“You know,” said Mrs. Arb, returning to the great subject, “I told her plainly she’d be much better off if she kept off men. And so she will!”
“They never know when they are well off,” said Mr. Earlforward.
“No … I expect this Square used to belong to your family,” Mrs. Arb remarked with deference.
“Oh! I shouldn’t say that,” answered Mr. Earlforward modestly. “But it was named after my grandfather’s brother.”
“It must have been very nice when it was new,” said Mrs. Arb, tactfully adopting towards the Square a more respectful attitude than aforetime. Clearly she desired to please. Clearly she had a kind heart. “But when the working-class get a hold on a place, what are you to do?”
“You’d scarcely think it,” said Mr. Earlforward with grim resignation, “but this district was very fashionable once. There used to be an archery ground where our steps are.” (He enjoyed saying “our steps,” the phrase united him to her.)
“Really!”
“Yes. And at one time the Duke of Newcastle lived just close by. Look here. I’ll show you something. It’s quite near.”
In a few minutes they were at the corner of a vast square—you could have put four Riceymans into it—of lofty reddish houses, sombre and shabby, with a great railed garden and great trees in the middle, and a wide roadway round. With all its solidity, in that neighbourhood it seemed to have the unreal quality of a vision, a creation of some djinn, formed in an instant and destined as quickly to dissolve; it seemed to have no business where it was.
“Look at that!” said Mr. Earlforward eagerly, pointing to the sign, “Wilmington Square.” “Ever heard of it before?”
Mrs. Arb shook her astonished head.
“No. And nobody has. But it’s here. That’s London, that is! Practically every house has been divided up into tenements. Used to be very well-to-do people here, you know!”
Mrs. Arb gazed at him sadly.
“It’s tragic!” she said sympathetically, her bright face troubled.
“She understands!” he thought.
“Now I’ll show you another sort of a square,” he went on aloud. “But it’s over on the other side of Farringdon Road. Not far! Not far! No distances here!”
He limped quickly along.
Coldbath Square easily surpassed even Riceyman Square in squalor and foulness; and it was far more picturesque and deeper sunk in antiquity, save for the huge, awful block of tenements in the middle. The glimpses of interiors were appalling. At the corners stood sinister groups of young men, mysteriously well dressed, doing nothing whatever, and in certain doorways honest-faced old men with mufflers round their necks and wearing ancient pea-jackets.
“I don’t like this at all,” said Mrs. Arb, as it were sensitively shrinking.
“No! This is a bit too much, isn’t it? Let’s go on to the Priory Church.”
“Yes. That will be better,” Mrs. Arb agreed with relief at the prospect of a Priory Church.
“Oh! There’s a News of the World!” she exclaimed. “Now I wonder—”
They were passing through a narrow, very short alley of small houses which closed the vista of one of the towering congeries of modern tenement-blocks abounding in the region. The alley, christened a hundred years earlier, “Model Cottages,” was silent and deserted, in strange contrast to the gigantic though half-hidden swarming of the granite tenements. The front doors abutted on the alley without even the transition of a raised step. The News of the World lay at one of the front doors. It must have been there for hours, waiting for its subscriber to awake, and secure in the marvellous integrity of the London public.
“I did want just to look at a News of the World,” said Mrs. Arb, stopping.
They had seen various newsvendors in the streets; in fact, newspapers were apparently the only articles of commerce at that hour of the Sunday morning; but she had no desire to buy a paper. Glancing round fearfully at windows, she stooped and picked up the folded News of the World. Mr. Earlforward admired her, but was apprehensive.
“Yes. Here it is!” she said, having rapidly opened the paper. Over her shoulder Mr. Earlforward nervously read: “Provisions. Confec. Busy W.C. district. £25 wkly. Six rooms. Rent £90. £200 everything. Long lease, or will sell premises. Delay dangerous. Chance lifetime. 7, Riceyman Steps, W.C.1.”
“Then you’ve decided!” murmured Mr. Earlforward, suddenly gloomy.
“Oh! Quite! I told you,” said Mrs. Arb, dropping back the newspaper furtively like a shameful accusing parcel, and walking on with a wonderful air of innocence.
“I wasn’t altogether sure if you’d decided finally.”
“You see,” Mrs. Arb continued. “Supposing the business failed. Supposing I lost my money. I’ve got to think of my future. No risks for me, I say! I only want a little, but I want it certain. And I’ve got a little.”
“It’s a very clever advertisement.”
“I didn’t know how to put it. Of course it’s called a confectioner’s. But it isn’t really, seeing I buy all the cakes from Snowman’s. The whole stock in the shop isn’t worth £25, but you see, I count the rest of the price asked as premium for the house. That’s how I look at it—and it’s quite fair, don’t you think?”
“Perfectly.”
They stood talking in front of a shut secondhand shop, where old blades of aeroplane propellers were offered at 3s. 6d. each. Mr. Earlforward said feebly “Yes” and “No” and “Hm” and “Ha.” His brain was occupied with the thought: “Is she going to slip through my fingers? Suppose she went to live in the country?” His knee began to ache. His body and his mind were always reacting upon one another. “Why should my knee ache because I’m bothered?” he thought, and could give no answer. But in secret he was rather proud of these mysterious inconvenient reactions; they gave him distinction in his own eyes. In another environment he would have been known among his acquaintances as “highly strung” and “highly nervously organized.” And yet outwardly so calm, so serene,
