One morning in November, at a little past eight o'clock, Mrs. Arb, watching from behind the door of her yet unopened shop, saw Mr. Earlforward help Elsie to carry out the empty bookstand and set it down in front of the window, and then, with overcoat, muffler and umbrella, depart from Riceyman Steps on business. Mrs. Arb immediately unlocked her door, went out just as she was—hatless, coatless, gloveless, wearing a white apron—locked her door, and walked across to Mr. Earlforward's. Elsie had already begun to fill the bookstand with books which overnight had been conveniently piled near the entrance of the shop.
"Good morning, Elsie. Dull morning, isn't it? Is master up yet?" said Mrs. Arb vivaciously, rubbing her hands in the chilly, murky dawn, and brightening the dawn.
"Oh, 'm! He's gone out. I don't expect him back till eleven. It's one of his buying mornings, ye see."
"Oh,dear, dear!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed, with cheerful resignation. "And I've only got ten minutes. Well, I haven't really got that. Shop ought to be open now. But I thought I'd let 'em wait a bit this morning."
She glanced anxiously at her own establishment to see whether any customer had come down the steps from the square. But, in truth, as she had now sold the business, and the premises, and was to give possession in a few weeks, she was not genuinely concerned about the possible loss of profit on an ounce or two ounces of tea. She wandered with apparent aimlessness into Mr. Earlforward's shop.
"Did you want to see him particular, 'm?"
"I won't say so particular as all that. So you look after the shop when Mr. Earlforward is out, Elsie?"
"It's like this, 'm. All the books is marked inside, and some outside. If anybody comes in that looks respectable, I ask 'em to look round for themselves, and if they take a book they pay me, and I ask 'em to write down the name of it on a bit of paper." She pointed to some small memorandum sheets prepared from old unassorted envelopes which had been cut open and laid flat, with pencil close by. "If it's some regular customer like, thatmustsee Mr. Earlforward himself, I ask 'em to write their names down. And if I don't like the look of anybody, I tell 'em I don't know anything, and out they go."
"What a good arrangement!" said Mrs. Arb approvingly. "But if you have to attend to the shop, how can you do the cleaning and so on?"
Elsie's ingenuous, kind face showed distress; her dark-blue eyes softened in solicitude.
"Ah, 'm! There you've got me. I can't. I can only clean the shop these mornings, and not much of that neither, because I must keep my hands dry for customers."
Mrs. Arb, vaguely smiling to herself, trotted to and fro in the gloomy shop, which had the air of a crypt, except that in these days crypts are usually lighted by electricity, and the shop was lighted by nature alone on this dark morning. She peered, bending forward, into the dark spaces between the bays, and descried the heaps of books on the floor. The dirt and the immense disorder almost frightened her. She had not examined the inside of the shop before—had, indeed, previously entered it only once, when she was in no condition to observe. Mr. Earlforward had never seized an occasion to invite her within.
"This will want some putting straight," she said, "if ever it is put straight."
"And well you may say it, 'm," Elsie replied compassionately. "He's always trying to get straight,'specially lately, 'm. We did get one room straight upstairs, but it meant letting all the others go. Between you and me, he'll never get straight. But he has hopes, and it's no use saying anything to him."
"I suppose you can do this room, too, on his buying mornings," said Mrs. Arb, peeping into Mr. Earlforward's private back-room from which the shop and the shop-door could be kept under observation.
"Oh, 'm! He wouldn't let me. He won't have anything touched in that room."
"Then who does it?"
"He does it himself, 'm—when it is done."
"Does he!" murmured Mrs. Arb in a peculiar tone.
The bookshelves went up to the ceiling on every side. The floor was thickly strewn with books, the table also. Chairs also. The blind lay crumpled on the book-covered window-sill. The window was obscured by dirt. The ceiling was a blackish-grey. A heavy deposit of black dust covered all things. The dreadful den expressed intolerably to Mrs. Arb the pathos of the existence of a man who is determined to look after himself. It convicted a whole sex of being feckless, foolish, helpless, infantile, absurd. Mrs. Arb and Elsie exchanged glances. Elsie blushed.
"Yes. I'm that ashamed of it, 'm!" said Elsie. "But you know what they are!"
Mrs. Arb gave two short nods. She moved her hand as if to plumb the layer of dust with one feminine finger, but refrained; she dared not.
"And do you do his cooking, too?" she asked.
"Well, 'm. He gets his own breakfast, and he makes his own bed—it's always done before I come of a morning—and he cleans his own boots. I begin his dinner, but, seeing as I go at twelve, he finishes it. He gets his own tea. I must say he isn't what you call a big eater."
"Seems to me it's all very cleverly organized."
"Oh, it is, 'm! There's not many gentlemen could manage as he does. But it's a dreadful pity. Makes mefair cry sometimes. And him so clean and neat himself, too."
"Yes," said Mrs. Arb, agreeing that the contrast between the master and his home was miraculous, awful, and tragic.
"I suppose I'd better not go upstairs as he isn't here, Elsie?"
The two women exchanged more glances. Elsie perfectly comprehended the case of Mrs. Arb, and sympathized with her. Mrs. Arb was being courted. Mrs. Arb had come to no decision. Mrs. Arb desired as much information as possible before coming to a decision. Women had the right to look after themselves against no matter what man. Women were women, and men were men. The Arb-Earlforward affair was crucial for both parties.
"Oh! I think you might, 'm. But I can't go with you." Sex-loyalty had triumphed over a too-strict interpretation of the duty of the employed to the employer. A conspiracy had been set up.
Mrs. Arb had to step over hummocks of books in order to reach the foot of the stairs. The left-hand half of every step of the stairs was stacked with books—cheap editions of novels in paper jackets, under titles such as "Just a Girl," "Not Like Other Girls," "A Girl Alone." Weak but righteous and victorious girls crowded the stairs from top to bottom, so that Mrs. Arb could scarcely get up. The landing also was full of girls. The front-room on the first floor was, from the evidence of its furniture, a dining-room, though not used as such. The massive mahogany table was piled up with books, as also the big sideboard, the mantelpiece, various chairs. The floor was carpeted with books. Less dust than in the den below, but still a great deal. The Victorian furniture was "good"; it was furniture meant to survive revolutions and conflagrations and generations; it was everlasting furniture; it would command respect through any thickness of dust.
The back-room, with quite as large a number of booksas the front-room, but even less dust, was a bedroom. The very wide bed had been neatly made. Mrs. Arb turned down the corner of the coverlet; a fairly clean pillow-slip, no sheets, only blankets! She drew open drawers in a great mahogany chest. Two of them were full of blue suits, absolutely new. In another drawer were at least a dozen quite new grey flannel shirts. A wardrobe was stuffed with books.
Coming out of the bedroom, she perceived between it and the stairs a long, narrow room. Impossible to enter this room because of books; but Mrs. Arb did the impossible, and after some excavation with her foot disclosed a bath, which was full to the brim and overflowing with books. Now Mrs. Arb was pretty well accustomed to baths; she was not aware of the extreme rarity of baths in Clerkenwell, and hence she could not adequately appreciate the heroism of a hero who, possessing such a treasure, had subdued it to the uses of mere business. Nevertheless, her astonishment and amaze were sufficiently noticeable, and she felt, disturbingly and delightfully, the thrill of surprising clandestinely the secrets of a man's intimate personal existence.
Then she caught the sound of dropping water; it was on the second-floor, in a room shaped like the bathroom, a room with two shelves, a gas-ring, and a sink. The water was dropping with a queer reverberation on to the sink from a tap above. There were a few plates, cups, saucers, jugs, saucepans, dishes; half a loaf of bread, a slice of cooked bacon; there was no milk, no butter. His kitchen and larder! One gas-ring! No fireplace! Mrs. Arb was impressed.
The other rooms on the second-floor were full of majestic furniture, books and dust. One of them had recently been cleaned and tidied, but dozens of books still lay on the floor. She picked up a book, a large, thick volume, for no other reason than that the cover bore a representation of a bird. It was a heavy book, with many coloured pictures of birds. She thought it was quite a pretty thing to look at. By accident she noticed theprice pencilled inside the front cover. £40. She was not astonished nor amazed—she was staggered. Mrs. Arb had probably not read ten books since girlhood. To her, reading was a refuge from either idleness or life. She was never idle, and she loved life. Thus she condescended towards books. That any book, least of all a picture-book of birds, could be worth £40 had not occurred to her mind. (And this one lying on the floor!) Instantly, in spite of her commonsense, she thought for a brief space of all the books in the establishment as worth £40 apiece! Before returning down the book-encumbered stairs, she paused on the top landing. Her throat was coated with the dust which she had displaced in her passage through the house. Her hands were very dirty and very cold—they shone with cold. No fire could have burnt in any of those rooms for years. She dared not touch the handrail of the staircase, even with her fingers all dirty. She paused because she was disconcerted and wanted to arrange the perplexing confusion of her thoughts. The more she reflected the better she realized how strange and powerful and ruthless a person was Mr. Earlforward. She admired, comprehended, sympathized, and yet was intimidated. The character of the man was displayed beyond any misunderstanding by the house with its revelations of his daily life; but there was no clue to it in his appearance and deportment. She was more than intimidated—she was frightened. Withal, the terror—for it amounted to terror—fascinated her. She went down gingerly, hesitating at every step.... At the bottom of the lower flight she heard, with new alarm, the bland voice of Mr. Earlforward himself. He was talking with a customer in his den.
"I'll slip out," she very faintly whispered to Elsie, who was sweeping near the stairs. Elsie nodded—like a conspirator. But at the same moment Mr. Earlforward and his customer emerged from the back room, and Mrs. Arb was trapped.
"I didn't notice you come in," said the bookseller most amiably. "What can I do for you?"
"Oh, thank you, but I only stepped across to speak to Elsie about something."
The lie, invented on the instant, succeeded perfectly. And Elsie, the honestest soul in Clerkenwell, gave it the support of her silence in the great cause of women against men.
"I'm glad to see you in here," said Mr. Earlforward gently, having dismissed the customer. "It's a bit of luck. I'd gone off for Houndsditch, but I happened to meet someone on the road, and nothing would do but I must come back with him. Come in here."
He drew her by the attraction of his small eyes into the back room. Books had been tipped off one of the chairs on to the floor. She sat down. Surely Mr. Earlforward was the most normal being in the world, the mildest, the quietest, the easiest! But the bath, the kitchen, the blankets, the filth, the food, the £40 book, and all those new suits and new shirts! She had never even conceived such an inside of a house! She could hardly credit her senses.
"I've wanted to see you in here, in this room," said Mr. Earlforward in a warm voice. And then no more.
She could not withstand his melting glance. She knew that their intimacy, having developed gradually through weeks, was startlingly on the point of bursting into a new phase. The sense of danger with her, as with nearly all women, was intermittent. The man was in love with her. He was in her hands. What could she not do with him? Could she not accomplish marvels? Could she not tame monsters? And she understood his instincts; she shared them. And he was a rock of defence, shelter, safety!... The alternative: solitude, celibacy, spinsterishness, eternal self-defence, eternal misgivings about her security; horrible!
"I must be opening my shop," she said nervously.
"And I must be getting away again, too," he said, and put on his hat and began to button his overcoat. Nothing more. But at the door he added:"Maybe I'll come across and see you to-night, if it isn't intruding."
"You'll be very welcome, I'm sure," she answered, modestly smiling.
She was no better than a girl, then. She knew she had uttered the deciding word of her fate. She trembled with apprehension and felicity. He was a wonderful man and an enigma. He inspired love and dread. As the day passed her feeling for him became intense. At closing time her ecstatic heart was liquid with acquiescence. And she had, too, a bright, adventurous valour, but shot through with forebodings.
Cytherea reigned in Mr. Earlforward's office behind the shop—invisible, but she was there—probably reclining—ask not how!—on the full red lips (which fascinated Mrs. Arb) of Mr. Earlforward. It was just after four o'clock in the January following their first acquaintance. They sat on opposite sides of Henry's desk, with the electric light extravagantly burning above them. At the front of the shop the day was expiring in faint gleams of grey twilight. Dirt was nothing; disorder was nothing; Mr. Earlforward loved. For weeks he had been steadfastly intending to put the place to rights for his bride, and he had not put it to rights. Dirt and disorder were repugnant to Mrs. Arb, but she had said not a word. She would not interfere or even suggest, before the time. She knew her place; she was a bit prim. The time was approaching, and she could wait.
"I suppose we can use that ring," said Henry, pointing to the wedding-ring on Mrs. Arb's hand, which lay on the desk like the defenceless treasure of an invaded city.
Despite a recent experience, Mrs. Arb was startled by this remark delivered in a tone so easy, benevolent and matter-of-fact. The recent experience had consisted in Mr. Earlforward's bland ultimatum, after a discussion in which Mrs. Arb had womanishly and prettily favoured a religious ceremony, that they would be married at a Registry because it was on the whole cheaper. Uponthat point she had taken pleasure in yielding to him. So long as you were genuinely married, the method had only a secondary importance. She admitted—to herself—that in desiring the church she might have been conventional, superstitious. She was eager to yield, as some women are eager to be beaten. Morbidity, of course! But not wholly. Self-preservation was in it, as well as voluptuousness. Mr. Earlforward's individuality frightened while enchanting her. She found she could cure the fright by intense acquiescence. And why not acquiesce? He was her fate. She would grasp her fate with both hands.
And there was this point: if he was her fate, she was his; she had already been married once, whereas he was an innocent; he had to learn. She saw an advantage there. Her day was coming—at least, she persuaded herself that it was.
Thus the question of the wedding ceremony had been quite satisfactorily dissolved; and so well that Mrs. Arb now scorned the notion of marriage in a church. But the incident of the ring touched her closer; it touched the aboriginal cave-woman in the very heart of her. Do you know, she had faintly suspected that to purchase a wedding-ring formed no part of his programme! An absurd, an impossible suspicion! How could he espouse without a ring? But there the suspicion had lain! She ought to have been revolted by the idea of a second husband marrying her with the ring of the first. However, she was not. Mr. Earlforward's natural, casual tone precluded that. And she answered quietly, as it were hypnotized, with a smile:
"We can't use this. It won't come off."
She displayed the finger. Obviously the ring would not pass the joint. Mrs. Arb was slim, but she had been slimmer.
He said:
"But you can't be married with thaton. You can't wear two." (Something of the cave-creature in him also!)
"I know. But I was going to have it filed off to-morrow morning. There wouldn't be time to have it made larger."
He took the supine hand and thrilled it.
"I tell you what," said he. "What carat is it?"
"Eighteen."
"Soft!" he murmured. "I've got a little file. I'll file it off now. I'm rather good at odd jobs. Oh no, I shan't hurt you! I wouldn't hurt you for anything."
He found the file, after some search, in a drawer of his desk.
"It must feel like this to be manicured," she said, with a slight, nervous giggle, when again he held her hand in his, and began to operate with the file.
He had not boasted; he was indeed rather good at odd jobs. Such delicate, small movements! Such patience! He was standing over her. She was his prisoner, and the ray of the bulb blazed down on the timorous yielded hand. At the finish the skin was scarcely perceptibly abraded. He pulled apart the ends of the severed band and removed it.
"Soft as butter!" he smiled. "Now lend me that other ring of yours, will you? For size, you know. And I'll just slip across to Joas's in Farringdon Road. Shan't be long. Will you look after the shop while I'm gone? If anyone comes in and there's any difficulty, ask 'em to wait. But all the prices are marked. I'll leave the light on in the shop. You won't feel lonely."
"Oh, but——!" she protested. Leave her by herself in his house—and without the protection of the ring! And before marriage! What would people think?
"Well, Elsie 'll be here in a minute. So there's nothing to worry over." He spoke most soothingly, as to an irrational child. "I'd better see to it to-night. And they close at six, same as me—except the pawnbroking. No time to lose!" He was gone.
She was saved from too much reflection by the entry of Elsie. At the sight of Elsie Mrs. Arb's demeanour immediately became normal—that is to say, the strangeenchantment which had held her was dissipated, blown away. She was no longer morbid; she was not supine. Her body resumed all its active little movements, her glance its authority, cheerfulness, liveliness and variety. She rose from the chair, smoothed her dress, and was ready to deal with the universe.
"Oh, Elsie! So you've come! Mr. Earlforward was expecting you. He's just slipped out on urgent business for a minute or two, and he said you'd be in to attend to customers, and I must say I didn't much fancy being left here alone, because you see—— But, of course, business must be attended to. We all know that, don't we?"
She gave a poke to the dull embers of the stove which warmed the shop in winter; Mr. Earlforward rarely replenished it after four o'clock; he liked it to be just out at closing time.
"Yes'm."
Elsie, although wearing her best jacket and hat, and looking rather Sundayish, had carried—not easily—into the shop a sizeable tin trunk with thin handles that cut uncomfortably into the hands. This box contained her late husband's medals, and all that was hers, including some very strange things. The french-polisher's wife, by now quite accustomed to having three infants instead of two, had procured for herself a pleasant little change from the monotony of home-life by helping Elsie to transport the trunk from Riceyman Square to Mr. Earlforward's shop-door. The depositing of the dented trunk on the uneven floor of the shop constituted Elsie's "moving in."
"I'll take this upstairs now, shall I, m'm?" Elsie suggested, somewhat timidly, because she was beginning a new life and didn't quite know how she stood.
"Well, it certainly mustn't be here when Mr. Earlforward returns," said Mrs. Arb gravely.
Elsie fully concurred. Masters of households ought not to be offended by the quasi-obscene sight of the private belongings of servants.
"No! You can't carry it up by yourself. You might hurt yourself. You never know. Come, come, Elsie!" as Elsie protested. "Do you suppose I've never helped to carry a box upstairs before? Now take the other handle, do! Where's your umbrella? I know you've got one."
"It's coming to-morrow, 'm. I've lent it."
Mrs. Arb was extremely cheerful, kindly and energetic over the affair of the trunk, and Elsie extremely apologetic.
"Now nip your apron on and come down as quick as you can—there might be a customer. You must remember I'm not mistress here until to-morrow. I'm only a visitor." Thus spoke Mrs. Arb gaily and a little breathless at the door of the small bedroom which Elsie was to share with a vast collection of various sermons in eighty volumes, some State Trials in twenty volumes, and a lot of other piled sensationalism.
When Elsie, still impressed by the fact of having a new home and by Mrs. Arb's benevolent demeanour, came rather self-consciously downstairs in a perfectly new apron (bought for this great occasion), Mrs. Arb went to the foot of the stairs to meet her, and employing a confidential and mysterious tone, said:
"Now don't forget all I told you about that cleaning business to-morrow, will you?"
"Oh, no, 'm. I suppose it will be all right?" Elsie's brow puckered with conscientiousness.
Mrs. Arb laughed amiably.
"What do you mean, my girl—'it'll be all right'? You must remember that when I come back to-morrow I come back Mrs. Earlforward. And you'll call me 'Mrs. Earlforward' too."
"I'd sooner call you mum, 'm, if it's all the same to you."
"Of course. But when you're speakingaboutme."
"I shall have to get into it, 'm."
"Now I expect Mr. Earlforward's settled your wages with you?"
"No, 'm."
"Not said anything at all?"
"No, 'm. But it'll be all right."
Mrs. Arb was once again amazed at Henry's marvellous faculty for letting things go.
"Oh, well, perhaps he was leaving it to me, though I've nothing to do with this house till to-morrow. Now, what wages do you want, Elsie?"
"I prefer to leave it to you, 'm," said Elsie diffidently.
"Well, of course, Elsie, being a 'general' is a very different thing from being a char. You have a good home and all your food. And a regular situation. No going about from one place to another and being told you aren't wanted to-day, or aren't wanted to-morrow, and only half a day the next day and so on and so on! A regular place. No worries about shall I or shan't I earn my day's wage to-day.... You see, don't you?"
"Oh yes, 'm."
"I'll just show you what I cut out of theWest London Observeryesterday." She drew her purse from her pocket, and from the purse an advertisement of a Domestic Servants' Agency, offering innumerable places. "'Generals £20 to £25 a year,'" she read. "Suppose you start with £20? Of course it's very high, but wages are high in these days. I don't know why. But they are. And we have to put up with it."
"Very well, 'm," Elsie agreed gratefully.
Twenty pounds seemed a big lump of money to her, and she could not divide by fifty-two. Besides, there it was, printed in the paper! No arguing against that. The two talked about washing and the kitchen and the household utensils which Mrs. Arb had abstracted from the schedule of possessions sold to the purchaser of the business opposite. Elsie sold a couple of books. During this transaction Mrs. Arb retired to the office, and after it she refused to take charge of the money which Elsie dutifully offered to her.
"Elsie, haven't I just told you I'm not mistress here? You must give the money to your master."
Then Mr. Earlforward returned; and Mrs. Arb gave Elsie a sign to withdraw upstairs; and Elsie, having placed the money on the paper containing the titles of the sold books, went discreetly upstairs.
"I've taken on myself to settle that woman's wages," said Mrs. Arb, while Henry was removing his overcoat in the back room. "She told me you hadn't said anything."
"No, I hadn't."
"Well. I've settled twenty pounds a year."
"Eight shillings a week. Rather less. Anyhow, it's better than half a crown every morning of your life for half a day's work."
"Did you give her half a crown? I only used to give her two shillings. Did you give her any food?"
"Certainly not."
"Neither did I. Unless she stayed late."
Mrs. Arb felt upon her Mr. Earlforward's glance of passionate admiration, and slipped into the enchantment again. She was very content; she was absurdly content. The fact was that Mr. Earlforward had been under the delusion of having driven a unique bargain with Elsie in the matter of wages. For he knew that the recognized monstrous rate was five shillings a dayandfood. And here this miraculous creature, so gentle, submissive and girlish, had beaten him by sixpence a half-day. What a woman! What a wife! She had every quality. He gloated over her.... He sat on the desk by her chair, boyishly to watch her girlishness. Then he interrupted the tête-à-tête to go and turn off the light in the shop—because the light in the office gave sufficient illumination to show that the shop was open. And he called out to Elsie:
"Elsie, come down and bring the bookstand inside. It ought to have been brought in before. It's quite dark—long since.... Oh! She won't lookthisway," he murmured, with a shrug in answer to Mrs. Arb'sgirlish alarm as he sat down on the desk by her once more.
"Now here's the ring I've got." He pulled from his waistcoat pocket a hoop of glittering gold. "And here's your finger-ring—keeper, do you call it? See! They're exactly the same size. It's a very good ring, and it'll last much longer than the old one. Harder. Nine carat. Looks better too,Ithink."
Mrs. Arb, examining the ring, kept a smiling, constrained silence. The nine carat was a blow to her. But, of course, he was right; he was quite right. He put the new ring back in his pocket.
"But where's my old wedding-ring?"
"Oh, I sold that to Joas. Flinty fellow, but I don't mind telling you I sold it to him for six and sixpence more than what I paid for this one." He spoke, very low—because of Elsie, with a contented and proud calm, his little eyes fixed on her. "I suppose that six and six is by right yours. Here it is." And he handed her the six and sixpence.
"Oh, that's all right," said Mrs. Arb weakly, as if to indicate that he could keep the money.
"Oh, no!" said he. "Right's right."
She put the coins in her purse. Then she said it was time for her to be "going across." (Part of the bargain with the purchaser of her business was that he should provide her with a room and food until the day of the wedding.)
"I hope you'll slip in again to-night," he urged.
"Not to-night, Henry.It's the night before. It wouldn't be quite nice."
He yielded. They discussed all the arrangements for the morrow. As they were leaving the back-room side by side, Henry switched off the light. Elsie had completed her task and gone upstairs. Total darkness—for a few moments! Mrs. Arb felt Henry's rich lips on hers. She was sensible of the mystery of the overcrowded shop stretching from bay to bay in front of her to the gradually appearing yellow twilight from the gas-lamp of Riceyman Steps. She abandoned herself, in an ecstasy that was perhaps less, perhaps more, than what is called happiness, to the agitating uncertainties of their joint future. Useless for her to recall to herself her mature years, her experience, her force, her sagacity. She was no better than a raw girl under his kiss. Well, it was a loving kiss. He worshipped the ground she trod on, as the saying was. A point in her favour!
He switched on the light.
Elsie's bedroom was a servant's bedroom, and always had been, though not used as such for many years. Its furniture comprised one narrow iron bedstead, one small yellow washstand, one small yellow chest of drawers with a small mirror, one windsor chair, and nothing else in the way of furniture—unless three hooks behind the door could be called furniture. No carpet. No apparatus of illumination except a candle. The flowery wallpaper was slowly divorcing itself from the walls in several places. The sash-cord of the window having been broken many years ago and never repaired, the window could only be made to stay open by means of a trick. It had, in fact, been closed for many years. When, early, she had finished her work, Elsie retired with an inch and a half of candle to this bedroom and shut the door, and could scarcely believe her good luck. Happy she was not, for she had a great grief, the intensity of which few people suspected and still fewer attempted to realize and none troubled about; but she was very grateful to the fate which had provided the bedroom. The room was extremely cold, but Elsie had never known of, or even conceived, a warm bedroom in winter. It was bare, but not to Elsie's sight, which saw in it the main comforts of nocturnal existence. It was small, but not according to Elsie's scale of dimensions. It was ugly, but Elsie simply could not see ugliness. (Nor could she see beauty, save in a child's face, a rich stuff, a bright colour, a pink sunset and things of that kind.)
She looked round and saw a bed in which you slept. She saw a chest of drawers—which would hold three orfour times as much as her trunk, which trunk held all she possessed except an umbrella. She saw a washstand, which if it was duly fitted out with water, soap and towel might one day be useful in an emergency. She saw a chair, which was strong. She saw hooks, which were useful. She saw a window, which was to look through. She knew that many books were piled against the wall between the window and the door, but she didn't see them. They were merely there, and one day would go downstairs. She thought of them as mysterious and valuable articles. Although she herself had the magic gift to decipher their rather arbitrary signs and so induce perplexing ideas in her own head, she would not have dreamed of doing so.
But do not suppose that the bedroom had no grand, exciting quality for Elsie. It had one. It was solely hers. It was the first bedroom she had ever in all her life had entirely to herself. More, in her personal experience, it was the first room that was used as a bedroom and nothing else. Elsie had never slept alone in a room, and she had very rarely slept in a bed alone. She had had no privacy. She now gazed on every side, and what she saw and felt was privacy; a luxurious sensation, exquisite and hardly credible. She abandoned herself to it as Mrs. Arb had abandoned herself to the kiss of Henry Earlforward. It was a balm to her grief. It was a retreat in which undisturbed she could enjoy her grief.
Unpacking her trunk, she moved about, walked, stooped, knelt, rose, opened drawers, shut drawers, with the magnificent movements of a richly developed and powerful body. The expression on her mild face and in her dark-blue eyes, denoted a sweet, unconscious resignation. No egotism in those features! No instinct to fight for her rights and to get all she could out of the universe! No apprehension of injustice! No resentment against injustice! No glimmer of realization that she was the salt of the earth. She thought she was in a nice, comfortable, quiet house, and appointedto live with kindly people of superior excellence. She was still touched by Mrs. Arb's insistence on helping her upstairs with her box.
She looked at her Post Office Savings Bank book. An enormous sum ready to her hand in the post office! Enough to keep her for a month if anything should "happen" to her. She looked at her late husband's two silver medals and their ribbons. They were what she called beautiful. She laid them at the back of one of the small top-drawers. Her feeling in regard to her late husband was now purely pious. He had lost reality for her. She took a letter out of a dirty envelope and read, bending to the candle: "Darling Elsie, I feel as how I must go right away until I am better. I feel it is not easy for you to forgive me. All you say is quite true. And it is best for you not to know where I am. I know I shall get better, and then I shall write to you and ask you——" She cried.... "Joe." This man was real to her, far more real than her husband had ever been. She could feel him standing by her. She could feel his nervous arm on her waist, and she was as familiar with the shape and pressure of his arm as a blind man with his accustomed chair. She had an ardent longing to martyrize herself to Joe, to relax her dominion over him so that he might exult in ill-treating her in his affliction. But she knew that her dominion over him could alone be his salvation, and she had firmly exercised it. And she thought:
"How awkward it must have been for poor Dr. Raste. He's got another now, but not so good—no, and never will have!"
The letter was two months old and more. She had read it at least fifty times. It was the dearest, bitterest, most miraculous phenomenon in the world. It was not a letter at all. It was a talisman, a fetish.
There came a rap on the door, shattering the immaterial fabric of her private existence and changing Elsie back into the ex-charwoman promoted to "general." She shuddered under the shock.
"Elsie, are you going to burn that candle all night?" Mr. Earlforward's bland, gentle, authoritative voice! He must have seen light shining under the door, and crept upstairs in his slippers.
"No, sir. I'm just going to blow it out." She was conscience-stricken.
"Did you finish offallthat loaf?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir." She was still more conscience-stricken.
"Tut-tut.... Tut-tut."
Elsie put the letter under her pillow. She was undressed in a minute. She had no toilet to perform. She no more thought of washing than a Saxon queen would have thought of washing. She did not examine the bed to see if it was comfortable. She had never failed to sleep. Any bed was a bed. As she slipped in between the blankets her brow puckered with one anxiety. Could she wake at six in that silent house? She must! She must! She extinguished the candle. And as she smelt its dying fumes in the darkness and explored with her sturdy limbs the roominess of the bed, a sudden surprising sensation impaired her joy in exclusive privacy. She missed the warm, soft body of the furniture-polisher's child, with whom she had slept so long. Some people are never satisfied.
As Henry and Violet approached the turnstile, Henry murmured to Violet:
"How much is it? How much is it?"
"One and three, including tax," Violet murmured in reply.
Half a crown for the two was less than he had feared, but he felt in his trouser-pocket and half a crown was more than he had there, and he slowly pulled out of his breast-pocket an old Treasury-note case. The total expenses of the wedding ceremony at the Registry had been considerable; he seemed to have been disbursing the whole time since they left Clerkenwell for the marriage and honeymoon (which, according to arrangement, was to be limited to one day).
The wedding-breakfast—two covers—at the magnificent, many-floored, music-enlivened, swarming Lyons' establishment in Oxford Street had been—he was prepared to believe—relatively cheap, and there were no tips, and everything was very good and splendid; but really the bill amounted to a lot of money in the judgment of a man who for years had never spent more than sixpence on a meal outside his own home, and whom the mere appearance of luxury frightened. Throughout the wedding-breakfast he had indeed been scared by the gilding, the carving, the seemingly careless profusion, the noise, and the vastness of the throng which flung its money about in futile extravagance; he had been unable to dismiss the disturbing notion that England was decadent, and the structure of English society threatened by a canker similar to the canker which had destroyed Gibbon's Rome. Ten shillings and sevenpencefor a single repast for two persons! It was fantastic. He had resolved that this should be the last pleasure excursion into the West End. Meanwhile, he was on his honeymoon, and he must conduct himself and his purse with the chivalry which a loved woman would naturally, if foolishly, expect.
It was after the wedding-breakfast that Violet had, in true feminine capriciousness, suddenly suggested that they should go to Madame Tussaud's waxworks before the visit to the gorgeous cinema in Kingsway, which was thepièce de résistanceof the day's programme. She had never seen Madame Tussaud's (nor had he), and she was sure it must be a very nice place; and they had plenty of time for it. All her life she had longed to see Madame Tussaud's, but somehow ... etc. Not that he needed too much persuading. No! He liked, he adored, the girlishness in that vivacious but dignified and mature creature, so soberly dressed (save for the exciting red flowers in her dark hat). In consenting to gratify her whim he had the sensations of a young millionaire clasping emerald necklaces round the divine necks of stage-favourites. After all, it was only for one day. And she had spoken truly in saying that they had plenty of time. The programme was not to end till late. Previous to their departure from Riceyman Steps on the wedding journey he had seen Violet call aside Elsie (who was left in charge of the shop), and he doubted not that she had been enjoining the girl to retire to bed before her employers' return. A nice thoughtfulness on Violet's part.
Withal, as he extracted a pound note from his case, he suffered agony—and she was watching him with her bright eyes. It was a new pound note. The paper was white and substantial; not a crease in it. The dim water-marks whispered genuineness. The green and brown of the design were more beautiful than any picture. The majestic representation of the Houses of Parliament on the back gave assurance that the solidity of the whole realm was behind that note. The thing was as lovelyand touching as a young virgin daughter. Could he abandon it for ever to the cold, harsh world?
"Here! Give it me," said Violet sympathetically, and took it out of his hand. What was she going to do with it?
"I've got change," she added, with a smile, her face crinkling pleasantly.
He was relieved. His agony was soothed. At any rate the note was saved for the present; it was staying in the shelter of the family. He felt very grateful. But why should she have taken the note from him?
"Thank you, ma'am," said the uniformed turnstile-man, with almost eager politeness as Violet put down half a crown. The character of the place had been established at once by the well-trained attendant.
"I'm sure it's a very nice place," Violet observed. She was a judge, too. Henry agreed with her.
There was a spacious Victorianism about the interior, and especially about the ornate, branching staircase, which pleased both of them. Crowds moving to and fro! Crowds of plain people; no fashion, no distinction; but respectable people, solid people; no riff-raff, no wastrels, adventurers, flighty persons.
"Itisa very nice place," Violet repeated. "And they're much better than audiences at cinemas, I must say."
Of course, she went through the common experience of mistaking a wax figure for a human being, and called herself a silly. Suddenly she clutched Henry's arm. The clutch gave him a new, delightful sensation of owning and being owned, and also of being a protector.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed in alarm. "It gave me quite a turn."
"What did?"
"I thought he was a wax figure, that young man there by the settee. I looked at him for ever so long, and he didn't move; and then he moved! I wouldn't like to come here alone. No! That I wouldn't!" Thereupon, with a glance of trust, she loosed Henry.
For perhaps a couple of decades Henry had not been even moderately interested in any woman, and for over a decade not interested at all; he had been absorbed in his secret passion. And now, after a sort of Rip van Winkle sleep, he was on his honeymoon, and in full realization of the wonderfulness of being married. He felt himself to be exalted into some realm of romance surpassing his dreams. The very place was romantic and uplifted him. He blossomed slowly, late, but he blossomed. And in the crowds he was truly alone with this magical woman. He did not, then, want to kiss her. He would save the kissing. He would wait for it; he was a patient man, and enjoyed the exercise of patience. Quite unperturbed, he was convinced, and rightly, that none in the ingenuous crowds could guess the situation of himself and Violet. Such a staid, quiet, commonplace couple. He savoured with the most intense satisfaction that they were deceiving all the simple creatures who surrounded them. He laughed at youth, scorned it. Then his eye caught a sign, "Cinematograph Hall." Ha! Was that a device to conjure extra sixpences and shillings from the unwary? He seemed to crouch in alarm, like a startled hare. But the entrance to the Cinematograph Hall was wide and had no barriers. The Cinematograph Hall was free. They walked into it. A board said, to empty seats, "Next performance four o'clock."
"We must see that," he told Violet urgently. She answered that they certainly must, and thereupon, Henry having looked at his watch, they turned into the Hall of Tableaux.
A restful and yet impressive affair, these reconstitutions of dramatic episodes in English history. And there was no disturbing preciosity in the attitude of the sightseers, who did not care a fig what "art" was, to whom, indeed, it would never have occurred to employ such a queer word as "art" even in their thoughts. Nor did they worry themselves about composition, lighting, or the theory of the right relation of subject to treatment. Nor did they criticize at all. They accepted, and if they couldnot accept they spared their brains the unhealthy excitement of trying to discover why they could not accept. They just left the matter and passed on. A poor-spirited lot, with not the slightest taste for hitting back against the challenge of the artist. But anyhow they had the wit to put art in its place and keep it there. What interested them was the stories told by the tableaux, and what interested them in the stories told was the "human" side, not the historic importance. King John signing Magna Charta under the menace of his bold barons, and so laying the foundation stone of British liberty? No! The picture could not move them. But the death of Nelson, Gordon's last stand, the slip of a girl Victoria getting the news of her accession, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots? Yes! Hundred per cent. successes every one. Violet shed a diamond tear at sight of the last. Violet said:
"They do say, seeing's believing."
She was fully persuaded at last that English history really had happened. Henry's demeanour was more reserved, and a little condescending. He said kindly that the tableaux were very clever, as they were. And he smiled to himself at Violet's womanish simplicity—and liked her the better for it, because it increased her charm and gave to himself a secret superiority.
What all the sightseers did completely react to was the distorting mirrors, which induced a never-ceasing loud tinkle and guffaw of mirth through the entire afternoon. Violet laughed like anything at the horrid reflection of herself.
"Well," she giggled, "they do say you wouldn't know yourself if you met yourself in the street. I can believe it."
Rather subtle, that, thought Henry, as he smiled blandly at her truly surprising gaiety. He hurried her away to the cinematograph. The hall was full. He had never in his life been to a picture-theatre. Why should he have gone? He had never felt the craving for "amusement." He knew just what cinemas were and how theyworked, but he did not lust after them. By long discipline he had strictly confined his curiosity to certain fields. But now that the cinema lay gratis to his hand he suddenly burned with a desire to judge it. He refrained from confessing to Violet that he had never been to a picture-theatre. As he had already decided that the cinema was a somewhat childish business, he found nothing in the show to affect this verdict. While it was proceeding he explained the mechanism to Violet, and also he gave her glimpses of the history of Madame Tussaud's, which he had picked up from books about London. Violet was impressed; and, as she had seen many films far more sensational than those now exhibited, she copied his indifference. Nevertheless, Henry would not leave until the performance was quite finished. He had a curiously illogical idea in his head that although he had paid nothing he must get his full money's worth.
It was in the upper galleries, amid vast waxen groups of monarchs, princes, princesses, statesmen, murderers, soldiers, footballers and pugilists (Violet favoured the queens and princesses) that, to the accompaniment of music from a bright red-coated orchestra, a new ordeal arose for Henry.
"I wonder where the Chamber of Horrors is," said Violet. "We haven't come across it yet, have we?"
An attendant indicated a turnstile leading to special rooms—admittance eightpence, tax included. Henry was hurt; Madame Tussaud's fell heavily in his esteem, despite the free cinematograph. It was a scheme to empty the pockets of a confiding public.
"Oh!" exclaimed Violet, dashed also. She was in a difficult position. She wanted as much as Henry to keep down costs, but at the same time she wanted her admired mate to behave in a grand and reckless manner suitable to the occasion.
Meeting her glance, Henry hesitated. Was there to be no end to disbursements? His secret passion fought against his love. He turned pale; he could not speak; he was himself amazed at the power of his passion. Fullof fine intentions, he dared not affront the monster. Then, his throat dry and constricted, he said blandly, with an invisible gesture of the most magnificent and extravagant heroism:
"I hardly think we ought to consider expense on a day like this."
And the monster recoiled, and Henry wiped his brow. Violet paid the one and fourpence. They entered into a new and more recondite world. Relics of Napoleon did not attract them, but a notice at the head of a descending flight of steps fascinatingly read, "Downstairs to the Chamber of Horrors." The granite steps presented a grim and awe-inspiring appearance; they might have been the steps into hell. Violet shivered and clutched Henry's arm again.
"No, no!" she whispered in agitation. "I couldn't face it. I couldn't."
"But we've paid, my dear," said Henry, gently protesting.
He, the strong male, took command of the morbidly affected, clinging woman, and led her down the steps. Her arm kept saying to him: "I am in your charge. Nobody but you could have persuaded me into this adventure...." Docks full of criminals of the deepest dye. The genuine jury-box from the original Old Bailey. Recumbent figures in frightful opium dens. Reconstitutions of illustrious murder scenes, with glasses of champagne and packs of cards on the tables, and siren women on chairs. Wonderful past all wondering! Violet was enthralled. Quickly she grew calmer, but she never relaxed her hold on him. The souvenirs of incredible crimes somehow sharpened the edge of his feeling for her and inflamed the romance. He remembered with delicious pain how his longing for this unparalleled Violet had made him unhappy night and day for weeks, how it had seemed impossible that she could ever be his, this incarnation of the very spirit of vivacity, brightness, energy, dominance. ... And now he dominated her. She attached herself to him, wound round him, the ivy to his oak. Shewas not young. And thank God she was not young. A nice spectacle he would have made, gallivanting round at the short skirts of some girlish thing! She was ideal, and she was his. The exquisite thought ran to and fro in his head all the time.
"What murdercanthat be?" she demanded in front of a kitchen interior. She had identified the others.
Close by was a lady with a catalogue.
"Would you mind telling me what crime this is supposed to be, madam?" Henry politely asked, raising his hat. The lady looked at him with a malignant expression.
"Can't you buy a catalogue for yourself?"
"Vulgar, nasty creature!" muttered Violet.
Henry said nothing, made no sign. They walked away. He knew that he ought to have bought a catalogue at the start, but he had not bought one, and now he could not. No! He could not. The situation was dreadful, but Violet enchantingly eased it.
"Everything ought to be labelled," she said. "However——" And she began to talk cheerfully as if nothing had happened.
They passed along a corridor and through a turnstile, and were once again in the less sensational Hall of Tableaux, and they heard the tinkling, unbridled laughter of girls surveying themselves in the distorting mirrors. Henry limped noticeably. Violet led the way through the restaurant towards the main hall. Tea laid on spotless tables. Jam in saucers on the tables. Natty, pretty and smiling waitresses.
"I could do with a cup of tea. Oh! And there's jam!" exclaimed Violet.
Henry was shocked. More expense. Must they be eating all day? Nevertheless, they sat down.
"I'm afraid I'm about done for," said Henry sadly, disheartened. "My knee."
His knee was not troubling him in the least, but a desperate plan for cutting short the honeymoon and going home had seized him. He had decided that the one cure for him was to be at home alone with her. He had hadenough, more than enough, of the licence of the West End. He wanted tranquillity. He wanted to know where he was.
"Your knee. Oh, Henry! I'm so sorry. What can we do?"
"We can go home," he replied succinctly.
"But the big cinema, and all that?"
"Well, we've seen one. I feel I should like to be at home."
"Oh, but——!"
Violet was strangely disturbed. He could not understand her agitation. Surely they could visit the big cinema another night. He was determined. He said to himself that he must either go home or go mad. The monster had come back upon him in ruthless might. To placate the monster he must at any cost bear Violet down. He did bear her down, and she surrendered with a soft and deferential amiability which further endeared her to him. They partook of tea and jam; she discharged the bill, and they departed.
"I don't want to be bothered with my lameness on my wedding-day," he said, wistfully smiling, as they got out into the street.
For potent municipal or administrative reasons the tram-car carrying Henry and his bride would not stop at Riceyman Steps, but it stopped fifty yards farther down the road. As Henry was whisked thunderingly past his home and the future nest of his love, he glimpsed in the Steps such a spectacle as put a strain on the credibility of his eyes. Only on the rarest occasions do men refuse to believe their eyes; they are much more likely to allow themselves to be deluded by their deceitful eyes. The vision was come and gone in a moment, and Henry, who had great confidence in his eyes, did, in fact, accept, though with difficulty, their report, which was to the effect that a considerable crowd had collected in front of his house, that the house was blazing with light, and that forms resembling engines, with serpentine hose rising therefrom, stood between the shop-door and the multitude of spectators.
"Did you see that?" he demanded, sharply but calmly.
"See what, dear?" said Violet, self-consciously.
"The house is on fire."
"Oh, no! Itcan'tbe on fire."
A strange colloquy! It seemed unreal to him. And the strangest thing was that he did not honestly think the house was on fire. He did not know what to think. But he suspected his angel of some celestial scheming against him; and he considered that she was beginning rather early and that his first business must be to set her in the true, wifely path. Suspicion is a wonderful collector of evidence in its own support. He recalled her agitation when he had decided to tear up the programme for the day and go home earlier; the agitation had soonpassed, but during the journey to Clerkenwell it had certainly recurred, increasing somewhat as they neared the destination. Also he recalled her private chat with Elsie before leaving in the morning. At the time he had attached no significance to that whispered interview, but now it suddenly took on a most sinister aspect.
An amazing fellow was Henry. As he hurried, without a word, from the tram to the house he carefully maintained his limp, and in pushing through the crowd he was careful to avoid any appearance of astonishment or alarm. At any rate, the engines, both throbbing, were too small to be fire-engines, there were no brass helmets or policemen about, and the house was not on fire. What distressed him was the insane expenditure of electricity that was going on. And why was the shop open? The day being Saturday it ought to have been closed hours ago.
He strode over a hose-pipe into his establishment. One side of the place looked just as if it had been newly papered and painted, and all the books on that side shone like books that had been dusted and vaselined with extreme care daily for months; almost the whole of the ceiling was nearly white, and the remainder of it was magically whitening under a wide-mouthed brass nozzle that a workman who stood on a pair of steps was applying to it. And Henry heard a swishing sound as of the in-drawing of wind. He went forward mechanically into his private room, which, quite unbelievably, was as clean as a new pin. No grime, no dust anywhere! And not a book displaced. The books which ordinarily lay on the floor still lay on the floor, and even the floor planks looked as if they had been planed or sandpapered. He dropped into a chair.
"Darling, how pale you are!" murmured Violet, bending to him. "This is my wedding present to you. I wanted it to be a surprise, but you've gone and spoilt it all with coming back home so soon!And I couldn't stop you."
He did not realize for weeks the grandeur of his wife'sact, which had outraged a thrifty instinct in her nearly as powerful as his own. But he realized at once the initiative and the talent for organized execution which had rendered her plan successful. How had she managed to accomplish the affair without betraying to him the slightest hint of what she was about? A prodigious performance! And she had suborned the faithful Elsie, too!
He could not like the cleanliness. He had been robbed of something. And the place had lost its look of home; it was bare, inhospitable, and he was a stranger in it.
"How much is it to cost?" he breathed.
"Well," Violet answered hesitatingly, "of course, vacuum-cleaning isn't what you'd call cheap. But it saves so much labour and wear-and-tear and inconvenience that it pays for itself over and over again. And you know I can'tstanddirt. And when a thing's got to be done I'm one of those that must get it over and havedonewith it. And it's my little present to you. Shall I rub your knee with some Zam-buk? I have some."
"How much is it to cost?" he repeated.
"Well, it ought by rights only to cost ten pounds for the whole job."
"Ten pounds!"
"Yes. Only as I wanted it done in a great hurry, I knew that would mean two machines instead of one; and besides that, the men expect overtime pay for Saturday afternoons. I'm afraid it'll cost thirteen or fourteen pounds. But think how nice it's going to be. Look at this room. You wouldn't know it."
"Fourteen pounds!"
The wages of a morning charwoman for over three months! Squandered in a few hours! The potentialities of Violet's energetic brain frightened him.
"You aren't vexed, I'm sure!" said Violet.
"Of course I'm not," he replied blandly, admitting the nobility of her motives and the startling efficiency of her methods.
"Perhaps I ought to have told you."
"Yes."
"But, you see, I wanted it to be a surprise for you."
He walked back into the shop and thence outside.
"What do you do with the dirt?" he inquired of one of the men in charge of the machines.
"Oh, we take it away, sir. We shan't leave any mess about."
"Do you sell it? Do you get anything for it?"