“We can’t use this. It won’t come off.”
She displayed the finger. Obviously the ring would not pass the joint. Mrs. Arb was slim, but she had been slimmer.
He said:
“But you can’t be married with that on. You can’t wear two.” (Something of the cave-creature in him also!)
“I know. But I was going to have it filed off tomorrow morning. There wouldn’t be time to have it made larger.”
He took the supine hand and thrilled it.
“I tell you what,” said he. “What carat is it?”
“Eighteen.”
“Soft!” he murmured. “I’ve got a little file. I’ll file it off now. I’m rather good at odd jobs. Oh no, I shan’t hurt you! I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.”
He found the file, after some search, in a drawer of his desk.
“It must feel like this to be manicured,” she said, with a slight, nervous giggle, when again he held her hand in his, and began to operate with the file.
He had not boasted; he was indeed rather good at odd jobs. Such delicate, small movements! Such patience! He was standing over her. She was his prisoner, and the ray of the bulb blazed down on the timorous yielded hand. At the finish the skin was scarcely perceptibly abraded. He pulled apart the ends of the severed band and removed it.
“Soft as butter!” he smiled. “Now lend me that other ring of yours, will you? For size, you know. And I’ll just slip across to Joas’s in Farringdon Road. Shan’t be long. Will you look after the shop while I’m gone? If anyone comes in and there’s any difficulty, ask ’em to wait. But all the prices are marked. I’ll leave the light on in the shop. You won’t feel lonely.”
“Oh, but—!” she protested. Leave her by herself in his house—and without the protection of the ring! And before marriage! What would people think?
“Well, Elsie’ll be here in a minute. So there’s nothing to worry over.” He spoke most soothingly, as to an irrational child. “I’d better see to it tonight. And they close at six, same as me—except the pawnbroking. No time to lose!” He was gone.
She was saved from too much reflection by the entry of Elsie. At the sight of Elsie Mrs. Arb’s demeanour immediately became normal—that is to say, the strange enchantment which had held her was dissipated, blown away. She was no longer morbid; she was not supine. Her body resumed all its active little movements, her glance its authority, cheerfulness, liveliness and variety. She rose from the chair, smoothed her dress, and was ready to deal with the universe.
“Oh, Elsie! So you’ve come! Mr. Earlforward was expecting you. He’s just slipped out on urgent business for a minute or two, and he said you’d be in to attend to customers, and I must say I didn’t much fancy being left here alone, because you see—But, of course, business must be attended to. We all know that, don’t we?”
She gave a poke to the dull embers of the stove which warmed the shop in winter; Mr. Earlforward rarely replenished it after four o’clock; he liked it to be just out at closing time.
“Yes’m.”
Elsie, although wearing her best jacket and hat, and looking rather Sundayish, had carried—not easily—into the shop a sizeable tin trunk with thin handles that cut uncomfortably into the hands. This box contained her late husband’s medals, and all that was hers, including some very strange things. The french-polisher’s wife, by now quite accustomed to having three infants instead of two, had procured for herself a pleasant little change from the monotony of home-life by helping Elsie to transport the trunk from Riceyman Square to Mr. Earlforward’s shop-door. The depositing of the dented trunk on the uneven floor of the shop constituted Elsie’s “moving in.”
“I’ll take this upstairs now, shall I, m’m?” Elsie suggested, somewhat timidly, because she was beginning a new life and didn’t quite know how she stood.
“Well, it certainly mustn’t be here when Mr. Earlforward returns,” said Mrs. Arb gravely.
Elsie fully concurred. Masters of households ought not to be offended by the quasi-obscene sight of the private belongings of servants.
“No! You can’t carry it up by yourself. You might hurt yourself. You never know. Come, come, Elsie!” as Elsie protested. “Do you suppose I’ve never helped to carry a box upstairs before? Now take the other handle, do! Where’s your umbrella? I know you’ve got one.”
“It’s coming tomorrow, ’m. I’ve lent it.”
Mrs. Arb was extremely cheerful, kindly and energetic over the affair of the trunk, and Elsie extremely apologetic.
“Now nip your apron on and come down as quick as you can—there might be a customer. You must remember I’m not mistress here until tomorrow. I’m only a visitor.” Thus spoke Mrs. Arb gaily and a little breathless at the door of the small bedroom which Elsie was to share with a vast collection of various sermons in eighty volumes, some State Trials in twenty volumes, and a lot of other piled sensationalism.
When Elsie, still impressed by the fact of having a new home and by Mrs. Arb’s benevolent demeanour, came rather self-consciously downstairs in a perfectly new apron (bought for this great occasion), Mrs. Arb went to the foot of the stairs to meet her, and employing a confidential and mysterious tone, said:
“Now don’t forget all I told you about that cleaning business tomorrow, will you?”
“Oh, no, ’m. I suppose it will be all right?” Elsie’s brow puckered with conscientiousness.
Mrs. Arb laughed amiably.
“What do you mean, my girl—‘it’ll be all right’? You must remember that when I come back tomorrow I come back Mrs. Earlforward. And you’ll call me ‘Mrs. Earlforward’ too.”
“I’d sooner call you mum, ’m, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Of course. But when
