RICEYMAN STEPS. Bennett Arnold
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girl was wearing all Elsie's clothes. Elsie's sack-apron covered her head and shoulders like a bridal veil. But she was not Mrs. Arb's Elsie nor Mr. Earlforward's! She was not the drudge.
She had suddenly become a celestial visitant. The attributes of such an unearthly being were in her shining face and in the solace of her little bodily movements; and her extraordinary mean and ugly apparel could not impair them in the least. The man, slowly, hesitatingly, put one arm round her waist—the other was occupied with the umbrella. She yielded her waist to him, and looked up at the man, and he looked down at her. Not a word. Then he said in a deep voice:
"Where's your hat—and things?"
He said this as one who apprehended calamity.
"I haven't finished yet," she answered gently. "I'm that sorry."
"How long shall you be?"
"I don't know, Joe. She's all by herself, and she begged and prayed me to stop on and help her. She's all by herself, and strange to it. And I couldn't find it in my heart to refuse. You have to do what's right, haven't you?"
The man's chin fell in a sort of sulky and despairing gloom; but he said nothing; he was not a facile talker, even on his best days. She took the umbrella from him without altering its position.
"Put both arms round me, and hold me tight," she murmured.
He obeyed, reluctantly, tardily, but in the end fiercely. After a long pause he said:
"And my birthday and all!"
"I know! I know!" she cried. "Oh, Joe! It can't be helped!"
He had many arguments, and good ones, against her decision; but he could not utter them. He never could argue. She just gazed up at him softly. Tears began to run down his cheeks.
"Now, now!" she soothed him. With her free hand she worked up the tail of her apron between them, and, while still fast in his clutch, wiped his eyes delicately. She kissed him, keeping her lips on his. She kissed him until she knew from the feel of his muscles everywhere that the warm soft contact with her had begun to dissolve his resentment. Then she withdrew her lips and kissed him again, differently. They stood motionless in the dark corner under the umbrella, and the rain pattered dully on the umbrella and dropped off the umbrella and round them, and pattered with a brighter sound on the flagstones of Riceyman Steps. A few people passed at intervals up and down the steps. But the clasped pair ignored them; and the wayfarers did not look twice, nor even smile at the lovers, who, in fact, were making love as honest love is made by lovers whose sole drawing-rooms and sofas are the street.
"Look here, Joe," Elsie whispered. "I want you to go home now. But you must call at Smithson's on yer way—they don't close till nine o'clock—and get them braces as I'm giving you for a birthday present. I see 'em still in the window this morning. I should have slipped in and bought 'em then, but I was on an errand for Mr. Earlforward, and, besides, I didn't like to, somehow, without you, and me with my apron on too. But you must buy 'em to-night so as you can wear 'em to-morrow. I want to say to myself to-morrow morning, 'He's wearing them braces.' I've brought you the money." She loosed one of his hands from her waist, got at the silver in her pocket, and inserted it into his breast pocket. "You promise me, Joe? It's a fair and square promise?
He made no reply.
"You promise me, darling Joe?" she insisted.
He nodded; he could not speak in his desolation and in his servitude to her. She smiled her lovely thanks for his obedience.
"Now let me see ye start off," she cajoled him. "I know ye. I know what you'll do if I don't see you start with me own eyes."
"Then it's to-morrow night?" he said gruffly.
She nodded. They kissed again. Elsie pushed him away, and then stood watching until he had vanished round the corner of the disused Mission Hall into King's Cross Road. She stood watching, indeed, for some moments after that. She was crying.
"My word!" said Mrs. Arb vivaciously. "I was beginning to wonder if you meant to come back, after all. You've been that long your tea 'll be cold. Here's the ham, and very nice it is too."
Chapter 8 The carving-knife
The two women were working together in a living-room over the shop. An oil-lamp had been hung on a hook which would have held a curtain loop had there been any curtains. The lamp, tilted slightly forward, had a round sheltered reflector behind it. Thus a portion of the lower part of the room was brilliantly lighted and all the rest of the room in shadow. Elsie was scrubbing the floor in the full glare of the reflector. She scrubbed placidly and honestly, with no eagerness, but with no sign of fatigue. Mrs. Arb sat in the fireplace with her feet upraised out of the damp on the rail of a chair, and cleaned the mantelpiece. She had worked side by side with Elsie through the evening, silent sometimes, vivaciously chatty sometimes—desirous generally of collecting useful pieces of local information. Inevitably a sort of community had established itself between the two women. Mrs. Arb would talk freely and yet give nothing but comment. Elsie talked little and yet gave many interesting facts.
"Let me see," said Mrs. Arb with a casual air. "It's that Mr. Earlforward you say you work for in the mornings, isn't it?"
"But I told you I did when you sent me in about the book, 'm. And I told you before that, too," Elsie answered, surprised at such forgetfulness.
"Oh, of course you did. Well, does he live all alone?"
"Oh, yes, 'm."
"And what sort of a gentleman is he?"
Elsie, instinctively loyal, grew cautious.
"He's a very nice gentleman, 'm."
"Treats you well, does he?"
"Well, of course, 'm, he has his ways. But he's always very nice."
"Nice and polite, eh?"
"Yes, 'm. And I'll say this, too: he never tries to take any liberties. No, that he doesn't!"
"And so he has his ways. Is he eccentric?"
"Oh, no, 'm! At least, I don't know what you mean, 'm, I'm sure I don't. He's very particular in some things; but, then, in plenty of things he takes no notice of you, and you can do it or leave it as you choose." Elsie suspected and mildly resented a mere inquisitiveness on the part of Mrs. Arb, and added quickly: "I think this floor's about done."
She wrung a cloth out in the pail at her right hand. The clock below struck its quick, wiry, reverberating note. It kept on striking.
"That's never eleven o'clock!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed, completely aware that it was eleven o'clock. "How time flies when you're hard at it, doesn't it?"
Elsie silently disagreed with this proposition. In her experience of toil she had found that time lagged.
"Well, Elsie, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you. I can finish myself. Don't you stay a minute longer."
"No, 'm," said Elsie, who had exchanged three hours' overtime for sixpence and a slice of ham.
At this moment, and before Elsie had raised her damp knees from the damp floor, a very sharp and imperious tapping was heard.
"My gracious! Who's that?"
"It's the shop door," said Elsie.
"I'll go." Mrs. Arb decided the procedure quite cheerfully. She was cheerful because the living-room, with other rooms, was done, and in a condition fit to be seen by possible purchasers of her premises and business she had no intention to live in the living-room herself. And also she was cheerful because of a wild and silly, and yet not wholly silly, idea that the rapping at the shop door came from Mr. Earlforward, who had made for himself some absurd man-like excuse for calling again that night. She had, even thus early, her notions about Mr. Earlforward. The undying girl in her ran downstairs with a candle and unlocked