“Now, Elsie, you’d better be coming downstairs. There’s nothing else up here to keep you.”
As a fact, Elsie was dawdling, in reflection.
II
Elsie’s Motive
There was only one exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises—through the shop. Once a door had given direct access to King’s Cross Road, but so long ago that the new bricks which had bricked it up were now scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding bricks. No one could have guessed at a glance that the main façade of the building had been shifted round, for some reason lost in antiquity, from King’s Cross Road to Riceyman Steps; or that the little oblong, railing-enclosed strip of grass, which was never cut nor clipped nor trodden by human foot, had once been a “front garden.” The back parts of T. T. Riceyman’s provided no escape save through a little yard, over high brick walls, into the back parts of other properties inhabited by unknown and probably pernickety persons and their children.
As there was only the shop exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises, it could not be concealed from the powers that Elsie went forth that same afternoon dressed in her best. Unusual array, for the girl generally began half-holidays by helping her friends, to whom she was very faithful, in Riceyman Square, either by skilled cleansing labour in the unclean dirty house or, as occasion might demand, by taking children out for an excursion into the more romantic leafy regions of Clerkenwell up towards the northeast, such as Myddelton Square, where there was room to play and opportunity for tumbling about in pleasant outdoor dirt. Mrs. Earlforward nodded to Elsie as she departed, and Elsie blushed, smiling. But Mrs. Earlforward asked no curious question, friendly or inquisitive. She knew her place, as Elsie knew Elsie’s. She knew that it was not “wise” to meddle. Servants must do what they liked with their own; they were mighty independent, even the best of them, these days. Not a word, save on household matters, had passed between the two women since the scene of the morning. Mr. Earlforward was still dealing with customers in the office; his voice, rather enfeebled, seemed blander than ever.
“I hope it will be fine for you,” Violet called after Elsie at the shop-door. Wonderful, the implications in the tone of that briefly-expressed amiability! It was as if Violet had said: “I know you’re up to something out of the ordinary. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t seek to inquire. I believe in people minding their own business. But you might have given me a hint, and anyhow I can see through you, though you mayn’t think it. Anyhow, in spite of the cold wind and the big moving clouds, I hope you won’t be inconvenienced in your very private affairs by the weather.”
Elsie comprehended all that Violet had not said, and her blushes flared out again.
No sooner had she turned the corner into the King’s Cross Road than she ceased to be the “general” at T. T. Riceyman’s, and became the image of the wife of a superior artisan with a maternal expression indicating a small family left at home, a sense of grave responsibilities, an ability to initiate and execute, considerable dignity. She had put her gloves on. She carried her umbrella. She had massiveness, and looked more than her age; indeed, she looked close on thirty. If she had blushed to Violet, it was because of her errand, which, had Violet known of it, would have set up serious friction. Elsie was going to see Dr. Raste about the state of health of T. T. Riceyman’s. An impossible errand, of course! Fancy a servant interfering thus in the most intimate affairs of her employers. But the welfare of her employers was as dear to Elsie as her own. Her finest virtue was benevolence, and she was quite ready to affront danger to a benevolent end. At the same time it has to be admitted that Elsie’s motive in going to Myddelton Square, without a train of children, to see Dr. Raste, was not a single motive. Probably in human activity there is no such a thing as a single motive. For Elsie this day was not chiefly the day on which Mrs. Earlforward had so piteously broken down before her as to Mr. Earlforward’s physical and mental condition—it was chiefly the anniversary of Joe’s disappearance. The fact of the anniversary filled all the horizon of Elsie’s thoughts, and at intervals it surged inwards upon her from every quarter of the compass and overwhelmed her—and then it would recede again. Joe had been in the service of Dr. Raste. He had lived at Dr. Raste’s. Therefore, it would be natural for him, if he reappeared, to reappear first at Dr. Raste’s. He would not reappear; it was inconceivable that he should reappear. This anniversary notion of hers, as she had often said to herself, was ridiculous. Much more likely that Joe had married some other girl by this time, for Elsie knew that he was not a man capable of doing without women. He had probably settled down somewhere. Where? Where could he be? … And yet he might reappear. The anniversary notion might not be so ridiculous after all. You never knew. And herein was part of her motive for going to Dr. Raste’s.
The doctor’s house—or, rather, the house of which he occupied the lower part—was one of the larger houses in the historic Myddelton Square, and stood at the corner of the Square and New River Street. The clock of St. Mark’s showed two minutes to the hour, but already patients had collected in the
