Part
II
I
The Day Before
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. Upon that 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 that on. You can’t wear two.” (Something of the cave-creature in him also!)
“I know. But I was going to have it filed off tomorrow 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 tonight. 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 strange enchantment 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 tomorrow, ’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 tomorrow. 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 tomorrow, 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 tomorrow 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 speaking about me.”
“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 tomorrow. 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 today, or aren’t wanted tomorrow, 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 today. … You see, don’t you?”
“Oh yes, ’m.”
“I’ll just show you what I cut out of the West London Observer yesterday.” 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 day and food. 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 look this way,” he murmured, with a shrug in answer to Mrs. Arb’s girlish 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, I think.”
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 tonight,” he urged.
“Not tonight, 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.
II
Elsie’s Retreat
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 or four 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 appointed to 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 off all that 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.
III
Waxworks
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 sevenpence for 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 the pièce de résistance of 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 watermarks 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 lovely and touching as a young virgin daughter. Could he abandon it forever 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 riffraff, no wastrels, adventurers, flighty persons.
“It is a 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 could not 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 percent 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 they worked, 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. Full of 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. She was 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 murder can that 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 had enough, 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.
IV
Vacuum
For potent municipal or administrative reasons the tramcar 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! It can’t be 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 soon passed, 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 hosepipe 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’s act, 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’t stand dirt. And when a thing’s got to be done I’m one of those that must get it over and have done with 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?”
V
The Priestess
While Henry was inquiring into the market value of the dirt which he himself had amassed, the new Mrs. Earlforward went upstairs to inspect her best bedroom. It was empty, but electric current was burning away in a manner to call forth just criticism from her husband. The room was incredibly clean, and had a bright aspect of freshness and gaiety which delighted Violet. She said to herself: “This vacuum business was a great idea of mine. Dangerous; but it’s gone off very well.” Already she realized, though not quite fully, that she had passed under the domination of her bland Henry. It was as if she had entered a fortress and heard the self-locking gates thereof clang behind her. No escape! But in the fortress she was sheltered; she was safe.
According to a prearrangement, certain dispositions had been made in the bedroom. On the bed was spread a luxurious and brilliant eiderdown quilt—Violet’s private possession, almost her only possession beyond clothes, cash, and money invested. Her three trunks were deposited in a corner. The wardrobe had been cleared of books, and one chest of drawers cleared of Earlforwardian oddments, and Violet, having doffed her street attire, began to unpack in the cold, which she did not notice.
She hoped that Henry would give her time to feel at home in the chamber. She was sure, indeed, that he would, for he could practise the most delicate considerations. Before deciding which drawers should hold which clothes, she laid out some of the garments on the bed, and this act seemed to tranquillize her. Then she noticed that an old slipper had been tied by a piece of pink ribbon to the head-rail of the bed. It was a much-worn white satin slipper, and had once shod the small foot of some woman who understood elegance. Elsie’s thought! Elsie’s gift! It could have come from none but Elsie. Elsie must have bought it, and perhaps its fellow, at the secondhand shop up the King’s Cross Road, past the police-station. And Elsie must also have bought the pink ribbon.
Violet was touched. She wanted to run out and say something nice to Elsie, wherever Elsie might be, but she wanted still more to stay in the bedroom and think. She enjoyed being in the bedroom alone. She glanced with pleasure at the shut door, the drawn blind, the solidity of the walls and of the furniture. And she thought of her first honeymoon. A violent, extravagant and passionate week at Southend! What excursions. What distractions! What fishings! What tragicomical seasickness! What winkle-eatings! What promenades and rides on the pier! What jocularities! What gigglings and what enormous laughter! What late risings! What frocks and hats! What hair-brushings! What fastenings of frocks! What arrogant confidence in one’s complexion! What emancipations! What grand, free, careless abandonments to the delight of life! What sudden tendernesses! What exhaustless energy! What youth! … And then the swift change in the demeanour of the late Mr. Arb when they got into the London train. Realization then that the man who could play and squander magnificently could also work and save magnificently! A man, in fact, the late Mr. Arb; and never without a grim humour unlike anybody else’s! And he was the very devil sometimes, especially at intervals during the few days when he was making up his mind to cut his corns. …
She did not gaze backward on that honeymoon with pangs of regret. No! She was not that kind of woman. As she advanced from one time of life to another she had the common sense of each age. She did not mourn the Southend hoydenish bride who knew nothing. She had a position now, both moral and material. She could put honeymoons in their right perspective. The honeymoon which she was at that moment in the midst of had certainly some remarkable characteristics. That is to say, it was a rather funny sort of honeymoon. But what matter? She was happy—not as the Southend bride had been happy, but still happy. She knew that she could comprehend Henry just as well as she had comprehended the late Mr. Arb. On the subject of men she was catholic. She could submit in one way to one and in another way to another; and the same for manoeuvring them. Look at what she had by audacity accomplished in the very first hours of this second marriage! Cleanliness! The brilliance of the results of scientific cleaning astonished even herself, far surpassing her expectations.
And the old satin shoe influenced her. There was something absurd, charming, romantic and inspiring about that shoe. It reminded Violet that security and sagacity and affectionate constancy could not be the sole constituents of a satisfactory existence. Grace, fancifulness, impulsiveness, some foolishness, were needed too. She saw the husband, the house, and even the business, as material upon which she had to work, constructively, adoringly, but also wilfully, and perhaps a bit mischievously. What could be more ridiculous than an old shoe tied to a respectable bedstead? And yet it had changed Violet’s mood. For her it had most mysteriously changed the mood of the domestic interior, of all Clerkenwell. It helped Violet to like Clerkenwell, an unlikeable place in her opinion.
After a long time, and reluctantly, she went downstairs again. Nobody had disturbed her—neither her husband nor Elsie nor the workmen. She had heard various movements beyond the citadel of the bedroom—ascents, descents, bumpings—and she now found the upper floors in darkness; the upper floors were finished. The shop also was apparently finished, with the exception of the principal window. She paused at the turn of the stairs and watched her husband attentively watching the operation on the windowful of books. Two workmen were engaged upon it. One handled the books in batches of ten or a dozen; the other manipulated the cleansing, swishing nozzle. Both men seemed to be experts, laborious, conscientious and exact. The volumes were replaced with precision. Mr. Henry Earlforward, in a critical temper, as became a merchant over an important affair which affected him closely but upon which he had been in no wise consulted, stood ready to pounce upon the slightest error or carelessness. Well, he found no occasion to pounce; the bland demon in him was foiled of its spring. He moved away, disappointed, admiring, and caught sight of Violet. His face welcomed her appearance. Undoubtedly he was pleased with and impressed by her capacity, in addition to being in love with her. She looked down demurely, perturbed by the ardour of his glance.
“Been putting things to right in the bedroom?” he murmured, approaching her.
She nodded. He lifted his hand to her shoulder, and there it rested for a moment. She wished to heaven the interminable job was finished and they could walk about the transformed shop alone together.
“Look here,” he murmured; the men at the window could not possibly distinguish what he was saying.
“Yes?”
He led her to a corner. One of the sacks in which books were delivered hid a fairly large cubical object. He pulled off the sack and disclosed an old safe which she had never seen before.
“I bought it yesterday,” said he, “and they delivered it this morning, I suppose.” Bending down, he took a key from his pocket, unlocked the safe, and swung open the massive door. “Two drawers, you see, and two compartments besides.”
“Very nice, I’m sure.”
He relocked the safe and handed her the key, which was very bright.
“It’s for you,” he said. “A little wedding present. You must decide where you’d like to have it. If you want it upstairs, I might get some of these chaps to carry it up before they go. Cheaper than getting men in on purpose. And it’s no featherweight, that safe isn’t.”
Violet was startled almost out of her self-possession. She held the key as though she did not know what to do with it. She gave a mechanical smile, very unlike the smile whose vivacity drew crinkling lines from all parts of her face to the corners of her eyes and of her mouth. The present was totally unexpected. He had said not one word as to presents; certainly he had not questioned her about her preferences, nor shown even indirectly any kind of curiosity in this regard. She had comprehended that he wished neither to bestow nor to receive, and she was perfectly reconciled to his idiosyncrasy. After all, was she not at that moment wearing, without resentment or discomfort, the wedding ring to obtain which he had sold its predecessor? And yet he had conceived the plan of giving her a present and had executed it in secret, as such plans on such occasions ought to be executed. And he was evidently pleased with his plan and proud of it.
How many husbands would have given a safe to their wives so that the dear creatures might really possess their property in privacy and independence? Very few. The average good husband would have expected his wife to hand over all that she had into his own safekeeping—not for his own use—but she would have had to ask him for what was hers, and in giving her what was hers he would have had the air of conferring a favour. Henry was not like that. Henry, she knew, admired her for her possessions as well as for her personality. And he had desired to insist on them in a spectacular manner. She was touched. Yes, she was touched; because she understood his motives; saw the fineness, the chivalry, in his motives.
When she had thanked him she said:
“I think I shall have it in the bathroom, under the window; there is plenty of room there.”
Her practical sagacity had not failed her. In the bathroom she could employ her safe, study the contents of her safe, and take from them or add to them, unsurveyed, according to her most free fancy. Whereas, if the safe was in the bedroom or in the dining room, or side by side with Henry’s safe in the office—well, you never knew! He agreed instantly with her suggestion.
“If I were you,” said he, “I should get your things out of that Cornhill safe-deposit place at once.”
The late Mr. Arb had always been in favour of a “safe-deposit place” for securities and valuables. The arrangement was beyond doubt best for a nomad, but in addition, with his histrionic temperament, he had loved the somewhat theatrical apparatus of triple security with which safe-deposit companies impressed their clients. He had loved descending into illuminated steel vaults, and the smooth noise of well-oiled locks and the signing and countersigning, and the surveillance, and the surpassing precautions. Violet had loved it also. It magnified riches. It induced ecstatic sensations.
But Mr. Henry Earlforward had other views. He held that the rent which you had to pay for a coffer in a safe-deposit was excessive, and that to pay it was a mere squandering of money in order to keep money, and quite irrational, quite ridiculous—indeed, a sort of contradiction in terms. That Mrs. Arb should patronize a safe-deposit company had seemed to offend him; that his wife should patronize a safe-deposit company gave him positive pain. Imagine having to take motorbuses and trams and spend money and half a day of time whenever you wanted to open your own coffer! Violet had listened to him at length on this topic.
She was pleasantly touched now, but simultaneously she was frightened again. Standing close to him in the gloom of the corner, dangling the key on its bit of string, glancing at his fresh, full-lipped, grey-bearded, kindly face, and at his bland little eyes which rested on her with love, she was frightened and even appalled. She had made him a present of a scientific spring-cleaning, and he had given her a safe, on their wedding day! It was terrible, it was horrible! Why? Eminently sensible gifts, both, surely! Not more prosaic than those very popular and well-accepted presents, a pair of fish-carvers, a patent carpet-sweeper, a copper coal-scuttle! No, possibly not more prosaic than those. … And yet, terrible! No doubt she would not have thought them so horrible if she had not seen that secondhand satin shoe hanging on the bedstead by a piece of pink ribbon. She knew that the excellent, trustworthy and adoring man who was the safe-deposit in which she had deposited herself had no suspicion of the nature of her thoughts. And his innocence, his simplicity, his blindness—call it what you please—only intensified her perturbation. He turned away to speak to the workmen about moving the safe.
At a later hour, soon after the workmen and the engines and the hose and all the apparatus of purification had vanished from Riceyman Steps, to the regret of a persistent crowd which had been enjoying an absolutely novel sensation, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Earlforward, who were alone and rather self-conscious and rather at a loss for something to do in the beautiful shut shop, heard steps on the upper stairs. Elsie! They had forgotten Elsie! It was not a time for them to be thoughtful of other people. Elsie presently appeared on the lower stairs, and was beheld of both her astonished employers. For Elsie was clothed in her best, and it was proved that she indeed had a best. Neither Henry nor Violet had ever seen the frock which Elsie was wearing. Yet it was obviously not a new frock. It had lain in that tin trunk of hers since more glorious days. Possibly Joe might have seen it on some bright evening, but no other among living men. Its colour was brown; in cut it did not bear, and never had borne, any relation to the fashions of the day. But it was unquestionably a best dress. Over the façade of the front Elsie displayed a garment still more surprising; namely, a white apron. Now in Clerkenwell white aprons were white only once in their active careers, and not always even once. White aprons in Clerkenwell were white (unless bought “shop-soiled” at a reduction) for about the first hour of their first wearing. They were, of course, washed, rinsed and ironed, and sometimes lightly starched, but they never achieved whiteness again, and it was impossible that they should do so. A whitish grey was the highest they could reach after the first laundry. Elsie therefore was wearing a new apron; and, in fact, she had purchased it with her own money under the influence of her modest pride in forming a regular part of a household comprising a gentleman and lady freshly united in matrimony. She had also purchased a cap, but at the last moment, after trying it on, had lacked the courage to keep it on; she felt too excessively odd in it. She was carrying a parcel in her left hand, and the other was behind her back. Mrs. Earlforward, at sight of her, guessed part of what was coming, but not the more exciting part.
“Oh, Elsie!” cried Mrs. Earlforward. “There you are! I fancied you were out.”
“No, ’m,” said Elsie, in her gentle, firm voice. “But I wasn’t expecting you and master home so early, and as soon as you came I run upstairs to change.”
With that Elsie, from the advantage of three stairs, suddenly showed her right hand, and out of a paper bag flung a considerable quantity of rice on to the middle-aged persons of the married. She accomplished this gesture with the air of a benevolent priestess performing a necessary and gravely important rite. Some of the rice stuck on its targets, but most of it rattled on the floor and rolled about in the silence. Indeed, there was quite a mess of rice on the floor, and the pity seemed to be that the vacuum-cleaners had left early.
Violet was the first to recover from the state of foolish and abashed stupefaction into which the deliberate assault had put man and wife. Violet laughed heartily, very heartily. Her mood was transformed again in an instant into one of gaiety, happiness, and natural ease. It was as if a sinister spell had been miraculously lifted. Henry gradually smiled, while regarding with proper regret this wanton waste of a health-giving food such as formed the sole nourishment of many millions of his fellow-creatures in distant parts of the world. Sheepishly brushing his clothes with his hand, he felt as though he was dissipating good rice-puddings. But he, too, suffered a change of heart.
“I had to do it, because it’s for luck,” Elsie amiably explained, not without dignity. Evidently she had determined to do the wedding thoroughly, in spite of the unconventionalities of the contracting parties.
“I’m sure it’s very kind of you,” said Mrs. Earlforward.
“Yes, it is,” Mr. Earlforward concurred.
“And here’s a present from me,” Elsie continued, blushing, and offering the parcel.
“I’m sure we’re very much obliged,” said Mrs. Earlforward, taking the parcel. “Come into the back room, Elsie, and I’ll undo it. It’s very heavy. No, I’d better not hold it by the string.”
And in the office the cutting of string and the unfolding of brown paper and of tissue paper disclosed a box, and the opening of the box disclosed a wedding cake—not a large one, true, but authentic. What with the shoe and the rice and the cake, Elsie in the grand generosity of her soul must have spent a fortune on the wedding, must have exercised the large munificence of a Rothschild—and all because she had faith in the virtue of the ancient proprieties appertaining to the marriage ceremony. She alone had seen Mrs. Earlforward as a bride and Mr. Earlforward as a bridegroom, and the magic of her belief compelled the partners also to see themselves as bride and bridegroom.
“Well, Elsie,” Violet burst out—and she was deeply affected—“I really don’t know what to say. It’s most unexpected, and I don’t know how to thank you. But run and get a knife, and we’ll cut it.”
“It must be cut,” said Elsie, again the priestess, and she obediently ran off to get the knife.
“Well, well! … Well, well!” murmured Henry, flabbergasted, and blushing even more than his wife had blushed. The pair were so disturbed that they dared not look at each other.
“You must cut it, ’m,” said Elsie, returning with the knife and a flat dish.
And Mrs. Earlforward, having placed the cake on the dish, sawed down into the cake. She had to use all her strength to penetrate the brown; the top icing splintered easily, and fragments of it flew about the desk.
“Now, Elsie, here’s your slice,” said Violet, lifting the dish.
“Thank ye, ’m. But I must keep mine. I’ve got a little box for it upstairs.”
“But aren’t you going to eat any of it?”
“No, ’m,” with solemnity. “But you must. … I’ll just taste this white part,” she added, picking up a bit of icing from the desk.
The married pair ate.
“I think I’ll go now, ’m, if you’ll excuse me,” said Elsie. “But I’ll just sweep up in the shop here first.” She was standing in the doorway.
They heard her with hand-brush and dustpan collecting the scattered food of the Orient. She peeped in at the door again.
“Good night, ’m. Good night, sir.” She saluted them with a benignant grin in which was a surprising little touch of naughtiness. And then they heard her receding footfalls as she ascended cautiously the dark flights of stairs and entered into her inviolable private life on the top floor.
“It would never have done not to eat it,” said Violet.
“No,” Henry agreed.
“She’s a wonder, that girl is! You could have knocked me down with a feather.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder where she bought it.”
“Must have gone up to King’s Cross. Or down to Holborn. King’s Cross more likely. Yesterday. In her dinner-hour.”
“I’m hungry,” said Violet.
And it was a fact that they had had no evening meal, seeing that they had expressly announced their intention of “eating out” on that great day.
“So must you be, my dear,” said Violet.
There they were, alone together on the ground-floor, with one electric bulb in the back room and one other, needlessly, lighting the middle part of the cleansed and pleasant shop. They could afford to be young and to live perilously, madly, absurdly. They lost control of themselves, and gloried in so doing. The cake was a danger to existence. It had the consistency of marble, the richness of molasses, the mysteriousness of the enigma of the universe. It seemed unconquerable. It seemed more fatal than daggers or gelignite. But they attacked it. Fortunately, neither of them knew the inner meaning of indigestion. When Henry had taken the last slice, Violet exclaimed like a child:
“Oh, just one tiny piece more!” And with burning eyes she bent down and bit off a morsel from the slice in Henry’s hand.
“I am living!” shouted an unheard voice in Henry’s soul.
VI
The Next Day
The next morning, before the first church-bells had begun to ring for early communion, and before the sun had decided whether or not it would shine upon Riceyman Square and Steps that day, Violet very silently came out of the bedroom and drew the door to without a sound; even the latch was not permitted to click. She was wearing her neat check frock, the frock of industry, and she carried in her hand a large blue pinafore-apron, clean and folded, and an old pair of gloves. Her hair, in a large cap, was as hidden as a nun’s. Her face had the expression, and her whole vivacious body the demeanour, of one who is dominated by a grandiose idea and utterly determined to execute it. She went upstairs, in the raw, chilly twilight, to the narrow room over the bathroom, which, in her mind, she called the kitchen, not because it was a kitchen, but because it alone in the house served the purpose of a kitchen.
Elsie, her hair still loose, was already there, boiling water on the gas-ring. The jets of blue flame helped to light the place, and also comfortably warmed it and made it cosy. Violet greeted the girl with a kindly smile, which was entirely matter-of-fact—as though this morning was a morning just like any other morning.
“Your master’s fast asleep,” she solemnly whispered; from her tone she might have been saying “our master.”
“Yes, ’m,” Elsie whispered solemnly.
And it was instantly established that the basic phenomenon of the household was their master’s heavy and sacred slumber.
“I’ll have some of that tea, too,” said Violet. “What is there for dinner?”
She had expressly refrained from showing any curiosity whatever about domestic arrangements until she should have acquired the status entitling her to take charge; no one could be more discreet, more correct, on important occasions, than Violet.
“He told me to buy this bit of mutton,” answered Elsie, indicating a scrag-end on a plate, “and then there’s them potatoes and the cheese.”
“But how shall you cook it?”
“Boil it, ’m. He never has flesh meat, not often that is, but when he does I boil it.”
“Oh, well, that will be all right. Of course I shall have to fix things up here, Elsie, and we may as well begin as we mean to go on.”
“Yes, ’m.”
“And you know my ways, don’t you? That’s fortunate.”
“Yes, ’m.”
While they were drinking the tea and eating pieces of bread, Violet nicely pretending to be Elsie’s equal in the sight of God, and Elsie gently firm in maintaining the theory of the impassableness of the social chasm which separated them, Violet said:
“I’m sure we shall understand one another, Elsie. Of course you’ve been here on and off for a long while, and you’ve got your little habits here, and quite right too, and I’ve no doubt very good habits, because I’m convinced you’re very conscientious in your work; if you hadn’t been I shouldn’t have kept you; but we’ve got to start afresh in this house, haven’t we?”
“Oh, yes, ’m!” Elsie eagerly concurred.
“Yes, and the first thing to do is to get straight and tidy. I know it’s Sunday, and I’m as much for rest and church as anybody, and I hope you’ll go to church yourself every Sunday evening regular. But tradespeople aren’t like others, and they can’t be. There’s certain things that can only be done on Sundays in a place of business—same as they have to lay railway lines on Sundays, you see. And what’s more, I’m one of those that can’t rest until what has to be done is done. They do say, the better the day the better the deed, don’t they? Now all those books lying about on the floor and so on everywhere—they’ve got to be put right.”
“Master used to say so, ’m, but somehow—”
“Yes,” Violet broke in, anticipating some implied criticism of the master. “Yes. But, of course, he simply hasn’t been able to do it. He’s been dreadfully overworked as it is. Now there’s all those books in the bathroom to begin with. I’m going to have them in the top front room, next to yours, you know. … I wish there were some spare shelves, but I suppose we must arrange the books on the floor.”
“There’s a lot of shelves slanting down the cellar steps, ’m,” said Elsie, with the joy of the bringer of glad tidings.
“Oh! I didn’t know we had a cellar.”
“Oh, yes, ’m, there’s a cellar.”
Violet enveloped herself in the pinafore-apron and put on the gloves. The bride on her honeymoon and the girl crept softly downstairs, and one by one, with miraculous success in the avoidance of any sound, the planks—they were no more than planks—were transported from the bottom of the house to the top. No uprights for the shelves could be discovered, but Violet, whose natural ingenuity had been intensified by the resistless force of her grandiose idea, improvised supports for the shelves out of a lot of shabby old volumes of The Illustrated London News. She laid a shelf on three perpendicular tomes—one at either end and one in the middle—and then three more tomes on the shelf, and then another shelf on them, and so on, till the whole of the empty wall in the front room was a bookcase ready to receive books. Violet was well pleased, and Elsie marvelled at Violet’s magical creative power.
The house was sealed up from the world. Not a door open; not a window open! Hours passed. The sun coldly shone. The faint jangle of church-bells was the only sound within the house where the two devotees laboured in a tiptoeing silence upstairs and downstairs while the master reposed unconscious. Violet filled Elsie’s stout apron with books, and, bearing a handful of books herself, followed her upstairs; the books were ranged; the devotees descended again. The work was simplified by the fact that the vacuum-cleaners had remedied the worst disorder on the previous day; they had, for example, emptied the bath of all its learning. At intervals Violet listened anxiously at the bedroom door. Once she peeped in. No sign of life. And the devotees were happy because in their rage of constructive energy they had contrived not to wake the master. The bathroom was cleared; the chief obstructions on the stairs were cleared; and there was still some space available on the improvised shelves.
“We’ll move on to that dark corner of the shop-floor by the stairs,” said Violet, triumphing more and more.
This decision meant still more stair-climbing. When Elsie, breathless, had lifted the first load out of the shop to the top-floor, Violet said thoughtfully as she emptied the apron: “I suppose your master is still asleep? Does he ring? Is there a bell?”
“Yes, there’s a bell, ’m, but it’s been out of order ever since I was here, and I don’t know where it would ring if it wasn’t out of order. He’s never slept like this before, ’m.”
Anxiety passed across their intent faces. Such sleeping was unnatural. Then they heard his footsteps on the stairs. … He had gone down into the shop, probably into his office.
“Better go and make some more tea,” said Violet gravely.
“Yes, ’m.”
The bride preceded the girl down the stairs. She felt suddenly guilty in well-doing. She wondered whether she was a ministering angel or a criminal. Henry stood in the bright, clean shop, gazing at the disturbed corner from which books had been taken.
“My dear, you’re ruining my business,” he said mildly and blandly.
“Henry!” She stopped near the foot of the stairs, as it were thunderstruck by a revelation.
“You don’t understand how much of it depends on me having lots of books lying about as if they weren’t anything at all. That’s just what book-collectors like. If everything was shipshape they wouldn’t look twice at the place. Whenever they see a pile of books in the dark they think there must be bargains.”
He did not say he was sure she meant for the best, nor praise her enterprise and energy. He merely stated baldly, simply, quietly, impartially, dispassionately a psychological fact. And he asked no questions.
“Oh, Henry! I never thought of that. I’m so sorry.”
And she for her part did not try to justify herself. In her self-confident ignorance she had sinned. His perfect tranquillity intimidated her. And he was so disturbingly sure of his position. He stood there in his neat blue Sunday suit, with the necktie hiding all the shirtfront, and the shirt-cuffs quite invisible, and his leather slippers, and his trim, greying beard and full, heavy, crimson lips, and his little eyes (rather fatigued now), and he put the plain truth before her, neither accusing nor excusing. She saw that, witless, she had been endangering the security of their joint future. She felt as though she had had the narrowest escape from actually ruining the business! In her vivacity and her proud carriage she was humbled. She came forward and took his hand.
“How cold your hand is, darling!” (She had never called the late Mr. Arb “darling.” She had called him “old josser” and things like that.)
“That’s cold water,” said he.
“You ought to have warm water to wash in.”
He laughed grimly. She knew that so long as the gas-meter clicked he would never allow her to heat water on the gas-ring for him. He bent and kissed her, and kept his mouth on hers for ages of eternity. They were happy together; they were bound to be happy together. As for her, she would be happy in yielding her will to his, in adopting all his ideas, and in being even more royalist than the king. Her glance fell. She experienced a sensuous pleasure in the passionate resolution to be his disciple and lieutenant. When Elsie, celestially benevolent, appeared with a tray on the stairs, Violet seized her husband’s arm to lead him to the back room. And as she did so she bridled and slightly swayed her body, and gave a sidelong glance at Elsie as if saying: “I am his slave, but I own him, and he belongs to no woman but me.”
“Elsie,” she said sternly. “You’d better bring that last lot of books down again. Mr. Earlforward thinks they should stay where they were.” The indisputable fiat of the sultan, published by his vizier!
“Yes, ’m.”
She sat him down in his desk-chair, and as she dispensed his tea she fluttered round him like a whole flock of doves.
“Let me see,” said he, with amiable detachment. “Did you give me the account of that one pound you had for spending yesterday?”
Outside, London was bestirring itself from the vast coma of Sunday morning. But inside the sealed house London did not exist. This was the end of the honeymoon; or, if you prefer it, their life was one long honeymoon.