mrs. perkins's boy, who lived with mrs. perkins in the house next door to elsie's old home in riceyman square, and who had a chivalric regard for elsie, fortunately happened to be out in the square. in the darkness he was engaged in amorous dialectic with a girl of his own age—fourteen or fifteen—and they were both imperfectly sheltering under the eve of an outhouse (church property) at the north-east corner of the churchyard. their voices were raised from time to time, and elsie recognized his as she approached the house. mrs. perkins's boy wore over his head a sack which he had irregularly borrowed for the night from the express parcel company in the tails of whose vans he spent about twelve hours a day hanging on to a piece of string suspended from the van roof. that he had energy left in the evening to practise savagely-delicate sentimental backchat in the rain was proof enough of a somewhat remarkable quality of "brightness."
elsie had chosen him for her mission because he was hardened to the world and thoroughly accustomed to the enterprise of affronting entrance-halls and claiming the attention of the guardians thereof. she now called to him across the roadway in an assured, commanding tone which indicated that she knew him to be her slave and that, in spite of her advanced years, she could more than hold her own with him against any chit in the square. there was an aspect of elsie's individuality which no living person knew except mrs. perkins's boy. he went hurrying to her.
"i want you to run down to the hospital with this[pg 254] letter and be sure to tell the porter it is to be given to mrs. earlforward to-night. she's in there. and here's sixpence for you, and i'll lend you my umbrella and i'll get it again from your mammy to-morrow morning; but you must just walk to the steps with me first because i don't want to get wet."
"right-o, elsie!" he agreed in his rough, breaking voice, and louder: "so long, nell!"
"put it in your pocket now," elsie said, handing him the letter. "no; don't take the keys." she was still carrying mr. earlforward's bunch of keys.
the boy insisted on taking the umbrella, which gave him almost as much happiness as the sixpence. never before had he had the opportunity to show off with an umbrella. he wished that he could get rid of the sack, which did not at all match the umbrella's glory.
"here, hold on!" he stopped her and threw the sack over the railings into his mother's area. they walked together towards the steps.
"your joe's been asking for you to-night," he said suddenly.
"my joe!" she stood still, then leaned against the railings.
"here! come on!" he adjured her, nervously sniggering in a cheeky way to hide the emotion in him caused by hers.
elsie obeyed.
"how do you know?"
"nell just told me. it's all about."
"where d'e call?"
"hocketts's."
"what'd they tell him?"
"told him where you was living, i suppose."
"d'you know when he was inquiring?"
"oh, some time to-night, i s'pose."
"now you hurry with that letter, jerry," she said at the shop-door. mrs. perkins's boy sailed round the corner into king's cross road with the umbrella on high.
elsie had the feeling that she had not herself spoken[pg 255] to jerry at all, but that she had heard someone else speaking to him with her voice. and she was quite giddy between the influences of fear and of happiness. her hands and feet were very cold. all kinds of memories and hopes which she had murdered in cold blood and buried deep came rushing and thronging out of their graves, intensely alive, and overwhelmed her mind. the anarchy within her was such that she had to think painfully before she could even command her fingers to open the shop-door.
entering from the street, you had to cross the full length of the shop to the wall between it and the office in order to turn on the electric light. as elsie passed gropingly between the bays of shelves she thought that she heard a sound of movement, and then the question struck and shook her: "was the door latched or unlatched when i opened it?" she could not be sure, so uncertain and clumsy had been her hands. she dared not, for a moment, light the shop lest she should see something sinister or something that she wanted too much to see.
turning the switch at last, she looked and explored with apprehensive eyes all of the shop that could be seen from the office doorway. nothing! but the recesses of the bays nearest the front of the shop were hidden from her. she listened. not a sound within the shop, and outside only the customary sounds which she never noticed unless attentively listening. she would go upstairs. she would extinguish the light and go upstairs. no! she could not, anyhow, leave the shop. she must wait. she must open the door and look forth at short intervals to see if joe was coming. she must even leave the door ajar for him. he was bound to come sooner or later. he knew where she was, and it was impossible that he should not come. she heard a very faint noise, which sounded through the shop and in her ears like the discharge of a gun or the herald of an earthquake. then a silence equally terrifying! the faint noise appeared to come from the bay at the end of which was the window giving on king's cross road. she could see about half,[pg 256] perhaps more, of this bay, but not all. she must go and look. her skin crept and tingled. the shop was now for her peopled with invisible menaces. mr. earlforward was so forgotten that he might have been dead a hundred years. she must go and look. she did go and look. her heart faltered horribly. there was indeed a heap of something lying under the side-window.
"joe!" she cried, but in a whisper, lest by some infernal magic mr. earlforward up in his bedroom should overhear.
joe was a lump of feeble life enveloped in loose, wet garments. his hat had fallen on the floor and was wetting it. he had grown a thin beard. elsie knelt down by him and took his head in her arms and kissed his pale face; her rich lips found his dry and shrivelled up. he recognized her without apparently looking at her. she knew this by the responsiveness of his lips.
"i'm very thirsty," he murmured in his deep voice, which to hear again thrilled her. (strange that, wet to the skin, he should be thirsty!)
though she knew that he was ill, and perhaps very ill, she felt happier in that moment than she had ever felt. happiness, exultant and ecstatic, rushed over her, into her, permeating and surrounding her. she cared for nothing save that she had him. she had no curiosity as to what he had been doing, what sufferings he had experienced, how his illness had come about, what his illness was. she lived exclusively in the moment. she did not even trouble about his thirst. then gradually a poignant yet sweet remorse grew in her because, a year ago, before his vanishing, she had treated him harshly. she had acted for the best in the interests of his welfare, but was it right to be implacable, as she had been implacable, towards a victim such as he unquestionably was? would it not have been better to ruin and kill him with kindness and surrender? for elsie kindness had a quality which justified it for its own sake, whatever the consequences of it might be. and then she began to regret keenly that she had destroyed his letter; she would[pg 257] have liked to be able to show it to him to prove her constancy. supposing he were to ask her if she had received it, what she had done with it. could she endure the shame of answering: "i burnt it"?
"i'm so thirsty," he repeated. he was a man of one idea.
"stay there," she whispered softly, squeezing him, and damping her dress and cheeks before loosing him.
she ran noiselessly upstairs and came back with a small jug of cold water from the kitchen. as seemingly he could not clasp the handle, she held the jug to his lips. he swallowed the water in large, eager gulps.
"wait a bit now," she said, when he had drunk half of it, and pulled the jug away from him. after twenty or thirty seconds he drank the rest and sighed.
"can you walk, joe? can you stand?"
he shook his head slowly.
"i dropped down giddy.... door was unlatched. i came in out of the rain and dropped down giddy."
she ran upstairs again, lit her candle, and set it on the floor by her bedroom door. when she had descended once more she saw that the candle threw a very faint light all the way down the two flights of stairs to the back of the shop. she seized joe in her arms—she was very strong from continual hard manual labour, and he was very thin—and carried him up to her room, and, because he was wet, put him on the floor there. breathless for a minute, she brought in the candle and closed and locked the door. (she locked it against nobody, but she locked it.)
she was nurse now, and he her patient. she began to undress him, and then stopped and hurried down to the bathroom, where mr. earlforward's weekly clean grey flannel shirt lay newly ironed. she stole the shirt. then, having secured her door again, she finished undressing the patient, taking every stitch off him, and rubbing him dry with her towel, and rubbed the ends of his hair nearly dry, and got the shirt over his shoulders, and turned down the bed, and lifted him into her bed, and covered him up, and[pg 258] threw on the bedclothes the very garments which in the early morning she had used for mrs. earlforward's comforting. there he lay in her bed, and nobody on earth except those two knew that he was in her room with the door locked to keep out the whole world. it was a wondrous, palpitating secret, the most wonderful secret that any woman had ever enjoyed in the history of love. she knelt by the bed and kissed him again and again. he smiled; then a spasm of pain passed over his face.
"what's the matter with you, joe, darling? what is it you've got?" she asked gently, made blissful by his smile and alarmed by his evident discomfort.
"i ache—all over me. i'm cold." his voice was extremely weak.
she ran over various diseases in her mind and thought of rheumatic fever. she had not the least idea what rheumatic fever was, but she had always understood that it was exceedingly serious.
"i shall light a fire," she said, announcing this terrific decision as though it was quite an everyday matter for a servant, having put a "follower" in her own room, to light a fire for him and burn up her employer's precious coal.
on the way downstairs to steal a bucket of coal she thought: "i'd better just make sure of the old gentleman," and went into the principal bedroom and turned on the light. mr. earlforward seemed to be neither worse nor better. she was reassured as to him. he looked at her intently, but could not see through her body the glowing secret in her heart.
"you all right, sir?" she asked.
he nodded.
"going to bed?"
"oh, no! not yet!" she smiled easily. "not for a long time."
"what's all that wet on your apron, elsie?"
she was not a bit disconcerted.
"oh, that's nothing, sir," she said, and turned out the light before departing.[pg 259]
"here! i say, elsie!"
"can't stop now, sir. i'm that busy with things." she spoke to him negligently, as a stronger power to a weaker—it was very queer!—and went out and shut the door with a smart click.
the grate and flue in her room were utterly unaccustomed to fires; it is conceivable that they had never before felt a fire. but they performed their functions with the ardour of neophytes, and very soon mr. earlforward's coal was blazing furiously in the hearth and the room stiflingly, exquisitely hot—while mr. earlforward, all unconscious of the infamy above, kept himself warm by bedclothes and the pride of economy alone. and a little later elsie was administering to joe her master's invalid food. the tale of her thefts was lengthening hour by hour.
