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<hr />[Pg 304] <h2>XII</h2> <h3>ASLEEP</h3> Mr. and Mrs. Belrose occupied a small bedroom at the top of their house. As for her sister and his sister, they fitted their amplitudes into some vague "somewhere else," and those of the curious who in the way of business or otherwise knew how nearly the entire house was devoted to "wholesale," wondered where the two sisters-in-law did in fact stow themselves. The servant slept out. In the middle of the night Mrs. Belrose raised her magnificent form out of the overburdened bed and went to the window to look forth on the Steps. "Charlie," said she, coming back to the bed and shaking her husband. He awoke unwillingly and grunted, and muttered that she was taking cold; an absurd suggestion, as he knew well, for she never took cold, and it was inconceivable that she should take cold. "That light's still burning at T. T.'s—in the shop. I don't like the look of it." She lit the room, and the fancies of night seemed to be dispelled by an onrush of realism, dailiness and sagacity. Mr. and Mrs. Belrose considered themselves to be two of the most sagacious and imperturbable persons that ever lived, and they probably were. No circumstances were too much for their sagacity and their presence of mind. Each had complete confidence in the kindly but unsentimental horse-sense of the other. Mrs. Belrose, despite her youngishness, was the more impressive. She it was who usually said the final word in shaping a policy; yet in her utterances there was an implication that Charles had a super-wisdom which[Pg 305] she alone could inspire, and also that he, being a man, could do certain things that she, being a woman, was ever so slightly incapable of. "I don't like the look of it at all," she said. "Well, I don't see we can do anything till morning," said Charles. Not that he was allowing his judgment to be warped by the desire to sleep. No; he was being quite impartial. "That girl's got too much on her hands, looking after that funny old man all by herself, day and night. She isn't a fool, far from it; but it's too much for one girl." "You'd better go over, perhaps, and have a look at things." "I was thinking you'd go, Charlie." "But I can't do anything if I do go. I can't help the girl." "I'm afraid," said the authoritative and sagacious wife simply. "What of?" asked the wizened slip of a husband. "Well, I don't know; but I am. It'll be better for you to go—anyway first. I could come afterwards. We can't leave the girl in the lurch." Nevertheless Mrs. Belrose did know what she was afraid of and so did Mr. Belrose. She helped him to put on some clothes; it was a gesture of sympathy rather than of aid. And she exhorted him not to waken "those girls," meaning her sister and his. He went out, shivering. A fine night with a harsh wind moving dust from one part of the Steps to another. Nobody about. The church clock struck three. Mr. Belrose peered through the slit between the edge of the door-blind and the door-frame, but could see nothing except that a light was burning somewhere in the background. He rapped quietly and then loudly on the glass. No response. The explanation of the scene doubtless was that Elsie had come down into the shop on some errand and returned upstairs, having forgotten to extinguish the light. Mr. Belrose was very cold. He was about to leave the place and report to his wife when his hand dis[Pg 306]covered that the door was not fastened. (Elsie, in the perturbation caused by doing a kindness to the boy Jerry, had forgotten to secure it.) Mr. Belrose entered and saw Mr. Earlforward, wearing a smart new suit, moveless in a peculiar posture in his office-chair. He now knew more surely than before what his wife had been afraid of. But he had a very stout and stolid heart, and he advanced firmly into the office. A faint glow of red showed in the ash-strewn grate. The electric light descended in almost palpable rays on Mr. Earlforward's grizzled head. The safe was open and there was a bag of money on the floor. Mr. Earlforward's chair was tilted and had only been saved from toppling over, with Mr. Earlforward in it, by the fact that its left arm had caught under the ledge of the desk. The electric light was patient; so was Mr. Earlforward. He was leaning over the right arm of the chair, his body at half a right angle to the perpendicular, and his face towards the floor. "I've never seen anything like this before," thought Mr. Belrose. "This will upset the Steps, this will." He was afraid. He had what he would have called the "creeps." Gingerly he touched Mr. Earlforward's left hand which lay on the desk. It was cold and rather stiff. He bent down in order to look into Mr. Earlforward's averted face. What a dreadful face! White, blotched, hairy skin drawn tightly over bones and muscles—very tightly. An expression of torment in the tiny, unseeing eyes! None of the proverbial repose of death in that face! "Mustn't touch it! Mustn't disturb anything!" thought Mr. Belrose, straightening his knees. He left the office and peered up the dark stairs. No light. No sound. He felt for his matches, but he had come away without them, and he suspected that he was not sufficiently master of himself to look effectively for matches. Still, the house must be searched. Although much averse from returning into the office, he did return, on the chance of finding a box of matches, and the first thing he saw was a box on the mantelpiece.[Pg 307] Striking matches, he stumbled up the stairs and came first to the bathroom. Empty. Nothing unusual therein except thick strings stretched across it and an orange box in the bath. A bedroom, well furnished, the bed unmade; a cup and saucer on the night-table; one door of the wardrobe ajar. Everything still, expectant. Then he found the living-room similarly still and expectant. He went back to the landing. No sound. The second flight of stairs dreadfully invited him to ascend. As he reached and pushed against the door at the head of those stairs another of his matches died. He struck a fresh one, and when it slowly flamed he stepped into the faintly fire-lit room and was amazed, astounded, thrilled, shocked and very seriously shaken to descry a young man lying on the bed in the corner and a young woman, Elsie, lying in abandonment across him, her head sunk in his breast. And he heard a regular sound of breathing. There was something in the situation of the pair which penetrated right through Mr. Belrose's horse-sense and profoundly touched his heart. Never had he had such a sensation at once painful and ravishing (yes, ravishing to the awed cheesemonger) as he had then. The young man raised his head an inch from the pillow and dropped it again. "She's asleep," said the young man in a low, deep, tired voice. "Don't wake her." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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