She advanced towards the office, and in her deferential hands the white newspaper became the document of some mysterious and solemn message to the waiting master. Her demeanour, indeed, showed that she knew it to be such. She had not been reading the paper—that, somehow, for her, would have been to pry—but as she passed under the sole gas-lamp of Riceyman Steps she had by accident noticed one word on the Star’s front page. That word was “Clerkenwell.” Something terrible had been occurring in Clerkenwell. Mr. Earlforward, whose habits she knew well, must have seen a reference to Clerkenwell on the Evening Standard’s poster on his way home, and after careful reflection he had decided to buy a copy of the paper.
“Wait a moment! Wait a moment!” said Mr. Earlforward to Elsie as she turned to leave the office. Elsie stood still. Violet sat on the chair behind the desk. Mr. Earlforward maintained his position by the fire, and created expectancy.
“ ‘Further slump in the franc,’ ” he read, his eye negligently wandering over the paper.
Elsie had not the least idea what this meant or signified. Violet was by no means sure of its import, but she knew positively that it was bad news for decent investing persons.
“ ‘Belgian franc falls in sympathy.’ ”
Happily Elsie did not even know what a franc was; but whatever a franc might be she vaguely wondered in the almost primeval night of her brain how its performances could be actuated by such a feeling as sympathy. For Violet the financial situation grew still gloomier.
“ ‘Over a million doomed to starvation in the Volga region.’ That’s communism, I’d like you to know; that’s the result of communism, that is,” observed Mr. Earlforward, looking over his glasses and including both women in an equal glance. “That’s what communism leads to. And what it must lead to wherever it’s tried.”
He had suddenly become an oracle. The women were impressed. They felt as if they had been doing something wrong, perhaps defending communism or trying to practise it. Elsie could not believe that he had bought the paper in order to obtain the latest results of communism. She waited for the word “Clerkenwell,” but Mr. Earlforward was never in a hurry and could not be hurried. As usual he was postponing.
“ ‘Fatal Affray in a Clerkenwell Communist Club,’ ” he announced at length. “Ah! So that’s it … Great Warner Street. Just across the road from here. Not five minutes away. ‘The Millennium Club.’ …” He nodded scornfully at the name. “ ‘Girl’s heroism.’ … Girls in it, too! … Oh! She was the waitress. ‘Threw herself very courageously between the assailants and seized the revolver, which, however, Vicenza wrenched from her and then fired, wounding Arthur Trankett in the abdomen. When the police effected an entrance at midnight’—that’s last night—‘Smith was lying dead on the floor in front of the bar, and Trankett was unconscious by his side. … Vicenza was subsequently apprehended in a house in Coldbath Square.’ ”
Mr. Earlforward continued calmly and intimidatingly to read the account of the police-court proceedings, and then went on:
“There you are, you see. At our door, as you may say! But don’t think Clerkenwell’s the only place. It’s everywhere, communism is. Ask Glasgow. It’s what we’re coming to. It’s what all Europe’s coming to. You may be sure if it’s as bad as this in England, it’s far worse on the Continent. … Oh, yes! ‘The magistrate warmly commended the girl Pieta Spinelly for her heroism and congratulated her on her lucky escape.’ … Yes, but she won’t always be so lucky. And will any of us?”
Violet was just reflecting that to eat steaks with communism at the door was an act showing levity of mind and not seriously to be defended, when Elsie remarked, with surprising equanimity:
“Pieta Spinelly. That’s my cousin.”
Mr. Earlforward, profoundly agitated, crushed the paper together.
“Your cousin?”
“Your cousin, Elsie?” Mrs. Earlforward stood up.
The shock of learning that Elsie had any relatives or connections of any kind, that she had any human interests outside Riceyman Steps, that she was not cut off utterly from the world and devoted exclusively to themselves—this alone would have sufficed to overthrow her employers, who had never since she entered their house, as a novice enters a nunnery, thought of her as anything but a “general.” But that she should be connected by blood with communists and foreigners! … Communists seemed to have invaded the very house, and civilization itself was instantly threatened.
“Yes, ’m. She’s my Aunt Maria’s daughter. My Aunt Maria married an Italian, an iceman, and his name was Spinelly. … Not as I ever saw them.”
“Oh! So you don’t see this girl what’s-her-name?”
“Shouldn’t know her if I saw her, ’m. But I know they always had to do with clubs like. There’s a lot of clubs round here. But I’m glad she’s not dead or anything. You see, ’m, her being half Italian I shouldn’t see her! … And me Aunt Maria’s been dead nearly five years. It must be Pieta, that must. There couldn’t be two of ’em. And it was just like her too, because I remember her at school. Oh, she was a one! But then what could you expect, poor thing? But I’m glad she’s not dead, nor cut about. Fancy her being in the papers!”
Elsie showed no perturbation. In spite of herself she felt pride in a foreign connection and the appearance of an heroic cousin in the papers; but the more serious part of her was rather ashamed of the foreign connection. Mrs. Earlforward informed her that she might retire to bed if she had left the kitchen all straight and ready for tomorrow morning. She retired, quite unaware of the fact that practically she had brought communism right into the house.
All this while the day’s takings had lain on the desk unprotected and unconcealed! Even during the unlocked shop-door interval they had lain there! The little heaps
