“I’ll slip out,” she very faintly whispered to Elsie, who was sweeping near the stairs. Elsie nodded—like a conspirator. But at the same moment Mr. Earlforward and his customer emerged from the back room, and Mrs. Arb was trapped.
“I didn’t notice you come in,” said the bookseller most amiably. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, thank you, but I only stepped across to speak to Elsie about something.”
The lie, invented on the instant, succeeded perfectly. And Elsie, the honestest soul in Clerkenwell, gave it the support of her silence in the great cause of women against men.
“I’m glad to see you in here,” said Mr. Earlforward gently, having dismissed the customer. “It’s a bit of luck. I’d gone off for Houndsditch, but I happened to meet someone on the road, and nothing would do but I must come back with him. Come in here.”
He drew her by the attraction of his small eyes into the back room. Books had been tipped off one of the chairs on to the floor. She sat down. Surely Mr. Earlforward was the most normal being in the world, the mildest, the quietest, the easiest! But the bath, the kitchen, the blankets, the filth, the food, the £40 book, and all those new suits and new shirts! She had never even conceived such an inside of a house! She could hardly credit her senses.
“I’ve wanted to see you in here, in this room,” said Mr. Earlforward in a warm voice. And then no more.
She could not withstand his melting glance. She knew that their intimacy, having developed gradually through weeks, was startlingly on the point of bursting into a new phase. The sense of danger with her, as with nearly all women, was intermittent. The man was in love with her. He was in her hands. What could she not do with him? Could she not accomplish marvels? Could she not tame monsters? And she understood his instincts; she shared them. And he was a rock of defence, shelter, safety! … The alternative: solitude, celibacy, spinsterishness, eternal self-defence, eternal misgivings about her security; horrible!
“I must be opening my shop,” she said nervously.
“And I must be getting away again, too,” he said, and put on his hat and began to button his overcoat. Nothing more. But at the door he added: “Maybe I’ll come across and see you tonight, if it isn’t intruding.”
“You’ll be very welcome, I’m sure,” she answered, modestly smiling.
She was no better than a girl, then. She knew she had uttered the deciding word of her fate. She trembled with apprehension and felicity. He was a wonderful man and an enigma. He inspired love and dread. As the day passed her feeling for him became intense. At closing time her ecstatic heart was liquid with acquiescence. And she had, too, a bright, adventurous valour, but shot through with forebodings.
Part II
I
The Day Before
Cytherea reigned in Mr. Earlforward’s office behind the shop—invisible, but she was there—probably reclining—ask not how!—on the full red lips (which fascinated Mrs. Arb) of Mr. Earlforward. It was just after four o’clock in the January following their first acquaintance. They sat on opposite sides of Henry’s desk, with the electric light extravagantly burning above them. At the front of the shop the day was expiring in faint gleams of grey twilight. Dirt was nothing; disorder was nothing; Mr. Earlforward loved. For weeks he had been steadfastly intending to put the place to rights for his bride, and he had not put it to rights. Dirt and disorder were repugnant to Mrs. Arb, but she had said not a word. She would not interfere or even suggest, before the time. She knew her place; she was a bit prim. The time was approaching, and she could wait.
“I suppose we can use that ring,” said Henry, pointing to the wedding ring on Mrs. Arb’s hand, which lay on the desk like the defenceless treasure of an invaded city.
Despite a recent experience, Mrs. Arb was startled by this remark delivered in a tone so easy, benevolent and matter-of-fact. The recent experience had consisted in Mr. Earlforward’s bland ultimatum, after a discussion in which Mrs. Arb had womanishly and prettily favoured a religious ceremony, that they would be married at a Registry because it was on the whole cheaper. Upon that point she had taken pleasure in yielding to him. So long as you were genuinely married, the method had only a secondary importance. She admitted—to herself—that in desiring the church she might have been conventional, superstitious. She was eager to yield, as some women are eager to be beaten. Morbidity, of course! But not wholly. Self-preservation was in it, as well as voluptuousness. Mr. Earlforward’s individuality frightened while enchanting her. She found she could cure the fright by intense acquiescence. And why not acquiesce? He was her fate. She would grasp her fate with both hands.
And there was this point: if he was her fate, she was his; she had already been married once, whereas he was an innocent; he had to learn. She saw an advantage there. Her day was coming—at least, she persuaded herself that it was.
Thus the question of the wedding ceremony had been quite satisfactorily dissolved; and so well that Mrs. Arb now scorned the notion of marriage in a church. But the incident of the ring touched her closer; it touched the aboriginal cave-woman in the very heart of her. Do you know, she had faintly suspected that to purchase a wedding ring formed no part of his programme! An absurd, an impossible suspicion! How could he espouse without a
