When Henry came home, limping, taciturn and absorbed, in the afternoon, Violet examined him carefully with her glance, and, asking no questions, gave him the written list of the day's transactions, which he always wanted, and which to-day was quite a good one. He, on his part, asked no questions either—he said not an inquiring word even about the visit of Mr. Bauersch; the name and the sum noted on the list sufficed his curiosity for the moment. (Out of compassion for his fatigue, Violet said not a word about his trickery in the matter of the removal of Mr. Bauersch's books.) After a sale he would sit down to his desk and study the catalogue marked with his purchases, and he would transfer the details into a special book; he must do this before anything else. Violet went upstairs, leaving him alone in the office to guard the shop.
She went upstairs to the kitchen and to her conspiracies and to the secret half of her double life which had recently commenced. Although apparently she had accomplished little in the way of modifying the daily routine of the establishment and household, that little amounted spiritually to a great deal. And it had been done almost without increased expense—save for gas. Her achievement generally was symbolized and figured in the abolition of the thermos flask from which Henry was used to take his tea, made many hours earlier when the gas was "going." The abolition of the thermos flask had been an event in the domestic annals. (Henry afterwards sold the contrivance for half a crown.) Violet would have tea set on the table in the dining-room; she would have fresh tea; she refused to drink thermos-preserved tea; she would have plates and bread and margarine on the table. And, considering that tea—now served immediately on the closing of the shop—was the last meal or snack of the day in that abode, none could fairly accuse her of innovating in an extravagant manner. Still, the disappearance of the thermos flask was regarded by everybody in the house as the crown of a sort of revolution. Such was the force of the individuality of Mr. Earlforward, who had scarcely complained, scarcely argued, scarcely protested! He had opposed simply his quiet blandness and had yielded—and the revolutionary yet marvelled at her own courage and her success, and had a sensation akin to being out of breath.
She had never been able to reorganize the kitchen department fundamentally; the problem of doing so was insoluble. In the young days of the house what was now the office had been a parlour-kitchen-scullery. The site of a little range was still distinguishable in it. Henry's bachelor uncle had transferred the kitchen to the top floor; it could not possibly be brought down again; there was no other room capable of serving as a kitchen. But Violet had humanized the long, narrow cubicle a little by means of polished utensils and white wood, and she had hung a tiny wire-cage larder outside the window, where it was the exasperation of foiled cats. The gas-ring remained, solitary cooker. She had not dared to suggest a small gas-stove or even an oil-stove, and two mere rings would not, in her opinion, have been much better than one. There were things she could dare and things she could not dare. For another example, she could not dare to bring in a plumber to cure the water-tap, which still ceaselessly dripped on to the sink. But the kitchen, with all its defects, had one great quality—it was gratefully warm in the cold months. Violet came into it again now, after hours in the haunting chill of the shop, with a feeling of deep physical relief. Elsie stood warm and supine, her back to the window. The two women filled the room. Violet had gradually come to find pleasure, chiefly no doubt unconsciousness, in Elsie's merepresence and nearness. Elsie was so young, so massive, so mild, so honest, so calm. She might be somewhat untidy in her methods and forgetful, but Violet was extremely well content with her. And Elsie, though she liked Violet less, liked her. They mutually suspected one another of occasional insincerity and ruse, and for Elsie's taste Violet was a bit over-sugary when she had an end to gain; but, then, common self-devotion to the welfare of Henry drew them together quite as fast as suspicions pushed them apart.
"Is that all right?" Violet asked, pointing to a bright contraption perched on the gas-ring and emitting the first hints of a lovely odour.
This contraption, new in Elsie's experience, and doubtfully regarded by her, was an important item in the double life of Violet, who had bought it exclusively with her own money, and, far from letting it appear in the household accounts which Henry expected from her as a matter of course, had not even mentioned it to him. Henry seldom or never entered the kitchen nowadays, being somehow aware that women did not welcome men in kitchens.
"Oh, yes, 'm," Elsie cheerfully and benevolently answered. She had not quite seen the point of the contraption. She knew that it was divided into two compartments, one above another, but why it should be so divided she had not fully understood, despite explanations administered to her.
Violet thought:
"How nice this is! How warm! What a comfort Elsie is! What a dear Henry is! And I shall have my way with him to-night, and having my way with him will make us both happier. And we're very happy, I'm sure; much happier than most people; and everything's so secure; and we've got plenty to fall back on. And how lovely and warm it is in here. And what a lovely smell. ... I hope he won't smell it till I'm ready for him." She looked to see that the door was shut and the window a little open.
Thus did Violet's thoughts run. And then she noticed, by chance as it seemed, a particle of something or other detach itself from the lower rim of the contraption and fall on the wooden shelf on which the gas-ring stood. Then another particle; then another. She was spellbound for a moment.
"Elsie!" she cried, aghast, desperate, and whipped the contraption off the ring.
"What, 'm?"
"You've not put any water in the bottom part and the solder's melted. You've ruined it! You've ruined it! How any girl can be so stupid, sostupid—after all the trouble I took to tell you—I cannot imagine. No, I cannot!"
And she could not. She knew that Elsie was stupid. In two days Violet had learnt more about the contents of the shop than Elsie had ever learnt or ever could learn. She knew that Elsie was conservative, set hard in her ways, and opposed to new knowledge. But she had not guessed that even Elsie could be so stupid as to leave the lower compartment of the contraption without water and then stick it on a lighted gas-ring! The phenomenon passed her comprehension.
"Stand away, do!" she exclaimed, as Elsie, puckered and gloomy, approached the region of disaster. "I shall have to have it repaired. And I can't cook this now as I wanted to. And I shall have to begin it all over again. And your master comes home tired out and this is all you can manage to do!"
Elsie, though severely conscience-stricken, was confirmed in her opinion that these new-fangled dodges were worthless—you never knew where you were with them.
"I should like to pay for the repairing, 'm," she at last broke the silence.
"Yes! And I should think youwouldlike to pay for the repairing, my girl! Youshallpay for it, whether you like or not! But what would your master say to such careless waste if he knew?" And Violet proceeded with the heart-breaking work of salvage.
"Now pass me that saucer, do!"
Elsie passed the saucer. Violet stared at the saucer, withheld from taking it by a sudden thought.
"What did you do with that egg?"
"What egg, 'm?"
"You know what egg. The egg your master couldn't eat this morning at breakfast. I put it in that saucer, I'm sure I did."
Violet gazed formidably at Elsie. Elsie's eyes dropped and her lips fell and she crimsoned.
"Have you put it in the cage?" No answer. "You don't mean to tell me you've eaten it!"
"Well, 'm. There it was all the time. And I felt so sinking like this afternoon. And I don't know what I was thinking of——"
"Elsie, your master always did say you were greedy! And I suppose you'll say I starve you. I suppose you'll say I don't give you enough to eat."
Violet burst into tears, to her own surprise and shame. Of late she had been less gay, less vivacious and more nervous than at the beginning of the year. She had not wanted the egg for her own need. But she had wanted to eat it, warmed up afresh, so as to keep Henry company while he ate the dish which Elsie's negligence had so nearly spoilt. And now Elsie had gluttonously swallowed the egg. Nobody could make out these servants. They might be very faithful and all that, but there was always something—always something. Yes, she cried openly! She was bowed down. And Elsie, seeing the proud, commanding spirit bowed down, melted and joined her in tears. And they were very close together in the narrow, warm cubicle and in the tragedy; and the contrast between the wrinkled, slim, mature woman and the sturdy, powerful ingenuous young widowed girl was strangely touching to both of them. And twilight was falling, and the gas-ring growing brighter.
And Elsie was thinking neither of the ruined contraption nor of the egg. She was most illogically crying because of her everlasting sorrow, and because, with constant folding and unfolding, Joe's letter, which she read every night, had begun to tear at the creases. Her greed, and the accident due to her carelessness, and Mrs. Earlforward's breakdown had mystically reinforced her everlasting sorrow and eclipsed her silly, fond hope that on the approaching anniversary of his disappearance Joe would reappear.
Tea was late; it was indeed very late—for tea. But Mr. Earlforward, down in the office, gave no sign of hunger, or even of impatience. He had to be called to the meal, and he responded without any alacrity. Husband and wife, he in his overcoat and she in her mantle, took their places at the glass-covered table in the fireless room; and the teapot was there and the bread-and-margarine was there, and everything seemed as usual, save in one point—a knife and fork had been set for Mr. Earlforward and another for Violet. As a fact, the appearance of such cutlery on the tea-table was the most extraordinary phenomenon in the history of the Earlforward marriage. Violet recognized this; and beneath a superficial, cheerful calm she was indeed very nervous and very excited. Moreover, she had suffered nerve-racking ordeals from breakfast onwards. Therefore she watched anxiously for Henry's reactions to the cutlery. But she could perceive no reactions, unless his somewhat exaggerated scrutiny of the high piles of books occupying the unglazed half of the dining-table might be interpreted as a reaction.
The blinds were drawn, the curtains were drawn; electric current was burning, if not the gas-fire; despite the blackness of the hearth the room had an air, or half an air, of domestic cosiness. Violet poured out the tea, an operation simplified by the total absence of sugar.
"Come, come!" Violet murmured as if to herself, fretfully, and Henry glanced at her. Then Elsie entered.
"Come along, Elsie! Come along!" said Violet. "What have you been doing?"
She made this remark partly to prove to Mr. Earlforward that if he imagined she cared twopence for him, or that she feared for the unusualness of the plate covered by another plate which Elsie carried, or that she was not perfectly mistress of herself—if he imagined any of these things he was mistaken.
But Violet, expecting to startle Henry, was herself considerably startled. Elsie was wearing a cap. Now Elsie never wore a cap. And the sight of her in a cap was just as gravely disturbing as the impossible, incredible sight of a servant without a cap would be in the more western parts of London. In a word, it shocked. Violet could make nothing out of it at all. Where had the girl obtained the cap? And why in the name of sense had she chosen this day of all days, this evening when the felicity of domestic life was balanced perilously on a knife-edge, to publish the cap? Violet knew not that Elsie had bought the cap before the marriage, but had lacked the audacity to put it on. And Violet knew not that Elsie was now wearing it as a sort of sign of repentance for sin, and in order to give solemnity and importance to the excessively unusual tea. Elsie undoubtedly had the dramatic instinct, but the present manifestation of it was ill-timed.
"Put it here! Put it here!" said Violet, indicating the space between her own knife and fork, and stopping Elsie with a jerk in her progress towards the master of the house.
When Elsie had gone Violet displayed the contents of the under-plate, and showed that noses had not been wrong in assuming them to be a beef-steak; the steak was stewed; it was very attractive, seductive, full of sound nourishment; one would have deemed it irresistible. Violet rose and deposited the plate in front of Henry, who said nothing. She then bent over him, and with his knife and fork cut off a little corner from the meat.
"You're going to give this bit to your little wife," she whispered endearingly, and kissed him, and sat down again with the bit, which she at once began to eat. "It's very tender," said she, pretending that the steak was aquite commonplace matter, that it was not unique, breathtaking, in the annals of tea-time in Riceyman Steps.
"I don't think I can eat any," said Henry amiably.
"To please me," Violet cajoled again, as at breakfast, changing her voice with all the considerable sexual charm at her disposition.
"I'm really not hungry," said Henry.
"I shan't finish mine till you begin yours." Her voice was now changing.
She waited for him to begin. He did not begin. The point with Henry was, not that he disliked the steak, but that for reasons of domestic policy he was absolutely determined not to eat it. Meat for tea! What an insane notion! The woman was getting ideas into her head! He saw in the steak the thin edge of a wedge. He felt that the time was crucial. He had been married for little less than a year, and he knew women. Placidly he continued with his bread-and-margarine.
"Henry!" she admonished him.
"I've got indigestion already," said he.
Strange that such a simple remark should have achieved the crisis; but it did.
"Yes. That's right!" Violet exclaimed sharply, in rasping tones. "That's right! Tell me you've got indigestion. You never have indigestion. You never have had indigestion. And you know perfectly well it's only an excuse. And you think any excuse is good enough for your wife. She's only a blind fool. Believe anything, your wife will—ifyousay it! God Almighty to your wife, aren't you!"
Just as the voyager at sea, after delighting in an utterly clear, soft sky and going below, may come on deck again to find the whole firmament from rim to rim hidden by dark, menacing clouds created inexplicably out of nothing, so did Henry find the sky of his marital existence terribly transformed in an instant. All had been well; all was ill. The bread-and-margarine stuck in his throat. Violet's features were completely altered as she gazed glassily at her plate. Henry saw in themthe face of the unreasonable schoolgirl that Violet long ago must have been. He understood for the first time that her vivacity and energy had another and a sinister side. He felt himself to be amid formidable dangers; he was a very courageous man, and like nearly all courageous men in danger he was frightened.
"A nice way I'm treated!" Violet continued grimly. "All I think of is you. All I want is your happiness, and look at me! I'm always snubbed, always! So long as you do everything you want, andIdo everything you want, it's all right. But ifIsuggest anything—look at you! I have to have my meals in my mantle because you grudge me a bit of fire! It isn't as if I didn't pay my share of everything. I pay my share right enough, and more—you see to that, trust you! But I have to catch my death of cold every day, because we're so poor, I suppose! Oh, yes! We haven't a penny in the world to bless ourselves with!"
Henry felt in his pockets, and then left the room in silence. Alone, Violet busily fed her angry resentment. She was in a rage, and knew she was in a rage, and her rage was dear to her. She cared for nothing but her rage, and she was ready to pay for it with all her possible future happiness and the future happiness of her husband. Henry returned with a match-box and lit the gas-fire.
Still no word. No sound but the plop of igniting gas. Violet sprang up in fury, rushed to the stove and extinguished it with a vehement, vicious gesture.
"No! I couldn't have it before, and I won't have it now!" She pulled off her mantle and threw it to the floor. "If I'm to be cold I'llbecold. Here I've been in the shop all day, shivering. Why? How many wives would do it? There isn't another in this dreadful Clerkenwell that you're so fond of, I swear! You're the stingiest man in London, and don't you make any mistake. You think I can't see through you and your excuses! Ha!" She began to walk up and down theroom now. "I'm a slave, same as Elsie is a slave. More than Elsie. She does get an afternoon off. But me? When? Night and day! Night and day! Love? A lot you know about it! Cold by day and cold by night! And so now you know! I've often wanted to tell you, but I wouldn't, because I thought it was my duty to struggle on. Besides, I didn't want to upset you. Well, now Idowant to upset you!... Andwhywouldn't you eat the steak? I'll tell you. BecauseIasked you to eat it."
"You know that's rather unfair," Henry muttered.
"'Unfair,' is it? 'Unfair'? A nice word for you to use. So I know it's unfair, do I? I'm being 'unfair,' am I?" She looked straight at him. Her eyes blazed at him, and she added solemnly: "Henry, you ought to beashamedof yourself, the way you go on. What do you think Elsie thinks? The marvel is that she stays here. Supposing she left us and started to talk! You ought to beashamedof yourself."
She dropped back into her chair and sobbed loudly. If Elsie heard her, what matter? In her rage she had put facts into words, and thereby given them life, devastating life. In two minutes she had transformed the domestic interior from heaven into hell. She had done something which could never be undone. Words had created that which no words could destroy. And he had driven her to it. She gazed at him once more, across the ruins of their primitive and austere bliss.
"You're shortening your life. That's what you're doing," she said, with chill ferocity. "Not to speak of mine. What's mine? What did you have for your dinner out to-day' You daren't tell me because you starved yourself. I defy you to tell me."
She laid her head on the table just like a schoolgirl abandoning herself utterly to some girlish grief, and went on crying, but not angrily and rebelliously now—mournfully, self-pityingly, tragically. And then she sat up straight again, with suddenness, and shot new fire from her wet eyes at the tyrannic monster.
"Yes, and you needn't think I've been spending money on servant's caps, either! Because I haven't. I know no more about that cap of Elsie's than you do. God alone knows where she's got it from, and why she's wearing it. But I give servants up." (Here Henry had an absurd wild glimmer of hope that she meant to give Elsie up, do without a servant, and so save wages and food. But he saw the next instant that he had misunderstood her words.) "They're past me, servants are! Only, of course, you think it's me been buying caps for the girl!"
This was the last flaring of her furious resentment. Instead of replying to it, Henry softly left the room. Violet's sobs died down, and her compassion for herself grew silent, since there was no longer need for its expression. She tried hard to concentrate on the hardships of her lot, but she could not. Another idea insisted on occupying her mind, and compared to this idea the hardships of her lot were trifles.
"I've lost my power over him."
If he had only responded to her cajolings, and recognized in some formal way her power! If he had only caressed her and pleaded with her not to exercise her power too drastically upon him. If he had only said: "Vi, let me off. I'll eat just a little bit to please you, but I really can't eat it all. You know you can do what you like with me, but let me off!" That would have been marvellous, delicious, entirely satisfactory. But she had lost her power. And yet, while mourning that she had lost her power, she knew very well that she had never had any power. He was in love with her, but he was more in love with his grand passion and vice, which alone had power over him, and of which he, the bland tyrant over all else, was the slave. She had pretended to herself that she had power, and she had been able to maintain the pretence because she had never till that day attempted to put her imagined power really to the test. Twice now she had essayed it, and twice failed.Fool! She was a fool! She had irreparably damaged her prestige. She had but one refuge, the refuge of yielding. "I must yield! I must yield!" she thought passionately. And the voluptuous pleasure of yielding presented itself to her temptingly.... She must submit. She must cling still closer to him, echo faithfully his individuality, lose herself in him. There was nothing else.
Elsie entered to clear the table. Violet jumped up, seized the discarded mantle, and put it on. She was not young enough—that is to say, her body was not young enough—to scorn the inclement evening cold of the room. Averting her face from the cap-wearer, she departed. But at the door another idea occurred to her.
"Elsie," she said. "I must leave you to see to everything to-night. I'm going to lie down." She spoke in a hard, dry voice, without turning her face towards Elsie. And in a few minutes she was getting into the sheetless and empty bed in the dark bedroom. She must yield! She must yield!
Elsie had had the experience of her own brief marriage, and had seen a very great deal of other people's. Mrs. Earlforward's efforts to deceive her were a complete failure. She knew at once, on entering the dining-room, that there must have been trouble. Mr. Earlforward's visit to the office during tea was unusual. Then there was the singular spectacle of Mrs. Earlforward putting on her mantle at the end of the meal. Why had she taken it off? The only explanation that Elsie could think of was that Mrs. Earlforward had taken off the mantle in order to have a dust-up with Mr. Earlforward. That was the natural explanation, but Elsie was sure that it could not be the true one. Then there was the appearance of Mrs. Earlforward's features, and the fact that in speaking to Elsie she departed from her habit of looking Elsie straight in the face. And further, there was the uneaten steak on Mr. Earlforward's plate, and the fragment of it on Mrs. Earlforward's plate. And further, there was the very disconcerting retirement to bed ofMrs. Earlforward. Elsie could not conceive what the trouble had been about. But she managed to think that both the antagonists were in the right, and to feel sorry for both of them—and so much so that her eyes filled with tears.
When she reached her kitchen with the remains of tea, the steak was to her a sacrosanct object. Even the fragment of it was a sacrosanct object; she put the fragment with her fingers on the same plate as the steak, and then she licked her fingers—not a very wise action—and proceeded to wash up. She was still full of remorse for the theft—yes, it was a theft!—of the egg. That incident was to be a lesson to her; it was to teach her the lamentable weakness of her character. Never again would she fall into sin. Absurd to fancy that she did not have enough to eat at Riceyman Steps, and that she was continually hungry! She had more to eat, and more regularly, than many persons in her experience. Appetite was a sign of good health, and she ought to be thankful for good health; good health was a blessing. She ought not to be greedy, and above all she ought not to seek to excuse her greed by false excuses about appetite and lack of food. She continued calmly with her washing-up.
The steak, during its cooking, had caused her a lot of inconvenience; the smell of it had awakened desires which she had had difficulty in withstanding; it had made her mouth water abundantly; and she had been very thankful to get the steak safely into the dining-room without any accident happening to it. But now the steak did not challenge her weakness. Resolution had triumphed over the steak. Her too active and ingenious mind became, however, entangled in the conception of the tiny fragment lying by the steak itself. She examined the fragment. A mouthful; no more! In the morning it would be dried up and shrunk to nothing. It would be wasted. She picked up the fragment out of curiosity, just to see exactly what it was like, and in an instant the fragment had vanished. The fragment did not seemto go into her stomach; it sub-divided itself into a thousand parts, which ran through all her veins like fire, more potent than brandy, more dreadfully inspiring than champagne.
From this moment the steak was turned into a basilisk, with a devilish, sinister fascination for her. She ceased to wash up. She was saddened by the domestic infelicity of her employers; she was cast down and needed a tonic. She felt that without some pick-me-up she could not bear the vast grief of the world. She went through the agonies of the resisting drunkard dragged by ruthless craving nearer and nearer to the edge of the fatal precipice. Would her employers themselves eat the steak on the morrow? Very probably not. Very probably Mrs. Earlforward on the morrow would authorize her, Elsie, to eat the steak. If she might eat it to-morrow she might eat it to-night. What difference to her employers whether she ate it to-morrow or to-night? Moreover, if Mrs. Earlforward had not been upset she would quite possibly have given Elsie express permission to eat the steak. Elsie began to feel her self-respect slipping away, her honour slipping away, all right-mindedness slipping away, under the basilisk's stare of the steak. A few minutes later she knocked at the bedroom door, and, receiving no answer, went in. The room was dark, but she could distinguish the form of Mrs. Earlforward in the bed.
"What is it? What is it?" demanded a weak, querulous, mournful voice.
Mrs Earlforward vaguely extended her hand, and it touched something which for several seconds she could not identify. It touched Elsie's cap. Elsie had sunk to her knees by the bedside. She burst into weeping.
"Oh, 'm!" sobbed Elsie. "Oh, 'm! I've gone and eaten the steak. I don't know what made me do it, 'm, but I've eaten the steak and I run straight in to tell you, 'm."
Violet laughed in the dark: an unusual laugh, not vivacious nor hearty, but a laugh.
"I'm glad, Elsie," she said, withdrawing her hand as though Elsie's cap had been red-hot.
Elsie, dismissed, felt relieved, but at the same time she was disappointed of her rich, tearful penitence, and she went away with the sensation that the world was an incomprehensible and arid place. Violet got out of bed and turned on the light, and the light somehow cured her perspective of a strange distortion. What! Make a tragedy because a man preferred not to eat a bit of steak for his tea! Absurd! Childish! Surely he had the right to refuse steak without being insulted, without being threatened with the destruction of his happiness! It was not as if he had forbidden his wife to eat steak. Thus did Violet try to nullify to herself the effect of her wild words in the dining-room and to create that which they had destroyed. Fortunately, Henry did not know that she had retired to bed, and so she could rise again without loss of dignity. She was very courageous at first, but when she had finished dressing, and was ready to go downstairs and face Henry once more, she was no better than a timorous young thing, defenceless and trembling.
As for Henry, he was working, and really working, in his office; but, as he worked, the idea pervading his mind was that he had had a serious shock. He had won; but had he won? He had deemed himself to be secure on the throne, and the throne was shaking, toppling. He had miscalculated Violet and under-estimated the possibilities of the married state. He saw, for the first time clearly, that certain conjugal problems are not to be solved by reason, and that if he wished to survive the storms of a woman's temperament he must be a traitor to reason and intellectual uprightness. In brief, the game must obviously be catch-as-catch-can. Ah! He was deceived in Violet. Because she would not pay more than sixpence for a needed book, and because she had surpassed himself in sweating a charwoman, he had been fool enough to believe that she was worthy to be his partner in the grand passion of his life. Well, he was wrong. He must count her in future as the enemy of his passion, and plot accordingly.
Then at length the weak creature, the broken reed upon which he had depended, reappeared in the doorway of his office, and she was not wearing her mantle. Henry had in that moment a magnificent inspiration. He limped from his chair at the desk and put a match to the fire, which was laid—which had been laid for many months. The fuel seemed anxious to oblige, and flared up eagerly. Violet was touched by the attention, whose spirit she comprehended and welcomed. All warm and melting from the bed and her tears, she let him masterfully take her in his clasp. And he felt her acquiescence, and the moment was the most exquisite of his whole life. Her frailty, her weakness, merely adorned and enhanced her—were precious, were the finest part of her charm. Reason was not. But whether he had won, or she, he could not decide; he could only hope for the best. Not a word said! They held each other near the warmth of the mounting fire in the office, with the dark shop stretching behind for a background. And Violet remembered how once she had jauntily told herself that at any rate she possessed one advantage over him—her long experience of marriage against his inexperience—and she saw that the advantage was quite illusory, and she was humbled, deliciously rueful! He said:
"I think you've got the key of my desk, haven't you?"
She nodded, gave a precarious smile, and ardently produced the key. The next moment he had taken the day's receipts, save Mr. Bauersch's money, from the tin box which was their appointed place in the top middle drawer, and husband and wife counted them together, checking one another, and checking the total with the written list of sales already delivered to Henry by Violet.
"Correct," said he, and was about to open his safe, when he stopped and added:
"Better get that Bauersch money first. I suppose you put it in your safe?"
"Yes. I'll run up for it." As instructed, she had transferred the important sum for safety during the day from the drawer to her own safe.
"I'll go with you," said he, as if anxious not to deprive himself of her society even for one minute. As they were entering the bathroom he saw Elsie in the obscurity of the upper stairs.
"Elsie," he called, "run out and buy me theEvening Standard, will you? You'll get it opposite the Rowton House, you know. Here's a penny." His tone was carefully matter-of-fact. Both women were astounded; they were almost frightened. Violet had never known him to buy a paper, and Elsie scarcely ever. Violet was grateful for this proof that when the greatness of the occasion demanded it he was capable of sublime extravagance. First the fire! Now the paper! It was not credible.
In the bathroom, where nobody ever had a bath, but of which the bath was at any rate empty of books and very clean, Henry bent his head to avoid the clothes-lines, and Violet kneeled down and unlocked her safe. It was like a little picnic, a little pleasure excursion. It was the first time Henry had been present at the opening of Violet's battered old safe. She swung the steel door; the shadow of her head remained stationary, though the door swung, and fell across the pale interior of the safe in a shape as distorted as Violet's perspective had been half an hour earlier. A fair pile of securities tied up with white tape lay in the embrasure above the twin drawers.Violet drew forth the right-hand drawer; there was nothing in it but Mr. Bauersch's money—ten-pound notes, five-pound notes, one-pound Treasury notes, all new and lovely, with a soiled ten-shilling Treasury note, and some silver wrapped in a bit of brown paper. Violet placed the entire mass on the top of the safe, and Henry, settling his spectacles more firmly on his nose, began to count slowly, accurately, passionately. Violet watched him.
"Why!" he exclaimed with a contented smile, after two countings, "he's given you a pound too much. The bank-notes are all right, but there's nine pound notes instead of eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Only ought to be eight. One hundred and forty-eight pounds, eighteen shillings, it ought to be all together."
"Well, that's funny, that is," said Violet. "I made sure I counted them right. Oh, I know! There was another pound for a French book I sold him. I forgot to enter it in the list. It was marked ten shillings, but I asked him a pound and he took it."
"Oh!" murmured Henry, disillusioned.
"Yes."
"And he took it at a pound, did he? Well, then, you made ten shillings for yourself that time, Vi." And he gave her the ten-shilling note, a glint of humour in his voice and glance.
Princely munificence! She was deliciously dumbfounded. She had misjudged him. Heaven was established again in the sealed home. She thanked him with a squeeze of the arm, and then put the note in the left-hand drawer of the safe, where were a lot of other notes.
"So that's your stand-by, in case?" said Henry.
"That's my stand-by, in case," said Violet, pleased by the proud approval in his voice, and she snapped-to the drawer and the brass handle rattled against the front of it.
"And I suppose those are your securities?"
"Like to look at them, darling?" She was still warm and melting.
He nodded. He undid the binding tape and examined the securities one by one, unfolding them, reading, scrutinizing, with respect—with immense respect. In each instance her surname had been altered from Arb to Earlforward in an official hand and initialled. She gazed up into his face like a satisfied child who has earned good marks.
"Well," he murmured at last, re-tying the tape. "For gilt-edged, fixed-interest-bearing securities...."
He nodded several times, almost ecstatic. Yes, he was as proud of her possessions as of herself. Violet was exceedingly happy. He then examined the few oddments in the safe, such as certain receipts, some coupons, the marriage-certificate, the birth-certificate. He smiled benignantly as in a sort of triumph she locked the safe. He was a wonderful husband. No covetousness, no jealousy in his little eye. They departed from the bathroom, leaving the magical income-producing apparatus inviolate in the eternal night of its tomb.
When they had felt their way downstairs again Violet exclaimed, happy and careless:
"I wonder what's happened to Elsie all this time?" Few things could have worried her then.
Mr. Earlforward, having lighted the office, limped through the gloom of the unlit shop to the entrance-door.
"Tut, tut!" His tongue clicked against the back of his teeth. "She's left this door unlocked. She knew perfectly well she ought to have taken the key with her. Leaving the door unfastened like that! One of these nights we shall be let in for it." He locked the door sharply.
"Oh, Henry!" Violet laughed easily; but a minute later she exclaimed again, with the faintest trace of apprehension in her voice: "I wonder whathashappened to that girl?"
Husband and wife could "settle to nothing" until Elsie came back. The marvel of Henry sending for a paper at all returned upon Violet, and she began to imagine that he had some very special purpose in doingso. She felt the first subtle encroachments of the fear without a name.
"Well!" she burst out later, and went to the door and opened it, and looked forth into King's Cross Road. No Elsie. She came in again and secured the door, and entered the office humming. Henry stood with his back to the fine fire, luxuriating grandly in its heat and in his own splendid extravagance. His glance at Violet seemed to say:
"See how I prove that I can refuse you nothing! See what follies I will perpetrate to please you!"
Then the shop-door shook, and the next instant there was a respectful tap-tap on it. Violet ran like a girl.
"Elsie, you know perfectly well you ought to have taken the key with you."
Elsie apologized. She was out of breath.
"You've been a long time, Elsie. We couldn't think what had happened to you!" added Violet, locking the door finally for the night.
"I couldn't get no paper, 'm," Elsie explained. "I had to go down nearly to the Viaduct before I could get one. And now it isn't theEvening Standard—it's theStar. They were all sold out, 'm."
She advanced towards the office, and in her deferential hands the white newspaper became the document of some mysterious and solemn message to the waiting master. Her demeanour, indeed, showed that she knew it to be such. She had not been reading the paper—that, somehow, for her, would have been to pry—but as she passed under the sole gas-lamp of Riceyman Steps she had by accident noticed one word on theStar'sfront page. That word was "Clerkenwell." Something terrible had been occurring in Clerkenwell. Mr. Earlforward, whose habits she knew well, must have seen a reference to Clerkenwell on theEvening Standard'sposter on his way home, and after careful reflection he had decided to buy a copy of the paper.
"Wait a moment! Wait a moment!" said Mr. Earlforward to Elsie as she turned to leave the office.Elsie stood still. Violet sat on the chair behind the desk. Mr. Earlforward maintained his position by the fire, and created expectancy.
"'Further slump in the franc,'" he read, his eye negligently wandering over the paper.
Elsie had not the least idea what this meant or signified. Violet was by no means sure of its import, but she knew positively that it was bad news for decent investing persons.
"'Belgian franc falls in sympathy.'"
Happily Elsie did not even know what a franc was; but whatever a franc might be she vaguely wondered in the almost primeval night of her brain how its performances could be actuated by such a feeling as sympathy. For Violet the financial situation grew still gloomier.
"'Over a million doomed to starvation in the Volga region.' That's communism, I'd like you to know; that's the result of communism, that is," observed Mr. Earlforward, looking over his glasses and including both women in an equal glance. "That's what communism leads to. And what it must lead to wherever it's tried."
He had suddenly become an oracle. The women were impressed. They felt as if they had been doing something wrong, perhaps defending communism or trying to practise it. Elsie could not believe that he had bought the paper in order to obtain the latest results of communism. She waited for the word "Clerkenwell," but Mr. Earlforward was never in a hurry and could not be hurried. As usual he was postponing.
"'Fatal Affray in a Clerkenwell Communist Club,'" he announced at length. "Ah! So that's it ... Great Warner Street. Just across the road from here. Not five minutes away. 'The Millennium Club.' ..." He nodded scornfully at the name. "'Girl's heroism.' ... Girls in it, too!... Oh! She was the waitress. 'Threw herself very courageously between the assailants and seized the revolver, which, however, Vicenza wrenched from her and then fired, wounding Arthur Trankett in the abdomen.When the police effected an entrance at midnight'—that's last night—'Smith was lying dead on the floor in front of the bar, and Trankett was unconscious by his side.... Vicenza was subsequently apprehended in a house in Coldbath Square.'"
Mr. Earlforward continued calmly and intimidatingly to read the account of the police-court proceedings, and then went on:
"There you are, you see. At our door, as you may say! But don't think Clerkenwell's the only place. It's everywhere, communism is. Ask Glasgow. It's what we're coming to. It's what all Europe's coming to. You may be sure if it's as bad as this in England, it's far worse on the Continent.... Oh, yes'. 'The magistrate warmly commended the girl Pieta Spinelly for her heroism and congratulated her on her lucky escape.' ... Yes, but she won't always be so lucky. And will any of us?"
Violet was just reflecting that to eat steaks with communism at the door was an act showing levity of mind and not seriously to be defended, when Elsie remarked, with surprising equanimity:
"Pieta Spinelly. That's my cousin."
Mr. Earlforward, profoundly agitated, crushed the paper together.
"Your cousin?"
"Your cousin, Elsie?" Mrs. Earlforward stood up.
The shock of learning that Elsie had any relatives or connexions of any kind, that she had any human interests outside Riceyman Steps, that she was not cut off utterly from the world and devoted exclusively to themselves—this alone would have sufficed to overthrow her employers, who had never since she entered their house, as a novice enters a nunnery, thought of her as anything but a "general." But that she should be connected by blood with communists and foreigners! ... Communists seemed to have invaded the very house, and civilization itself was instantly threatened.
"Yes, 'm. She's my Aunt Maria's daughter. MyAunt Maria married an Italian, an iceman, and his name was Spinelly.... Not as I ever saw them."
"Oh! So you don't see this girl what's-her-name?"
"Shouldn't know her if I saw her, 'm. But I know they always had to do with clubs like. There's a lot of clubs round here. But I'm glad she's not dead or anything. You see, 'm, her being half Italian Ishouldn'tsee her!... And me Aunt Maria's been dead nearly five years. It must be Pieta, that must. There couldn't be two of 'em. And it was just like her too, because I remember her at school. Oh, she was a one! But then what could you expect, poor thing? But I'm glad she's not dead, nor cut about. Fancy her being in the papers!"
Elsie showed no perturbation. In spite of herself she felt pride in a foreign connexion and the appearance of an heroic cousin in the papers; but the more serious part of her was rather ashamed of the foreign connexion. Mrs. Earlforward informed her that she might retire to bed if she had left the kitchen all straight and ready for to-morrow morning. She retired, quite unaware of the fact that practically she had brought communism right into the house.
All this while the day's takings had lain on the desk unprotected and unconcealed! Even during the unlocked shop-door interval they had lain there! The little heaps of paper and coins seemed to accuse somebody of criminal negligence, almost of inviting communism to ruin the structure of society. Husband and wife were still gravely under the shock of the communist murder (of course communists would be murderers—they always killed everyone who had the misfortune to disagree with them) so near to Riceyman Steps, and the shock of Elsie's evil communications; and as for Violet herself, she was further thrilled by the perception of the deliberate dramatic quality of Henry's purchase of the paper and announcement of the news, and by the mysterious man's power of biding his time, and by his generosity in the fire gift and the money gift, and by his loving embrace—all these matters working upon the embers of the burning episode of the steak. Violet, indeed, that sagacious, bright, energetic and enterprising woman of the world, was in a state of quivering, confused emotion whose intensity she scarcely realized. When Henry brought out his safe-key she was strangely relieved, and her glittering eyes seemed to say: "This money's been lying here on the desk too long. Hide it quickly, quickly! Secure it without another moment's delay, for heaven's sake!"
Having unlocked his safe, Henry pulled out two of the drawers (it was a much larger safe than Violet's, with four drawers) and placed them on the desk. One of them was full of pound notes and the other of ten-shilling notes, and all the notes were apparently equal to new. He never kept a dirty note for more than a few days, and usually he managed to exchange it for a clean one on the day of receipt. At the bottom of the drawer containing the Treasury notes lay a foolscap linen envelope which he had once had by registered post. It bulged with bank-notes. Into this he forced Mr. Bauersch's excellent tale of bank-notes. As he dealt methodically, slowly, precisely with the rest of the money Violet wondered how much cash the drawers held. It might be hundreds, it might be thousands of pounds; she could not estimate. It was a very marvellous and reassuring sight. She had seen it before, but not in such solemn circumstances nor so fully. It reassured her against communism. With that hoard well gripped, what could communists do to you after all? Of course to keep the cash thus was to lose interest, but you couldn't have it both ways. And the cash was so beautiful to behold.... Stocks! Dead flesh! Bodily desires, appetites!... Negligible! This lovely cash satisfied the soul. Ah, how she admired Henry! How she shared his deepest instincts! How she would follow his example! How right he was—always!
He said suddenly, but with admirable calm:
"Of course if things do come to the worst, as theycertainly will, in my opinion, all this will be worth nothing at all!" "This" was the contents of the two drawers. "Nothing. Or just as much as a Russian rouble. If some of those fellows across the road in Great Warner Street get their way a five-pound note won't buy a loaf of bread. I'm not joking. It's happened in other countries and it'll happen here. And the first thing will be the banks closing. And then where will you be, with your gilt-edged securities? Where will you be then? But I'll tell you one thing that communism and socialism and murder and so on won't spoil, and it'll always be good value."
He took a third drawer out of the safe, lifting it with both hands because of its weight, and put it on the table. It was full of gold sovereigns. Violet had never seen this gold before, nor suspected its existence. She was astounded, frightened, ravished. He must have kept it throughout the war, defying the Government's appeal to patriots not to hoard. He was a superman, the most mysterious of supermen. And he was a fortress, impregnable.
"Nothing like it!" he said blandly, running his fingers through the upper sovereigns as through water that tinkled with elfin music.
She too ran her fingers through the gold. A unique sensation! He had permitted it to her as a compensation for her silly sufferings in regard to the steak. She looked down, moved.... With regret she saw him put the drawers back and close the safe. They stayed a very long time in the office. Henry had clerical work to do, and she helped him, eagerly, in a lowly capacity.... The crumpled newspaper was carefully folded. The light was extinguished. They climbed the dark stairs, leaving behind them the shop, with the faint radiance near the window from the gas-lamp. She slipped. She grasped his arm. He knew the stairs far more intimately than she did. On the first landing she exclaimed:
"Now, has that girl fastened the dining-room windows? Or hasn't she?"
She had new fears for the security of the house. Not surprising that he had previously breathed no word as to the golden contents of his safe! What a proof of confidence in her that he had let her into the dangerous secret! Suppose that the truth should get about? Burglars! Homicides! (Madame Tussaud's!) She shut her knowledge up with triple locks in herself. They passed into the dining-room, groping. The windows had been duly fastened. There was plenty of light through them. The upper windows of the confectioner's nearly opposite, her old shop, were blazing as usual with senselessly extravagant illumination. That business would not last long. She had been fortunate to get the last instalment of her money. The purchaser was a middle-aged man with a youngish wife. Fatal combination! Violet had not found him directly through her advertisement in theNews of the World, but through one of those business-transfer agents who had written to her about the advertisement. How right Henry had been in insisting that she should not pay the agent's commission until she had received the last instalment of the purchase-money! Henry had told her that most business-transfer agents were quite honest, but that a few weren't, because it was a calling that could be embraced without any capital and therefore specially tempting to the adventurer. Henry knew all those things.
A tram-car thundered up King's Cross Road, throwing sparks from its heels and generally glowing with electricity. It was crammed and jammed with humanity—exhausted pleasure-seekers returning home northwards from theatre, music-hall, cinema and restaurant. Pathetic creatures; stupid, misguided, deluded, heedless, improvident—sheltered in no strong fortress, they! Violet thought of the magic gold.
"Come. Come to bed," she said. "It's very cold here after the office."
He obeyed.
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 hadbuilt upon odd volumes (still unsold) ofThe 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 notionof 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'tshutthe 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 Iwaswanting 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 tohim."
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 ofit—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.