“Elsie,” he called, “run out and buy me the Evening Standard, will you? You’ll get it opposite the Rowton House, you know. Here’s a penny.” His tone was carefully matter-of-fact. Both women were astounded; they were almost frightened. Violet had never known him to buy a paper, and Elsie scarcely ever. Violet was grateful for this proof that when the greatness of the occasion demanded it he was capable of sublime extravagance. First the fire! Now the paper! It was not credible.
In the bathroom, where nobody ever had a bath, but of which the bath was at any rate empty of books and very clean, Henry bent his head to avoid the clotheslines, and Violet kneeled down and unlocked her safe. It was like a little picnic, a little pleasure excursion. It was the first time Henry had been present at the opening of Violet’s battered old safe. She swung the steel door; the shadow of her head remained stationary, though the door swung, and fell across the pale interior of the safe in a shape as distorted as Violet’s perspective had been half an hour earlier. A fair pile of securities tied up with white tape lay in the embrasure above the twin drawers. Violet drew forth the right-hand drawer; there was nothing in it but Mr. Bauersch’s money—ten-pound notes, five-pound notes, one-pound Treasury notes, all new and lovely, with a soiled ten-shilling Treasury note, and some silver wrapped in a bit of brown paper. Violet placed the entire mass on the top of the safe, and Henry, settling his spectacles more firmly on his nose, began to count slowly, accurately, passionately. Violet watched him.
“Why!” he exclaimed with a contented smile, after two countings, “he’s given you a pound too much. The banknotes are all right, but there’s nine pound notes instead of eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Only ought to be eight. One hundred and forty-eight pounds, eighteen shillings, it ought to be all together.”
“Well, that’s funny, that is,” said Violet. “I made sure I counted them right. Oh, I know! There was another pound for a French book I sold him. I forgot to enter it in the list. It was marked ten shillings, but I asked him a pound and he took it.”
“Oh!” murmured Henry, disillusioned.
“Yes.”
“And he took it at a pound, did he? Well, then, you made ten shillings for yourself that time, Vi.” And he gave her the ten-shilling note, a glint of humour in his voice and glance.
Princely munificence! She was deliciously dumbfounded. She had misjudged him. Heaven was established again in the sealed home. She thanked him with a squeeze of the arm, and then put the note in the left-hand drawer of the safe, where were a lot of other notes.
“So that’s your standby, in case?” said Henry.
“That’s my standby, in case,” said Violet, pleased by the proud approval in his voice, and she snapped-to the drawer and the brass handle rattled against the front of it.
“And I suppose those are your securities?”
“Like to look at them, darling?” She was still warm and melting.
He nodded. He undid the binding tape and examined the securities one by one, unfolding them, reading, scrutinizing, with respect—with immense respect. In each instance her surname had been altered from Arb to Earlforward in an official hand and initialled. She gazed up into his face like a satisfied child who has earned good marks.
“Well,” he murmured at last, re-tying the tape. “For gilt-edged, fixed-interest-bearing securities. …”
He nodded several times, almost ecstatic. Yes, he was as proud of her possessions as of herself. Violet was exceedingly happy. He then examined the few oddments in the safe, such as certain receipts, some coupons, the marriage-certificate, the birth-certificate. He smiled benignantly as in a sort of triumph she locked the safe. He was a wonderful husband. No covetousness, no jealousy in his little eye. They departed from the bathroom, leaving the magical income-producing apparatus inviolate in the eternal night of its tomb.
When they had felt their way downstairs again Violet exclaimed, happy and careless:
“I wonder what’s happened to Elsie all this time?” Few things could have worried her then.
Mr. Earlforward, having lighted the office, limped through the gloom of the unlit shop to the entrance-door.
“Tut, tut!” His tongue clicked against the back of his teeth. “She’s left this door unlocked. She knew perfectly well she ought to have taken the key with her. Leaving the door unfastened like that! One of these nights we shall be let in for it.” He locked the door sharply.
“Oh, Henry!” Violet laughed easily; but a minute later she exclaimed again, with the faintest trace of apprehension in her voice: “I wonder what has happened to that girl?”
Husband and wife could “settle to nothing” until Elsie came back. The marvel of Henry sending for a paper at all returned upon Violet, and she began to imagine that he had some very special purpose in doing so. She felt the first subtle encroachments of the fear without a name.
“Well!” she burst out later, and went to the door and opened it, and looked forth into King’s Cross Road. No Elsie. She came in again and secured the door, and entered the office humming. Henry stood with his back to the fine fire, luxuriating grandly in its heat and in his own splendid extravagance. His glance at Violet seemed to say:
“See how I prove that I can refuse you nothing! See what follies I will perpetrate to please you!”
Then the shop-door shook, and the next instant there was a respectful tap-tap on it. Violet ran like a girl.
“Elsie, you know perfectly well you ought to have taken the key with you.”
Elsie apologized. She was out of breath.
“You’ve been a long time, Elsie. We couldn’t think what had happened to you!” added Violet, locking the door finally for the night.
“I couldn’t get no paper, ’m,” Elsie explained. “I had to go down nearly to the
