers in the office; his voice, rather enfeebled, seemed blander than ever.

"I hope it will be fine for you," Violet called after Elsie at the shop-door. Wonderful, the implications in the tone of that briefly-expressed amiability! It was as if Violet had said: "I know you're up to something out of the ordinary. I don't know what it is, and I don't seek to inquire. I believe in people minding their own business. But you might have given me a hint, and anyhow I can see through you, though you mayn't think it. Anyhow, in spite of the cold wind and the big moving clouds, I hope you won't be inconvenienced in your very private affairs by the weather."

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

No sooner had she turned the corner into the King's Cross Road than she ceased to be the "general" at T. T. Riceyman's, and became the image of the wife of a superior artisan with a maternal expression indicating a small family left at home, a sense of grave responsibilities, an ability to initiate and execute, considerable dignity. She had put her gloves on. She carried her umbrella. She had massiveness, and looked more than her age; indeed, she looked close on thirty. If she had blushed to Violet, it was because of her errand, which, had Violet known of it, would have set up serious friction. Elsie was going to see Dr. Raste about the state of health of T. T. Riceyman's. An impossible errand, of course! Fancy a servant interfering thus in the most intimate affairs of her employers. But the welfare of her employers was as dear to Elsie as her own. Her finest virtue was benevolence, and she was quite ready to affront danger to a benevolent end. At the same time it has to be admitted that Elsie's motive in going to Myddelton Square, without a train of children, to see Dr. Raste, was not a single motive. Probably in human activity there is no such a thing as a single motive. For Elsie this day was not chiefly the day on which Mrs. Earlforward had so piteously broken down before her as to Mr. Earlforward's physical and mental condition--it was chiefly the anniversary of Joe's disappearance. The fact of the anniversary filled all the horizon of Elsie's thoughts, and at intervals it surged inwards upon her from every quarter of the compass and overwhelmed her--and then it would recede again. Joe had been in the service of Dr. Raste. He had lived at Dr. Raste's. Therefore, it would be natural for him, if he reappeared, to reappear first at Dr. Raste's. He would not reappear; it was inconceivable that he should reappear. This anniversary notion of hers, as she had often said to herself, was ridiculous. Much more likely that Joe had married some other girl by this time, for Elsie knew that he was not a man capable of doing without women. He had probably settled down somewhere. Where? Where could he be?... And yet he _might_ reappear. The anniversary notion might not be so ridiculous after all. You never knew. And herein was part of her motive for going to Dr. Raste's.

The doctor's house--or, rather, the house of which he occupied the lower part--was one of the larger houses in the historic Myddelton Square, and stood at the corner of the Square and New River Street. The clock of St. Mark's showed two minutes to the hour, but already patients had collected in the ante-room to the surgery in the side-street. Elsie hesitated exactly at the corner. From detailed and absorbing talks about nothing with Joe, she knew the doctor's habits pretty well. The doctor was due to be entering his surgery for the afternoon session. And there he was--it seemed almost a miracle--approaching from the eastward! A little girl, all thin legs and thin arms, was trotting by his side, and the retinue consisted of a fox-terrier, who was joyfully chasing a few selected leaves among the thousands blown across the square by the obstreperous wind. The doctor and his little girl stopped at their front-door.

"Very well," Elsie heard the doctor say, "you can give Jack his bath, but you must change your frock first, and if there's any mess of any sort I shan't take your part when mummy comes home."

The dog stood still, listening, and the doctor turned to him and ejaculated loudly and mischievously:

"Bath! Bath!"

Jack's tail dropped, and in deep sulks he walked off towards the railings in the middle of the square.

"Come here, sir" commanded the doctor firmly.

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

Jack obeyed, totally disillusioned about the interestingness of dead leaves, and slipped in a flash down the area steps, the child after him. Dr. Raste moved towards the surgery, and saw Elsie in his path.

"No! No!" he said to her, kindly, humanly, for he had not yet had time to lose his fatherhood. "This won't do, you know. You must take your turn with the rest." He raised his hand in protest. He was acquainted with all the wiles of patients who wanted illicitly to forestall other patients.

"It isn't for myself, sir," said Elsie, with puckered brow, very nervous. "It's for Mr. Earlforward--at least, Mrs. Earlforward."

"Oh!" The doctor halted.

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

"Yes, of course." He ought to have proceeded: "By the way, Elsie, Joe's come back to-day." It would have been too wonderful if he had said that. But he didn't. He merely said: "Well, what's it all about?" somewhat impatiently, for at that moment the clock struck.

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

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

"Oh, yes, sir. He married Mrs. Arb, as was; she kept that confectioner's shop opposite in the Steps. But she sold it. And I'm the servant, sir, now. It'll soon be a year ago, sir."

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

"Well, sir," said Elsie, hesitating and blushing very red, "missis didn't exactly send me, in a manner of speaking. She says master won't have a doctor, she says. But I was thinking if you could----"

"Do you mean to say you've come up here to tell me about your master and mistress without orders?"

"Well, sir----"

"But--but--but--but--but," Dr. Raste spluttered with the utmost rapidity, startled for once out of his inhuman imperturbability by this monstrous act of Elsie's. He had no child nor dog now. He was the medico chemically pure. "Did you suppose that I can come like that without being called in? I never heard of such a thing. What next, I wonder?"

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

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

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

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

"Haven't they got any friends you could speak to?" he asked in a tone still hard, but with a touch of comprehending friendliness in it. This touch brought tears to Elsie's silly eyes.

"No, sir."

"No friends?"

"No, sir."

"Nobody ever calls?"

"No, sir."

"And they never go out?"

"No, sir."

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

"Oh, never, sir."

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

Not a word about Joe. Not a word, even, of inquiry! And yet he knew that Joe and she had been keeping company! And he had been so fond of Joe. He had thought the world of Joe. He might, at least, have said: "Seen anything of poor Joe lately?" But nothing! Nothing! Joe might never have existed for all the interest the doctor showed in him. It was desolating. She was a fool. She was a fool to try to get the doctor to call without a proper summons, and she was thrice a fool to have hoped or fancied that Joe would turn up again, on either the anniversary of his vanishing or any other day. The reaction from foolish hope to despair was terrible. She had known that it would be. The whole sky fell down on her and overwhelmed her in choking folds of night, and there was not a gleam anywhere. No glimmer for T. T. Riceyman's. No glimmer for herself. ... And then she did detect a pin-point of light. The day was not yet finished. Joe might still ... Renewal of utter foolishness!

III

CHARITY

A dramatic event occurred that same afternoon at the shop. Violet and Henry were together in the office, where the electricity had just been turned on; the shop itself was still depending on nature for light, and lay somewhat obscure in the dusk. Husband and wife were in an affectionate mood, for Violet as usual had been beaten by the man's extraordinary soft obstinacy. She had had more than one scene of desperation with him about his health and his treatment of himself, but nobody can keep on fighting a cushion for ever. Henry had worn her down into a good temper, into a condition of reassurance and even optimism. He had, in fact, by patience convinced her that his indisposition was temporary and such as none can hope to escape; and that he undoubtedly possessed a constitution of iron. The absence of Elsie helped the intimacy of the pair; they enjoyed being alone, unobserved, free from the constraint of the eyes of a third person who was here, there and everywhere. The trouble was that as soon as the affectionate mood had been established Violet wanted to begin her tactics and her antics all over again.

"You know, darling," she said, playful and serious, sitting on the edge of the desk by his side in a manner most unmatronly. "Either you eat to-morrow, or I shall have the doctor in. Oh! I shall have the doctor in! It's for you to decide, but I've made up my mind. You must admit----"

And then the shop door opened and someone entered. Violet sprang off the desk to the switches, illuminated the shop, and beheld Dr. Raste. Henry also beheld Dr. Raste. Although a perfectly innocent woman, Violet's face at once changed to that of a wicked conspirator who has been caught in the act. Try as she would she could not get rid of that demeanour of guilt, and the more she tried the less she succeeded. She dared not look at Henry. Certainly she could not murmur to Henry; "I swear to you I didn't send for him. His coming's just as much a surprise to me as it is to you." She thought: "This is that girl Elsie's doing." And she was angry and resentful against Elsie, and yet timorously glad that Elsie had been interfering. What Henry was thinking no one could guess. Henry's mind to him a kingdom was, and a kingdom never invaded. All that could be positively stated of Henry was that the moment he recognized the doctor he rose vigorously from his chair and limped about with vivacity to prove that he was not an invalid, or in any way in need of any doctor. And, strange to say, he really felt quite well. Dr. Raste startled Violet by offering to shake hands.

"Ha! How d'ye do, Mrs. Earlforward," said he, in his sprightly, professional, high-voiced style. "Not seen you for a long time."

Violet recalled the Sunday morning in Riceyman Square when he had spoken to Henry on the pavement. She was happy then, and expectant of happiness. She was girlish then, exuberant, dominating, self-willed, free. None could withstand her. A year ago! The change in twelve months suddenly presented itself to her with a sinister significance; but she imagined that the change was confined to her circumstances, and that an unchanged Violet had survived.

The doctor with his fresh eyes saw a shrunken woman, subject to some kind of neurosis which he could not diagnose. He greeted the oncoming Mr. Earlforward, and shook a hand of parchment. Mr. Earlforward's appearance indeed astonished him, and he said to himself that perhaps he had done well to call, and that anyhow Elsie had not exaggerated her report, Mr. Earlforward was worse than shrunken--he was emaciated; his jaws were hollowed, his little eyes had receded, his complexion was greyish, his lips were pale and dry--the lower lip had lost its heavy fullness; his ears were nearly white. And there he was moving nervously about in the determination to be in excellent health in the presence of the doctor. Amazing, thought Dr. Raste, that Mrs. Earlforward had not summoned medical assistance weeks earlier! But then Mrs. Earlforward saw her husband every day and nearly all day. Amazing that no customer had dropped a word of alarm! But then Mr. Earlforwaid's amiable and bland relations with customers were not such as to permit any kind of intimacy. You got a certain distance with Mr. Earlforward, but you never got any further.

"You remember I bought a Shakspere here last year," Dr. Raste began cheerily, and somewhat loudly. (He often spoke more loudly than he need: result of imposing himself on the resistant stupidity of the proletariat.) Relief spread through the shop like a sweet odour. The professional man's visit was a pure coincidence after all. Violet ceased to look guilty. Henry ceased to ape the person of vigorous health.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Earlforward; and to his wife: "Just reach down that 'Shakspere with Illustrations,' will you?"

"Shakspere with Illustrations" was the shop's title for the work (Valpy's edition of Shakspere's plays and poems), because these three words were the only words on the binding.

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

And Mr. Earlforward recalled from their previous interview in the shop an impression that the doctor was apt to be impudent. What right had the man to express surprise at the work not having been sold? Mr. Earlforward had in stock books bought ten years ago, fifteen years ago.

"I could have sold it," said he. "But the truth is I've been keeping it for you. I felt sure you'd be looking in one of these days. I meant to drop you a postcard to say I'd found it; but somehow----"

All this was true. For at least ten months Mr. Earlforward had intended to drop the postcard, and had never dropped it. Yet his conviction that one day he would drop it had remained fresh and strong throughout the period.

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

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

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

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

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

"Shakspere's been having considerable success in my house," Dr. Raste went on, when the two men were alone, with an arch smile at his own phrasing. "You'd scarcely believe it, but my little daughter simply devours him. And as it's her birthday next week I thought I'd give her my Globe edition for herself, and get another one with a wee bit larger type for myself. My eyes aren't what they were.... Simply devours him! Scarcely believe it, would you?" The doctor was growing human. His eyes sparkled with ingenuous paternal pride. Then he checked himself.

"I notice your old clock isn't going," said he, in a more conventional, a conversation-making tone, and glanced at his wrist.

"No," Mr. Earlforward quietly admitted, thinking: "What's it got to do with you--my 'old clock' not going?" The clock had not gone for months.

Violet, who had further illuminated the shop as she passed out, was rather long in returning, partly because she had had to hunt for the steps, and partly because she had popped into the bedroom to see that it was in order. Dr. Raste gallantly took the volumes from her as she stood half-way up the steps.

"Fifteen volumes--that's right," said Mr. Earlforward. "I told you there were eight, didn't I?"

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

"Yes. I was mixing it up with another edition. Easy to make a mistake of that kind. Well, just look at it. Biography. Notes. Beautiful clear type. Nice, modest binding, in very good taste. Light and handy to hold. Clean as a pin. Nearly two hundred illustrations--from the Boydell edition. I told you Flaxman's illustrations, didn't I? Yes, I did. That was wrong. I somehow got the idea they were Flaxman's because they're in outline. But I see there's quite a selection of artists." He peered at the names engraved in microscopic characters under the illustrations, and passed on volume after volume to the prospective customer. "Pretty edition."

A silence. Violet stood attendant--an acolyte, submissive, watchful--while Henry did business.

"I'm afraid it'll be too dear for my purse," said the doctor, affrighted by the thought of nearly two hundred illustrations from Boydell.

"Twenty-five shillings."

"I'd better take it," said the doctor, looking up from the books into Mr. Earlforward's little eyes; he was startled at the lowness of the price, and immediately counted out the money--two notes and two new half-crowns, which Mr. Earlforward gazed at passionately, and in a bravura of self-control left lying on the desk.

"Make them up into two parcels, will you?" said the doctor. "I'll carry them home myself. I suppose you wouldn't be able to deliver to-night? Too late?"

"Yes. Too late to-night, I'm afraid," answered Mr. Earlforward calmly, well aware that he had long since ceased to deliver any goods under any circumstances. "My dear, some nice brown paper and string. Oh! The string's here, isn't it?" He bent down to a drawer of the desk, and drew out a tangle of all manner of pieces of string.

Violet now became important in the episode, and took charge of the wrapping; her mien showed a conviction that she could make up a parcel as well as her husband.

"Hospitals are getting in a bad way," said Dr. Raste, and Mr. Earlforward thought to himself that the doctor was one of those distressing persons who from nervousness could not endure a silence.

"Yes?"

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

"Well, I may have seen something about it," said Mr. Earlforward. But he had not seen anything about it, nor did he care anything about it. He held the common view that hospitals were maintained by magic, or if not by magic, then by the cheques of millionaires in great houses in the West End who paid subscriptions as they paid their rates and taxes.

"Yes. The London Hospital--our largest hospital--unparalleled work in the East End, you know--the London's thinking of closing a hundred beds. A calamity, but there seems to be no alternative. My wife's interesting herself in Lord Knutsford's special effort to save the beds; she used to be on the staff. I was just wondering whether you'd care to give me something for her list. ... I thought I might mention it--as I'm not here professionally. Here as a customer, you see." He gave one of his little, nervous laughs.

Mr. Earlforward perceived that the doctor had not been merely breaking a silence. He perceived also that Violet, mysteriously excited by the name of the legendary subscription-collecting peer who directed the London Hospital, was "willing" him to practise charity on this occasion. He keenly regretted, as the doctor developed his subject, that he had left the price of the Shakspere on the desk. There it lay, waiting to be given, asking to be given! There it lay and could not be ignored. The doctor was, of course, being impudent again; but there the money lay. Half a crown? Too little. Two half-crowns, those bright and lovely objects? Too little--or at any rate too little so long as the notes lay beside them. A note? Impossible! Fantastic! The situation was desperate, and Mr. Earlforward in agony. He could not in decency refuse--he a Londoner, fond of London and its institutions--he an established tradesman; neither could he part with his money. He was about to martyrize himself; his hand, each finger separately suffering, hovered over one of the notes, when deliverance occurred to him.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said he, and picked up a thin, tattered, quarto volume that was lying on the desk. "I'll make you a sporting offer. Here's one of the earliest collected editions of Gray's Poems."

"Gray? Gray?" reflected the doctor, and aloud: "Elegy in a Country Churchyard sort of thing?"

"Yes. This is the Glasgow edition, and I can't remember now whether it or the London edition was the first--the first collected edition, I mean. They are both dated 1768. I'll give you this for your hospital. You take it to Sotherans or Bain, and see what it'll fetch."

The doctor opened the book.

"'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desart air.'"

he read. "Funny way of spelling 'desert,' _a_, r, t. But this is very interesting. 'Full many a flower----' So that's Gray, is it? Very interesting." He was quite uplifted by the sight of familiar words in an old book. "It's very clean _in_side. Suppose it's worth a lot of money. I'm sure you're very generous, very generous indeed." Violet paused in making up the second parcel.

"Well," said Mr. Earlforward, uplifted in his turn by reason of the epithet "generous" applied to him. "I don't know without inquiring just what it _is_ worth. That's the sporting offer."

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm afraid it's worth more than that, at the worst," said Mr. Earlforward, suddenly grieved. He saw to what an extent he was making a fool of himself--losing pounds in order to save a ten-shilling note! Ridiculous! Idiotic! Mad! True, he had bought the book for ten shillings, and he strove to regard the transaction from the angle of his own disbursement. But he could not deny that he was losing pounds. Yes, pounds and pounds. Still, he could not have let the ten-shilling note go. A ten-shilling note was a treasure, whereas a book was only a book. Illogical, but instinct was more powerful than logic.

"Ah!" said the doctor. "If it's worth more than two pounds I must sell it. You're generous. Mr. Earlforward, you're generous. Thank you."

Violet rearranged the second parcel, including the Gray in it, while Dr. Raste expanded further in gratitude.

"That type won't strain anybody's eyes," Mr. Earlforward commented on the Gray as it disappeared within brown paper.

"No."

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

"Um!" said the doctor, gazing at the bookseller, and taking the chance to feel his way towards the matter which had brought him into the shop. "I shouldn't say you were looking _quite_ the man you were when I saw you last."

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

"Oh! I'm all right," Mr. Earlforward, defending himself against yet another example of the doctor's impudence. "All I want is more exercise, and I can't get that because of my knee, you know."

"Yes," said the doctor. "I've always noticed you limp. You ought to go to Barker. I shouldn't be surprised if he could put you right in ten minutes. Not a qualified man, of course; but wonderful cures!... You might never limp again."

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

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

Mr. Earlforward made no reply to this silly question. Fifty pounds, or anything like it, for just pulling your knee about! "What was money," indeed! He seized the money on the table. The doctor understood himself to have been definitely repulsed. Being a philosopher, he felt resigned. He had done what he could at an expense of twenty-five shillings. He lodged one of the parcels under his left arm and he took the other in his left hand and assumed a demeanour, compulsory in a gentleman, to indicate to the world that the parcels were entirely without weight, and that he was carrying them out of caprice and not from necessity.

"Here, doctor," Violet most unexpectedly exclaimed. "As you are here I think I'll consult you."

"Not about me! Not about me!" Mr. Earlforward protested plaintively, imploringly, and yet implacably.

Violet leaned over him with an endearment.

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

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

"Didn't you?" said Violet in a strange tone at once dry and affectionate. "Elsie did. Will you come upstairs, doctor?" She was no longer the packer of books. She had initiative, authority, dominion. Horribly suspecting her duplicity, Henry watched her leave the office in front of the doctor, who had set down his parcels. Never, never, would he have a doctor!

IV

NO VERDICT

"What do you think of Mr. Earlforward's health?" Violet demanded peremptorily, in the bedroom. Her features were alive with urgent emotion. She almost intimidated the doctor.

"Ha!" he retorted defensively, with an explosive jerk. "I haven't examined him. I have--not--examined him. He strikes me as under-nourished."

"And he is. He refuses food."

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

"It's because he's set on being economical. He's got drawers full of money, and so have I--at least, I've got a good income of my own. But there you are. He won't eat, he won't eat. He won't eat enough, do _what_ I will."

"Is that the only reason?"

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

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

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

The doctor appreciated his own great careless indiscretion, and answered with admirable deceitful nonchalance:

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

Violet left the point there.

The electric light blazed down upon them; it had no shade; not a single light in the house had a shade. It showed harshly, realistically, Violet half leaning against the foot of the bed, and Dr. Raste, upright as when in uniform he used to give orders in Palestine, on the rag hearthrug. Violet's baffled energy raged within her. She had at hand all the materials for tranquil happiness--affection, money, temperament, sagacity, an agreeable occupation--and they were stultified by the mysterious, morbid, absurd, inexcusable and triumphant volition of her loving husband. Instead of happiness she felt doom--doom closing in on her, on him, on the sentient house.

"My husband is a miser. I've encouraged him for the sake of peace. And so now you know, doctor!"

An astounding confession to a stranger, a man to whom she had scarcely spoken before! But it relieved her. She made it with gusto, with passion. She had begun candour with Elsie in the morning; she was growing used to it. The domestic atmosphere itself had changed within six hours. That which had been tacitly denied for months was now admitted openly. Truth had burst out. A few minutes earlier--vain chatter about hospitals, trifling and vain commercial transactions, make-believes, incredible futilities, ghastly nothings! And now, the dreadful reality exposed! And at that very moment Henry in his office, to maintain to himself the frightful pretence, was squandering the remains of his vitality in the intolerably petty details of business.

"Well," said Dr. Raste primly--the first law of his actions was self-preservation--"there isn't a great deal to be done until you can persuade him to have professional advice.... And you? What is it with you? You don't look much better than your husband."

"Oh, doctor!" Violet cried, suddenly plaintive. "I don't know. You must examine me. Perhaps I ought to have come to you before."

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

"Oh, dear!"--a sort of despair in Violet's voice now "I knew that lamp would be going soon." The fact was that the lamps in the house generally had begun to go. All of them had passed their allotted span of a thousand burning hours. Two in the shop had failed. Henry possessed no reserve of lamps, and he would not buy, and Violet had not yet wound herself up to the resolve of buying in defiance of him. Once a fuse had melted. For two days they had managed mainly with candles. Violet, irritated, went forth secretly to buy fuse wire. She returned, and with a half-playful, half-resentful gesture threw the wire almost in his face; but it had happened that during her absence he had inserted a new fuse made from a double thickness of soda-water-bottle wire which he had picked up from somewhere. His reproaches, though unspoken, were hard for her to bear.

The doctor promptly struck a match, and Violet lit the candle on the night-table.

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

"Oh, _dear_!" She nearly wept, then masterfully took hold of herself. "I know!" She rushed to the bathroom, stood on the orange-box, and detached the bathroom lamp, and returned with it to the bedroom. "Here! This will do."

The doctor climbed on to a chair. As soon as he had fixed the new lamp Violet economically blew out the candle; and then, quaking, she yielded up her body, in the glacial chill of the room, for the trial and verdict which would reassure or agonize her. However, she was neither reassured or agonized; there was no verdict.

When Dr. Raste redescended the dark stairs the shop lay in darkness and the bookseller was wheeling in the bookstand. The doctor entered the still lighted office to get his two parcels, which he arranged on his left side exactly as before.

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

"I should prefer not to say anything at present," the doctor announced in loud, prim, clearly articulated syllables. "There may be nothing abnormal, nothing at all. At any rate, it is quite impossible to judge under existing conditions. I shall call again in a week or ten days--perhaps earlier. No immediate cause for anxiety."

He had been but little more communicative than this to Violet herself. He was inhuman again--for his patients. Within him, however, glowed the longing to see his child's eyes kindle when he presented her with the Globe Shakspere for her very own.

That night, contrary to custom, Henry went to bed earlier than Violet. He stated that he felt decidedly better, but that he had finished all his book-keeping and oddments of work, and that it would be a pity to keep the office fire alive for nothing. Violet, in her mantle, had to darn a curtain in the front-room. When she went into the bedroom and switched on the light she saw him, with the counterpane well up to his chin, lying flat on his back, eyes shut, but not asleep. He had the pallor of a corpse, and the corpse-like effect was enhanced by the indications of his straight, thin body under the clothes. She stood bent by the side of the bed and looked at him, as it were passionately, but vainly trying by the intensity of her gaze to wrench out and drag up from hidden depths the inaccessible secrets of his mind.

Though saying little to her about her trouble he had behaved to her through the evening with the most considerate kindliness. He had caressed her with his voice. And about her trouble she had not expected him to say much. He had a very inadequate conception of the physical risks which women by nature are condemned to run. And she had never talked much in such directions, for not only was he a strangely modest man, but she deliberately practised the reserve which he himself practised. She argued, somewhat vindictively: "He tells me nothing. I will tell him nothing." Moreover, the doctor's calm non-committal attitude had given Henry an exceptional occasion to exercise his great genius for postponement. Never would Henry go half-way to meet an ordeal of any sort. Lastly, his reactions were generally slow. Fear, anxiety, seemed to come late to him.

He opened his eyes. She gave him one of the long kisses which he loved. Could he guess (she wondered) that her kiss was absent-minded that night, perfunctory, a kiss that emerged inattentive to him from the dark, virginal fastnesses of her being, which neither he nor any other would or could invade. With intention she pressed her lips on his.

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

Half undressed she looked carefully at herself in the mirror of the perfectly made, solid, everlasting Victorian wardrobe. Yes, her face showed evidence of illness; it frightened her. No, she was merely indisposed; she was frightening herself. She had no pain, or extremely little. She thought, as she regarded herself in the glass, how inscrutable, how enigmatic, how feminine she was, and how impossible it was for him to comprehend her. She felt superior to him, as a complex mind to a simple one. She thought that she, far better than he, could appreciate the significance of the terrible day. She was overwhelmed by it. Situations were evolving one out of another. Nothing had happened, and yet all was changed. The night was twenty years away from the morning.

"Do you know about that girl?" he asked with soft weariness when she had slipped into bed and the light was out.

"No. Elsie? What?"

"She's eaten two-thirds of the cheese in the cage--at least two-thirds. Must have eaten it before she went out."

The "cage" was the wire-netted larder hung outside the kitchen window. Henry had taken to buying cheese, because it was as nourishing as meat, and cheaper. He had "discovered" cheese as a food--especially a food for servants. Violet said no word, but she sighed. She was staggered, deeply discouraged, by this revelation of Elsie's incredible greed and guile; it was a blow that somehow finished her off.

"Yes," Henry went on, and his mild voice passed through the darkness into Violet's ear with an uncanny effect. "I happened to go up into the kitchen just before I came to bed." (And he had not rushed back to tell her of the calamity. He had characteristically kept it to ripen in his brain. And how characteristic of him to wander ferreting into the kitchen! Naught could escape his vigilance.) "Did you see her when she came home?"

"Yes. She went straight to bed."

A silence.

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

"What does he mean?" thought Violet, alarmed anew. "Does he mean we must get rid of her? No, that would be too much." But she was not afraid of the extra work for herself which getting rid of Elsie would entail. She was afraid of being left to live all alone with Henry. She trembled at such a prospect.

V

MIDNIGHT

Elsie, straight from the street, sat down on the edge of her creaking bed on the second-floor and looked at her best boots, which had lost their polish during the course of the afternoon and were covered with dust. She had paid various brief calls, and in her former home in Riceyman Square she had taken off her jacket and put on a pinafore-apron and vigorously helped with housework in arrear. But most of the time she had spent in walking certain streets. Though she ought to have been tired--what with the morning's labour, the calls, the episode in the pinafore, the long walking--she had almost no sensation of bodily fatigue. Her mind, however, was exhausted by the monotony of thinking one importunate thought, which refused to be dismissed, and which indeed she did not sincerely want to dismiss.

When, on her way upstairs, she had spoken to Mrs. Earlforward at the door of the dining-room, she had hoped that her employer would say: "There's someone been inquiring for you," or, "Elsie, _that man_ has come pestering again." But no! Nothing but a colourless, preoccupied "Good night." An absurd hope, naturally! She knew it was an absurd hope--and yet would not let it go. She had had the same silly hope upon entering each of the houses which she had visited. She had had it constantly as she walked the streets, examining every distant male figure. The silence of Dr. Raste had nearly killed it, but it could not be killed; it had more lives than a cat.

She had been sitting on the bed for a century when a church clock struck. Eleven! Still another hour! Why exactly an hour? Well, midnight was midnight. She must give him till twelve. An hour was an enormous period, full of chances. Suddenly she bent to take off her boots. They were not comfortable, never had been, but she took them off for another reason: so that she might move about noiselessly. She extinguished the candle and passed into the empty front-room, and after some struggles with the front window posted herself at the side window. It was unfortunate that the window giving on to Riceyman Steps simply would not open on just this night, for if Joe came he would probably come by way of the steps, having first called at the house in the Square to get news of her. Nevertheless, he might come along King's Cross Road _en route_ for the Square.

King's Cross Road was preparing to go to sleep for the night. No lorries. Not a taxi--even in the day-time taxies were few in King's Cross Road. A tram-car, two tram-cars crammed with passengers. A few footfarers, mostly couples. The Nell Gwynn Tavern was dark, save for a window in the top storey where the barmaids slept. Down to the left a cold, vague glare showed the locality of the loading yard of the big post office. She could not see the pavement beneath the window; thus she might miss him. Cautiously and silently she opened the window wider. The bulb-pots were on the sill. Mrs. Earlforward had forgotten to bring them in. Elsie brought them in. (A transient, sympathetic thought for Mrs. Earlforward in her trouble.) She leaned her body out of the window, and felt the modest feather of her hat brush against the window-frame. She could see everything perfectly now--north and south. No wanderer could escape her vision. At intervals, not a sign of either vehicle or footfarers! The road would be utterly deserted, and the street lamps seemed to be wasted. Then a policeman; he never looked up, never suspected that Elsie had her eye on him. Then a tram-car, empty save for a few woeful figures, a vast waste of tram-car.