During the day Henry had asked several times for bulletins as to Elsie's consumption of food, and he received them with satisfaction, but also with a certain sardonic air new in Violet's experience of him. This demeanour was one of the things that disquieted Violet. Another was that, contrary to his habit of solicitude for her, he made absolutely no inquiry as to her own health, though he surely ought to have been ever so little disturbed about it. And another was that he no longer showed his customary quiet pleasure in being worried over her. After taking some soft food he demanded a toothpick, and had employed himself with it in the most absurd way for quite an hour. In answer to her questions he said blandly again and again that he was all right. Soon after nightfall he insisted that the electricity should be switched off. Violet refused, as she was determined to watch him carefully. He said that the light hurt his eyes. She took the paper lining from a tray in her wardrobe and fashioned a shade for the lamp—the first shade ever known in that house.
At ten o'clock, feeling cold and ill, she undressed and got into bed, but kept the light burning. Henry was perfectly tranquil. The trams seemed to make a tremendous uproar. She could not sleep, but Henry apparently dozed at intervals. Then she had a severe shock. He was violently sick.
"What's this? What's this?" he murmured feebly and sadly.
He did not know what it was; but Violet, who had witnessed a deal of physical life during her peregrinationswith the clerk of the works, knew what it was. It was what Violet's varied acquaintances had commonly called, in tones of awe on account of its seriousness, the "coffee-grounds vomit." It was, indeed, a sinister phenomenon.
Henry had dropped back exhausted. His forehead was wet, and his hair damp with perspiration. Also he seemed to be terrorized—he who was never afraid until hours or days after the event! At this point it was that Violet went out of the bedroom to send Elsie for the doctor.
As soon as Elsie was gone Violet dressed. She still felt very cold and ill. The minutes dragged. Henry lay inert. His aspect had considerably worsened. The facial emaciation was accentuated, and the pallor of the ears and the lips, and even his beard and hair were limp as if from their own fatigue. Elsie's greed was now an infinitesimal thing in Violet's mind, and the importance attached to it struck her as wildly absurd. Yet she had a strange, cruel desire (which she repressed) to say to Henry: "Your bluff has failed! Your bluff has failed! And look at you!" She thought of the approaching Christmas, for which she had secretly been making plans for merriment; she had meant to get Elsie's aid, because she knew that Elsie had in her the instincts of fancy and romance. Pathetic! She thought of her anger at Elsie's indiscretion in telling a customer that the master would never get up again. Ridiculous anger! He neverwouldget up again; and what did it matter if all Clerkenwell knew in advance? The notion of Henry spending money on the cure of his damaged knee seemed painfully laughable. His dread, genuine or affected, of communism, seemed merely grotesque. She saw a funeral procession, consisting of a hearse and one coach, leave Riceyman Steps. The coffin would have to be carried across the space from the shop-door to the main road, as no vehicle could come right to the door. Crowds! Crowds of gapers!
Then she heard a noise below. Elsie, who had runall the way to Myddelton Square and all the way back, tapped with tremulous eagerness.
"He's coming, 'm." She was panting.
Dr. Raste arrived, but only after an interval of nearly half an hour, which seemed to Violet like half a night. The fact was that, despite much practice, he could not dress in less than about twenty minutes; nor was it his habit to run to his patients, whatever their condition. He came with the collar of his thick overcoat turned up. Violet met him on the landing; she had shut the bedroom door behind her. He was calm; he yawned; and his demeanour hovered between the politely indifferent and the politely inimical. He spoke vaguely, but in his loud tone, in reply to Violet's murmur: "I was afraid you weren't coming, doctor."
Violet had by this time lost her sense of proportion. She was incapable of bearing in mind that the doctor lived daily and nightly among disease and death, and that he was more accustomed to sick people than to healthy. She did not suspect that in the realism of his heart he regarded sick people and their relations in the mass as persons excessive in their fears, ruthless in their egotism, and cruel in their demands upon himself. She had no conception that to him a night-call was primarily a grievance and secondarily an occasion to save life or pacify pain. She might have credited that fifty per cent. of his night-calls were unnecessary, but she could never have guessed that he had already set down this visit to Riceyman Steps as probably the consequence of a false, foolish, feminine alarm. She began to explain to him at length the unique psychology of the sufferer, as though the doctor had never before encountered an unwilling and obstinate patient. The doctor grew restless.
"Yes. Just so. Just so. I'd better have a look at him."
"I haven't dared to tell him I've sent for you," said Violet piteously, reproachful of the doctor's inhumanity.
"Tut-tut!" observed the doctor, and opened the bedroom door.
He sniffed on entering, glanced placidly at Henry, then at the fireplace, and then went to the window and drew the curtains and blind aside.
"I should advise you to have a fire lighted at once, and we'll open the window a bit."
He put his hat carefully on the chest of drawers, but did not even unbutton his overcoat or turn down his collar. Then he removed his gloves and rubbed his hands. At last to Henry:
"Well, Mr. Earlforward, what's this I hear?"
No diplomacy with the patient! No ingenious excusing of his presence! The patient just had to accept his presence; and the patient, having no alternative, did accept it.
"Shall I light the fire now, 'm?" asked Elsie timidly at the door.
"Yes," said the doctor shortly, including both the women in his glance.
"But won't she be disturbing you while you're ..." Violet suggested anxiously. She was afraid that this unprecedented proceeding would terribly upset Henry and so make him worse.
"Not at all."
"I don't think we've ever had this fire lighted," said Violet, to which the doctor deigned no reply.
"Run along, Elsie. Take your things off and be quick. The doctor wants a fire immediately."
Before the doctor, changed now from an aggrieved human being into a scrupulously conscientious professional adviser, had finished his examination, the room was half full of smoke. Violet could not help looking at Elsie reproachfully as if to say: "Really, Elsie, you should be able to control the chimney better than this—and your master so ill!"
The patient coughed excessively, but everyone knew that the coughing was merely his protest against the madness of lighting a fire.
"I'm too hot," he muttered. "I'm too hot."
And such was the power of auto-suggestion that he didin fact feel too hot, though the fire had not begun to give out any appreciable heat. He privately determined to have the fire out as soon as the doctor had departed; a limit must be set to folly after all. However, Henry was at once faced with a great new crisis which diminished the question of the fire to a detail.
"I can't come to any conclusion without washing out the stomach," said Dr. Raste, turning to Violet, and then turning back quickly to Henry: "You say you've no pain there? You're sure?" And he touched a particular point on the chest.
"None," replied Henry.
"The fellow is lying," thought the doctor. "It's amazing how they will lie. I bet anything he's lying. Why do they lie?"
Nevertheless, the doctor could not be quite sure. And he had a general preference for not being quite sure; he liked to postpone judgment.
"Idon't mind having my stomach washed out," Henry murmured blandly.
"No, of course not. I'll telephone to the hospital early to-morrow, and Mrs. Earlforward will take you round there in a cab." And to Violet: "You'll see he's well covered, won't you?"
"I will," Violet weakly agreed.
"But I don't want to go to any hospital," was Henry's second protest. "Why can't you do the business here?"
"Impossible in a house!" the doctor announced. "You can only do that sort of thing where you've got all the apparatus and conveniences. But I'll make it all smooth for you."
"Oh, no! Oh, no! Not to a hospital!"
The doctor said callously:
"I doubt whether you realize how ill you are, my friend."
"I'm notthatill. When should I come out again?"
"The moment you are better."
"Oh, no! No hospital for me. There's two of them here to nurse me."
"Your wife is not in a condition to nurse you. You must remember that, please.... Better get him there by eleven o'clock. I shall probably be there first. I'll give you the order—to let you in."
Henry ceased to cough; he ceased to feel hot. His condition suddenly improved in a marvellous way. He had been ill. He admitted now that he had been chronically ill. (He had first begun to feel ill either just before or soon after the eating of the wedding-cake on his bridal night.) But he was now better, much better. He was aware of a wonderful amelioration, which surprised even himself. At any rate, he would not go into a hospital. The enterprise was too enormous and too perilous. Once in, when would he get out again? And nurses were frightful bullies. He would be helpless in a hospital. And his business? It would fall to ruin. Everything would get askew. And the household? Astounding foolishness would be committed in the house if he lost his grip on it. He could manage his business and he could manage his household; and nobody else could. Besides, there was no sound reason for going into a hospital. As for washing out his stomach, if that was all, give him some mustard and some warm water, and he would undertake to do the trick in two minutes. The doctor evidently desired to make something out of nothing. They were all the same. And women were all the same, too. He had imagined that Violet was not like other women. But he had been mistaken! She had lost her head—otherwise she would never have sent for the doctor in the middle of the night. The doctor would undoubtedly charge double for a night visit. And the fire, choking and roasting him! He saw himself in the midst of a vast general lunacy and conspiracy, and he alone maintaining ordinary common sense and honesty. He felt the whole world against him; but he could fight the whole world. He had perfect confidence in the fundamental hard strength of his nature.
Then he observed that the other two had left the room. Yet he did not remember seeing them go. Elsie cameback, her face smudged, to watch the progress of the fire, which was no longer smoking.
"Where's your mistress, my girl?"
"She's talking to the doctor on the landing, sir."
"You see," the doctor was saying in a low voice to Violet, "it may be cancer at the cardiac end of the stomach. I don't say it is. But it may be. That would account for the absence of appetite—and for other symptoms." In the moonlight he saw Violet wiping her eyes. "Come, come, Mrs. Earlforward, you mustn't give way."
"It's not that," Violet spluttered, who was crying at the thought that she had consistently misjudged Henry for many months past. Not from miserliness, but from illness, had he been refusing to eat. Hecouldnot eat normally. He was a stricken man, and to herself she had been accusing him of the meanest avarice and the lowest stupidity. She now in a flash acquitted him on every charge, and made him perfect. His astounding secretiveness as to his condition she tried to attribute to a regard for her feelings.
"What are we to do? What am I to do?"
"Oh!" said Dr. Raste. "Don't let that worry you. We'll get him away all right to-morrow morning. I'll come myself and fetch him."
At the same moment they both saw the bedroom door open and the lank figure of the patient in his blue-grey nightshirt emerge. The light was behind him, and threw his shadow across them. Elsie stood scared in the background.
"It's not the slightest use you two standing chattering there," Henry murmured bitterly. "I'm not going into a hospital, so you may as well know it."
"Oh, Henry!"
"Better get back to bed, Mr. Earlforward," said the doctor rather grimly and coldly.
"I'm going back to bed. I don't need you or anybody else to tell me I oughtn't to be out here. I'm going back to bed." And he limped back to bed triumphant.
Dr. Raste, who thought that he had nothing to learn about the strange possibilities of human behaviour, discovered that he had been mistaken. He could not hide that he was somewhat impressed. He again assured Violet that it would be all right in the morning, but he was not very convincing. As for Violet, since Dr. Raste was a little man, she did not consider that he had much chance, morally, against her husband, who was unlike all other men, and, indeed, the most formidable man on earth.
"How do you feel, my girl?" Henry asked.
They lay again in bed together. Before leaving the doctor had given, with casualness, certain instructions, not apparently important, which Violet had carried out, having understood that there was no immediate danger to her husband and also that there was nothing immediately to be done. Dr. Raste's final remarks, as he departed, had had a sardonic tone, almost cynical, which had at first abraded Violet's sensitiveness; but later she had said to herself: "After all, with a patient like Henry, whatcanyou expect a doctor to do?" And she had accepted, and begun to share, the doctor's attitude. A patient might be very seriously ill, he might be dying of cancer, and yet by his callous and stupid obstinacy alienate your sympathies from him. Human sympathies were as precarious as that! She admitted it. A few minutes earlier she had lifted Henry to a pedestal of perfection. Now she dashed him down from it. "I know I oughtn't to feel as I do, but Idofeel as I do." And she even confirmed herself in harshness. She had sent Elsie to bed for the few remaining hours of the night. She had undressed once more and got into bed herself.
The light of the fire played faintly at intervals on the astonished ceiling, and sometimes shafts of moonlight could be discerned through an aperture in the thick, drawn curtains. Behind the curtains the blind could be heard now and then answering restlessly to the north breeze. The room was so warm that the necessity to keep the bedclothes over the shoulders and up to the chinhad disappeared. Violet had a strange sense of luxury. "And why shouldn't we have a fireeverynight?" she thought, and added, somewhat afraid of the extravagance of the proposition: "Well, anyhow,somenights—when it's very cold." She gave no reply to Henry's question about her health.
Henry felt much better. He had scarcely any pain at the spot which the doctor had indicated; he was as sure as ever that he had done right in refusing to enter a hospital, and as determined as ever that he never would enter a hospital. None the less, he was disturbed; he was a bit frightened of trouble in the bed. He had noted his wife's face before she turned the light out, and seen rare and unmistakable signs in it. His illness was not now the important matter, nor her illness either. The important matter was their sentimental relations. He knew that he had estranged her. Convinced of the justice of his own cause and of the folly of doctors and wives, he was yet apprehensive and had somehow a quite illogical conviction of guilt. Violet had wanted to act against his best interests, and yet he must try to appease her! It was more important to appease her than to get well!
Dr. Raste, or anybody else, looking at the couple lying beneath Violet's splendid eiderdown (which still by contrast intensified the dowdiness and shabbiness of the rest of the room) would have seen merely a middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman with haggard faces worn by illness, fatigue, privations and fear. But Henry did not picture himself and Violet thus; nor Violet herself and Henry. Henry did not feel middle-aged. He did not feel himself to be any particular age. His interest in life and in his own existence had not diminished during the enormous length of time which had elapsed since he first came into Riceyman Steps as a young man. In his heart he felt no older than on that first night. He did not feel that he now in the least corresponded to his youthful conception of a middle-aged man. He did not feel that he was as old as other men whom he knew to be of about his own age. He thought that he alone hadmysteriously remained young among his generation. For him his grey hairs had no significance; they were an accident. Then in regard to his notion of Violet. He knew that all women were alike, but with one exception—Violet. Women were women, and Violet was thrice a woman. He was aware of her age arithmetically, for he had seen her birth-certificate. But in practice she was a girl—well, perhaps a little more than a girl, but not much more. And she had for him a romantic quality perceptible in no other woman. He admired certain efficiencies in her, but he could not have said why she was so important to him, nor why he was vaguely afraid of her frown—why it was so urgent for him to stand well with her. He could defeat her in battle. He had more common sense than she had, more authority, a surer grasp of things; he could see farther; he was more straightforward. In fact, a superior being! Further, she had crossed him, sided with the doctor against him, made him resentful. Therefore, if justice reigned, she ought to be placating him. Instead, he was anxious to placate her.
And, on her part, Violet saw in Henry a man not of any age, simply a man: egotistic, ruthless, childish, naughty, illogical, incalculable, the supreme worry of her life; a destroyer of happiness; a man indefensible for his misdeeds, but very powerful and inexplicably romantic, different from all other men whatsoever. She hated him; her resentment against him was very keen, and yet she wanted to fondle him, physically and spiritually; and this desire maintained itself not without success in opposition to all her grievances, and, compared to it, her sufferings and his had but a minor consequence.
"Well, how do you feel?" he repeated.
The repetition aroused Violet's courage. She paused before speaking, and in the pause she matured a magnificent, a sublime enterprise of attack. She had a feeling akin to inspiration. She flouted his illness, his tremendous power, her own weakness and pain. She did not care what happened. No risk could check her.
"You don't care how I am!" she began quietly and bitterly. "Did you show the slightest in me all yesterday? Not one bit. You thought only of yourself. You pretended you were ill. Well, if you weren't, why couldn't you think about me? But you were ill. Not that that excuses you! However ill I was, I should be thinking about you all the time. But I say you were ill, and I say it again. You only told me a lot of lies about yourself, one lie after another. Whydoyou keep yourself to yourself? It's an insult to me, all this hiding, and you know it. I suppose you think I'm not good enough to be told! I can tell you one thing, and I've said it before, and this is the last time I ever shall say it—you've taught me to sew my mouth up, too; that's what you've done with your everlasting secrecy. I always said you're the most selfish and cruel man that ever was. You're ill, and the doctor says you ought to go to a hospital—and you won't. Why? Doesn't everybody go into a hospital some time or another? A hospital's not good for you—that's it. It suits you better to stop here and be nursed night and day by your wife. Don't matter how illIam! I've got to nurse youandlook after the shop as well. It'll kill me; but a fat lot you care about that. And if you hadn't deceived me and told me a lot of lies you might have been all right by this time, because I should have had the doctor in earlier, and we should have known where we were then. But how was I to know how ill you are? How was I to know I'd married a liar besides a miser?"
Henry interjected quietly:
"I told you long ago that the reason I didn't eat was because I'd got indigestion. But you wouldn't believe me."
Violet's voice rose:
"Oh, you did, did you? Yes, you did tell me once. You needn't think I don't remember. It was that night I cooked a beautiful bit of steak for you, and you wouldn't touch it. Yes, you did tell me, and itwasthe truth, and I didn't believe it. And you were glad I didn't believeit. You didn't want me to believe it. You're very knowing, Henry, aren't you? You say a thing once, and then it's been said, it's finished with. And then afterwards you can always say: 'But I told you.' And you're always so polite! As if that made any difference! I wish to God often you weren't so polite. My first husband wasn't very polite, and I've known the time when he's laid his hand on me, knocked me about—yes, and more than once. I was young then. Disgusting,you'd call it. And I've never told a soul before; not likely. But what I say is I'd sooner be knocked about a bit and know what my man's really thinking about than live with a locked-up, cast-iron safe like you! Yes, a hundred times sooner. There's worse things than a blow, and every woman knows it. Well, you won't go to the hospital! That's all right. You won't go and you won't go. But I shall go to the hospital! The doctor'll tell me to go, and the words won't be out of his mouth before I shall be gone. I can feel here what's coming to me. I shall go, and I shall leave you with your Elsie, that eats you out of house and home. She was here before I came. I'm only a stranger. You pretend to be very stiff and all that with her, but you and her understand each other, and I'm only a stranger coming between you. Are you asleep?"
"No."
Violet rose up and slipped out of bed. Henry heard the sound of her crying. She seemed to rush at the fire. She poked it furiously, not because it needed poking, but because she needed relief.
"Come back to bed, Vi," said Henry kindly.
She dropped the poker with a clatter on the fender, and Henry saw her, a white creature, moving towards him round by his side of the bed. She bent over him.
"Why should I come back to bed?" she asked angrily, her voice thickened and obscured by sobs. "Why should I come back to bed? You're ill. You've got no strength, and haven't had for weeks. What do you want me to come back to bed for?"
He felt her fingers digging into the softness of his armpits. He felt her face nearer his. She mastered herself.
"Listen to me, Henry Earlforward," she said in a low, restrained, trembling voice: "You'll go into that hospital to-morrow morning. You'll go into that hospital. You'llgointo it when the doctor comes to fetch you. Or, if you don't, I'll—I'll—I'll——"
He felt her lips on his in a savage, embittered and passionate kiss. She was heroical; he a pigmy—crushed by her might. He was afraid and enchanted.
"No," he thought, "there never was another like her."
"Will you, will you, will you, will you?" she insisted ruthlessly, and her voice was smothered in his lips.
"Very well. I'll go."
Her body fell limp upon his. She was not sobbing now, but feebly and softly weeping. With a sudden movement she stood upright, then ran to the door, just as she was, fumbled for the knob in the darkness, and rushed out of the room, banging the door after her with a noise that formidably resounded through the whole house. Her victory was more than she could bear.
In the morning Dr. Raste, unusually interested in the psychological aspect of the Earlforward affair, arrived at about ten o'clock in a taxicab, prepared and well-braced to make good his word to Violet. He remembered vividly his own rather cocksure phrase: "We'll get him away all right to-morrow." He was tired and overstrung, and therefore inclined to be violent and hasty in endeavour. He had his private apprehensions. He asked the driver to wait, meaning to have Henry captive and downstairs in quite a few minutes. His tactic was to take the patient by storm. He had disorganized his day's work in order to deal with the matter, and for the maintenance of self-respect he was bound to deal with it effectively. Further, he had arranged by telephone for a bed at the hospital.
The front of the shop dashed him. The shop had not been opened. The milk-can had not been brought within. There it stood, shockingly out of place at ten A.M., proof enough that something very strange had happened or was happening at T. T. Riceyman's. He tried to open the door; it was locked. Then he noisily shook the door, and he decided to adopt the more customary course of knocking. He knocked and knocked. Little Mr. Belrose, the proprietor of the confectioner's opposite, emerged to watch the proceedings with interest, and two other people from the houses farther along the steps also observed. Evidently Riceyman Steps was agog for strange and thrilling events. Dr. Raste grew self-conscious under the gaze of Clerkenwell. No view of the interior of the shop could be had through the book-filled windows, and only a narrow slit of a view between the door-blind and the frame of the door. Dr. Raste peered through this and swore in a whisper. At length he saw Elsie approaching.
"Isn't it about time you took your milk in?" he greeted her calmly, presenting her with the can when she opened the door. Elsie accepted the can in silence; the doctor entered the shop; Elsie shut and bolted the door. The morning's letters lay unheeded on the unswept floor at her feet. The doctor had the sensation of being imprisoned with her in the sombre and chilly shop. A feeling of calamity weighed upon him. The stairs in the thick gloom at the back of the shop seemed to be leading upwards to terrible affairs. He thought of the taximeter ticking away threepences.
"Well?" he inquired impatiently of the still silent Elsie. "Well? How's he getting on?"
Elsie answered:
"Missis must have been took bad in the night, sir. When I came down this morning, she was lying on the sofa in the parlour, and I thought she was dead. Yes, I did, sir. She was that cold you wouldn't believe. Not a stitch on her but her night-things. And shewasin a state, too!"
"I hope you got her back to bed at once," said the doctor.
"I got her up to my bed, sir, and I half-carried her. She wouldn't go to their bedroom for fear of frightening master, and him so bad, too!"
"Of course, you couldn't send for me because you'd no one to send, had you?" The doctor began to move towards the stairs.
"Oh, I could have sent someone, sir. There's several about here could have gone. But I understood you were coming, and I said to myself half an hour more or less, like, that can't make much difference. And missis didn't want me to send anyone else, either; she didn't want it to get about too much, sir. Not that that would have stopped me, sir. Soon as I see her really ill, I saysI'mresponsible now, I says—of course, under you, sir, and I shouldn't have listened to her. No, sir."
The doctor was very considerably impressed, and relieved, by Elsie's dignity, calm and power. An impassible common sense had come to life in the sealed house. She was tidy, too; no trace on her of a disturbed night and morning, and she was even wearing a clean apron. No wearisome lamentation about the shop having to be closed! Elsie had instinctively put the shop into its place of complete unimportance.
As they passed the shut door of the principal bedroom the doctor, raising his eyebrows, gave an inquiring jerk.
"I did knock, sir. There was no answer, so I took the liberty of looking in. He seemed to be asleep."
"You're sure he wasasleep?"
"Well, sir," said Elsie, stolidly and yet startlingly, "he wasn't dead. I'll say that."
They passed to the second floor. There lay the mistress on the servant's narrow bed, covered with Elsie's half-holiday garments on the top of the bedclothes. That Violet was extremely ill and in pain was obvious from the colours of her complexion and the sharp, defeated, appealing expression on her face. The doctor saw Elsie smile at her; it was a smile beaming out help and pure benevolence, and it actually brought some sort of a transient smiling response into the tragic features of the patient; it was one of the most wonderful things that the doctor had ever seen. Nobody could have guessed that only thirty-six hours before Elsie had been a thief convicted of stealing and eating raw bacon. And, indeed, the memory of the deplorable episode was erased as completely from Elsie's mind as from her mistress's.
"I shall take you to the hospital at once, Mrs. Earlforward," the doctor said in his prim, gentle tone, after the briefest examination. He added rather abruptly: "I've got a taxi waiting. I think you've borne up marvellously." In a few moments he had changed his plans to meet the new developments, and he was now wondering whether he might not have difficulty in securing a bed for Mrs. Earlforward.
"I shall see properly to master, 'm," Elsie put in. "I mean if he doesn't go to the hospital himself."
Violet nodded acquiescence. She did not want to waste her strength in speech, or she might have told them of Henry's promise to her to go into hospital. Moreover she was suffering too acutely to feel any strong interest in either Henry or anybody else.
"We'll carry you to the cab," said the doctor, and to Elsie: "She must be dressed, somehow—doesn't matter how."
Violet murmured:
"I'd sooner walk to the cab, doctor, if you know what I mean. I can."
"Well, if youcan——" he concurred in order not to upset her.
When the summary dressing was done, Elsie having made two journeys to her employer's bedroom to fetch garments and hat, the doctor said to her confidentially:
"We shall want some money. Have you any? Where is the money kept?"
Experience had taught him never to disburse money for patients; and he had a very clear vision of the threepences ticking up outside in King's Cross Road.
"My purse. On chest of drawers," whispered Violet, who had heard.
Elsie made a third journey to the state-bedroom. Oblivious of the proprieties, she had not knocked before, and she did not knock now. On the previous occasion Mr. Earlforward had merely watched her with apparently dazed, indifferent eyes. But the instant she picked up the purse from the chest of drawers he exclaimed:
"Here! Where are you going with that purse?"
"Missis sent me for it," Elsie replied.
From prudence she would give him no more news than that of the situation. No knowing what he might attempt to do if he was fully apprised!
Violet was carried downstairs and through the shop,and at the shop door she was set on her insecure feet, and Dr. Raste held her while Elsie unbolted. And she managed to walk, under the curious glances of a few assembled quidnuncs, along the steps to the taxi, Dr. Raste on one side of her and Elsie on the other. She had foretold that the moment the doctor ordered her to the hospital she would go to the hospital. She had foretold true. She was gone. The taxi made a whir and moved. She was gone.
"I'll call this afternoon!" the doctor shouted from the departing vehicle.
In the shop again, the encouraging smile with which she had speeded her mistress still not yet expired from her round, fat face, Elsie picked up the milk-can. The letters on the floor were disdained. She thought of her presentiment of the previous evening but one: "This will be the last time I shall ever wheel in the bookstand." And she had a firm conviction that in that presentiment she had by some magical power seen acutely into the future.
Elsie was forgetting to fasten the shop door. With a little start at her own negligence she secured both the bolt and the lock. She thought suddenly of the days—only a year away, yet far, far off in the deceiving distances of time—when Mr. Earlforward and she had the place to themselves. Mrs. Earlforward had come, and Mrs. Earlforward had gone, and now Elsie had sole charge—had far more responsibility and more power than ever before. The strangeness of quite simple events awed her. Nor did the chill of the thin brass handle of the milk-can in her hand protect her against the mysterious spell of the enigma of life.
She "knew" that the shop would never open again as T. T. Riceyman's. She "knew" that either Mr. or Mrs. Earlforward would die, and perhaps both; and she was very sad because she felt sorry for them, not because she felt sorry for herself. In the days previous to the amazing advent of Mrs. Earlforward Elsie had had Joe. Joe was definitely vanished from her existence. Nothing else in her own existence greatly mattered to her. She would probably lose a good situation; but she was well aware, beneath her diffidence and modesty, that by virtue of the knowledge which she had acquired from Mrs. Earlforward she could very easily get a fresh situation, and from the material point of view a better one. Professionally she had one secret ambition, to be able to say to a prospective employer that she could "wait at table." There would be something grand about that, but she sawno chance of learning such an intricate and rare business. She had never seen anybody wait at table. In the little pewed eating-houses to which once or twice Joe had taken her, or she had taken Joe, the landlady or a girl brought the food to you and took your plate away, and whisked crumbs on to the floor and asked you what else you wanted; but she felt sure that that was not waiting at table, nor anything like it.... So the ideas ran on in her mind—scores of them following one another in the space of a few seconds, until she shut off the stream with a murmured: "I'm a nice one, I am!" The solitary dæmonic figure of Mr. Earlforward, fast in bed, was drawing her upstairs. And the shop was keeping her in the shop. And the plight of Mrs. Earlforward was pulling her away towards St. Bartholomew's Hospital. And there she stood like a regular hard-faced silly, thinking about waiting at table! She must go to Mr. Earlforward instantly, and tell him what had happened.
When she reached the first-floor she said to herself that she might as well take the milk into the kitchen first, and when she reached the kitchen she remembered poor Mrs. Earlforward's bulbs. The precious bulbs had been neglected. Out of kindness to Mrs. Earlforward she went at once and watered the soil in which they were buried, and put the pots out on the window-sill. It was an act of piety, not of faith, for Elsie had no belief in the future of those bulbs. Indeed, she counted them among the inexplicable caprices of employers. If you wanted a plant, why not buy one that you could see, instead of interring an onion in a lot of dirt? Still, for Mrs. Earlforward's sake, she took great pains over the supposed welfare of the bulbs. And yet—it must be admitted, however reluctantly—her motive in so meticulously cherishing the bulbs was by no means pure. She was afraid of the imminent interview with Mr. Earlforward, and was delaying it. If she had been sure of herself in regard to Mr. Earlforward, she would not have spent one second on the bulbs; she would have disdained them utterly.
Mr. Earlforward was somewhat animated.
"I didn't sleep much the first part of the night," he said, "but I must have had some good sleeps this morning."
Elsie thought he was a little better, but he still looked very ill indeed. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes confessed that he knew he was very ill. He was forlorn in the disordered and soiled bed; and the untidy room, with its morsel of dying fire, was forlorn.
"Well," said Elsie nervously, in a tone as if she was repeating a fact with which both of them were familiar, "well, so missis has gone to the hospital!"
She had told him. She trembled for his exclamation and his questions. He made no sound, no movement. Elsie felt extremely uncomfortable. She would have preferred any reply to this silence. She was bound to continue.
"Yes. Missis was that ill that when doctor came for you he tookheroff instead. I told her I'd see after you properly till you was fetched too, sir." She gave no further details. "I'm that sorry, sir," she said.
Mr. Earlforward maintained his silence. He did not seem to desire any details. He just lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The expression on his hollowed face, now the face of a man of seventy, drew tears to Elsie's eyes, and she had difficulty in restraining a sob. The aspect of her employer and of the room, the realization of the emptiness of the rest of the house, the thought of Mrs. Earlforward snatched away into the mysterious and formidable interior of the legendary hospital, were intolerable to Elsie, who horribly surmised that "they" must be cutting up the unconscious form of her once lively and impulsive mistress. To relieve the tension which was overpowering her Elsie began to straighten the rumpled eiderdown.
"I'll run and make you some of that arrowroot, sir," she said. "You must have something, so it's no use you——"
Mr. Earlforward said nothing; then his head dropped on one side, and his eyes met hers.
"Elsie," he murmured plaintively, "you won't desert me?"
"Of course not, sir. But the doctor's coming for you."
"Never!" Mr. Earlforward insisted, ignoring her last sentence. "You'll never desert me?"
"Of course not, sir." His weakness gave her strength.
In order to continue in activity, she went to mend the fire.
"Let it out," said Mr. Earlforward. "I'm too hot."
She desisted, well knowing that he was not too hot, but that he hated to see good coal consumed in a grate where it had never been consumed before. From pity she must humour him. What did it matter whether the fire was in or out?—the doctor would be coming for him very soon. Then a flicker of thought for herself: after the departure of Mr. Earlforward, would she have to stay and mind the place till something else happened, or would she be told to go, and let the place mind itself? Very probably she would be told to stay. She opened the door.
"Where are you going now?"
"I was just going to make your arrowroot, sir. That was what missis was giving you. At least, it looks like arrowroot."
"Come here. I want to talk to you. Have you opened the shop?"
"No, sir."
A long pause.
"Bring me up the letters, and let me have my glasses."
He had accepted, in his practical, compromising philosophy, the impressive fact that the shop had not been and would not be opened.
Without saying anything Elsie went downstairs into the shadowy shop. A dozen or so letters lay on the floor."I'll give him two or three to quiet him," she thought, counting him now as a baby. She picked up three envelopes at random. "He'd better not have them all," she thought. The others she left lying. She had no concern whatever as to the possible business importance of any of the correspondence. Her sole concern, apart from the sick-room, was the condition of the shop. Ought she to clean it, or ought she to "let it go"? She wanted to clean it, because it was obviously fast returning to its original state of filth. On the other hand, while cleaning it she might be neglecting her master. None but herself had the power to decide which course should be taken. She perceived that she was mistress. Naïvely she enjoyed the strange sensation of authority, but the responsibility of authority dismayed her.
"Are these all?" Mr. Earlforward asked indifferently, as she put the three letters into his limp, shiny hand.
"Yes, sir," she said without compunction.
He allowed the letters to slip out of his hand on to the eiderdown. She was just a little afraid of being alone with him.
In the early dusk of the afternoon, about four o'clock, there was a banging on the shop-door, and the short bark of a dog, who evidently considered himself entitled to help in whatever affair was afoot. Elsie was upstairs. During the morning several persons, incapable of understanding that when a shop is shut it is shut, had banged on the door, and at last Elsie, by means of two tin tacks, had affixed to the door—without a word to her master—a dirty old card on which she had scrawled in large pencilled letters the succinct announcement, "Closed." This had put an end to banging. But now more banging!
"The doctor!" Elsie exclaimed, and ran down.
Not the doctor, but a lanky and elegant little girl accompanied by a fox-terrier, stood at the door. As soon as the door opened and she saw Elsie the little girl blushed. The fact was that this was her very first entry into the world of affairs, and she felt both extremely nervous and extremely anxious not to show her nervousness to a servant. The dog, of course, suffered.
"Be quiet, sir!" she said very emphatically to the restless creature, addressing him as a gentleman, and the next minute catching him a clout on his hard head. "Papa can't come, and he told me to say——"
"Will you please step inside, Miss Raste?" Elsie suggested.
Nobody was about, but Elsie with a servant's imitativeness had acquired her mistress's passion for keeping private business private. The little girl, reassured by the respectful formality of her reception, stepped inside withsome dignity, and the dog, too tardily following, got himself nipped in the closing door and yelped.
"Serves you right!" said Miss Raste; and to apologetic Elsie: "Oh, not at all! It's all his own fault.... Papa says he's so busy he can't come himself, but you are to get Mr. Earlforward ready to go to the hospital, and wrap him up well; and while you're doing that I am to walk towards King's Cross and get a taxi for you. I may have to go all the way to King's Cross," Miss Raste added proudly and eagerly. "But it will be all right. I got a taxi for papa yesterday; it was driving towards our Square, but I stopped it and got in, and told the chauffeur to drive me to our house—notveryfar, of course. Papa said I should be quite all right, and he's teaching me to be self-reliant and all that." Miss Raste gave a little snigger. "Jack! You naughty boy!"
Jack was examining in detail the correspondence which Elsie had neglected and told lies about. At his mistress's protest he ran off into the obscure hinterland of the shop to stake out a claim there.
"And after I've got you the taxi I am to walk home. Oh, and papa said I was to say you were to tell Mr. Earlforward that Mrs. Earlforward will have an operation to-morrow morning."
Miss Raste was encouraged to be entirely confidential, to withhold nothing even about herself, by the confidence-inspiring and kindly aspect of Elsie's face. She thought almost ecstatically to herself: "How nice it would be to haveherfor a servant! She's heaps nicer than Clara." But she had some doubt about the correctness of Elsie's style in aprons.
"Oh dear! Oh dear!" Elsie murmured.
"And they'll be expecting Mr. Earlforward at Bart's. It's all arranged."
Having impinged momentarily upon a drab tragedy of Clerkenwell and taken a considerable fancy to Elsie, and having imperiously summoned her dog, Miss Raste, who was being educated to leave Clerkenwell one day and disdain it, departed on her mission with a demeanour in which the princess and the filly were mingled.
"What's the matter? What have you turned the light on for?" Mr. Earlforward demanded when Elsie, much agitated, entered the bedroom. "Whatisthe matter?"
Elsie tried to compose her face.
"How do you feel now, sir?" she asked, serpent-like in spite of her simplicity and nervousness.
"I feel decidedly better. In fact, I was almost thinking of getting up."
"Oh! That's good. Because the doctor's sending a taxi for you, and I am to take you to the hospital at once. Here's all your things." She fingered a loaded chair. "And while you're putting 'em on I'll just run upstairs and get my things."
"Is the doctor here?" Henry cautiously inquired.
"No, sir. He says he's too busy. But he's sent his little girl."
"Well, I'm not going to the hospital. Why should I go to the hospital?" Mr. Earlforward exclaimed with peevish, rather shrill obstinacy.
She had "known" he would refuse to go to the hospital. She was beaten from the start.
"But you said youwouldgo to the hospital, sir."
"When did I say I would go to the hospital?"
"You said so to missis, sir."
"And who toldyou?"
"Missis, sir."
"Yes, but I didn't know then that your mistress would have to go. The place can't be left without both of us. You aren't expecting I should leavethisplace in your charge. Besides, I'm not really ill. Hospital! I never heard of such a thing. I should like to know what I've got—to be packed off to a hospital! I should feel a perfect fool there. I'm not going. And you can tell everybody I'm not going." He rolled over and hid his face from Elsie, and kept on muttering, feeble-fierce. He had no weapon of defence except his irrational obstinacy; but it was sufficient, and he knew it was sufficient, againstthe entire organized world. If he had had an infectious disease the authorities would have had the right to carry him off by force; but he had no infectious disease, and therefore was impregnable.
"Now, it's no use you standing there, Elsie. I'm not going. You think because I'm ill you can do what you like, do you? I'll show you!"
Elsie could see the perspiration on his brow. He looked desperate. He was a child, a sick man, a spoilt darling, a martyr to anguish and pain, a tiger hunted and turning ferociously on his pursuers. His mind as much as his body was poisoned. Elsie said quietly:
"Missis is to have an operation to-morrow morning, sir."
A silence. Then, savagely:
"Is she? Then more fool her!"
Elsie extinguished the light, shut the door and descended the stairs, wondering what brilliant people, clever people, people of resource and brains, would have done in her place.
When Miss Raste came back with the taxi in the gathering night, having accomplished a marvellous Odyssey and pretending grandly that what she had done was nothing at all, it was Elsie who blushed in confusion.
"I can't get him to go to the hospital, Miss Raste. No, I can't!"
"Oh!" observed Miss Raste uncertainly. "Well, shall I tell papa that?"
"Yes, please.... DowhatI will!"
"I'm afraid the taxi will have to be paid. I've left Jack in it. He's so naughty. A shilling I saw on the dial. But, of course, there's the tip."
Elsie hurried upstairs to her own room and brought down one and twopence of her own money. Another minute and she had locked herself up alone once again with her master.
"I'm raging in my heart! I'm raging in my heart!" Elsie said to herself. "It makes me gnash my teeth!" And she did gnash her teeth all alone in the steadily darkening shop. "I'm thatashamed!" she said out loud.
The origin of her expostulation was Mr. Earlforward's obstinacy. She was humiliated on his behalf by his stupidity, and on her own behalf by her failure to get him to the hospital. The incident would certainly become common knowledge, and ignominy would fall upon T. T. Riceyman's. What preoccupied her was less the danger to her employer's health, and perhaps life, than the moral and social aspects of the matter. She would have liked to give her master a good shaking. She was losing her fear of the dread Mr. Earlforward; she was freely criticizing and condemning him, and, indeed, was almost ready to execute him—she who, under the continuous suggestion of Mrs. Earlforward, had hitherto fatalistically and uncritically accepted his decrees and decisions as the decrees and decisions of Almighty God. He had argued with her; he had defended himself against her; he had shown tiny glimpses of an apprehension that she might somehow be capable of forcing him to go to the hospital against his will. He had lifted her to be nearly equal with him. The relations between them could never be the same again. Elsie had a kind of intoxication.
"Well, anyway, something's got to be done," she said, with a violent gesture.
She rushed for her tools and utensils, she found a rough apron and tied it tightly with a hard, viciously-drawn knot over her white one, and began to clean the shop. If seen by nobody else the shop was seen by her, and she could no longer stand the sight of its filth. She ranged about like a beast of prey. She picked up the letters from the floor and ran with them into the office and dashed them on to the desk. And at that moment a postman outside inconsiderately dropped several more letters through the flap. "Of course youwould!" Elsie angrily protested, and picked them up and ran with them into the office and dashed them on to the desk.
"Oh! This is no use!" she muttered, after a minute or so of sweeping in the gloom, and she turned on the electric lights. Only two sound lamps were now left in the shop, and one in the office. She turned them all on—the one in the office from sheer naughtiness. "I'll see about his electric light!" she said to herself. "I'll burn his electric light for him—see if I don't!" She was punishing him as she cleaned the shop with an energy and a thoroughness unexampled in the annals of charing. This was the same woman who a short while ago had trembled because she had eaten a bit of raw bacon without authority. And when, having finished the shop, she assaulted the office, she drowned the floor in dust-laying water, and she rubbed his desk and especially his safe with a ferocity calculated to flay them. For there was not only his obstinacy and his stupidity—there was his brutality. "Then more fool her!" he had exclaimed about his wife, soon to be martyrized by an "operation." And he had said nothing else.
Then Elsie began to think of Dr. Raste. Of course, she had been mistaken about Dr. Raste. On the pavement in front of his house he had been very harsh, with his rules about what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. And before that, long before that, when he had given a careless look at her in the house in Riceyman Square upon the occasion of Joe's attack on her—well, he hadn't seemed very human. A finicking sort of man—that was what she called him—stand-offish, stony. Andyet he had got out of bed in the middle of the night for the old miser, and he must have known he could never screw much money out of him. And fancy the doctor coming with a taxi himself to take away the master! Elsie had never heard of such a thing. And him taking the mistress instead! It was wonderful. And still more wonderful was the arrival of his little girl—a little queen she was, and knew her way about. And he'd arranged things at the hospital, too. (Oh! As she reflected, her humiliation at the failure to "manage" Mr. Earlforward was intensified. She could scarcely bear to think of it.) No doubt at all she had been mistaken about Dr. Raste. Joe had always praised Dr. Raste, and she had been putting Joe down for a simpleton, as indeed he was; but in this matter Joe had been right and she wrong. In repentance, or in penance, she extinguished the two lights in the shop, which she was not using; her mind worked in odd ways, but it had practical logic. The cleaning done, she doffed the rough apron.
She was somewhat out of breath, and she seated herself in the master's chair at his desk. An audacious proceeding, but who could say her nay? She looked startlingly out of place in the sacred chair as she gazed absently at the sacred desk. The mere fact that nobody could say her nay filled her with sadness. Tragedy pressed down upon her. Life was incomprehensible, and she saw no relief anywhere in the world. That man upstairs might be dying, probably was dying. And no one knew what was his disease, and no one could help him without his permission. He lay over the shop-ceiling there, and there was nothing to be done. As for mistress, the case of her mistress touched her even more closely. Mistress was a woman, and she was a woman. She had known a dozen such cases. Women fought their invisible enemy for a time. Then they dropped, and they were swept off to a hospital, and the next thing you heard they were dead.... Mrs. Earlforward alone in a hospital—all rules and regulations! And her husband very ill in bed at home here! Nobody to say a word to Mrs.Earlforward about home, and she fretting her heart away because of master, and the operation to-morrow morning and all!Hewas very ill, and people were often queer while they were ill. They weren't rightly responsible; you couldn't really blame them, could you? He must be terribly worried about everything. It was a pity he was obstinate, but there you were. Elsie was overwhelmed with affliction, misery, anguish. Her features were most painfully decomposed under the lamp.
But when Mr. Earlforward, answering her tap at the bedroom-door, roused himself to make a fresh and more desperate defence against a powerful antagonist who was determined to force him to act contrary to his inclination and his judgment, he saw, as soon as his eyes had recovered from the dazzle of the sudden light, a smiling, kind and acquiescent face. His relief was intense, and it flowered into gratitude. He thought: "She promised she would never desert me, and she won't." He was weak from his malady and from lack of nourishment; he was in pain; he had convinced himself that he was better, but he could not deny that he was still very ill—and Elsie was all he had. She could make his existence heaven or hell; he perceived that she meant to make it as nearly heaven as she could. She was not going to bully him. She had no intention of disputing his decision about the hospital business. She had accepted her moral defeat, and accepted it without reserve and without ill will. She was bringing liquid food for him, in an attractive white basin. He had, as usual, little desire for food, but the sight of the basin and the gleaming spoon on the old lacquer tray tempted him, and he reflected that even an abortive attempt at a meal would provide a change in the awful monotony of his day. Moreover, he wanted to oblige her.
As, angelically smiling, she walked round the bed to his side and stood close to him, a veil fell from his eyes, and for the first time he saw her, not as a charwoman turned servant, but as a girl charged with energetic life; and her benevolence had rendered her beautiful. Heenvied her healthy vigour. He relied on it. The moment was delicious in the silent and curst house.
"I'll try," he said pleasantly, raising his body up and gazing at her.
"Why!" she exclaimed. "If you haven't been making your bed!"
No disapproval in her voice. No warning as to the evil consequences of this mad escapade of making his bed.
"Any more letters?" he inquired, after he had swallowed a mouthful.
"I believe there was one," she answered vivaciously. "Shall I run and get it for you?" Down she ran and picked up a letter at random off the desk in the office. And she brought back also a sheet of notepaper and an envelope, a millboard portfolio and a pencil.
"What's all that?" he asked mildly, opening the letter.
"Well, you want to write to missis, don't you?"
"Um?" he murmured as he read the letter, affecting not to have heard her. He was ashamed and self-conscious because he had not himself had the idea of writing to Violet.
"You'll be sending a note to missis at the hospital. It'll give her a good lift-up to hear from you."
"Yes," he said. "I was going to write."
"Here! I'll take that letter. You can do with some of this food. I shouldn't like you to let it get cold." She stayed near him and held a corner of the insecure tray firmly. "You can't take any more? All right."
She removed the tray, and replaced it by the portfolio which was to serve as a writing-desk on the bed. It was always marvellous to Elsie to see the ease with which her master wrote. She admired. And she was almost happy because she had resolved to smile cheerfully and give in to him and do the best she could for him on his own lines and be an angel.
"Shall I read you what I've written?" he suggested, with a sudden upward glance.
"Oh, sir!"
The astounding, the incredible flattery overthrew hercompletely. He would read to her what he had written to the mistress, doubtless for her approval. She blushed.
"'My dear Wife,—As you may guess, I am torn with anxiety about you. It was a severe shock when Elsie told me the doctor had taken you off to the hospital without a moment's delay. However, I know you are very brave and have an excellent constitution, and I feel sure that before a week is out you will be feeling better than you have done for months. And, of course, the hospital is a very good one, one of the best in London, if not the best. It has been established for nearly eight hundred years. If it was only to be under the same roof as you I should have come to the hospital myself to-day, but I feel so much better that really it is not necessary, and I feel sure that if you were here to see me you would agree with me. There is the business to be thought of. I am glad to say that Elsie is looking after me splendidly, but, of course, that does not surprise me. Now, my dear Violet, you must get better quickly for my sake as well as your own. Be of good courage and do not worry about me. My little illness is nothing. It is your illness that has made me realize that.—Your loving Husband,H. Earlforward.'"
"'My dear Wife,—As you may guess, I am torn with anxiety about you. It was a severe shock when Elsie told me the doctor had taken you off to the hospital without a moment's delay. However, I know you are very brave and have an excellent constitution, and I feel sure that before a week is out you will be feeling better than you have done for months. And, of course, the hospital is a very good one, one of the best in London, if not the best. It has been established for nearly eight hundred years. If it was only to be under the same roof as you I should have come to the hospital myself to-day, but I feel so much better that really it is not necessary, and I feel sure that if you were here to see me you would agree with me. There is the business to be thought of. I am glad to say that Elsie is looking after me splendidly, but, of course, that does not surprise me. Now, my dear Violet, you must get better quickly for my sake as well as your own. Be of good courage and do not worry about me. My little illness is nothing. It is your illness that has made me realize that.—Your loving Husband,H. Earlforward.'"
He read the letter in a calm and even but weak voice, addressed the envelope, and then lay back on the pillows. (He was now—since he had made the bed—using Violet's pillow as well as his own.) He did not finish his food. He left Elsie to fold the letter, stick it in the envelope, and lick and fasten the envelope. She did these things with a sense of the honour bestowed upon her. It was a wonderful letter, and he had written it right off. No hesitation. And it was so nice and thoughtful; and how it explained everything. She had to believe for a moment that her master really was better. The expressions about herself touched her deeply, and yet somehow she would have preferred them not to be there. What touched her most, however, was the mere thought of the fact that once, and not so long ago either, her master had been asolitary single man, never troubling himself about women and no prospect of such; and here he was wrapped up in one, and everything so respectable and nice.... But he was very ill. His lips and cheeks were awful. Elsie recalled vividly the full rich red lips he once had.
She had moved away from the bed, taking the basin and putting it on the chest of drawers. The contents of her master's pockets were on the chest of drawers, where he laid them every night, in order better to fold his carefully creased clothes.
"I do fancy I haven't got any money," she said diffidently, after a little while.
"Why, it isn't your wages day—you don't mean?"
"Oh, no, sir."
She had deposited nearly all her cash in the Post Office Savings Bank during her afternoon out, and the bit kept in hand had gone to pay for the unused taxi.
"Why, Elsie! You must be a rich woman," said Mr. Earlforward. "What with your wages and your pension!" He spoke without looking at her, in a rather dreamy tone, but certainly interested.
"Well, sir," Elsie replied, "it's like this. I give my pension to my mother. She's a widow, same as me, and she can't fend for herself."
"All of it? Your mother?"
"Yes, sir."
"How much is your pension?"
"Twenty-eight shillings and elevenpence a week, sir."
"Well, well." Mr. Earlforward said no more. He had often thought about her war pension, but never about any possible mother or other relative. He had never heard mention of her mother. He thought how odd it was that for years she had been giving away a whole pension and nobody knew about it in Riceyman Steps.
"Could you let me have sixpence, sir?" Elsie meekly asked, coming to the point of her remark concerning money.
"Sixpence? What do you want sixpence for? You surely aren't thinking of buying food to-night!" Mr.Earlforward, who had been lying on his right side, turned with a nervous movement on to his back and frowned at Elsie.
"I wanted it to give to Mrs. Perkins's boy in the Square to take your letter down to missis at the hospital." In spite of herself she felt guilty of a betrayal of Mr. Earlforward's financial interests.
"What next?" he said firmly. "You must run down with it yourself. Won't take you long. I shall be all right."
"I don't like leaving you, sir. That's all."
"You get off with it at once, my girl."
She was reduced to the servant again, she who had just been at the high level of a confidante. The invalid turned again to his right side and pushed his nose into the pillow, shutting his eyes to indicate that he had had enough of words and desired to sleep. His keys were on the chest of drawers and several other things, including three toothpicks, but not money. He seldom went to bed with money in his pockets.
Elsie, with a swift gesture, silently picked up the bunch of keys and left the room, a criminal; she had no intention of taking the letter to the hospital herself. She went downstairs quite cheerful; she still felt happier because she had been smiling and benevolent and yielding after her mood of revolt, and because the letter to Mrs. Earlforward was her own idea. In the office she knelt in front of Mr. Earlforward's safe. No fear accompanied the sense of power which she felt. There was nobody to spy upon her, to order her to do one thing, to forbid her to do another. Her omnipotence outside the bedroom could not be disputed.
Although she was handling the bunch of keys for the first time, she knew at once which of the keys was the safe-key and how to open the safe, from having seen Mr. Earlforward open and close it. He would have been extremely startled to learn the extent of her knowledge, not only about the safe, but about many other private matters in the life of the household; for Elsie, like mostservants, was full of secret domestic information, unused, but ready at any time for use. She unlocked the safe and swung open the monumental door of it and pulled out a drawer—and drew back, alarmed, almost blinded. The drawer was full of gold coins—full! Her domestic information had not comprised this dazzling hoard. In all her life Elsie had scarcely ever seen a sovereign. Years ago, in the early part of the war, she had seen a half-sovereign now and then. She shut the drawer quickly. Then she looked round, scared of possible spies after all. She thought she could hear creepings on the stairs and stirrings in the black corners of the mysterious shop. Not even when caught in the act of eating stolen raw bacon had she had such a terrifying sense of monstrous guilt. Her impulse was to shut the safe, lock it, double-lock it, treble-lock it, and try to erase the golden vision utterly from her memory. She would not on any account have pulled out another drawer.
But, lying on the ledge above the nest of drawers, she saw a canvas bag. This bag was familiar to her; it held silver. She loosened its string and drew forth sixpence. Then she rose, tore the wrapper off a circular among the correspondence on the table, wrote on the inside of the wrapper "6d.," and put it in the bag. Such was her poor, her one feasible, inadequate precaution against the tremendous wrath to come. She had done a deed unspeakable, and she could perfectly imagine what the consequences of it might be.
She was still breathing rapidly when she unlocked the shop-door. Rain was falling—rather heavy rain. Securing the door again, she ran upstairs to get her umbrella, which lay under her bed wrapped in newspaper. She had to grope for it in the dark. Roughly she tore off the newspaper. Downstairs again she could not immediately find the door-key and decided to risk leaving the door unlocked. She would be back from the Square in a minute, and nobody would dream of breaking in. She ran off and up the Steps towards the Square.