Part + 

III + 

I + 

Early Morning + 

Elsie it always was who every morning breathed the breath of life into the dead nocturnal house, and revived it, and turned it once again from a dark, unresponsive, meaningless and deathlike keep into a human habitation. The dawn helped, but Elsie was the chief agent. + 

On this morning, which was a Monday, she arose much earlier than in the rest of the week, and even before the dawn. She arose with her sorrow, which left her only when she slept and which was patiently and ruthlessly waiting for her when she awoke. Few people save certain bodily sufferers and certain victims of frustration know the infernal, everlasting perseverance of which pain, physical or mental, is capable. Nevertheless, Elsie’s sorrow was lightening by hope. Nearly a year had passed since Joe’s departure, and she had invented a purely superstitious idea, almost a creed, that he would reappear on the anniversary of his vanishing. This idea was built on nothing whatever; and although it shot her sorrow through with radiance it also terrified her⁠—lest it should prove false. If it proved false her sorrow would close her in like the black grave. + 

She raised the blind of her window and dressed; she was dressed in three minutes; she propped the window open to the frosty air, lit the candle, and went downstairs to the bathroom, and as she went the house seemed to resume life under her tread. The bathroom contained nothing but Mrs. Earlforward’s safe, under the window, a clotheshorse, a clothesline or two stretched from window to door, and an orange-box and an oval galvanized iron bathtub, both of which were in the bath proper. The week’s wash lay in the orange-box and in the oval bath. It comprised no large articles⁠—no sheets, no tablecloths, only personal linen (including one grey flannel shirt of Henry’s and two collars), a few towels, aprons, cloths, and two pillow-slips. Elsie fearfully lit the ancient explosive geyser, cried “Oh!” and rushed to the window because she had omitted the precaution of opening it, put nearly all the linen into the bath, set the bath on the orange-box in the bath proper, left the bathroom, and returned to it with another “Oh!” to blow out the candle, which she had forgotten. It was twilight now. + 

In the first-floor front room, which Mrs. Earlforward called the dining room and Elsie the parlour, all objects stood plainly revealed as soon as Elsie had drawn up the two blinds. Half of the large table was piled several feet high with books, and the other half covered with a sheet of glass that was just a little small for its purpose. Elsie dusted this glass first, and she dusted it again after she had cleaned the room; not a long operation, the cleaning; she was “round” the room like an express train. When she opened one of the windows to shake her duster the sun was touching the top of the steeple of St. Andrew’s, Daphut’s yard was unlocked, and trams and lorries were in movement in King’s Cross Road. + 

A beautiful October morning, thought Elsie as she naughtily lingered for ten seconds at the window instead of getting on with her job. She enjoyed the fresh, chill air blowing through Riceyman Steps. Conscience pricked her; she shut the window. Taking crockery and cutlery from the interior of the sideboard, she rapidly laid breakfast on the glass for two. The parlour was now humanized, despite the unlit gas-fire. With a glance at the clock, which rivalled Greenwich in exactitude, but which had a mysterious and disconcerting habit of hurrying when she wanted it to loiter, Elsie hastened away back to the bathroom and gave a knock on the bedroom door as she passed. The bathroom was beautifully warm. She rolled up her tight sleeves, put on a rough apron, and pushed the oval tub under the thin trickle of steaming water that issued from the burning geyser. She was absorbed utterly in her great lifework, and in the problem of fitting the various parts of it into spaces of time which would scarcely hold them. She had the true devotee’s conviction that something very grave, something disastrously affecting the whole world, would happen if she fell short of her ideal in labour. As she bent over the linen in the tub she hummed “God Save the King” to herself. + 

In the darkened bedroom Violet leaned over from her side of the bed and placed her lips on Henry’s in a long, anxious, loving kiss, and felt the responsive upward pressure of his rich, indolent lips. They were happy together, these two, so far as the dreadful risks of human existence would allow. Never a cross word! Never a difference! + 

“How are you?” she murmured. + 

“I’m all right, Vi.” + 

“You’ve got a heavy day in front of you.” + 

“Yes. Fairly. I’m all right.” + 

“Darling, I want you to do something for me, to please me. I know you will.” + 

“I expect I shall.” + 

“I want you to eat a good breakfast before you start. I don’t like the idea of you⁠—” + 

“Oh! That!” he interrupted her negligently. “I always eat as much as I want. Nothing much the matter with me.” + 

“No. Of course there isn’t. But I don’t like⁠—” + 

“I say,” he interrupted her again. “I tore the seat of my grey trousers on Saturday. I wish you’d just mend it⁠—now. It won’t show, anyhow. You can do it in a minute or two.” + 

“You never told me.” + 

The fact was he seldom did tell her anything until he had to tell her. And his extraordinary gift for letting things slide was quite unimpaired by the influence of marriage. Her face was still close to his. + 

“You never told me,” she repeated. Then she rose and slipped an old mantle over her nightdress. + 

“Oh, Harry,” she cried, near the window, examining the trousers, “I can’t possibly mend this now. It will take me half the morning. You must put on your blue trousers.” + 

“To go to an auction? No. I can’t do that. You’ll manage it well enough.” + 

“But you’ve got seven pairs of them, and six quite new!” + 

Years ago he had bought a job lot of blue suits, which fitted him admirably, for a song. Yes, for a song! At the present rate of usage of suits some of them would go down unworn to his heirs. He had had similar luck with a parcel of flannel shirts. On the other hand, the expensiveness and the mortality of socks worried him considerably. + 

“I don’t think I’ll wear the blue,” he insisted blandly. “They’re too good, those blue ones are.” + 

“Well, I shall mend it in bed,” said Violet, brightly yielding. “There must have been a frost in the night.” + 

She got back into bed with the trousers and her stitching gear, and lit the candle which saved the fantastic cost of electric light. As soon as she had done so Mr. Earlforward arose and drew up the blind. + 

“I think you won’t want that,” said he, indicating the candle. + 

“No, I shan’t,” she agreed, and extinguished the candle. + 

“You’re a fine seamstress,” observed Mr. Earlforward with affectionate enthusiasm, “and I like to see you at it.” + 

Violet laughed, pleased and flattered. Simple souls, somehow living very near the roots of happiness⁠—though precariously! + 

II + 

After Breakfast + 

By chance Violet went down into the shop just after the first-post delivery and just before Henry came. She was always later in the shop on Monday mornings than on other mornings because on that day she prepared the breakfast herself and also attended personally to other “little matters,” as she called them. Henry had already been into the shop, for such blinds as there were had been drawn up, and he had replenished the bookstand, but too soon for the letters. She noticed the accumulation of dirt in the shop, very gradual, but resistless. Although the two women cleaned the shop, and, indeed, the whole establishment, section by section, with a most regular periodicity, they could not get over the surface fast enough to cope with the unceasing deposit of dirt. And they could not cope at all with, for instance, the grime on the ceiling; to brush the ceiling made it worse. In Henry’s eyes, however, the shop was as clean as on the wedding night, and he was as content with it as then; he deprecated his wife’s lamentations about its condition. Certainly no one could deny that it still was cleaner than before her advent, and anyhow he could never again have tolerated another vacuum-cleaning, with its absurd costliness; he knew the limits of his capacity for suffering. + 

Violet unlocked the door and let in the morn, and shivered at the tonic. This act of opening the shop-door, though having picked up the milk she at once closed the door again, seemed to mark another stage in the process which Elsie had begun more than two hours earlier; it broke the spell of night by letting in not only the morn but dailiness. She gathered the envelopes together from the floor, and noticed one with a halfpenny stamp, which she immediately opened⁠—furtively. Yes, it was the gas bill for the September quarter, the quarter which ought to be the lightest of the year. And was not! She deciphered the dread total; it affected her like an accusation of crime, like an impeachment for treason. She felt guilty, yet she had done her utmost to “keep the gas down.” What would Henry say? She dared not let him see it.⁠ ⁠… And the electricity bill to follow it in a few days!⁠ ⁠… Unquestionably Elsie was wasteful. They were all alike, servants were, and even Elsie was not an exception. + 

At that moment Henry limped down the stairs. Violet hid the bill and envelope in the pocket of her pinafore-apron. + 

“Here are the letters,” she said, seizing the little milk-can and moving forward to meet him. “Just put a match to the stove, will you? I’m late.” + 

She went on towards the stairs. + 

“We surely shan’t want the stove today,” he stopped her. “We haven’t needed it yet. It’s going to be a beautiful day.” + 

She had had the fire laid in the stove more than a week ago, perceiving, with her insight into human nature, that a fire laid is already half lighted. + 

“That’s all very well for you⁠—for you to talk like that,” she laughed, hiding her disquiet with devilish duplicity under a display of affectionate banter. “You’re going out, but I have to keep shop.” + 

He was dashed. + 

“Well, you’ll see later on. I won’t light it now, at any rate. You’ll see later on. Of course you must use your own judgment, my dear,” he added, courteously, judicial, splendidly fair. + 

“Elsie,” said Violet, peeping into the bathroom on her way upstairs. “Do you really need that geyser full on all the time?” She spoke with nervous exasperation. + 

“Well, ’m⁠—” + 

“I don’t know what your master will say when he sees the gas-bill that’s come in this very moment. I really don’t. I daren’t show it him.” She warningly produced the impeachment. + 

“Well, ’m, I must make the water hot.” + 

“Yes, I know. But please do be as careful as you can.” + 

“Well, ’m, I’ve nearly finished.” And Elsie dramatically turned off the gas-tap of the geyser. + 

The gloomy bathroom was like a tropic, and the heat very damp. Linen hung sodden and heavy along the line. The panes of the open window were obscured by steam. The walls trickled with condensed steam. And Elsie’s face and arms were like bedewed beetroot. But to Violet the excessive warmth was very pleasant. + 

“You didn’t have any tea this morning,” said she, for she had noticed that nobody had been into the kitchen before herself. + 

“No, ’m. It’s no use. If I’m to get through with my work Monday mornings I can’t waste my time getting my tea. And that’s all about it, ’m.” + 

Elsie, her brow puckered, seemed to be actually accusing her mistress of trying to tempt her from the path of virtue. The contract between employers and employed in that house had long since passed, so far as the employed was concerned, far beyond the plane of the commercial. The employers gave £20 a year; the employed gave all her existence, faculties, energy; and gave them with passion, without reserve open or secret, without reason, sublimely. + 

“It’s her affair,” muttered Violet as she mounted to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast. “It’s her affair. If she chooses to work two hours on a Monday morning on an empty stomach, I can’t help it.” And there followed a shamed little thought: “It saves the gas.” + 

When the breakfast tray was ready she slipped off her blue apron. At the bedroom door she set the tray down on the floor and went into the bedroom to put on the mantle which she had already worn that morning as a seamstress in bed. Before taking the tray again she called out to Elsie: + 

“Your breakfast’s all ready for you, Elsie.” + 

Mr. Earlforward was waiting for her at the dining room table. He wore his overcoat. In this manner, at his instigation, they proved on chilly mornings that they could ignore the outrageous exactions of coal trusts and striking colliers. + 

“What’s that?” demanded Henry with well-acted indifference as he observed an unusual object on the tray. + 

“It’s a boiled egg. It’s for you.” + 

“But I don’t want an egg. I never eat eggs.” + 

“But I want you to eat this one.” She smiled, cajolingly. + 

Useless! She was asking too much. He would not eat it. + 

“It’ll be wasted if you don’t.” + 

It might be; but he would not be the one to waste it. He calmly ate his bread and margarine, and drank his tea. + 

“I do think it’s too bad of you, Harry. You’re wasting away,” she protested in a half-broken voice, and added with still more emotion, daringly, defiantly: “And what’s the use of a husband who doesn’t eat enough, I should like to know?” + 

A fearful silence. Thunder seemed to rumble menacingly round the horizon; nature itself cowered. Henry blushed slightly, pulling at his beard. Then his voice, quiet, bland, soothing, sweet, inexorable: + 

“Up to thirty, eat as much as you can. After thirty, as much as you want. After fifty, as little as you can do with.” + 

“But you aren’t fifty!” + 

“No. But I eat as much as I want. I’m the only judge of how much I want. We’re all different. My health is quite good.” + 

“You’re thinner.” + 

“I was getting stout.” + 

“I prefer you to be a bit stout⁠—much. It’s a good sign in a man.” + 

“Question of taste,” he said with a humorous, affectionate glance at her. + 

“Oh, Harry!” she exclaimed violently. “You’re a funny man.” Then she laughed. + 

The storm had dissipated itself, save in Violet’s heart. She knew by instinct, by intuition, beyond any doubt, that Henry deprived himself in order to lessen the cost of housekeeping⁠—and this although by agreement she paid half the cost out of her separate income! The fact was, Henry was just as jealous of her income as of his own. She trembled for the future. Then for safety, for relief, she yielded to him in her heart; she trusted; her hope was in the extraordinary strength of his character. + 

Mr. Earlforward ate little, but he would seldom hurry over a meal. At breakfast he would drink several cups of tea, each succeeding one weaker and colder than the last, and would dally at some length with each. He was neither idle nor unconscientious about his work; all that could be charged against him was leisureliness and a disinclination to begin; no urgency would quicken him, because he was seriously convinced that he would get through all right; as a rule, his conviction was justified; he did get through all right, and even when he didn’t nothing grave seemed to result. He loved to pick his teeth, even after a meal which was no meal. One of the graces of the table was a little wineglass containing toothpicks; he fashioned these instruments himself out of spent matches. He would calmly and reflectively pick his teeth while trains left stations without him and bargains escaped him. Violet, actuated by both duty and desire, would sit with him at meals until he finally nerved himself to the great decision of leaving the table and passing on to the next matter; but as she never picked her teeth before her public, which was himself, she grew openly restive sometimes. Not, however, this morning. No, this morning she would not even say: “I know you’re never late, dear, but⁠—” + 

When they did arrive in the shop Elsie, having had her breakfast and changed her apron, had already formally opened the establishment and put the bookstand outside in front of the window. The bookstand, it should be mentioned, could now be moved, fully loaded, by one person with ease, for brilliant Violet had had the idea of taking the castors off the back legs of an old armchair and screwing them on to two of the legs of the bookstand, so that you had merely to raise one end of the thing and it slid about as smoothly as a perambulator. Do not despise such achievements of the human brain; such achievements constituted important events in the domestic history of the T. T. Riceyman firm; this one filled Violet with exultation, Henry with pride in his wife, and Elsie with wondering admiration; Elsie never moved the bookstand without glee in the ingenious effectiveness of the contrivance. + 

Violet, despite the chill, had removed her mantle. She could not possibly wear it in the shop, whatever the temperature, because to do so would be to admit to customers that the shop was cold. Nor would she give an order to light the stove; nor would she have the stove lighted when the master had gone forth on his ways; after the stifled scene at breakfast she must act delicately; moreover, she contemplated a further dangerous, desperate move which might be prejudiced if she availed herself of Henry’s authorization to use her own judgment in regard to the stove. So she acquired warmth by helping Elsie with the cleaning and arranging of the shop for the day. The work was done with rapidity.⁠ ⁠… Customers might now enter without shaming the management. An age had passed since Elsie, preceding the dawn, arose to turn night into day. Looking at it none could suppose that the shop had ever been sheeted and asleep, or that a little milk-can was but recently squatting at the foot of its locked door. Mysterious magic of a daily ritual, unperceived by the priest and priestesses! + 

Mr. Earlforward was writing out the tail-end of a long bill in the office. He could not use his antique typewriter for bills, because it would not tabulate satisfactorily. He wore his new eyeglasses, memorial of Violet’s sole victory over him. She had been forced to make him a present of the eyeglasses, true; but he did wear them. + 

“My dear,” he summoned her in a rather low voice, and she hastened to him, duster in hand. “Here’s this bill for Mr. Bauersch; £148 18s.” He blotted the bill with some old blotting-paper which spread more ink than it absorbed. “And here’s the stamp. I haven’t put it on in case there’s any hitch. I asked him if he’d mind paying in cash. Of course he’s a very big dealer, but you never know with these New Yorkers, and he’s sailing tomorrow, and I’ve not done any business with him before. He said he wouldn’t mind at all.” + 

“I should hope not, indeed!” said Violet, who, nevertheless, was well aware that the master had asked for cash, not from any lack of confidence in the great Bauersch, but because he had a powerful preference for cash; the sight of a cheque did not rouse Henry’s imagination. + 

“It’s all ready,” said Henry, pointing to two full packing-cases in front of his desk. + 

“But are we to nail them up, or what?” + 

“I haven’t fastened them. He might want to run through them with the bill.” + 

“Yes,” agreed Violet, who nevertheless was well aware that the master had not fastened them because he had postponed fastening them till too late. + 

“He’ll take them away in a car; probably have them re-packed with his other purchases. I hear he’s bought over twenty thousand pounds’ worth of stuff in London these last three weeks.” + 

“Oh, my!” + 

“And you can put the money in your safe till I get back.” + 

Henry stood up, took his hat from the top knob of the grandfather’s clock, and buttoned his overcoat. He was going to a book auction at Chingby’s historic salerooms in Fetter Lane. For years he had not attended auctions, for he could never leave the shop for the best part of a day; he had to be content with short visits to ragged sub-dealers in Whitechapel and Shoreditch, and with such offers of “parcels” as came to him uninvited. He always bought cheap or not at all; but he would sell cheap, with very rare exceptions. If he picked up a first edition worth a pound for two shillings he would sell it for five shillings. Thus he had acquired a valuable reputation for bargains. He was shrewd enough⁠—shrewder than most⁠—and ready to part with money in exchange for stock. Indeed, his tendency was to overstock his shop. Violet’s instinct for tidiness and order had combated this tendency, whose dangers he candidly admitted. He had applied the brake to buying. No longer was the staircase embarrassed with heroic and perfect girls in paper dust-jackets! And save in the shop and the office all floors had been cleared of books. A few hundred volumes, in calculated and admired disorder, still encumbered the ground-floor and the lower steps of the staircase, to the end explained by the master to his wife on the morrow of the honeymoon. Stock was now getting a little low, and the master went to certain sales with his wife’s full encouragement. He was an autocrat, but where is the autocrat who can escape influence? + 

“Now do take care of yourself, darling,” Violet murmured, almost in a whisper. “And if you go to that A.B.C. shop be sure to order some cold beef. What does it matter if you do miss a few lots?” + 

“I’ll see.” + 

They parted at the shop-door on a note of hard, cheerful indifference: note struck for the sake of the proprieties of a place of business⁠—and utterly false. For Henry loved his wife to worry about him, and Violet’s soul was heavy with apprehensions. She saw herself helpless in a situation growing ever more formidable. + 

III + 

International + 

Violet was attending to another customer when Mr. Bauersch came into the shop. She ignored him until she had sped the first customer, who happened also to be “in the trade.” According to Violet’s code, all customers were equal in the sight of the shopkeeper, and although the first customer was shabby and dirty, and carried for his acquisitions a black stuff sack which he slung over his shoulder, Violet would not abate one comma of her code. Nevertheless, while ignoring, she appraised Mr. Bauersch, whom on his previous visits she had only glimpsed once. She was confirmed in her original lightning impression that he bore a resemblance to Henry. He was of about the same age and build; he had the same sort of pointed beard, and the same mild demeanour; and also his suit was of the same kind and colour of cloth as Henry wore on Sundays. But what a different suit from Henry’s! It had a waist. Violet did not like that. Unaware that Mr. Bauersch clothed himself in London, she attributed the waist to the decadent eccentricity of New York. Nor did she like the excessive width of the black ribbon which held Mr. Bauersch’s pince-nez. Nor did she like the boldly exposed striped shirt⁠—(nobody except Violet and Elsie ever saw even the cuffs of Mr. Earlforward’s shirt, to say nothing of the front)⁠—nor the elegant, carefully studied projecting curve of the necktie. In short, Mr. Bauersch failed utterly to match Violet’s ideal of a man of business. + 

She turned to him at last, as he was strolling about curiously, and greeted him with the hard, falsely genial, horrible smile of the suspicious woman who is not going to be done in the eye in a commercial matter. This was not at all the agreeable Violet of the confectioner’s shop. And the reason for the transformation was that she had a husband to protect, that the prestige and big transactions of the great Bauersch made her nervous, and that Mr. Bauersch was from New York. Violet, I regret to say, had fixed and uncharitable notions about foreigners. Mr. Bauersch acknowledged her greeting with much courtesy, and with no condescension whatever. + 

“My name’s Bauersch, Mrs. Earlforward,” said he. (Why should he so certainly assume that she was Mrs. Earlforward?) + 

“Oh, yes!” she murmured, simpering. “You’ve called about the books, I suppose?” Her tone indicated that there was just a chance of his having called about the gas or the weather. + 

“Yes. Are they all ready for shipping?” (What did he mean by “shipping”? They were ready for him to take away, ready for dispatch.) + 

She nodded vaguely. + 

“Those are the cases, no doubt,” said Mr. Bauersch, pointing to the office, and walking into it without invitation. + 

“People aren’t supposed to come in here,” said Violet, smiling harshly, as she followed him. + 

He examined the packing of the cases rather negligently, and then turned to the shelves and adjusted his pince-nez. + 

“Mr. Earlforward left the bill. I don’t know whether you’d like to check the volumes.” + 

Mr. Bauersch appeared to be a man of few words. In another minute he had paid down the money in Bank Notes and Treasury Notes. Violet counted and temporarily locked the money away in a drawer of the desk. Strange that this reassuring episode did not soften her attitude! + 

“May I go and explore a little upstairs?” asked Mr. Bauersch, while she was preparing the receipt. + 

Evidently Henry, as sometimes he did to customers, had given Mr. Bauersch the freedom of the house during Violet’s absence. The house was still very full of books, and free exploration was good for trade; but Violet the house-mistress objected to free exploration. + 

“I’m afraid I can’t go up with you now,” said she. “I’m all alone in the shop.” + 

“I quite see.” Mr. Bauersch accepted the rebuff with grace, and turned back again to the shelves, and then to the mounds of books on the floor. + 

Having receipted the bill, Violet ahemmed in the direction of the absorbed Mr. Bauersch, who ignored the signal. Then two young women entered the shop, and Violet decided to punish Mr. Bauersch by attending to them. They wanted “sevenpennies.” There were no sevenpennies, and Violet spent at least five minutes with them, making a profit of one penny on the sale of a soiled copy of The Scapegoat; she displayed no impatience, and continued to chat after the deal was done and finished; she seemed to part from them with lingering pain. + 

“How much is this?” Mr. Bauersch demanded, somewhat urgently, holding out a volume; he had come into the shop. + 

The book was a copy of an eighteenth-century Dutch illustrated edition, octavo, of La Fontaine’s Tales. Violet, looking at it, inspected it. She did not know what the book was. But Henry had taught her some general principles: for instance, that any book printed before 1600 is “worth money,” that any book of verse printed before 1700 is worth money, and that most illustrated books printed before 1800 are worth money. Also she had learnt to read Roman date numerals. Indeed she had left Elsie out of sight in the race for knowledge. The price of the book was marked in cipher, inside the front-cover⁠—ten shillings. In Elsie’s viceroyalty all prices had been marked in plain figures⁠—largely for the convenience of Elsie. But under Violet plain figures were gradually being abolished; there was no need for them, and they were apt to interfere with Violet’s freedom of action in determining prices to suit the look and demeanour of customers. + 

“A pound,” she answered. + 

“Put it in, please.” Mr. Bauersch pulled out a Treasury Note. “We won’t haggle. Now I must have these cases sent down to the American Express Company’s at once, please, at once. I’ll have the books checked there. I’ve got a pile of stuff collected there, and they must leave London tonight, sure.” + 

“Mr. Earlforward told me you would take the cases away with you in your car.” + 

“Me take them away with me!⁠ ⁠… Well, in the first place, I’ve come in a taxi. And in the second place, I couldn’t put those in a car. And they won’t hold in a taxi either. I’ll be glad if you’ll send them down.” + 

“I’m very sorry, but I don’t see how I can send them. I haven’t anybody here, as I’ve told you.” She was unhelpful, adamantine. + 

“Mr. Earlforward isn’t in?” Mr. Bauersch’s tone had begun to roughen in impatience. + 

“Oh no!” She swept aside such an absurd impossibility. “But I’m sure he understood you were taking them away.” (She perceived, however, that Henry had involved her in this difficulty in order to escape the cost of delivery.) + 

“Do you know where he is?” + 

“I couldn’t say exactly; he might be at a sale at Chingby’s.” + 

“Well, will you mind telephoning to him and saying⁠—” + 

“We don’t have the telephone here,” she replied, with cold triumph, remembering Henry’s phrase, “those New Yorkers.” + 

“Well, can you send to a garage and get a van or something for me?” + 

“I couldn’t unless I went myself.” + 

“Well, where is the nearest garage?” + 

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.” + 

Using words in a sense in which Violet had never heard them used, Mr. Bauersch dashed out of the shop to speak to his taxi-driver. He returned in ten minutes. In the meantime Violet had hammered the lids on the two cases. In possession of both the money and the books she had maintained all her tranquillity. Mr. Bauersch had come back with a Ford van in addition to his taxi. He led the driver of the taxi and the driver of the van into the office, and instructed them to remove the cases. + 

“The receipt, if you please,” he said dryly to Violet, who handed him the receipt, but showed none of the clemency due from a conqueror to the defeated. + 

Mr. Bauersch moralized (to himself) about English methods. + 

“Why do they hate the sight of a customer?” he asked himself, puzzled. “I’ll never come into this damned store again!” he said to himself. + 

But he well knew that on his next visit he would come into the damned shop again, because the shop had the goods he wanted, and didn’t care whether he bought them or not. If he could have ruined the shop by never coming into it again he would perhaps have ruined the shop. But it was the shop’s cursed indifference that spiritually beat him and ensured the triumph of the astonishing system. + 

IV + 

Afternoon + 

When Henry came home, limping, taciturn and absorbed, in the afternoon, Violet examined him carefully with her glance, and, asking no questions, gave him the written list of the day’s transactions, which he always wanted, and which today was quite a good one. He, on his part, asked no questions either⁠—he said not an inquiring word even about the visit of Mr. Bauersch; the name and the sum noted on the list sufficed his curiosity for the moment. (Out of compassion for his fatigue, Violet said not a word about his trickery in the matter of the removal of Mr. Bauersch’s books.) After a sale he would sit down to his desk and study the catalogue marked with his purchases, and he would transfer the details into a special book; he must do this before anything else. Violet went upstairs, leaving him alone in the office to guard the shop. + 

She went upstairs to the kitchen and to her conspiracies and to the secret half of her double life which had recently commenced. Although apparently she had accomplished little in the way of modifying the daily routine of the establishment and household, that little amounted spiritually to a great deal. And it had been done almost without increased expense⁠—save for gas. Her achievement generally was symbolized and figured in the abolition of the thermos flask from which Henry was used to take his tea, made many hours earlier when the gas was “going.” The abolition of the thermos flask had been an event in the domestic annals. (Henry afterwards sold the contrivance for half a crown.) Violet would have tea set on the table in the dining room; she would have fresh tea; she refused to drink thermos-preserved tea; she would have plates and bread and margarine on the table. And, considering that tea⁠—now served immediately on the closing of the shop⁠—was the last meal or snack of the day in that abode, none could fairly accuse her of innovating in an extravagant manner. Still, the disappearance of the thermos flask was regarded by everybody in the house as the crown of a sort of revolution. Such was the force of the individuality of Mr. Earlforward, who had scarcely complained, scarcely argued, scarcely protested! He had opposed simply his quiet blandness and had yielded⁠—and the revolutionary yet marvelled at her own courage and her success, and had a sensation akin to being out of breath. + 

She had never been able to reorganize the kitchen department fundamentally; the problem of doing so was insoluble. In the young days of the house what was now the office had been a parlour-kitchen-scullery. The site of a little range was still distinguishable in it. Henry’s bachelor uncle had transferred the kitchen to the top floor; it could not possibly be brought down again; there was no other room capable of serving as a kitchen. But Violet had humanized the long, narrow cubicle a little by means of polished utensils and white wood, and she had hung a tiny wire-cage larder outside the window, where it was the exasperation of foiled cats. The gas-ring remained, solitary cooker. She had not dared to suggest a small gas-stove or even an oil-stove, and two mere rings would not, in her opinion, have been much better than one. There were things she could dare and things she could not dare. For another example, she could not dare to bring in a plumber to cure the water-tap, which still ceaselessly dripped on to the sink. But the kitchen, with all its defects, had one great quality⁠—it was gratefully warm in the cold months. Violet came into it again now, after hours in the haunting chill of the shop, with a feeling of deep physical relief. Elsie stood warm and supine, her back to the window. The two women filled the room. Violet had gradually come to find pleasure, chiefly no doubt unconsciousness, in Elsie’s mere presence and nearness. Elsie was so young, so massive, so mild, so honest, so calm. She might be somewhat untidy in her methods and forgetful, but Violet was extremely well content with her. And Elsie, though she liked Violet less, liked her. They mutually suspected one another of occasional insincerity and ruse, and for Elsie’s taste Violet was a bit over-sugary when she had an end to gain; but, then, common self-devotion to the welfare of Henry drew them together quite as fast as suspicions pushed them apart. + 

“Is that all right?” Violet asked, pointing to a bright contraption perched on the gas-ring and emitting the first hints of a lovely odour. + 

This contraption, new in Elsie’s experience, and doubtfully regarded by her, was an important item in the double life of Violet, who had bought it exclusively with her own money, and, far from letting it appear in the household accounts which Henry expected from her as a matter of course, had not even mentioned it to him. Henry seldom or never entered the kitchen nowadays, being somehow aware that women did not welcome men in kitchens. + 

“Oh, yes, ’m,” Elsie cheerfully and benevolently answered. She had not quite seen the point of the contraption. She knew that it was divided into two compartments, one above another, but why it should be so divided she had not fully understood, despite explanations administered to her. + 

Violet thought: + 

“How nice this is! How warm! What a comfort Elsie is! What a dear Henry is! And I shall have my way with him tonight, and having my way with him will make us both happier. And we’re very happy, I’m sure; much happier than most people; and everything’s so secure; and we’ve got plenty to fall back on. And how lovely and warm it is in here. And what a lovely smell.⁠ ⁠… I hope he won’t smell it till I’m ready for him.” She looked to see that the door was shut and the window a little open. + 

Thus did Violet’s thoughts run. And then she noticed, by chance as it seemed, a particle of something or other detach itself from the lower rim of the contraption and fall on the wooden shelf on which the gas-ring stood. Then another particle; then another. She was spellbound for a moment. + 

“Elsie!” she cried, aghast, desperate, and whipped the contraption off the ring. + 

“What, ’m?” + 

“You’ve not put any water in the bottom part and the solder’s melted. You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined it! How any girl can be so stupid, so stupid⁠—after all the trouble I took to tell you⁠—I cannot imagine. No, I cannot!” + 

And she could not. She knew that Elsie was stupid. In two days Violet had learnt more about the contents of the shop than Elsie had ever learnt or ever could learn. She knew that Elsie was conservative, set hard in her ways, and opposed to new knowledge. But she had not guessed that even Elsie could be so stupid as to leave the lower compartment of the contraption without water and then stick it on a lighted gas-ring! The phenomenon passed her comprehension. + 

“Stand away, do!” she exclaimed, as Elsie, puckered and gloomy, approached the region of disaster. “I shall have to have it repaired. And I can’t cook this now as I wanted to. And I shall have to begin it all over again. And your master comes home tired out and this is all you can manage to do!” + 

Elsie, though severely conscience-stricken, was confirmed in her opinion that these newfangled dodges were worthless⁠—you never knew where you were with them. + 

“I should like to pay for the repairing, ’m,” she at last broke the silence. + 

“Yes! And I should think you would like to pay for the repairing, my girl! You shall pay for it, whether you like or not! But what would your master say to such careless waste if he knew?” And Violet proceeded with the heartbreaking work of salvage. + 

“Now pass me that saucer, do!” + 

Elsie passed the saucer. Violet stared at the saucer, withheld from taking it by a sudden thought. + 

“What did you do with that egg?” + 

“What egg, ’m?” + 

“You know what egg. The egg your master couldn’t eat this morning at breakfast. I put it in that saucer, I’m sure I did.” + 

Violet gazed formidably at Elsie. Elsie’s eyes dropped and her lips fell and she crimsoned. + 

“Have you put it in the cage?” No answer. “You don’t mean to tell me you’ve eaten it!” + 

“Well, ’m. There it was all the time. And I felt so sinking like this afternoon. And I don’t know what I was thinking of⁠—” + 

“Elsie, your master always did say you were greedy! And I suppose you’ll say I starve you. I suppose you’ll say I don’t give you enough to eat.” + 

Violet burst into tears, to her own surprise and shame. Of late she had been less gay, less vivacious and more nervous than at the beginning of the year. She had not wanted the egg for her own need. But she had wanted to eat it, warmed up afresh, so as to keep Henry company while he ate the dish which Elsie’s negligence had so nearly spoilt. And now Elsie had gluttonously swallowed the egg. Nobody could make out these servants. They might be very faithful and all that, but there was always something⁠—always something. Yes, she cried openly! She was bowed down. And Elsie, seeing the proud, commanding spirit bowed down, melted and joined her in tears. And they were very close together in the narrow, warm cubicle and in the tragedy; and the contrast between the wrinkled, slim, mature woman and the sturdy, powerful ingenuous young widowed girl was strangely touching to both of them. And twilight was falling, and the gas-ring growing brighter. + 

And Elsie was thinking neither of the ruined contraption nor of the egg. She was most illogically crying because of her everlasting sorrow, and because, with constant folding and unfolding, Joe’s letter, which she read every night, had begun to tear at the creases. Her greed, and the accident due to her carelessness, and Mrs. Earlforward’s breakdown had mystically reinforced her everlasting sorrow and eclipsed her silly, fond hope that on the approaching anniversary of his disappearance Joe would reappear. + 

V + 

Tea + 

Tea was late; it was indeed very late⁠—for tea. But Mr. Earlforward, down in the office, gave no sign of hunger, or even of impatience. He had to be called to the meal, and he responded without any alacrity. Husband and wife, he in his overcoat and she in her mantle, took their places at the glass-covered table in the fireless room; and the teapot was there and the bread-and-margarine was there, and everything seemed as usual, save in one point⁠—a knife and fork had been set for Mr. Earlforward and another for Violet. As a fact, the appearance of such cutlery on the tea-table was the most extraordinary phenomenon in the history of the Earlforward marriage. Violet recognized this; and beneath a superficial, cheerful calm she was indeed very nervous and very excited. Moreover, she had suffered nerve-racking ordeals from breakfast onwards. Therefore she watched anxiously for Henry’s reactions to the cutlery. But she could perceive no reactions, unless his somewhat exaggerated scrutiny of the high piles of books occupying the unglazed half of the dining-table might be interpreted as a reaction. + 

The blinds were drawn, the curtains were drawn; electric current was burning, if not the gas-fire; despite the blackness of the hearth the room had an air, or half an air, of domestic cosiness. Violet poured out the tea, an operation simplified by the total absence of sugar. + 

“Come, come!” Violet murmured as if to herself, fretfully, and Henry glanced at her. Then Elsie entered. + 

“Come along, Elsie! Come along!” said Violet. “What have you been doing?” + 

She made this remark partly to prove to Mr. Earlforward that if he imagined she cared twopence for him, or that she feared for the unusualness of the plate covered by another plate which Elsie carried, or that she was not perfectly mistress of herself⁠—if he imagined any of these things he was mistaken. + 

But Violet, expecting to startle Henry, was herself considerably startled. Elsie was wearing a cap. Now Elsie never wore a cap. And the sight of her in a cap was just as gravely disturbing as the impossible, incredible sight of a servant without a cap would be in the more western parts of London. In a word, it shocked. Violet could make nothing out of it at all. Where had the girl obtained the cap? And why in the name of sense had she chosen this day of all days, this evening when the felicity of domestic life was balanced perilously on a knife-edge, to publish the cap? Violet knew not that Elsie had bought the cap before the marriage, but had lacked the audacity to put it on. And Violet knew not that Elsie was now wearing it as a sort of sign of repentance for sin, and in order to give solemnity and importance to the excessively unusual tea. Elsie undoubtedly had the dramatic instinct, but the present manifestation of it was ill-timed. + 

“Put it here! Put it here!” said Violet, indicating the space between her own knife and fork, and stopping Elsie with a jerk in her progress towards the master of the house. + 

When Elsie had gone Violet displayed the contents of the under-plate, and showed that noses had not been wrong in assuming them to be a beefsteak; the steak was stewed; it was very attractive, seductive, full of sound nourishment; one would have deemed it irresistible. Violet rose and deposited the plate in front of Henry, who said nothing. She then bent over him, and with his knife and fork cut off a little corner from the meat. + 

“You’re going to give this bit to your little wife,” she whispered endearingly, and kissed him, and sat down again with the bit, which she at once began to eat. “It’s very tender,” said she, pretending that the steak was a quite commonplace matter, that it was not unique, breathtaking, in the annals of teatime in Riceyman Steps. + 

“I don’t think I can eat any,” said Henry amiably. + 

“To please me,” Violet cajoled again, as at breakfast, changing her voice with all the considerable sexual charm at her disposition. + 

“I’m really not hungry,” said Henry. + 

“I shan’t finish mine till you begin yours.” Her voice was now changing. + 

She waited for him to begin. He did not begin. The point with Henry was, not that he disliked the steak, but that for reasons of domestic policy he was absolutely determined not to eat it. Meat for tea! What an insane notion! The woman was getting ideas into her head! He saw in the steak the thin edge of a wedge. He felt that the time was crucial. He had been married for little less than a year, and he knew women. Placidly he continued with his bread-and-margarine. + 

“Henry!” she admonished him. + 

“I’ve got indigestion already,” said he. + 

Strange that such a simple remark should have achieved the crisis; but it did. + 

“Yes. That’s right!” Violet exclaimed sharply, in rasping tones. “That’s right! Tell me you’ve got indigestion. You never have indigestion. You never have had indigestion. And you know perfectly well it’s only an excuse. And you think any excuse is good enough for your wife. She’s only a blind fool. Believe anything, your wife will⁠—if you say it! God Almighty to your wife, aren’t you!” + 

Just as the voyager at sea, after delighting in an utterly clear, soft sky and going below, may come on deck again to find the whole firmament from rim to rim hidden by dark, menacing clouds created inexplicably out of nothing, so did Henry find the sky of his marital existence terribly transformed in an instant. All had been well; all was ill. The bread-and-margarine stuck in his throat. Violet’s features were completely altered as she gazed glassily at her plate. Henry saw in them the face of the unreasonable schoolgirl that Violet long ago must have been. He understood for the first time that her vivacity and energy had another and a sinister side. He felt himself to be amid formidable dangers; he was a very courageous man, and like nearly all courageous men in danger he was frightened. + 

“A nice way I’m treated!” Violet continued grimly. “All I think of is you. All I want is your happiness, and look at me! I’m always snubbed, always! So long as you do everything you want, and I do everything you want, it’s all right. But if I suggest anything⁠—look at you! I have to have my meals in my mantle because you grudge me a bit of fire! It isn’t as if I didn’t pay my share of everything. I pay my share right enough, and more⁠—you see to that, trust you! But I have to catch my death of cold every day, because we’re so poor, I suppose! Oh, yes! We haven’t a penny in the world to bless ourselves with!” + 

Henry felt in his pockets, and then left the room in silence. Alone, Violet busily fed her angry resentment. She was in a rage, and knew she was in a rage, and her rage was dear to her. She cared for nothing but her rage, and she was ready to pay for it with all her possible future happiness and the future happiness of her husband. Henry returned with a matchbox and lit the gas-fire. + 

Still no word. No sound but the plop of igniting gas. Violet sprang up in fury, rushed to the stove and extinguished it with a vehement, vicious gesture. + 

“No! I couldn’t have it before, and I won’t have it now!” She pulled off her mantle and threw it to the floor. “If I’m to be cold I’ll be cold. Here I’ve been in the shop all day, shivering. Why? How many wives would do it? There isn’t another in this dreadful Clerkenwell that you’re so fond of, I swear! You’re the stingiest man in London, and don’t you make any mistake. You think I can’t see through you and your excuses! Ha!” She began to walk up and down the room now. “I’m a slave, same as Elsie is a slave. More than Elsie. She does get an afternoon off. But me? When? Night and day! Night and day! Love? A lot you know about it! Cold by day and cold by night! And so now you know! I’ve often wanted to tell you, but I wouldn’t, because I thought it was my duty to struggle on. Besides, I didn’t want to upset you. Well, now I do want to upset you!⁠ ⁠… And why wouldn’t you eat the steak? I’ll tell you. Because I asked you to eat it.” + 

“You know that’s rather unfair,” Henry muttered. + 

“ ‘Unfair,’ is it? ‘Unfair’? A nice word for you to use. So I know it’s unfair, do I? I’m being ‘unfair,’ am I?” She looked straight at him. Her eyes blazed at him, and she added solemnly: “Henry, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, the way you go on. What do you think Elsie thinks? The marvel is that she stays here. Supposing she left us and started to talk! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” + 

She dropped back into her chair and sobbed loudly. If Elsie heard her, what matter? In her rage she had put facts into words, and thereby given them life, devastating life. In two minutes she had transformed the domestic interior from heaven into hell. She had done something which could never be undone. Words had created that which no words could destroy. And he had driven her to it. She gazed at him once more, across the ruins of their primitive and austere bliss. + 

“You’re shortening your life. That’s what you’re doing,” she said, with chill ferocity. “Not to speak of mine. What’s mine? What did you have for your dinner out today? You daren’t tell me because you starved yourself. I defy you to tell me.” + 

She laid her head on the table just like a schoolgirl abandoning herself utterly to some girlish grief, and went on crying, but not angrily and rebelliously now⁠—mournfully, self-pityingly, tragically. And then she sat up straight again, with suddenness, and shot new fire from her wet eyes at the tyrannic monster. + 

“Yes, and you needn’t think I’ve been spending money on servant’s caps, either! Because I haven’t. I know no more about that cap of Elsie’s than you do. God alone knows where she’s got it from, and why she’s wearing it. But I give servants up.” (Here Henry had an absurd wild glimmer of hope that she meant to give Elsie up, do without a servant, and so save wages and food. But he saw the next instant that he had misunderstood her words.) “They’re past me, servants are! Only, of course, you think it’s me been buying caps for the girl!” + 

This was the last flaring of her furious resentment. Instead of replying to it, Henry softly left the room. Violet’s sobs died down, and her compassion for herself grew silent, since there was no longer need for its expression. She tried hard to concentrate on the hardships of her lot, but she could not. Another idea insisted on occupying her mind, and compared to this idea the hardships of her lot were trifles. + 

“I’ve lost my power over him.” + 

If he had only responded to her cajolings, and recognized in some formal way her power! If he had only caressed her and pleaded with her not to exercise her power too drastically upon him. If he had only said: “Vi, let me off. I’ll eat just a little bit to please you, but I really can’t eat it all. You know you can do what you like with me, but let me off!” That would have been marvellous, delicious, entirely satisfactory. But she had lost her power. And yet, while mourning that she had lost her power, she knew very well that she had never had any power. He was in love with her, but he was more in love with his grand passion and vice, which alone had power over him, and of which he, the bland tyrant over all else, was the slave. She had pretended to herself that she had power, and she had been able to maintain the pretence because she had never till that day attempted to put her imagined power really to the test. Twice now she had essayed it, and twice failed. Fool! She was a fool! She had irreparably damaged her prestige. She had but one refuge, the refuge of yielding. “I must yield! I must yield!” she thought passionately. And the voluptuous pleasure of yielding presented itself to her temptingly.⁠ ⁠… She must submit. She must cling still closer to him, echo faithfully his individuality, lose herself in him. There was nothing else. + 

Elsie entered to clear the table. Violet jumped up, seized the discarded mantle, and put it on. She was not young enough⁠—that is to say, her body was not young enough⁠—to scorn the inclement evening cold of the room. Averting her face from the cap-wearer, she departed. But at the door another idea occurred to her. + 

“Elsie,” she said. “I must leave you to see to everything tonight. I’m going to lie down.” She spoke in a hard, dry voice, without turning her face towards Elsie. And in a few minutes she was getting into the sheetless and empty bed in the dark bedroom. She must yield! She must yield! + 

Elsie had had the experience of her own brief marriage, and had seen a very great deal of other people’s. Mrs. Earlforward’s efforts to deceive her were a complete failure. She knew at once, on entering the dining room, that there must have been trouble. Mr. Earlforward’s visit to the office during tea was unusual. Then there was the singular spectacle of Mrs. Earlforward putting on her mantle at the end of the meal. Why had she taken it off? The only explanation that Elsie could think of was that Mrs. Earlforward had taken off the mantle in order to have a dustup with Mr. Earlforward. That was the natural explanation, but Elsie was sure that it could not be the true one. Then there was the appearance of Mrs. Earlforward’s features, and the fact that in speaking to Elsie she departed from her habit of looking Elsie straight in the face. And further, there was the uneaten steak on Mr. Earlforward’s plate, and the fragment of it on Mrs. Earlforward’s plate. And further, there was the very disconcerting retirement to bed of Mrs. Earlforward. Elsie could not conceive what the trouble had been about. But she managed to think that both the antagonists were in the right, and to feel sorry for both of them⁠—and so much so that her eyes filled with tears. + 

When she reached her kitchen with the remains of tea, the steak was to her a sacrosanct object. Even the fragment of it was a sacrosanct object; she put the fragment with her fingers on the same plate as the steak, and then she licked her fingers⁠—not a very wise action⁠—and proceeded to wash up. She was still full of remorse for the theft⁠—yes, it was a theft!⁠—of the egg. That incident was to be a lesson to her; it was to teach her the lamentable weakness of her character. Never again would she fall into sin. Absurd to fancy that she did not have enough to eat at Riceyman Steps, and that she was continually hungry! She had more to eat, and more regularly, than many persons in her experience. Appetite was a sign of good health, and she ought to be thankful for good health; good health was a blessing. She ought not to be greedy, and above all she ought not to seek to excuse her greed by false excuses about appetite and lack of food. She continued calmly with her washing-up. + 

The steak, during its cooking, had caused her a lot of inconvenience; the smell of it had awakened desires which she had had difficulty in withstanding; it had made her mouth water abundantly; and she had been very thankful to get the steak safely into the dining room without any accident happening to it. But now the steak did not challenge her weakness. Resolution had triumphed over the steak. Her too active and ingenious mind became, however, entangled in the conception of the tiny fragment lying by the steak itself. She examined the fragment. A mouthful; no more! In the morning it would be dried up and shrunk to nothing. It would be wasted. She picked up the fragment out of curiosity, just to see exactly what it was like, and in an instant the fragment had vanished. The fragment did not seem to go into her stomach; it subdivided itself into a thousand parts, which ran through all her veins like fire, more potent than brandy, more dreadfully inspiring than champagne. + 

From this moment the steak was turned into a basilisk, with a devilish, sinister fascination for her. She ceased to wash up. She was saddened by the domestic infelicity of her employers; she was cast down and needed a tonic. She felt that without some pick-me-up she could not bear the vast grief of the world. She went through the agonies of the resisting drunkard dragged by ruthless craving nearer and nearer to the edge of the fatal precipice. Would her employers themselves eat the steak on the morrow? Very probably not. Very probably Mrs. Earlforward on the morrow would authorize her, Elsie, to eat the steak. If she might eat it tomorrow she might eat it tonight. What difference to her employers whether she ate it tomorrow or tonight? Moreover, if Mrs. Earlforward had not been upset she would quite possibly have given Elsie express permission to eat the steak. Elsie began to feel her self-respect slipping away, her honour slipping away, all right-mindedness slipping away, under the basilisk’s stare of the steak. A few minutes later she knocked at the bedroom door, and, receiving no answer, went in. The room was dark, but she could distinguish the form of Mrs. Earlforward in the bed. + 

“What is it? What is it?” demanded a weak, querulous, mournful voice. + 

Mrs. Earlforward vaguely extended her hand, and it touched something which for several seconds she could not identify. It touched Elsie’s cap. Elsie had sunk to her knees by the bedside. She burst into weeping. + 

“Oh, ’m!” sobbed Elsie. “Oh, ’m! I’ve gone and eaten the steak. I don’t know what made me do it, ’m, but I’ve eaten the steak and I run straight in to tell you, ’m.” + 

VI + 

Evening + 

Violet laughed in the dark: an unusual laugh, not vivacious nor hearty, but a laugh. + 

“I’m glad, Elsie,” she said, withdrawing her hand as though Elsie’s cap had been red-hot. + 

Elsie, dismissed, felt relieved, but at the same time she was disappointed of her rich, tearful penitence, and she went away with the sensation that the world was an incomprehensible and arid place. Violet got out of bed and turned on the light, and the light somehow cured her perspective of a strange distortion. What! Make a tragedy because a man preferred not to eat a bit of steak for his tea! Absurd! Childish! Surely he had the right to refuse steak without being insulted, without being threatened with the destruction of his happiness! It was not as if he had forbidden his wife to eat steak. Thus did Violet try to nullify to herself the effect of her wild words in the dining room and to create that which they had destroyed. Fortunately, Henry did not know that she had retired to bed, and so she could rise again without loss of dignity. She was very courageous at first, but when she had finished dressing, and was ready to go downstairs and face Henry once more, she was no better than a timorous young thing, defenceless and trembling. + 

As for Henry, he was working, and really working, in his office; but, as he worked, the idea pervading his mind was that he had had a serious shock. He had won; but had he won? He had deemed himself to be secure on the throne, and the throne was shaking, toppling. He had miscalculated Violet and underestimated the possibilities of the married state. He saw, for the first time clearly, that certain conjugal problems are not to be solved by reason, and that if he wished to survive the storms of a woman’s temperament he must be a traitor to reason and intellectual uprightness. In brief, the game must obviously be catch-as-catch-can. Ah! He was deceived in Violet. Because she would not pay more than sixpence for a needed book, and because she had surpassed himself in sweating a charwoman, he had been fool enough to believe that she was worthy to be his partner in the grand passion of his life. Well, he was wrong. He must count her in future as the enemy of his passion, and plot accordingly. + 

Then at length the weak creature, the broken reed upon which he had depended, reappeared in the doorway of his office, and she was not wearing her mantle. Henry had in that moment a magnificent inspiration. He limped from his chair at the desk and put a match to the fire, which was laid⁠—which had been laid for many months. The fuel seemed anxious to oblige, and flared up eagerly. Violet was touched by the attention, whose spirit she comprehended and welcomed. All warm and melting from the bed and her tears, she let him masterfully take her in his clasp. And he felt her acquiescence, and the moment was the most exquisite of his whole life. Her frailty, her weakness, merely adorned and enhanced her⁠—were precious, were the finest part of her charm. Reason was not. But whether he had won, or she, he could not decide; he could only hope for the best. Not a word said! They held each other near the warmth of the mounting fire in the office, with the dark shop stretching behind for a background. And Violet remembered how once she had jauntily told herself that at any rate she possessed one advantage over him⁠—her long experience of marriage against his inexperience⁠—and she saw that the advantage was quite illusory, and she was humbled, deliciously rueful! He said: + 

“I think you’ve got the key of my desk, haven’t you?” + 

She nodded, gave a precarious smile, and ardently produced the key. The next moment he had taken the day’s receipts, save Mr. Bauersch’s money, from the tin box which was their appointed place in the top middle drawer, and husband and wife counted them together, checking one another, and checking the total with the written list of sales already delivered to Henry by Violet. + 

“Correct,” said he, and was about to open his safe, when he stopped and added: + 

“Better get that Bauersch money first. I suppose you put it in your safe?” + 

“Yes. I’ll run up for it.” As instructed, she had transferred the important sum for safety during the day from the drawer to her own safe. + 

“I’ll go with you,” said he, as if anxious not to deprive himself of her society even for one minute. As they were entering the bathroom he saw Elsie in the obscurity of the upper stairs. + 

“Elsie,” he called, “run out and buy me the Evening Standard, will you? You’ll get it opposite the Rowton House, you know. Here’s a penny.” His tone was carefully matter-of-fact. Both women were astounded; they were almost frightened. Violet had never known him to buy a paper, and Elsie scarcely ever. Violet was grateful for this proof that when the greatness of the occasion demanded it he was capable of sublime extravagance. First the fire! Now the paper! It was not credible. + 

In the bathroom, where nobody ever had a bath, but of which the bath was at any rate empty of books and very clean, Henry bent his head to avoid the clotheslines, and Violet kneeled down and unlocked her safe. It was like a little picnic, a little pleasure excursion. It was the first time Henry had been present at the opening of Violet’s battered old safe. She swung the steel door; the shadow of her head remained stationary, though the door swung, and fell across the pale interior of the safe in a shape as distorted as Violet’s perspective had been half an hour earlier. A fair pile of securities tied up with white tape lay in the embrasure above the twin drawers. Violet drew forth the right-hand drawer; there was nothing in it but Mr. Bauersch’s money⁠—ten-pound notes, five-pound notes, one-pound Treasury notes, all new and lovely, with a soiled ten-shilling Treasury note, and some silver wrapped in a bit of brown paper. Violet placed the entire mass on the top of the safe, and Henry, settling his spectacles more firmly on his nose, began to count slowly, accurately, passionately. Violet watched him. + 

“Why!” he exclaimed with a contented smile, after two countings, “he’s given you a pound too much. The banknotes are all right, but there’s nine pound notes instead of eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Only ought to be eight. One hundred and forty-eight pounds, eighteen shillings, it ought to be all together.” + 

“Well, that’s funny, that is,” said Violet. “I made sure I counted them right. Oh, I know! There was another pound for a French book I sold him. I forgot to enter it in the list. It was marked ten shillings, but I asked him a pound and he took it.” + 

“Oh!” murmured Henry, disillusioned. + 

“Yes.” + 

“And he took it at a pound, did he? Well, then, you made ten shillings for yourself that time, Vi.” And he gave her the ten-shilling note, a glint of humour in his voice and glance. + 

Princely munificence! She was deliciously dumbfounded. She had misjudged him. Heaven was established again in the sealed home. She thanked him with a squeeze of the arm, and then put the note in the left-hand drawer of the safe, where were a lot of other notes. + 

“So that’s your standby, in case?” said Henry. + 

“That’s my standby, in case,” said Violet, pleased by the proud approval in his voice, and she snapped-to the drawer and the brass handle rattled against the front of it. + 

“And I suppose those are your securities?” + 

“Like to look at them, darling?” She was still warm and melting. + 

He nodded. He undid the binding tape and examined the securities one by one, unfolding them, reading, scrutinizing, with respect⁠—with immense respect. In each instance her surname had been altered from Arb to Earlforward in an official hand and initialled. She gazed up into his face like a satisfied child who has earned good marks. + 

“Well,” he murmured at last, re-tying the tape. “For gilt-edged, fixed-interest-bearing securities.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He nodded several times, almost ecstatic. Yes, he was as proud of her possessions as of herself. Violet was exceedingly happy. He then examined the few oddments in the safe, such as certain receipts, some coupons, the marriage-certificate, the birth-certificate. He smiled benignantly as in a sort of triumph she locked the safe. He was a wonderful husband. No covetousness, no jealousy in his little eye. They departed from the bathroom, leaving the magical income-producing apparatus inviolate in the eternal night of its tomb. + 

When they had felt their way downstairs again Violet exclaimed, happy and careless: + 

“I wonder what’s happened to Elsie all this time?” Few things could have worried her then. + 

Mr. Earlforward, having lighted the office, limped through the gloom of the unlit shop to the entrance-door. + 

“Tut, tut!” His tongue clicked against the back of his teeth. “She’s left this door unlocked. She knew perfectly well she ought to have taken the key with her. Leaving the door unfastened like that! One of these nights we shall be let in for it.” He locked the door sharply. + 

“Oh, Henry!” Violet laughed easily; but a minute later she exclaimed again, with the faintest trace of apprehension in her voice: “I wonder what has happened to that girl?” + 

Husband and wife could “settle to nothing” until Elsie came back. The marvel of Henry sending for a paper at all returned upon Violet, and she began to imagine that he had some very special purpose in doing so. She felt the first subtle encroachments of the fear without a name. + 

“Well!” she burst out later, and went to the door and opened it, and looked forth into King’s Cross Road. No Elsie. She came in again and secured the door, and entered the office humming. Henry stood with his back to the fine fire, luxuriating grandly in its heat and in his own splendid extravagance. His glance at Violet seemed to say: + 

“See how I prove that I can refuse you nothing! See what follies I will perpetrate to please you!” + 

Then the shop-door shook, and the next instant there was a respectful tap-tap on it. Violet ran like a girl. + 

“Elsie, you know perfectly well you ought to have taken the key with you.” + 

Elsie apologized. She was out of breath. + 

“You’ve been a long time, Elsie. We couldn’t think what had happened to you!” added Violet, locking the door finally for the night. + 

“I couldn’t get no paper, ’m,” Elsie explained. “I had to go down nearly to the Viaduct before I could get one. And now it isn’t the Evening Standard⁠—it’s the Star. They were all sold out, ’m.” + 

She advanced towards the office, and in her deferential hands the white newspaper became the document of some mysterious and solemn message to the waiting master. Her demeanour, indeed, showed that she knew it to be such. She had not been reading the paper⁠—that, somehow, for her, would have been to pry⁠—but as she passed under the sole gas-lamp of Riceyman Steps she had by accident noticed one word on the Star’s front page. That word was “Clerkenwell.” Something terrible had been occurring in Clerkenwell. Mr. Earlforward, whose habits she knew well, must have seen a reference to Clerkenwell on the Evening Standard’s poster on his way home, and after careful reflection he had decided to buy a copy of the paper. + 

“Wait a moment! Wait a moment!” said Mr. Earlforward to Elsie as she turned to leave the office. Elsie stood still. Violet sat on the chair behind the desk. Mr. Earlforward maintained his position by the fire, and created expectancy. + 

“ ‘Further slump in the franc,’ ” he read, his eye negligently wandering over the paper. + 

Elsie had not the least idea what this meant or signified. Violet was by no means sure of its import, but she knew positively that it was bad news for decent investing persons. + 

“ ‘Belgian franc falls in sympathy.’ ” + 

Happily Elsie did not even know what a franc was; but whatever a franc might be she vaguely wondered in the almost primeval night of her brain how its performances could be actuated by such a feeling as sympathy. For Violet the financial situation grew still gloomier. + 

“ ‘Over a million doomed to starvation in the Volga region.’ That’s communism, I’d like you to know; that’s the result of communism, that is,” observed Mr. Earlforward, looking over his glasses and including both women in an equal glance. “That’s what communism leads to. And what it must lead to wherever it’s tried.” + 

He had suddenly become an oracle. The women were impressed. They felt as if they had been doing something wrong, perhaps defending communism or trying to practise it. Elsie could not believe that he had bought the paper in order to obtain the latest results of communism. She waited for the word “Clerkenwell,” but Mr. Earlforward was never in a hurry and could not be hurried. As usual he was postponing. + 

“ ‘Fatal Affray in a Clerkenwell Communist Club,’ ” he announced at length. “Ah! So that’s it⁠ ⁠… Great Warner Street. Just across the road from here. Not five minutes away. ‘The Millennium Club.’⁠ ⁠…” He nodded scornfully at the name. “ ‘Girl’s heroism.’⁠ ⁠… Girls in it, too!⁠ ⁠… Oh! She was the waitress. ‘Threw herself very courageously between the assailants and seized the revolver, which, however, Vicenza wrenched from her and then fired, wounding Arthur Trankett in the abdomen. When the police effected an entrance at midnight’⁠—that’s last night⁠—‘Smith was lying dead on the floor in front of the bar, and Trankett was unconscious by his side.⁠ ⁠… Vicenza was subsequently apprehended in a house in Coldbath Square.’ ” + 

Mr. Earlforward continued calmly and intimidatingly to read the account of the police-court proceedings, and then went on: + 

“There you are, you see. At our door, as you may say! But don’t think Clerkenwell’s the only place. It’s everywhere, communism is. Ask Glasgow. It’s what we’re coming to. It’s what all Europe’s coming to. You may be sure if it’s as bad as this in England, it’s far worse on the Continent.⁠ ⁠… Oh, yes! ‘The magistrate warmly commended the girl Pieta Spinelly for her heroism and congratulated her on her lucky escape.’⁠ ⁠… Yes, but she won’t always be so lucky. And will any of us?” + 

Violet was just reflecting that to eat steaks with communism at the door was an act showing levity of mind and not seriously to be defended, when Elsie remarked, with surprising equanimity: + 

“Pieta Spinelly. That’s my cousin.” + 

Mr. Earlforward, profoundly agitated, crushed the paper together. + 

“Your cousin?” + 

“Your cousin, Elsie?” Mrs. Earlforward stood up. + 

The shock of learning that Elsie had any relatives or connections of any kind, that she had any human interests outside Riceyman Steps, that she was not cut off utterly from the world and devoted exclusively to themselves⁠—this alone would have sufficed to overthrow her employers, who had never since she entered their house, as a novice enters a nunnery, thought of her as anything but a “general.” But that she should be connected by blood with communists and foreigners!⁠ ⁠… Communists seemed to have invaded the very house, and civilization itself was instantly threatened. + 

“Yes, ’m. She’s my Aunt Maria’s daughter. My Aunt Maria married an Italian, an iceman, and his name was Spinelly.⁠ ⁠… Not as I ever saw them.” + 

“Oh! So you don’t see this girl what’s-her-name?” + 

“Shouldn’t know her if I saw her, ’m. But I know they always had to do with clubs like. There’s a lot of clubs round here. But I’m glad she’s not dead or anything. You see, ’m, her being half Italian I shouldn’t see her!⁠ ⁠… And me Aunt Maria’s been dead nearly five years. It must be Pieta, that must. There couldn’t be two of ’em. And it was just like her too, because I remember her at school. Oh, she was a one! But then what could you expect, poor thing? But I’m glad she’s not dead, nor cut about. Fancy her being in the papers!” + 

Elsie showed no perturbation. In spite of herself she felt pride in a foreign connection and the appearance of an heroic cousin in the papers; but the more serious part of her was rather ashamed of the foreign connection. Mrs. Earlforward informed her that she might retire to bed if she had left the kitchen all straight and ready for tomorrow morning. She retired, quite unaware of the fact that practically she had brought communism right into the house. + 

All this while the day’s takings had lain on the desk unprotected and unconcealed! Even during the unlocked shop-door interval they had lain there! The little heaps of paper and coins seemed to accuse somebody of criminal negligence, almost of inviting communism to ruin the structure of society. Husband and wife were still gravely under the shock of the communist murder (of course communists would be murderers⁠—they always killed everyone who had the misfortune to disagree with them) so near to Riceyman Steps, and the shock of Elsie’s evil communications; and as for Violet herself, she was further thrilled by the perception of the deliberate dramatic quality of Henry’s purchase of the paper and announcement of the news, and by the mysterious man’s power of biding his time, and by his generosity in the fire gift and the money gift, and by his loving embrace⁠—all these matters working upon the embers of the burning episode of the steak. Violet, indeed, that sagacious, bright, energetic and enterprising woman of the world, was in a state of quivering, confused emotion whose intensity she scarcely realized. When Henry brought out his safe-key she was strangely relieved, and her glittering eyes seemed to say: “This money’s been lying here on the desk too long. Hide it quickly, quickly! Secure it without another moment’s delay, for heaven’s sake!” + 

Having unlocked his safe, Henry pulled out two of the drawers (it was a much larger safe than Violet’s, with four drawers) and placed them on the desk. One of them was full of pound notes and the other of ten-shilling notes, and all the notes were apparently equal to new. He never kept a dirty note for more than a few days, and usually he managed to exchange it for a clean one on the day of receipt. At the bottom of the drawer containing the Treasury notes lay a foolscap linen envelope which he had once had by registered post. It bulged with banknotes. Into this he forced Mr. Bauersch’s excellent tale of banknotes. As he dealt methodically, slowly, precisely with the rest of the money Violet wondered how much cash the drawers held. It might be hundreds, it might be thousands of pounds; she could not estimate. It was a very marvellous and reassuring sight. She had seen it before, but not in such solemn circumstances nor so fully. It reassured her against communism. With that hoard well gripped, what could communists do to you after all? Of course to keep the cash thus was to lose interest, but you couldn’t have it both ways. And the cash was so beautiful to behold.⁠ ⁠… Stocks! Dead flesh! Bodily desires, appetites!⁠ ⁠… Negligible! This lovely cash satisfied the soul. Ah, how she admired Henry! How she shared his deepest instincts! How she would follow his example! How right he was⁠—always! + 

He said suddenly, but with admirable calm: + 

“Of course if things do come to the worst, as they certainly will, in my opinion, all this will be worth nothing at all!” “This” was the contents of the two drawers. “Nothing. Or just as much as a Russian rouble. If some of those fellows across the road in Great Warner Street get their way a five-pound note won’t buy a loaf of bread. I’m not joking. It’s happened in other countries and it’ll happen here. And the first thing will be the banks closing. And then where will you be, with your gilt-edged securities? Where will you be then? But I’ll tell you one thing that communism and socialism and murder and so on won’t spoil, and it’ll always be good value.” + 

He took a third drawer out of the safe, lifting it with both hands because of its weight, and put it on the table. It was full of gold sovereigns. Violet had never seen this gold before, nor suspected its existence. She was astounded, frightened, ravished. He must have kept it throughout the war, defying the Government’s appeal to patriots not to hoard. He was a superman, the most mysterious of supermen. And he was a fortress, impregnable. + 

“Nothing like it!” he said blandly, running his fingers through the upper sovereigns as through water that tinkled with elfin music. + 

She too ran her fingers through the gold. A unique sensation! He had permitted it to her as a compensation for her silly sufferings in regard to the steak. She looked down, moved.⁠ ⁠… With regret she saw him put the drawers back and close the safe. They stayed a very long time in the office. Henry had clerical work to do, and she helped him, eagerly, in a lowly capacity.⁠ ⁠… The crumpled newspaper was carefully folded. The light was extinguished. They climbed the dark stairs, leaving behind them the shop, with the faint radiance near the window from the gas-lamp. She slipped. She grasped his arm. He knew the stairs far more intimately than she did. On the first landing she exclaimed: + 

“Now, has that girl fastened the dining room windows? Or hasn’t she?” + 

She had new fears for the security of the house. Not surprising that he had previously breathed no word as to the golden contents of his safe! What a proof of confidence in her that he had let her into the dangerous secret! Suppose that the truth should get about? Burglars! Homicides! (Madame Tussaud’s!) She shut her knowledge up with triple locks in herself. They passed into the dining room, groping. The windows had been duly fastened. There was plenty of light through them. The upper windows of the confectioner’s nearly opposite, her old shop, were blazing as usual with senselessly extravagant illumination. That business would not last long. She had been fortunate to get the last instalment of her money. The purchaser was a middle-aged man with a youngish wife. Fatal combination! Violet had not found him directly through her advertisement in the News of the World, but through one of those business-transfer agents who had written to her about the advertisement. How right Henry had been in insisting that she should not pay the agent’s commission until she had received the last instalment of the purchase-money! Henry had told her that most business-transfer agents were quite honest, but that a few weren’t, because it was a calling that could be embraced without any capital and therefore specially tempting to the adventurer. Henry knew all those things. + 

A tramcar thundered up King’s Cross Road, throwing sparks from its heels and generally glowing with electricity. It was crammed and jammed with humanity⁠—exhausted pleasure-seekers returning home northwards from theatre, music-hall, cinema and restaurant. Pathetic creatures; stupid, misguided, deluded, heedless, improvident⁠—sheltered in no strong fortress, they! Violet thought of the magic gold. + 

“Come. Come to bed,” she said. “It’s very cold here after the office.” + 

He obeyed. + 