“It must be cut,” said Elsie, again the priestess, and she obediently ran off to get the knife.
“Well, well! … Well, well!” murmured Henry, flabbergasted, and blushing even more than his wife had blushed. The pair were so disturbed that they dared not look at each other.
“You must cut it, ’m,” said Elsie, returning with the knife and a flat dish.
And Mrs. Earlforward, having placed the cake on the dish, sawed down into the cake. She had to use all her strength to penetrate the brown; the top icing splintered easily, and fragments of it flew about the desk.
“Now, Elsie, here’s your slice,” said Violet, lifting the dish.
“Thank ye, ’m. But I must keep mine. I’ve got a little box for it upstairs.”
“But aren’t you going to eat any of it?”
“No, ’m,” with solemnity. “But you must. … I’ll just taste this white part,” she added, picking up a bit of icing from the desk.
The married pair ate.
“I think I’ll go now, ’m, if you’ll excuse me,” said Elsie. “But I’ll just sweep up in the shop here first.” She was standing in the doorway.
They heard her with hand-brush and dustpan collecting the scattered food of the Orient. She peeped in at the door again.
“Good night, ’m. Good night, sir.” She saluted them with a benignant grin in which was a surprising little touch of naughtiness. And then they heard her receding footfalls as she ascended cautiously the dark flights of stairs and entered into her inviolable private life on the top floor.
“It would never have done not to eat it,” said Violet.
“No,” Henry agreed.
“She’s a wonder, that girl is! You could have knocked me down with a feather.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder where she bought it.”
“Must have gone up to King’s Cross. Or down to Holborn. King’s Cross more likely. Yesterday. In her dinner-hour.”
“I’m hungry,” said Violet.
And it was a fact that they had had no evening meal, seeing that they had expressly announced their intention of “eating out” on that great day.
“So must you be, my dear,” said Violet.
There they were, alone together on the ground-floor, with one electric bulb in the back room and one other, needlessly, lighting the middle part of the cleansed and pleasant shop. They could afford to be young and to live perilously, madly, absurdly. They lost control of themselves, and gloried in so doing. The cake was a danger to existence. It had the consistency of marble, the richness of molasses, the mysteriousness of the enigma of the universe. It seemed unconquerable. It seemed more fatal than daggers or gelignite. But they attacked it. Fortunately, neither of them knew the inner meaning of indigestion. When Henry had taken the last slice, Violet exclaimed like a child:
“Oh, just one tiny piece more!” And with burning eyes she bent down and bit off a morsel from the slice in Henry’s hand.
“I am living!” shouted an unheard voice in Henry’s soul.
VI
The Next Day
The next morning, before the first church-bells had begun to ring for early communion, and before the sun had decided whether or not it would shine upon Riceyman Square and Steps that day, Violet very silently came out of the bedroom and drew the door to without a sound; even the latch was not permitted to click. She was wearing her neat check frock, the frock of industry, and she carried in her hand a large blue pinafore-apron, clean and folded, and an old pair of gloves. Her hair, in a large cap, was as hidden as a nun’s. Her face had the expression, and her whole vivacious body the demeanour, of one who is dominated by a grandiose idea and utterly determined to execute it. She went upstairs, in the raw, chilly twilight, to the narrow room over the bathroom, which, in her mind, she called the kitchen, not because it was a kitchen, but because it alone in the house served the purpose of a kitchen.
Elsie, her hair still loose, was already there, boiling water on the gas-ring. The jets of blue flame helped to light the place, and also comfortably warmed it and made it cosy. Violet greeted the girl with a kindly smile, which was entirely matter-of-fact—as though this morning was a morning just like any other morning.
“Your master’s fast asleep,” she solemnly whispered; from her tone she might have been saying “our master.”
“Yes, ’m,” Elsie whispered solemnly.
And it was instantly established that the basic phenomenon of the household was their master’s heavy and sacred slumber.
“I’ll have some of that tea, too,” said Violet. “What is there for dinner?”
She had expressly refrained from showing any curiosity whatever about domestic arrangements until she should have acquired the status entitling her to take charge; no one could be more discreet, more correct, on important occasions, than Violet.
“He told me to buy this bit of mutton,” answered Elsie, indicating a scrag-end on a plate, “and then there’s them potatoes and the cheese.”
“But how shall you cook it?”
“Boil it, ’m. He never has flesh meat, not often that is, but when he does I boil it.”
“Oh, well, that will be all right. Of course I shall have to fix things up here, Elsie, and we may as well begin as we mean to go on.”
“Yes, ’m.”
“And you know my ways, don’t you? That’s fortunate.”
“Yes, ’m.”
While they were drinking the tea and eating pieces of bread, Violet nicely pretending to be Elsie’s equal in the sight of God, and Elsie gently firm in maintaining the theory of the impassableness of the social chasm which separated them, Violet said:
“I’m sure we shall understand one another, Elsie. Of course you’ve been here on and off for a long while, and you’ve got your little habits here, and quite right too, and I’ve no doubt very good habits, because I’m convinced you’re very conscientious in your work; if you hadn’t been I shouldn’t have kept you; but
