“Oh, we take it away, sir. We shan’t leave any mess about.”
“Do you sell it? Do you get anything for it?”
V
The Priestess
While Henry was inquiring into the market value of the dirt which he himself had amassed, the new Mrs. Earlforward went upstairs to inspect her best bedroom. It was empty, but electric current was burning away in a manner to call forth just criticism from her husband. The room was incredibly clean, and had a bright aspect of freshness and gaiety which delighted Violet. She said to herself: “This vacuum business was a great idea of mine. Dangerous; but it’s gone off very well.” Already she realized, though not quite fully, that she had passed under the domination of her bland Henry. It was as if she had entered a fortress and heard the self-locking gates thereof clang behind her. No escape! But in the fortress she was sheltered; she was safe.
According to a prearrangement, certain dispositions had been made in the bedroom. On the bed was spread a luxurious and brilliant eiderdown quilt—Violet’s private possession, almost her only possession beyond clothes, cash, and money invested. Her three trunks were deposited in a corner. The wardrobe had been cleared of books, and one chest of drawers cleared of Earlforwardian oddments, and Violet, having doffed her street attire, began to unpack in the cold, which she did not notice.
She hoped that Henry would give her time to feel at home in the chamber. She was sure, indeed, that he would, for he could practise the most delicate considerations. Before deciding which drawers should hold which clothes, she laid out some of the garments on the bed, and this act seemed to tranquillize her. Then she noticed that an old slipper had been tied by a piece of pink ribbon to the head-rail of the bed. It was a much-worn white satin slipper, and had once shod the small foot of some woman who understood elegance. Elsie’s thought! Elsie’s gift! It could have come from none but Elsie. Elsie must have bought it, and perhaps its fellow, at the secondhand shop up the King’s Cross Road, past the police-station. And Elsie must also have bought the pink ribbon.
Violet was touched. She wanted to run out and say something nice to Elsie, wherever Elsie might be, but she wanted still more to stay in the bedroom and think. She enjoyed being in the bedroom alone. She glanced with pleasure at the shut door, the drawn blind, the solidity of the walls and of the furniture. And she thought of her first honeymoon. A violent, extravagant and passionate week at Southend! What excursions. What distractions! What fishings! What tragicomical seasickness! What winkle-eatings! What promenades and rides on the pier! What jocularities! What gigglings and what enormous laughter! What late risings! What frocks and hats! What hair-brushings! What fastenings of frocks! What arrogant confidence in one’s complexion! What emancipations! What grand, free, careless abandonments to the delight of life! What sudden tendernesses! What exhaustless energy! What youth! … And then the swift change in the demeanour of the late Mr. Arb when they got into the London train. Realization then that the man who could play and squander magnificently could also work and save magnificently! A man, in fact, the late Mr. Arb; and never without a grim humour unlike anybody else’s! And he was the very devil sometimes, especially at intervals during the few days when he was making up his mind to cut his corns. …
She did not gaze backward on that honeymoon with pangs of regret. No! She was not that kind of woman. As she advanced from one time of life to another she had the common sense of each age. She did not mourn the Southend hoydenish bride who knew nothing. She had a position now, both moral and material. She could put honeymoons in their right perspective. The honeymoon which she was at that moment in the midst of had certainly some remarkable characteristics. That is to say, it was a rather funny sort of honeymoon. But what matter? She was happy—not as the Southend bride had been happy, but still happy. She knew that she could comprehend Henry just as well as she had comprehended the late Mr. Arb. On the subject of men she was catholic. She could submit in one way to one and in another way to another; and the same for manoeuvring them. Look at what she had by audacity accomplished in the very first hours of this second marriage! Cleanliness! The brilliance of the results of scientific cleaning astonished even herself, far surpassing her expectations.
And the old satin shoe influenced her. There was something absurd, charming, romantic and inspiring about that shoe. It reminded Violet that security and sagacity and affectionate constancy could not be the sole constituents of a satisfactory existence. Grace, fancifulness, impulsiveness, some foolishness, were needed too. She saw the husband, the house, and even the business, as material upon which she had to work, constructively, adoringly, but also wilfully, and perhaps a bit mischievously. What could be more ridiculous than an old shoe tied to a respectable bedstead? And yet it had changed Violet’s mood. For her it had most mysteriously changed the mood of the domestic interior, of all Clerkenwell. It helped Violet to like Clerkenwell, an unlikeable place in her opinion.
After a long time, and reluctantly, she went downstairs again. Nobody had disturbed her—neither her husband nor Elsie nor the workmen. She had heard various movements beyond the citadel of the bedroom—ascents, descents, bumpings—and she now found the upper floors in darkness; the upper floors were finished. The shop also was apparently finished, with the exception of the principal window. She paused at the turn of the stairs and watched her husband attentively watching the operation on the windowful of books. Two workmen were engaged upon it. One handled the books in batches of ten or a dozen; the other manipulated the
