The entrance-gates to the yard of Daphut, the builder and stonemason, which lay between Mrs. Arb's shop and the steps proper, were set back a little from the general frontage of the north side of Riceyman Steps, so that there was a corner at that point sheltered from east and north-east winds. In this corner stood a young man under an old umbrella; his clothes were such as would have entitled him to the newspaper reporter's description, "respectably dressed"—no better. His back was against the blind wall of Mrs. Arb's. It was raining again, with a squally wind, but the wind being in the north-east the young man was only getting spotted with rain. A young woman ran out of Mrs. Arb's and joined him. She placed herself close to him, touching him, breast to breast; it was the natural and rational thing to do, and also she had to receive as much protection as possible from the umbrella. The girl was wearing all Elsie's clothes. Elsie's sack-apron covered her head and shoulders like a bridal veil. But she was not Mrs. Arb's Elsie nor Mr. Earlforward's! She was not the drudge. She had suddenly become a celestial visitant. The attributes of such an unearthly being were in her shining face and in the solace of her little bodily movements; and her extraordinary mean and ugly apparel could not impair them in the least. The man, slowly, hesitatingly, put one arm round her waist—the other was occupied with the umbrella. She yielded her waist to him, and looked up at the man, and he looked down at her. Not a word. Then he said in a deep voice:
"Where's your hat—and things?"
He said this as one who apprehended calamity.
"I haven't finished yet," she answered gently. "I'm that sorry."
"How long shall you be?"
"I don't know, Joe. She's all by herself, and she begged and prayed me to stop on and help her. She's all by herself, and strange to it. And I couldn't find it in my heart to refuse. You have to do what's right, haven't you?"
The man's chin fell in a sort of sulky and despairing gloom; but he said nothing; he was not a facile talker, even on his best days. She took the umbrella from him without altering its position.
"Put both arms round me, and hold me tight," she murmured.
He obeyed, reluctantly, tardily, but in the end fiercely. After a long pause he said:
"And my birthday and all!"
"I know! I know!" she cried. "Oh, Joe! It can't be helped!"
He had many arguments, and good ones, against her decision; but he could not utter them. He never could argue. She just gazed up at him softly. Tears began to run down his cheeks.
"Now, now!" she soothed him. With her free hand she worked up the tail of her apron between them, and, while still fast in his clutch, wiped his eyes delicately. She kissed him, keeping her lips on his. She kissed him until she knew from the feel of his muscles everywhere that the warm soft contact with her had begun to dissolve his resentment. Then she withdrew her lips and kissed him again, differently. They stood motionless in the dark corner under the umbrella, and the rain pattered dully on the umbrella and dropped off the umbrella and round them, and pattered with a brighter sound on the flagstones of Riceyman Steps. A few people passed at intervals up and down the steps. But the clasped pair ignored them; and the wayfarers did not look twice, nor even smile at the lovers, who, in fact, were making loveas honest love is made by lovers whose sole drawing-rooms and sofas are the street.
"Look here, Joe," Elsie whispered. "I want you to go home now. But you must call at Smithson's on yer way—they don't close till nine o'clock—and get them braces as I'm giving you for a birthday present. I see 'em still in the window this morning. I should have slipped in and bought 'em then, but I was on an errand for Mr. Earlforward, and, besides, I didn't like to, somehow, without you, and me with my apron on too. But you must buy 'em to-night so as you can wear 'em to-morrow. I want to say to myself to-morrow morning, 'He's wearing them braces.' I've brought you the money." She loosed one of his hands from her waist, got at the silver in her pocket, and inserted it into his breast pocket. "You promise me, Joe? It's a fair and square promise?"
He made no reply.
"You promise me, darling Joe?" she insisted.
He nodded; he could not speak in his desolation and in his servitude to her. She smiled her lovely thanks for his obedience.
"Now let me see ye start off," she cajoled him. "I know ye. I know whatyou'lldo if I don't see you start with me own eyes."
"Then it's to-morrow night?" he said gruffly.
She nodded. They kissed again. Elsie pushed him away, and then stood watching until he had vanished round the corner of the disused Mission Hall into King's Cross Road. She stood watching, indeed, for some moments after that. She was crying.
"My word!" said Mrs. Arb vivaciously. "I was beginning to wonder if you meant to come back, after all. You've been that long your tea'll be cold. Here's the ham, and very nice it is too."
The two women were working together in a living-room over the shop. An oil-lamp had been hung on a hook which would have held a curtain loop had there been any curtains. The lamp, tilted slightly forward, had a round sheltered reflector behind it. Thus a portion of the lower part of the room was brilliantly lighted and all the rest of the room in shadow. Elsie was scrubbing the floor in the full glare of the reflector. She scrubbed placidly and honestly, with no eagerness, but with no sign of fatigue. Mrs. Arb sat in the fireplace with her feet upraised out of the damp on the rail of a chair, and cleaned the mantelpiece. She had worked side by side with Elsie through the evening, silent sometimes, vivaciously chatty sometimes—desirous generally of collecting useful pieces of local information. Inevitably a sort of community had established itself between the two women. Mrs. Arb would talk freely and yet give nothing but comment. Elsie talked little and yet gave many interesting facts.
"Let me see," said Mrs. Arb with a casual air. "It's that Mr. Earlforward you say you work for in the mornings, isn't it?"
"But I told you I did when you sent me in about the book, 'm. And I told you before that, too," Elsie answered, surprised at such forgetfulness.
"Oh, of course you did. Well, does he live all alone?"
"Oh, yes, 'm."
"And what sort of a gentleman is he?"
Elsie, instinctively loyal, grew cautious.
"He's a very nice gentleman, 'm."
"Treats you well, does he?"
"Well, of course, 'm, he has his ways. But he's always very nice."
"Nice and polite, eh?"
"Yes, 'm. And I'll say this, too: he never tries to take any liberties. No, that he doesn't!"
"And so he has his ways. Is he eccentric?"
"Oh,no, 'm! At least, I don't know what you mean, 'm, I'm sure I don't. He's very particular in some things; but, then, in plenty of things he takes no notice of you, and you can do it or leave itasyou choose." Elsie suspected and mildly resented a mere inquisitiveness on the part of Mrs. Arb, and added quickly: "I think this floor's about done."
She wrung a cloth out in the pail at her right hand. The clock below struck its quick, wiry, reverberating note. It kept on striking.
"That's never eleven o'clock!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed, completely aware that it was eleven o'clock. "How time flies when you're hard at it, doesn't it?"
Elsie silently disagreed with this proposition. In her experience of toil she had found that time lagged.
"Well, Elsie, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you. I can finish myself. Don't you stay a minute longer."
"No, 'm," said Elsie, who had exchanged three hours' overtime for sixpence and a slice of ham.
At this moment, and before Elsie had raised her damp knees from the damp floor, a very sharp and imperious tapping was heard.
"My gracious! Who's that?"
"It's the shop door," said Elsie.
"I'll go." Mrs. Arb decided the procedure quite cheerfully. She was cheerful because the living-room, with other rooms, was done, and in a condition fit to be seen by possible purchasers of her premises and business; she had no intention to live in the living-room herself. And also she was cheerful because of a wild and silly, and yet not wholly silly, idea that the rapping at the shop door came from Mr. Earlforward, who had made for himself some absurd man-like excuse for calling again that night. She had, even thus early, her notions about Mr. Earlforward. The undying girl in her ran downstairs with a candle and unlocked the shop door. As she opened it a man pushed forward roughly into the shop—not Mr. Earlforward; a young man with a dangerous look in his burning eyes, and gestures indicating dark excitement.
"What do you want?" she demanded, trying to control the situation firmly and not succeeding.
The young man glanced at her. She perceived that he carried a torn umbrella and that his clothes were very wet. She heard the heavy rain outside.
"You can't come in here at this time of night," she added. "The shop's closed."
She gave a sign for him to depart. She actually began to force him out; mere temerity on her part. She thought:
"Why am I doing this? He might attack me."
Instead of departing the young man dropped his umbrella and sprang for the big carving-knife which she had left on the counter after cutting the slice of ham for Elsie. In that instant Mrs. Arb decided absolutely and without any further vacillation that she would sell the place, sell it at once, and for what it would fetch. Already she had been a little alarmed by the sinister aspect of several of her customers. She remembered the great Clerkenwell murder. She saw how foolish she had been ever to come to Clerkenwell at all. The man waved the carving-knife over his head and hers.
"Where's Elsie?" he growled savagely, murderously.
Mrs. Arb began dimly to understand.
"This comes of taking charwomen you don't know," she said pathetically to herself. "And yet I could have sworn by that girl."
Then a strong light shone in the doorway leading to the back-room. Elsie stood there holding the wall-lamp in her hand. As soon as he caught sight of her the man, still brandishing the knife, ran desperately towards her.She hesitated and then retreated a little. The man plunged into the room and banged the door.
After that Mrs. Arb heard not a sound. She was nonplussed, helpless and panic-stricken. Ah! If the late Mr. Arb had been alive, how he would have handled the affair! Not by force, for he had never been physically strong. But by skill, by adroitness, by rapid chicane. Only she could not imagine preciselywhatthe late Mr. Arb would have done in his unique and powerful sagacity. She was overwhelmed by a sudden and final sense of the folly, the tragedy, of solitary existence for a woman like her. She had wisdom, energy, initiative, moral strength, but there were things that women could do and things that women could not do; and a woman who was used to a man needed a man for all sorts of purposes, and she resolved passionately that she would not live alone another day longer than she could help.
This resolve, however, did not mitigate her loneliness in the candle-lit shop with the shut door in front of her hiding dreadful matters and the rain pelting on the flagstones of Riceyman Steps. She looked timidly forth; a policeman might by Heaven's mercy be passing. If not, she must run in the wet, as she was, to the police-station. She then noticed a faint light in Mr. Earlforward's shop, and dashed across. Through the window she could see Mr. Earlforward walking in his shop with a candle in his hand. She tattooed wildly on the window. A tram-car thundered down King's Cross Road, tremendously heedless of murders. After a brief, terrible interval the lock of Mr. Earlforward's portal grated, and Mr. Earlforward appeared blandly in the doorway holding the candle.
"Oh, Mr. Earlforward!" she cried, and stepped within, and clutched his sleeve and told him what had occurred. And as she poured out the words, and Mr. Earlforward kept apparently all his self-possession and bland calm, an exquisite and intense feeling of relief filled her whole being.
"I'll come over," said Mr. Earlforward. "Rather wet, isn't it?"
He cut a fine figure in the eyes of Mrs. Arb. He owed his prestige at that moment, however, not to any real ability to decide immediately and courageously upon the right, effective course to follow, but to the simple fact that his reactions were very slow. Mr. Earlforward was always afraid after the event. He limped vigorously into the dangers of Mrs. Arb's dwelling with his placidity undisturbed by the realization of those dangers. And he had no conception of what he should do. Mrs. Arb followed timorously.
The door into Mrs. Arb's back-room was now wide open; the lamp near the carving-knife burnt on the white table there. Also the candle was still burning in the shop, but the umbrella had vanished from the shop floor. The back-room was empty. No symptom of murder, nor even of a struggle! Only the brief, faint rumble of an Underground train could be heard and felt in the silence.
"Perhaps he's chased her upstairs."
"I'll go and see. Anyhow, he's left the knife behind him." Mr. Earlforward picked up the carving-knife, and thereby further impressed Mrs. Arb.
"Take the lamp," said Mrs. Arb.
"Nobody up here!" he called from the first floor. Mrs. Arb ascended. Together they looked into each room.
"She's taken her jacket!" exclaimed Mrs. Arb, noticing the empty peg behind the door when they came down again to the back-room.
"Ah! That's better," Mr. Earlforward commented, expelling breath.
"I've left my candle lighted," he said a moment later. "I'll go and blow it out."
"But——"
"Oh! I'm coming back. I'm coming back."
While he was gone Mrs. Arb had a momentary lapse into terror. Suppose——! She glimpsed again the savage and primeval passion half-disclosed in the gestures and the glance of the young man, hints of forces uncontrollable, terrific and fatal.
"I expect he's that young fellow that's running after her," said Mr. Earlforward when he returned. "Seems he's had shell-shock! So I heard. She'll have to leave him alone—that's clear!" He was glad to think that he had found a new argument to help him to persuade Elsie not to desert him.
"She seemed to be sorespectable!" observed Mrs. Arb.
"Well, she is!"
"Poor girl!" sighed Mrs. Arb; she felt a genuine, perturbing compassion for Elsie. "Ought I to go and tell the police, Mr. Earlforward?"
"If I were you I shouldn't have the police meddling. It's all right."
"Well, anyhow, I can't pass the night here by myself. No, I can't. And that's flat!" She smiled almost comically.
"You go off to bed," said Mr. Earlforward, with a magnificent wave of the hand. "I'll make myself comfortable in this rocking-chair. I'll stop till daylight."
Mrs. Arb said that she couldn't think of such a thing, and that he was too kind. He mastered her. Then she said she would put a bit of coal on the fire.
"You needn't." He stopped her. "I'll go across and get my overcoat and a quilt, and lock up there. It'll be all right. It'll be all right."
He reappeared with his overcoat on and the quilt a little rain-spotted. Mrs. Arb was wearing a long thick mantle.
"What's this?" he asked. "What's the meaning of this?"
"I couldn't leave you to sit up by yourself. I couldn't, really. I'm going to sit up too."
"She never came to you this morning?" questioned Mr. Earlforward with eager and cheerful interest.
"No. Did she to you?"
Mr. Earlforward shook his head, smiling.
"You seem to be quite the philosopher about it," said Mrs. Arb. "But it must bemostinconvenient for a man."
"Oh, no! I can always manage, I can."
"Well, it's very wonderful of you—that's all I say."
This was Sunday morning, the third day after the episode of the carving-knife.
"What's so funny," said Mrs. Arb, "is that she should come yesterday and Friday, just as if nothing had happened, and yet she doesn't come to-day! And yet it was settled plainly enough shewasto come—early, an hour to you and an hour to me, wasn't it now? I do think she might have sent round a message or something—even if sheisill."
"Yes, but you see it never strikes them the inconvenience they're causing. Not that she's a bad girl. She's a very good girl."
"They always work better for gentlemen," remarked Mrs. Arb with an air vivacious and enigmatic.
Mr. Earlforward, strolling towards the steps, had chanced—if in this world there is such a thing as chance—to see Mrs. Arb, all dressed, presumably, for church—standing in her shop and regarding the same with the owner's critical, appreciative eye. Mr. Earlforward had a good view of her, as anybody else might have had, because only the blue blind of the door was down, thisbeing the recognized sufficient sign to the public of a shut shop. The two small windows had blinds, but they were seldom drawn, except to protect butter against sunshine. The pair had exchanged smiles, Mrs. Arb had hospitably unlocked, and Mr. Earlforward had entered. To him she presented a finely satisfactory appearance, dressed in black, with vermilion flowers in her hat, good shoes on her feet, and good uncreased gloves held in her ringed hand. She was slim—Mr. Earlforward thought of her aspetite—but she was imposing, with all her keen restlessness of slight movements and her changing glance. No matter how her glance changed it was always the glance of authority and of intelligence.
On her part, Mrs. Arb beheld Mr. Earlforward with favour. His pointed short beard, so well trimmed, seemed to give him the status of a pillar of society. She still liked his full red lips and his fresh complexion. And he was exceedingly neat. True, he wore the same black, shirt-hiding tie as on weekdays, and his wristbands were still invisible; his hat and overcoat were not distinguished! But he had on a distinguished new blue suit; she was quite sure that he was inaugurating it that day. His slight limp pleased and touched her. His unshakable calmness impressed her. Oh! He was a man with reserves, both of character and of goods. Secure in these reserves he could front the universe. He was self-reliant without being self-confident. He was grave, but his little eyes had occasionally a humorous gleam. She had noticed the gleam even when he picked up the carving-knife on Thursday night. His demeanour in that dreadful crisis had been perfect. In brief, Mr. Earlforward, considered as an entity, was nearly faultless.
Mr. Earlforward, on the other hand, was still secretly trembling as he realized more and more clearly the dangers which he had narrowly escaped in the Thursday night affair; and he had not begun to tremble until Friday morning!
"Rather early, isn't it, if you're going to church?" he suggested.
"I always like to be early if it's a strange church, and I've not been in there at all yet."
"St. Andrew's?"
"I don't know what its name is. The one up the steps in the middle of the Square."
"Yes. St. Andrew's, that is."
Without another word they then by a common impulse both moved out of the shop, which Mrs. Arb smartly locked up. In spite of the upset caused by Elsie's defection, and the prospect of future trouble and annoyance in this connexion, they were very happy, and they had quite overlooked the fact that their combined years amounted to ninety, or thereabouts. The sun was feebly shining on the Sabbath scene. The bells of St. Andrew's were jangling.
"I see you have some plant-pots on your top window-sill," observed Mrs. Arb. "Do you ever water them?"
An implied criticism! Mr. Earlforward enjoyed it, for it proved that they were getting intimate, as, indeed, became two people who had slept (well) opposite one another in two chairs through the better part of a coldish night.
"I do not," said Mr. Earlforward, waggishly, stoutly.
The truth was that for years he had seen the plant-pots without noticing them. They were never moved, never touched. The unconquerable force of nature was illustrated in the simple fact that one or two of the plants still sturdily lived, displaying a grimy green.
"I love plants," said Mrs. Arb.
They passed up the steps, Mr. Earlforward a foot or so behind his heroine.
"Now what I don't understand," said she, turning upon him and stopping, "is why the Square should be so much higher than the road. It means that all the carts and things, even the milk-carts, have to go all the way round by Gilbert Street to get into the Square from the side. Why couldn't they have had it all on the same level?"
Exquisitely feminine, he thought! "Why couldn'tthey have had it all on the same level?" Absurd! Delicious! He adored the delicious, girlish absurdity.
"Well," he said. "It's like this. You see, in the old days they used to make tiles in Clerkenwell, and they scooped out the clay for the tiles in large quantities—and this is the result."
With a certain eagerness he amplified the explanation.
"I should never have thought of that," said Mrs. Arb ingenuously but archly. "What sort of church is St. Andrew's?"
"Oh! It was built in the 'thirties and cost £4,541. Cheap! I doubt if you'd build it to-day for twenty thousand. Supposed to hold eleven hundred people."
"Really! But I mean, is it High or Low, or Broad?"
"I haven't the least idea," answered Mr. Earlforward. "I did go in one day to look at the reredos to oblige a customer, but I've never been to a service." He spoke jauntily.
"D'you know why I go to church—when I do go?" said she. "Because it makes me feel nice. It's a great comfort, especially when it's a foggy day and you can't see very well, and there's not too many people. I don't mean I like sermons. No. But what I say is, if you enjoy part of the service the least you can do is to stay it out. Don't you agree?" She looked up at him, as it were appealing for approval.
Wonderful moments for Mr. Earlforward, and for Mrs. Arb too!
He thought to himself:
"She has a vigorous mind. Not one woman in a hundred would have said that. And sopetiteand smart too. It doesn't really matter about her being only a confectioner."
St. Andrew's Church, of yellow bricks with freestone dressings, a blue slate roof, and a red coping, was designed and erected in the brilliant reign of William IV, whose Government, under Lord Grey, had a pious habit, since lost by governments, of building additional churches in populous parishes at its own expense. Unfortunately its taste in architecture was less laudable than its practical interest in the inculcation among the lowly of the Christian doctrine about the wisdom and propriety of turning the other cheek. St. Andrew's, of a considerably mixed Gothic character, had architecturally nothing whatever to recommend it. Its general proportions, its arched windows, its mullions, its finials, its crosses, its spire, and its buttresses, were all and in every detail utterly silly and offensive. The eye could not rest anywhere upon its surface without pain. And time, which is supposed to soften and dignify all things, had been content in malice to cover St. Andrew's with filth and ridicule. Out of the heights of the ignoble temple came persistent, monotonous, loud sounds, fantastic and nerve-racking, to match its architecture. The churchyard was a garden flanked by iron rails and by plane trees, upon which brutal, terrifying surgical operations had been performed. In the garden were to be seen the withering and melancholy but still beautiful blossoms of asters and tulips, a quantity of cultivated vegetables, dishevelled grass, some heaps of rubble, and patches of unproductive brown earth. Nobody might walk in the garden, whose gates were most securely padlocked.
Riceyman Square had been built round St. Andrew's inthe hungry 'forties. It had been built all at once, according to plan; it had form. The three-story houses (with areas and basements) were all alike, and were grouped together in sections by triangular pediments with ornamentations thereon in a degenerate Regency style. These pediments and the window-facings, and the whole walls up to the beginning of the first floor were stuccoed and painted. In many places the paint was peeling off and the stucco crumbling. The fronts of the doorsteps were green with vegetable growth. Some of the front-doors and window-frames could not have been painted for fifteen or twenty years. All the horizontal lines in the architecture had become curved. Long cracks showed in the brickwork where two dwellings met. The fanlights and some of the iron work feebly recalled the traditions of the eighteenth century. The areas, except one or two, were obscene. The Square had once been genteel; it ought now to have been picturesque, but was not. It was merely decrepit, foul and slatternly. It had no attractiveness of any sort. Evolution had swirled round it, missed it, and left it. Neither electricity nor telephones had ever invaded it, and scores of windows still had Venetian blinds. All men except its inhabitants and the tax-collector, the rate-collector, and the school attendance officer had forgotten Riceyman Square.
It lay now frowsily supine in a needed Sunday indolence after the week's hard labour. All the upper windows were shut and curtained, and most of the ground-floor windows. The rare glimpses of forlorn interiors were desolating. Not a child played in the roadways. But here and there a housewife had hung her doormats and canaries on the railings to take the holy Sabbath air; and newspapers, fresh as newly gathered fruit, waited folded on doorsteps for students of crime and passion to awake from their beds in darkened and stifling rooms. Also little milk-cans with tarnished brass handles had been suspended in clusters on the railings. Cats only, in their elegance and their detached disdain, rose superiorto the terrific environment. The determined church bells ceaselessly jangled.
"The church is rather nice," said Mrs. Arb. "But what did I tell you about the Square?"
"Wait a moment! Wait a moment," replied Mr. Earlforward. "Let us walk round, shall we?"
They began to walk round. Presently Mr. Earlforward stopped in front of a house which had just been painted, to remind the spectator of the original gentility of the hungry 'forties.
"No broken panes there, I think," he remarked triumphantly.
Mrs. Arb's glance searched the façade for even a cracked pane, and found none. She owed him a shilling.
"Well," she said, somewhat dashed, but still briskly. "Of course there was bound to be one house that was all right. Don't they say it's the exception proves the rule?"
He understood that he would not receive his shilling, and he admired her the more for her genial feminine unscrupulousness.
At the corner of Gilbert Street Mrs. Arb suddenly burst out laughing.
"I hadn't noticed we had any Savoys up here!" she said.
Painted over the door of the corner house were the words "Percy's Hotel."
The house differed in no other detail from the rest of the Square.
"I wonder if they have any self-contained suites?"
Mr. Earlforward was about to furnish the history of this singular historic survival, when they both, almost simultaneously, through a large interstice of the curtains, noticed Elsie sitting and rocking gently by the ground-floor window of a house near to Percy's Hotel. Her pale face was half turned within the room, and its details obscure in the twilight of the curtained interior; but there could be no mistake about her identity.
"Is it here she lives?" said Mrs. Arb.
"I suppose so. I know she lives somewhere in the Square, but I never knew the number."
The front-door of the house opened and Dr. Raste emerged, fresh, dapper, prim, correct, busy, speeding without haste, the incarnation of the professional. You felt that he would have emerged from Buckingham Palace in just the same manner. To mark the Sabbath, which his ceaseless duties forbade him to honour otherwise, he wore a silk hat. This hat he raised on perceiving Mr. Earlforward and a lady; and he raised also, though scarcely perceptibly, his eyebrows.
"You been to see my charwoman, doctor?" Mr. Earlforward urbanely stopped him.
Dr. Raste hesitated a moment.
"Your charwoman? Ah, yes. I did happen to see her. Yes."
"Ah! Then she is unwell. Nothing serious, I hope?"
"No, no!" said the doctor, his voice rather higher than usual. "She'll be all right to-morrow. A mere nothing. An excellent constitution, I should imagine."
A strictly formal reply, if very courteous. Probably nobody in Clerkenwell, except perhaps his man Joe, knew how Dr. Raste talked and looked when he was not talking and looking professionally. Dr. Raste would sometimes say with a dry, brief laugh, "we medicoes," thereby proclaiming a caste, an order, a clan, separated by awful, invisible, impregnable barriers from the common remainder of mankind; and he never stepped beyond the barriers into humanity. In his case the secret life of the brain was indeed secret, and the mask of the face, tongue and demeanour made an everlasting privacy. He cleared his throat.
"Yes, yes.... By the way, I've been reading that Shakspere. Very fine, very fine. I shall read it all one of these days. Good morning." He raised his hat again and departed.
"I shall go in and see her, poor thing!" said Mrs. Arb with compassion.
"Shall you?"
"Well, I'm here. I think it would be nice if I did, don't you?"
"Oh, yes," Mr. Earlforward admiringly agreed.
The house which Mrs. Arb decided to enter had a full, but not an extraordinary, share of experience of human life. There were three floors of it. On the ground floor lived a meat-salesman, his wife and three children, the eldest of whom was five years of age. Three rooms and some minute appurtenances on this floor. The meat-salesman shouted and bawled cheap bits of meat in an open-fronted shop in Exmouth Street during a sixty-hour week which ended at midnight on Saturday. He possessed enormous vocal power. All the children out of naughtiness had rickets. On the first floor lived a french-polisher, his wife and two children, the eldest of whom was three years of age. One child less than the ground-floor family, but the first floor was about to get level in numbers. Three rooms and some minute appurtenances on this floor. The french-polisher worked only forty-four hours a week. His fingers wore always the colour of rosewood, and he emitted an odour which often competed not unsuccessfully with the characteristic house odour of stale soapsuds. Out of ill-will for mankind he had an everlasting cough. On the second floor lived a middle-aged dressmaker, alone. Three rooms and some minute appurtenances on this floor. Nobody but an occasional customer was ever allowed access to the second floor.
Elsie was a friend of the french-polisher's wife, and she slept in the infinitesimal back-room of the first floor with the elder child of the family. She paid three shillings a week for this accommodation, and also helped with the charing and the laundry work of the floor—in her spare time.
Except Elsie, the adult inhabitants of the house werealways unhappy save when drinking alcohol or making love. Although they had studied Holy Scripture in youth, and there were at least three Bibles in the house, they had failed to cultivate the virtue of Christian resignation. They permitted trifles to annoy them. On the previous day the wife of the meat-salesman had been upset because her "copper" leaked, and because she could never for a moment be free of her own children, and because it was rather difficult to turn her perambulator through the kitchen doorway into an entrance-hall three feet wide, and because she had to take all three children with her to market, and because the eldest child, cleanly clad, had fallen into a puddle and done as much damage to her clothes as would take a whole day to put right, and because another child, teething, would persistently cry, and because the landlord of the house was too poor to do necessary repairs, and because she could not buy a shilling's worth of goods with sixpence, and because her payments to the Provident Club were in arrear, and because the sunshine made her hat look shabby, and for many other equally inadequate reasons.
As for the french-polisher's wife, she moped and grew neurotic because only three years ago she had been a pretty girl earning an independent income, and because she was now about to bear another pledge of the french-polisher's affection, and because she felt sick and frequently was sick, and because she had no money for approaching needs, and because she hated cooking and washing, and because her husband spent his evenings and the purchase-money of his children's and his wife's food at a political club whose aim was to overthrow the structure of society, and because she hated her husband's cough and his affection, and because she could see no end to her misery, and because she had prophetic visions of herself as a hag with five hundred insatiable children everlastingly in tears for something impossible to obtain for them.
The spinster on the second floor was profoundly and bitterly dissatisfied for the mere reason that she was aspinster; whereas the other two women would have sold their souls to be spinsters.
The centre of irritation in the house was the entrance-hall, or lobby, which the first floor and ground floor had to keep clean in alternate weekly spells. On the previous day one of the first-floor children had dragged treacly fingers along the dark yellowish-brown wall. Further, the first-floor perambulator had been brought in with muddy wheels, and the marks had dried on the linoleum, which was already a palimpsest of various unclean deposits. This perambulator was the origin of most of the lobby trouble. The ground floor resented its presence there, and the second floor purposely knocked it about at every passage through the lobby; but the mistress of the first floor obstinately objected to carrying it up and down stairs once or twice a day.
A great three-corner quarrel had arisen on the Saturday morning around the first-floor perambulator and the entrance-hall, and when the french-polisher arrived home for his dinner shortly after one o'clock he had found no dinner, but a wife-helpmeet-cook-housekeeper-maidservant in hysterics. Very foolishly he had immediately gone forth again with all his wages. At eleven-thirty p.m. he had returned intoxicated and acutely dyspeptic. At a quarter to twelve he had tried to fight Elsie. At twelve-thirty the meat-salesman had come home to sleep, and had had to listen to a loud sermon on the manners of the first-floor and his own wife's manners delivered from the top of the second-floor stairs. Subsequently he had had to listen to moans from the mistress of the first floor and the eternal coughing of the master of the first floor.... And all about nothing! Yet every one of the adults was well acquainted with the admirable text which exhorted Christians to bear one another's burdens. A strange houseful! But there were some scores of such housefuls in Riceyman Square, and a £4,500 church in the midst.
Sunday morning always saw the adults of Elsie's household in a paradisaical coma. Elsie alone was afoot. On this particular Sunday morning she kept an eye onthe two elder children, who were playing quietly in the murky autumnal darkness of the walled backyard. Elsie had herself summarily dressed them. The other three children had been doped—or, as the advertisements phrased it, "soothed"—so that while remaining in their beds they should not disturb the adults. The adults slept. They embraced sleep passionately, voraciously, voluptuously. Their sole desire in those hours was to find perfect unconsciousness and rest. If they turned over they snatched again with terrible greed at sleep. They wanted it more than love and more than beer. They would have committed crimes for it. Even the prospective mother slept, in a confusion of strange dreams.
There was a loud, heavy knocking on the warped and shabby door of the house of repose. It shook the house. The children in the yard, thunderstruck by the outrage, stopped playing. Elsie ran in alarm through the back passage and the lobby and opened the front-door. Joe stood there, the worried, mad look, which Elsie knew so well, on his homely face. She was frightened, but held herself together, and shook her head sadly and decisively. As a result of the episode of the carving-knife she had banished him from her presence for one week, which had yet by no means expired. It seemed odd that Elsie, everybody's slave, should exercise an autocratic dominion over Joe; but she did. She knew her power and divined that she must use it, if Joe was ever to get well of his mysterious mental malady. And now, though she wished that she had sentenced him to only three days' banishment instead of seven, she would not yield and correct her error, for she felt that to do so would impair her authority.
Moreover, Joe had no right to molest her at home. She had her reputation to think of, and her reputation, in her loyal and ingenuous mind, was his reputation also. Therefore, with woe in her heart she began to close the door on Joe. Joe, rendered savage by a misery which he could not define, put his foot in the aperture and then forced the door backwards and lunged his desecrating body inside the sacred Sunday morning temple of sleep.(A repetition of his procedure of the previous Thursday night.) The two stood close together. He could not meet her fixed gaze. His eyes glanced restlessly and wildly round, at the foul walls, the gritty and soiled floor.
"Get out of this, my boy."
"Let me kiss you," he demanded harshly.
"Get out of it."
Losing what little remained of his self-control, he hit Elsie a strong blow on the shoulder. She was not ready for it. In the idiom of the ring her "foot-work" was bad, and she lost her balance, falling against the french-polisher's perambulator, which crashed violently into the stairs like an engine into a stationary buffer. Elsie's head caught the wheel of the perambulator. A great shrill scream arose; the children had followed Elsie out of the yard and witnessed the fall of their beloved slave. Joe, appalled at the consequences of his passion, ran off, banging the door behind him with a concussion which shook the house afresh and still more awakeningly. Two mothers recognized the howls of their children. The spinster on the second floor saw a magnificent opportunity for preaching from a point of vantage her views on the state of modern society. Two fathers, desperate with exasperation, but drawn by the mighty attraction of a good row, jumped murderous from their warm and fetid beds. Two half-clad figures appeared in the doorways of the ground-floor rooms and three on the stairs.
Elsie sat up, dazed, and then stood up, then sank limply down again. One mother smacked her child and a child which was not hers. The other mother protested furiously from the stairs. The paradise of Sunday morning lay shattered. The meat-salesman had sense, heart, and initiative. He took charge of Elsie. The hellish din died down. A few minutes later Elsie was seated in the rocking-chair by the window in his front room. She wept apologetically. Little was said, but all understood that Elsie's fantastic sweetheart had behaved disgracefully, and all indicated their settled opinion that if she kept on with him he would murder her one of these days. Three-quarters of an hour later Dr. Raste calmly arrived. Joe had run to the surgery and shouted at him: "I've killed her, sir." The meat-salesman, having himself lighted a bit of a fire, left the room while the doctor examined the victim. The doctor could find nothing but one bruise on the front of Elsie's left shoulder. With a splendid gesture of devotion the meat-salesman's wife gave her second child's warm milk to the reluctant Elsie. There happened to be no other stimulant in the house. Peace was reestablished, and even slumber resumed.
The front door was opened to Mrs. Arb's quiet knock by the oldest child in the house, an obstreperous boy of five, who was suddenly struck sheepish and mute by the impressive lady on the doorstep. He said nothing at all in reply to Mrs. Arb's request to see Elsie, but sidled backwards along-the lobby and opened a door, looking up at her with the most crude curiosity. As soon as she had gone into the room and the inhibition was lifted, he ran off to the yard raising his heels high and laughing boisterously.
The room in which Elsie had been installed was crowded and overcrowded with the possessions of the meat-salesman and his wife. The walls were covered from cornice to near the floor with coloured supplements from Christmas numbers, either in maple-wood frames or unframed; a wonderful exhibition of kindly sentiment: the innocence of children, the purity of lovers, the cohesion of families, the benevolence of old age, immense meals served in interiors of old oak, landscapes where snow lay in eternal whiteness on church steeples, angels, monks, blacksmiths, coach-drivers, souls awakening: indeed, a vast and successful effort to convince the inhabitants of Riceyman Square that Riceyman Square was not the only place on earth. The display undoubtedly unbent, diverted, and cheered the mind. In between the chromatic prints were grey, realistic photographs of people who really existed or had existed. The mantelpiece was laden with ornaments miscalled "china," standing on bits of embroidery. The floor was covered with oddments of carpet. There were many chairs, unassorted; there was a sofa; there was a cradle; there was asewing-machine; there was a clothes-horse, on which a man's blue apron with horizontal white stripes was spread out. There were several tables, including a small walnut octagonal table, once a lady's work-table, which stood in the window and upon which a number of cloth-bound volumes ofOnce a Weekwere piled carefully, corkscrew-wise. And there was a wardrobe, also a number of kitchen utensils. The place was encumbered with goods, all grimy as the walls and ceilings, many of them cracked and worn like the woodwork and paint, but proving triumphantly that the meat-salesman had no commerce with pawnbrokers.
"I thought I should like to come round and see how you are, Elsie," said Mrs. Arb kindly and forgivingly. "No, don't get up. I can see you aren't well. I'll sit here."
Elsie blushed deeply.
"I've had a bit of trouble, 'm," she apologetically murmured.
Elsie's trouble was entirely due to Mrs. Arb's demand for overtime from her on Thursday night. Mrs. Arb had not considered the convenience nor the private life of this young woman whose services made daily existence tolerable for her and for Mr. Earlforward. The young woman had consequently found herself in a situation of the gravest difficulty and of some danger. Hence the young woman was apologetic and Mrs. Arb forgiving. Elsie admitted to herself a clear failure of duty with its sequel of domestic embarrassment for her employers, and she dismissed as negligible the excuses which she might have offered. Nor did she dream of criticizing Mrs. Arb. She never consciously criticized anyone but Elsie. And yet somewhere in the unexplored arcana of her mind lay hidden a very just estimate of Mrs. Arb. Strange! No, not strange! A quite common phenomenon in the minds of the humble and conscientious!
"Was the trouble over that young man?" asked Mrs. Arb. "Not that I want to be inquisitive!"
Elsie began to cry. She nodded, unable for themoment to speak. The sound of a snore came through the wall from the next room. There were muffled noises overhead. Mrs. Arb grew aware that a child had peeped in upon her and Elsie. The church bells, after a few single notes, ceased to ring.
"I suppose you couldn't have sent somebody across to tell me you weren't coming?" Mrs. Arb suggested. Elsie shook her head. "Shall you come to-morrow?"
"Oh, yes, 'm. I shall come to-morrow—andpunctual."
"Well, Elsie, don't think I'm interfering, but don't you think you'd better give him up? Two upsets in three days, you know." (Four days Mrs. Arb ought to have said; but in these details she took the licence of an artist.) "I haven't said a word to you about Thursday night, have I? I didn't want to worry you. I knew you'd had worry enough. But I don't mind telling you now that I was very much upset and frightened, as who wouldn't be!... What do you want with men? They'll never be any good to you—that is, if you value a quiet life and a good name. I'm telling you for your own sake. I like you, and I'd like you to be happy and respectable." Mrs. Arb seemed to have forgotten that she was addressing a widow and not a young girl.
"Oh, 'm. I'm giving him up. I'll never have anything to do with him again. Never!" Elsie burst out, with intense tragedy in her soul.
"That's right! I'm glad to hear it," said Mrs. Arb with placidity. "And if you really mean it the people that employ you will be able to trust and rely on you again. It's the only way."
"Oh, I'm so ashamed, 'm!" said Elsie, with the puckered brow of conscientiousness. "'Specially seeing I couldn't let you know. Nor Mr. Earlforward, either! But it won't occur again, 'm, and I hope you'll forgive me."
"Please, please!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed magnanimously, protesting against this excess of remorse and penitence. "I only thought I'd call to inquire."After Mrs. Arb had gone out to dally with a man and to reassure him with the news that everything would be all right and they had nothing to fear, the boy crept into the front-room with a piece of bread and jam in his sticky hand. He silently offered the morsel to Elsie, who leaned forward as he held it up to her and bit off a corner to please him. She smiled at him; then broke into a sob, and choked and clutched him violently, bread and jam and all, and there was a dreadful mess.
"I think I've putherstraight," said Mrs. Arb very cheerfully to Mr. Earlforward, out in the Square, and gave him an account of the interview.
Mr. Earlforward's mind was much relieved. He admired Mrs. Arb greatly in that moment. He himself could never have put Elsie straight. There were things that a woman, especially a capable and forceful woman, could do which no man could possibly do. "Forceful"! Perhaps a sinister adjective to attach to a woman. Yes. But the curious point about this woman was that she was also feminine. Forceful, she could yet (speaking metaphorically) cling and look up. And also she could look down in a most enchanting and disturbing way. She had done it a number of times to Mr. Earlforward. Now Mr. Earlforward, from the plenitude of his inexperience of women, knew them deeply. He knew their characteristic defects and shortcomings. And it seemed to him that Mrs. Arb was remarkably free from such. It seemed to him, as it has seemed to millions of men, that he had had the luck to encounter a woman who miraculously combined the qualities of two sexes, and the talent to recognize the miracle on sight. He would not go so far as to assert that Mrs. Arb was unique (though he strongly suspected that she must be), but there could not be many Mrs. Arbs on earth. He was very happy in youthful dreams of a new and idyllic existence. His sole immediate fear was that he would be compelled to go to church with her. He knew them; they were queer on religious observances. Of course it was because, as she had half admitted, they liked to feel devotional. But you could donothing with a woman in church. And he could not leave her to go to church alone.... He was unhappy.
"I'm afraid that service of yours has begun," said he. "I saw quite a number of people going in while you were talking to Elsie."
"I'm afraid it has," she replied. He saw a glint of hope.
"It's a nice fresh morning," said he daringly. "And what people like you and me need is fresh air. I suppose you wouldn't care for me to show you some bits of Clerkenwell?"
"I think I should," said she. "I could go to service to-night, couldn't I?"
Triumph! Undoubtedly she was unique.
Both quite forgetting once more that they would never again see forty, they set off with the innocent ardour of youth.
"You know," said Mrs. Arb, returning to the great subject, "I told her plainly she'd be much better off if she kept off men. And so she will!"
"They never know when theyarewell off," said Mr. Earlforward.
"No ... I expect this Square used to belong to your family," Mrs. Arb remarked with deference.
"Oh! I shouldn't say that," answered Mr. Earlforward modestly. "But it was named after my grandfather's brother."
"It must have been very nice when it was new," said Mrs. Arb, tactfully adopting towards the Square a more respectful attitude than aforetime. Clearly she desired to please. Clearly she had a kind heart. "But when the working-class get a hold on a place, what are you to do?"
"You'd scarcely think it," said Mr. Earlforward with grim resignation, "but this district was very fashionable once. There used to be an archery ground where our steps are." (He enjoyed saying "our steps," the phrase united him to her.)
"Really!"
"Yes. And at one time the Duke of Newcastle livedjust close by. Look here. I'll show you something. It's quite near."
In a few minutes they were at the corner of a vast square—you could have put four Riceymans into it—of lofty reddish houses, sombre and shabby, with a great railed garden and great trees in the middle, and a wide roadway round. With all its solidity, in that neighbourhood it seemed to have the unreal quality of a vision, a creation of some djinn, formed in an instant and destined as quickly to dissolve; it seemed to have no business where it was.
"Look at that!" said Mr. Earlforward eagerly, pointing to the sign, "Wilmington Square." "Ever heard of it before?"
Mrs. Arb shook her astonished head.
"No. And nobody has. But it's here. That's London, that is! Practically every house has been divided up into tenements. Used to be very well-to-do people here, you know!"
Mrs. Arb gazed at him sadly.
"It's tragic!" she said sympathetically, her bright face troubled.
"She understands!" he thought.
"Now I'll show you another sort of a square," he went on aloud. "But it's over on the other side of Farringdon Road. Not far! Not far! No distances here!"
He limped quickly along.
Coldbath Square easily surpassed even Riceyman Square in squalor and foulness; and it was far more picturesque and deeper sunk in antiquity, save for the huge, awful block of tenements in the middle. The glimpses of interiors were appalling. At the corners stood sinister groups of young men, mysteriously well dressed, doing nothing whatever, and in certain doorways honest-faced old men with mufflers round their necks and wearing ancient pea-jackets.
"I don't like thisat all," said Mrs. Arb, as it were sensitively shrinking.
"No! This is a bit too much, isn't it? Let's go on to the Priory Church."
"Yes. That will be better," Mrs. Arb agreed with relief at the prospect of a Priory Church.
"Oh! There's aNews of the World!" she exclaimed. "Now I wonder——"
They were passing through a narrow, very short alley of small houses which closed the vista of one of the towering congeries of modern tenement-blocks abounding in the region. The alley, christened a hundred years earlier, "Model Cottages," was silent and deserted, in strange contrast to the gigantic though half-hidden swarming of the granite tenements. The front-doors abutted on the alley without even the transition of a raised step. TheNews of the Worldlay at one of the front-doors. It must have been there for hours, waiting for its subscriber to awake, and secure in the marvellous integrity of the London public.
"I did want just to look at aNews of the World," said Mrs. Arb, stopping.
They had seen various newsvendors in the streets; in fact, newspapers were apparently the only articles of commerce at that hour of the Sunday morning; but she had no desire to buy a paper. Glancing round fearfully at windows, she stooped and picked up the foldedNews of the World. Mr. Earlforward admired her, but was apprehensive.
"Yes. Here it is!" she said, having rapidly opened the paper. Over her shoulder Mr. Earlforward nervously read: "Provisions. Confec. Busy W.C. district. £25 wkly. Six rooms. Rent £90. £200 everything. Long lease, or will sell premises. Delay dangerous. Chance lifetime. 7, Riceyman Steps, W.C.1."
"Then you've decided!" murmured Mr. Earlforward, suddenly gloomy.
"Oh! Quite! I told you," said Mrs. Arb, dropping back the newspaper furtively like a shameful accusing parcel, and walking on with a wonderful air of innocence.
"I wasn't altogether sure if you'd decided finally."
"You see," Mrs. Arb continued. "Supposing the business failed. Supposing I lost my money. I've got to think of my future. No risks for me, I say! I only want a little, but I want it certain. And I've got a little."
"It's a very clever advertisement."
"I didn't knowhowto put it. Of course it's called a confectioner's. But it isn't really, seeing I buy all the cakes from Snowman's. The whole stock in the shop isn't worth £25, but you see, I count the rest of the price asked as premium for the house. That's how I look at it—and it's quite fair, don't you think?"
"Perfectly."
They stood talking in front of a shut second-hand shop, where old blades of aeroplane propellers were offered at 3s. 6d. each. Mr. Earlforward said feebly "Yes" and "No" and "Hm" and "Ha." His brain was occupied with the thought: "Is she going to slip through my fingers? Suppose she went to live in the country?" His knee began to ache. His body and his mind were always reacting upon one another. "Why should my knee ache because I'm bothered?" he thought, and could give no answer. But in secret he was rather proud of these mysterious inconvenient reactions; they gave him distinction in his own eyes. In another environment he would have been known among his acquaintances as "highly strung" and "highly nervously organized." And yet outwardly so calm, so serene, so even-tempered!
They got to the quarter of the great churches.
"Would you care to go in?" he asked her in front of St. James's. For he desired beyond almost anything to sit down.
"I think it's really too late now," she replied. "It wouldn't be quite nice to go in just at the end of the sermon, would it? Too conspicuous."
There were seats in the churchyard, but all were occupied, despite the chilliness of the morning, by persons who, for private reasons, had untimely left their beds. Moreover, he felt that Mrs. Arb, whose niceties he much admired, would not like to sit in a churchyard with serviceproceeding in the church. He had begun to understand her. There were no seats round about St. John's. Mr. Earlforward stood on one leg while Mrs. Arb deciphered the tablet on the west front:
"'The Priory Church of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, consecrated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 10th March, 1185.' Fancy that, now! It doesn't lookquitethat old. Fancy them knowing the day of the month too!"
He was too preoccupied and tortured to instruct her. He would have led her home then; but she saw in the distance at the other side of St. John's Square a view of St. John's Gate, the majestic relic of the Priory. Quite properly she said that she must see it close. Quite properly she thanked him for a most interesting promenade, most interesting.
"And me living in London off and on all my life! They do say you can't see the wood for the trees, don't they?"
But the journey across the huge irregular Square cut in two by a great avenue was endless to Mr. Earlforward. Then she must needs go under the gateway into a street that seemed to fascinate her. For there was an enormous twilit shoeing-forge next door to the Chancery of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and though it was Sunday morning the air rang with the hammering of a blacksmith who held a horse's hind leg between his knees. Then she caught the hum of unseen machinery and inquired about it. Then the signs over the places of business attracted her; she became charmingly girlish.
"'Rouge. Wholesale only.' 'Glass matchers to the trade.' 'I want five million moleskins and ten million rabbitskins. Do not desert your old friend. Cash on the nail.' And painted too, on a board! Not just written! 'Gorgonzola cheese manufacturers.' Oh! The mere thought of it! No, I shall never touch Gorgonzola again after this! I couldn't! But, of course, I see theremustbe places like these in a place like London. Only it's too funny seeing them all together. 'Barclay'sBank.' Well, it would be! Those banks are everywhere in these days. I do believe there are more banks than A.B.C. shops and Lyonses. You look at any nice corner site, and before you can say knife there's a bank on it. I mistrust those banks. They do what they like. When I go into my bank somehow they make me feel as if I'd done something wrong, or at least, I'd better mind what I was about; and they look at you superior as if you were asking a favour. Oh, very polite! But so condescending."
A shrewd woman! A woman certainly not without ideas! And he perceived, dimly through the veil of his physical pain, that their intimacy was developing on the right lines. He would have been joyous but for the apprehension of her selling the business and vanishing from him, and but for the pain. The latter was now the worst affliction. Riceyman Steps seemed a thousand miles off, through a Sabbath-enchanted desert of stone and asphalt.
When they returned into St. John's Square a taxicab with its flag up stood terribly inviting. Paradise, surcease from agony, for one shilling and perhaps a two-penny tip! But he would not look at it. He could not. He preferred the hell in which he was. The grand passion which had rendered all his career magnificent, and every hour of all his days interesting and beautiful, demanded and received an intense, devotional loyalty; it recompensed him for every ordeal, mortification, martyrdom. He proudly passed the taxicab with death in his very stomach. Nowhere was there a chance of rest! Not a seat! Not a rail! Mrs. Arb had inveighed against the lack of amenities in the parish and district. No cinemas, no theatre, no music-halls, no cafés! But Mr. Earlforward realized the ruthless, stony, total inhospitality of the district far more fully than Mrs. Arb could ever have done. He was like a weakening bird out of sight of land above the surface of the ocean.
He led Mrs. Arb down towards the nearest point ofFarringdon Road, though this was not the shortest way home. The tram-cars stopped at the corner. Every one of them would deposit him at his own door. Paradise for one penny! No, twopence; because he would have to pay for Mrs. Arb! He had thought to defeat his passion at this corner. He was mistaken. He could not. He had, after all his experience, misjudged the power of his passion. He was as helpless as the creatures who were beginning to gather at the iron-barred doors of the public-houses, soon to open for a couple of too short hours; and also he had the secret ecstasy which they had. He could scarcely talk now, and each tram that passed him in his slow and endless march gave him a spasm of mingled bitterness and triumph. His fear now was lest his grand passion should on this occasion be overcome by bodily weakness. He did not desire it to be overcome. He desired it to conquer even if it should kill him.
"I'm afraid I've walked you too far," said Mrs. Arb.
"Why?"
"I thought you were limping a bit."
"Oh no! I always limp a bit. Accident. Long time ago." And he smartened his gait.
They reached Riceyman Steps in silence. He had done it! His passion had forced him to do it! His passion had won! There were two Mr. Earlforwards: one splendidly uplifted, the other ready to faint from pain and fatigue. The friends disappeared, each into the solitude of his own establishment. In the afternoon Mr. Earlforward heard a sharp knock on his front-door; it was repeated before he could get downstairs; and when he opened the door he opened it to nobody; but Mrs. Arb was just entering her shop. He called out, and she returned.
"I was a bit anxious about your leg," she said, so brightly and kindly, "so I thought I'd step across and inquire."
"Quite all right again now, thank you." (An exaggeration.)
How delightful of her! How feminine! He could hardly believe it! He was tremendously flattered. She could not after all slip through his fingers, whatever happened! They chatted for a few moments, and then each disappeared a second time into the recondite, inviolate solitude of his own establishment.