Riceyman Steps

Riceyman Steps

By Arnold Bennett.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Part I
   1. I: Riceyman Steps
   2. II: The Customer
   3. III: The Bookseller at Home
   4. IV: Elsie
   5. V: The Gift
   6. VI: Mrs. Arb’s Case
   7. VII: Under an Umbrella
   8. VIII: The Carving-Knife
   9. IX: Sunday Morning
   10. X: Riceyman Square
   11. XI: Elsie’s Home
   12. XII: The Benefactress
   13. XIII: The Passion
   14. XIV: A Man’s Private Life
4. Part II
   1. I: The Day Before
   2. II: Elsie’s Retreat
   3. III: Waxworks
   4. IV: Vacuum
   5. V: The Priestess
   6. VI: The Next Day
5. Part III
   1. I: Early Morning
   2. II: After Breakfast
   3. III: International
   4. IV: Afternoon
   5. V: Tea
   6. VI: Evening
6. Part IV
   1. I: At the Window
   2. II: Elsie’s Motive
   3. III: Charity
   4. IV: No Verdict
   5. V: Midnight
   6. VI: Henry’s Plot
   7. VII: The Night-Call
   8. VIII: On the Landing
   9. IX: Violet’s Victory
   10. X: Departure
7. Part V
   1. I: The Promise
   2. II: The Refusal
   3. III: The Message of Violet
   4. IV: Out of the Rain
   5. V: The Two Patients
   6. VI: The Second Refusal
   7. VII: Malaria
   8. VIII: A Climax
   9. IX: The Kiss
   10. X: The Safe
   11. XI: Prison
   12. XII: Asleep
   13. XIII: Disappearance of T. T.’s
8. Colophon
9. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Part I

I

Riceyman Steps

On an autumn afternoon of 1919 a hatless man with a slight limp might have been observed ascending the gentle, broad acclivity of Riceyman Steps, which lead from King’s Cross Road up to Riceyman Square, in the great metropolitan industrial district of Clerkenwell. He was rather less than stout and rather more than slim. His thin hair had begun to turn from black to grey, but his complexion was still fairly good, and the rich, very red lips, under a small greyish moustache and over a short, pointed beard, were quite remarkable in their suggestion of vitality. The brown eyes seemed a little small; they peered at near objects. As to his age, an experienced and cautious observer of mankind, without previous knowledge of this man, would have said no more than that he must be past forty. The man himself was certainly entitled to say that he was in the prime of life. He wore a neat dark-grey suit, which must have been carefully folded at nights, a low, white, starched collar, and a “made” black tie that completely hid the shirtfront; the shirt-cuffs could not be seen. He was shod in old, black leather slippers, well polished. He gave an appearance of quiet, intelligent, refined and kindly prosperity; and in his little eyes shone the varying lights of emotional sensitiveness.

Riceyman Steps, twenty in number, are divided by a half-landing into two series of ten. The man stopped on the half-landing and swung round with a casual air of purposelessness which, however, concealed, imperfectly, a definite design. The suspicious and cynical, slyly watching his movements, would have thought: “What’s that fellow after?”

A man interested in a strange woman acquires one equine attribute⁠—he can look in two directions at once. This man could, and did, look in two directions at once.

Below him and straight in front he saw a cobbled section of King’s Cross Road⁠—a hell of noise and dust and dirt, with the County of London tramcars, and motor-lorries and heavy horse-drawn vans sweeping north and south in a vast clangour of iron thudding and grating on iron and granite, beneath the bedroom windows of a defenceless populace. On the far side of the road were, conspicuous to the right, the huge, red Nell Gwynn Tavern, set on the site of Nell’s still huger palace, and displaying printed exhortations to buy fruity Portuguese wines and to attend meetings of workers; and, conspicuous to the left, red Rowton House, surpassing in immensity even Nell’s vanished palace, divided into hundreds and hundreds of clean cubicles for the accommodation of the defeated and the futile at a few coppers a night, and displaying on its iron façade a newspaper promise to divulge the names of the winners of horse-races. Nearer to the man who could look two ways lay the tiny open space (not open to vehicular traffic) which was officially included in the title “Riceyman Steps.” At the south corner of this was a secondhand bookseller’s shop, and at the north an abandoned and decaying mission-hall; both these abutted on King’s Cross Road. Then, on either hand, farther from the thoroughfare and nearer the steps, came a few private houses with carefully curtained windows, and one other shop⁠—a confectioner’s. And next, also on either hand, two