elsie was cleaning the upper windows of t. t. riceyman's, and she had arrived at the second-floor spare-room, which had two windows, one on king's cross road and the other on riceyman steps. (a third window, on riceyman steps, had been bricked up, like two first-floor windows on king's cross road, in the prehistoric ages of the house.) two-thirds of her body was dangerously projected over king's cross road, above the thunder of the trams and the motor-lorries and the iron trotting of cart-horses; the inferior third dangled within the room. she clung with one powerful arm to woodwork or brickwork, while with the other she wiped and rubbed the panes; the window-sill was the depository of a tin can, a leather, and a cloth, each of which had to be manipulated with care, lest by falling any of them should baptize or injure the preoccupied passers-by whose varied top-knots and shoulders elsie glimpsed when she happened to look down. the windows of the house were all sashed; to clean the upper half was fairly easy, but the lower half could only be done by lifting it bit by bit into the place of the upper half and pulling the latter down on to elsie's legs. a difficult operation, this cleaning, in addition to being risky to limb or even to life. elsie performed it with the exactest conscientiousness in the dusty and cold north wind that swept through the canyon of king's cross road.
she could see everything within the room. the orderly piles of books ranged on the floor, and the array of provisional shelves which she and her mistress had[pg 170] built upon odd volumes (still unsold) of the illustrated, london news. the top or covering plank had disappeared, having been secretly removed, during the master's absence, and sawn and chopped up for firewood in the cellar; for the master had decisively discountenanced the purchase of more firewood, holding that somehow or other the women could "manage"; they had managed. elsie saw the door open and her mistress enter with a plant-pot in either hand. violet, all aproned and wearing a renovated check frock, gave a start at the sight of elsie's legs.
"so here you are!" elsie heard her voice coming weakly through the glass into the uproar of the street. "and i've been looking for you everywhere!"
that elsie had been engaged upon the windows for quite three-quarters of an hour was proof that a servant might go her own ways without attracting the attention even of an employer who flattered herself on missing nothing. elsie wormed her body back within the room.
"didn't you see me cleaning the outside of the shop windows, 'm?" she asked, sedately benevolent. (she could clean the inside of the shop windows only by special arrangement with the proprietor.)
"no, i did not. it's true i've had other matters to think about this morning. yes, it is! and why must you choose this morning for your windows? you know it's your afternoon out, and there's a lot to do. but perhaps you aren't going out, elsie?"
"well, 'm, i was thinking of going out," elsie answered, bringing in the tin can. "but i thought they looked so dirty."
here elsie was deceitful, or at best she was withholding part of the truth. mrs. earlforward would not have guessed in a million guesses elsie's real reason for cleaning the windows on just that morning. the real reason was that the vanished joe had been famous for the super-excellence of his window-cleaning. this day was the anniversary of his disappearance. elsie had no genuine expectation that he would reappear. the notion[pg 171] of his return after precisely a year was merely silly. she admitted it. and yet he might come back! if he did he would find her in half an hour by inquiry, and if he did find her she could not tolerate that he should find "her" windows dirty. he had an eye for windows, and windows must shine for him. thus mysteriously, mystically, poetically, passionately did elsie's devotion express itself.
"now don't shut the window!" violet admonished her sharply. "you know i want to put these plants out."
elsie's eyes grew moist.
"how touchy the girl is this morning!" thought violet. "if she had to put up with what i have——"
and perhaps violet was to be excused. how could she, with all her commonsense and experience of mankind, divine that stodgy elsie's equanimity was at the mercy of any gust that windy morning? she could not.
she established the plant-pots on the window-sill. she had bought bulbs with the ten shillings so startlingly given to her by her husband, and with his reluctant approval. she had scrubbed the old plant-pots, stirred the soil in them, and embedded the bulbs. she put the pots out in the day-time and brought them in at night; she watered them when necessary in the bathroom. she tended them like a family of children. all unseen, they were the romance of her daily existence, her refuge from trouble, the balm of her anxieties. the sight of the clean, symmetrically arranged pots on the sills might have given the idea that a new era had set in for t. t. riceyman's, that the terror of the curse of its vice had been exorcized by the secret workings within those ruddy pots. violet hoped that it was so. but it was not so, and elsie, in the primeval quality of her instincts, knew that it was not so. the bulbs were not pushing upwards to happiness; they were pushing upwards to sinister consummations, the approach of which rendered them absurd. and elsie felt this too.
"were you wanting me for anything particular, 'm?"[pg 172] elsie asked, rather contrite about her windows and eager to appease.
"yes, i should think i was wanting you for something! how dare you give me this money you put on my dressing-table?" she spoke with nervous exasperation, and produced from her pocket some coins wrapped in the bit of paper in which elsie had wrapped them an hour or two earlier—the price of the ruined double saucepan, now replaced by violet. "take it back. you ought to have known i should never let you pay for it."
this after she had most positively insisted that elsie should repair out of her resources the consequence of her unparalleled stupidity! the fact was that violet, unsentimental and hard as she could be, and generally was, in "practical" matters, had been somewhat moved at the sight of the poor little coins in the dirty paper, deposited in the bedroom dumbly, without a word written or spoken. also she happened that morning to be in a frame of mind favourable to emotion of certain sorts. she sniffed ominously, glancing at elsie's face and glancing away. she could not bear to think that the lovable, loyal, silly creature had seriously intended to settle for the saucepan out of her wages.
elsie, astonished and intimidated, took the money back as dumbly as she had paid it out.
"i'm that sorry, 'm," she murmured simply.
the little episode was closed. and yet violet sniffed again, and her features slowly suffered distortion, and she began to cry. she was one who "never cried," and this was her third crying within a week! in truth it was not about the money at all that she had wanted to speak to elsie. she said indistinctly through her tears:
"he's not gone out this morning, elsie; and he's not going out. he's missing the sale. he says himself he's not well enough; that just means not strong enough. and now he's sitting in the office trying to type, and customers just have to come to him."
the secret that was no secret was suddenly out. there was in elsie's ingenuous dark-blue eyes such devotion,[pg 173] such reliability, such an offering of soft comfort as violet could not resist. the deep-rooted suspiciousness which separates in some degree every woman from every other woman dissolved away, and with it violet's pride in her superior station and violet's self-sufficiency. the concealed yet notorious fact that violet lived in torment about her husband, that all was not well in the placid household, was now openly admitted. in an instant elsie, ardently yielding herself to another's woe, quite forgot the rasping harshness of violet's recent onslaught. she was profoundly flattered. and she was filled with an irrational gratitude because violet had given her the shelter of a sure, respectable home which knew not revolutions, altercations, penury, debauchery, nor the heart-rending stridency of enervated mothers and children.
"he's not himself, master isn't," she said gently.
"what do you mean—he's not himself?"
"i mean, he's not well, 'm."
"he'd be all right if he'd eat more—you know that as well as i do."
"perhaps he hasn't got no appetite, 'm."
"why shouldn't he have an appetite? he's never suffered from indigestion in all his life; he says so himself."
"yes, 'm. not till lately."
"all this talk about saving ...!" said violet, shrugging her shoulders and wiping her eyes.
it was a curious thing to say, because there had never been any talk about saving, and, even if there had been, clearly elsie ought not to have heard it. nevertheless, she received the remark as of course, nodding her head.
"what's the use of saving if you're killing yourself to do it?" violet proceeded impatiently.
violet was referring, and elsie knew that she was referring, to the master's outburst on communism, with all its unspoken implications. they had both been impressed at the time; mr. earlforward had convicted them of sin. but now they were both femininely scornful of the silent argument of the illogical male. what,[pg 174] indeed, was the use of fatally depriving yourself now in order not to have to deprive yourself later on? there was something wrong in the master's mysterious head.
"if you could get somebody to talk to him, 'm, somebody from outside."
elsie stressed these last three words, thereby proving that her simplicity had led her straight to the heart of the matter. the atmosphere of the sealed house was infected by the strangeness of the master, who himself, in turn, was influenced by it. fresh air, new breath, a great wind, was needed to dispel the corruption. the house was suffocating its owners. an immense deterioration had occurred, unperceived till now. violet was afraid; she was aghast; she realized the change, not fully, but sufficiently to frighten her. the gravity of the danger dried up her tears.
"yes," she assented.
"the doctor—dr. raste."
"but do you think he'd let me send for the doctor—for one moment! and if i did send, do you think he'd see him! it's out of the question!"
"you might have the doctor for yourself, 'm. you might send me for him, and then he could see master by accident like."
"but i'm not ill, my girl," violet protested, though she was impressed by the kind creature's resourcefulness.
"oh, mum! why, you've been ill for weeks!"
violet blushed like a culprit.
"what in the name of goodness are you talking about?" she demanded. "of course, i'm not ill!" they were all the same, servants. they never understood that familiarity from an employer should not be answered by familiarity.
"sorry, 'm," said elsie meekly, but still with a very slight benevolent obstinacy, as one who would withdraw and wouldn't withdraw.
violet stared half a moment at her, and then abruptly walked out of the room. the interview was getting to be too much for her. she could not stand any more of[pg 175] it—not one more word of it. she foresaw the probability of a complete humiliating breakdown if she tried herself too far. a few seconds later she popped her head in at the door again and said firmly but quite pleasantly:
"now, elsie, you'd better be coming downstairs. there's nothing else up here to keep you."
as a fact, elsie was dawdling, in reflection.
