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Riceyman Steps

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<hr />[Pg 99] <h2>IV</h2> <h3>VACUUM</h3> For potent municipal or administrative reasons the tram-car carrying Henry and his bride would not stop at Riceyman Steps, but it stopped fifty yards farther down the road. As Henry was whisked thunderingly past his home and the future nest of his love, he glimpsed in the Steps such a spectacle as put a strain on the credibility of his eyes. Only on the rarest occasions do men refuse to believe their eyes; they are much more likely to allow themselves to be deluded by their deceitful eyes. The vision was come and gone in a moment, and Henry, who had great confidence in his eyes, did, in fact, accept, though with difficulty, their report, which was to the effect that a considerable crowd had collected in front of his house, that the house was blazing with light, and that forms resembling engines, with serpentine hose rising therefrom, stood between the shop-door and the multitude of spectators. "Did you see that?" he demanded, sharply but calmly. "See what, dear?" said Violet, self-consciously. "The house is on fire." "Oh, no! 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[Pg 100] 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 hose-pipe into his establishment. One side of the place looked just as if it had been newly papered and painted, and all the books on that side shone like books that had been dusted and vaselined with extreme care daily for months; almost the whole of the ceiling was nearly white, and the remainder of it was magically whitening under a wide-mouthed brass nozzle that a workman who stood on a pair of steps was applying to it. And Henry heard a swishing sound as of the in-drawing of wind. He went forward mechanically into his private room, which, quite unbelievably, was as clean as a new pin. No grime, no dust anywhere! And not a book displaced. The books which ordinarily lay on the floor still lay on the floor, and even the floor planks looked as if they had been planed or sandpapered. He dropped into a chair. "Darling, how pale you are!" murmured Violet, bending to him. "This is my wedding present to you. I wanted it to be a surprise, but you've gone and spoilt it all with coming back home so soon! And I couldn't stop you." He did not realize for weeks the grandeur of his wife's[Pg 101] 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."[Pg 102] "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?" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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