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Riceyman Steps

<hr />[Pg 155] <h2>VI</h2> <h3>EVENING</h3> 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 under-estimated the possi[Pg 156]bilities 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?"[Pg 157] 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 clothes-lines, 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.[Pg 158] 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 bank-notes 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 stand-by, in case?" said Henry. "That's my stand-by, 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.[Pg 159] 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[Pg 160] 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.[Pg 161] 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.[Pg 162] 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 connexions 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[Pg 163] 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 connexion and the appearance of an heroic cousin in the papers; but the more serious part of her was rather ashamed of the foreign connexion. Mrs. Earlforward informed her that she might retire to bed if she had left the kitchen all straight and ready for to-morrow 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[Pg 164]—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 bank-notes. Into this he forced Mr. Bauersch's excellent tale of bank-notes. 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[Pg 165] 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?"[Pg 166] 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 tram-car 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. [Pg 167] [Pg 168] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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