Violet was amazed at this revelation of his mentality. She had a new source of alarm now. No doubt the plan would work; but what a plan! How funny! (She meant morbid.) Could she cross him? Could she deride the plan? She dared not. She dared not trifle with a man in his condition. And the worst was that he might, after all, be only pretending to pretend he was very ill. He might really be very ill.
“Elsie,” she said shortly in the kitchen, “go to your master. He wants to speak to you.”
“Is he in the office already, ’m?”
“No, he isn’t in the office already. He’s in bed. Now run along, do!”
As soon as Elsie was gone, Violet examined the hanging larder. The ravage was appalling. Where in heaven’s name did the girl stow the food? Well might the doctor say that she was well nourished. A good thing if she was to be frightened! She deserved it. … Ah! Violet did not know which way to turn in the moil of Henry’s illness, Henry’s morbidity, her own unnamed malady, and Elsie’s shocking and incredible vice.
Elsie entered the bedroom with extreme apprehension, as for an afflicting solemnity. She thanked God she had had the wit to remove her working apron. Mr. Earlforward was staring at the ceiling. Nothing of him moved except his eyelids, and he appeared not to notice her presence. She waited, twitching her great, red hands. Violet had seemed like a girl before him. But here was the genuine girl. Elsie’s hard experience of life and disaster fell away from her. She was simple and intimidated. Youthfulness was her chief characteristic as she stood humbly waiting. Her candid youthfulness accused the room of age, decay and distemper.
“Elsie, has Mrs. Earlforward told you anything?”
“No, sir.”
“Listen.” He still did not shift his eyes from the ceiling. “We had the doctor in yesterday afternoon.” Elsie’s heart thumped. Had the doctor betrayed her meddling? “He came to buy a book, and we kept him.” Elsie thought the worst was over. “I’m very ill, Elsie, and I shall probably never get up again. Do you think it’s right of you to go on stealing food as you do, with a dying man in the house?” He spoke very gently.
Elsie gave a sob; she was utterly overwhelmed.
“Now you must go. I can’t do with any fuss, Elsie!” He stopped her at the door. “Do we give you enough to eat? Tell me at once if we don’t.”
“Yes, yes. Quite enough!” Elsie cried, almost in a shriek, hiding her face in her hands. Her condition was so desperate that she had omitted the ceremonial “sir.” The rushing tears ran between her fingers as she escaped. She sat a long time in the kitchen sobbing, sobbing for guilt and sobbing for sorrow at her master’s fate.
VII
The Night-Call
“Here,” said Mrs. Earlforward frigidly to Elsie, handing her two coins. “Slip out now and buy half a pound of bacon and the same quantity as before of that cheese. And please hurry back so as you can take your turn in the shop. Not that you’re in a state to be in charge of any shop. You’re a perfect sight and a fright. However, they do say it’s an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.”
Mrs. Earlforward called Elsie a perfect sight and a fright because of her countenance, swollen and blotched with violent weeping. She had not deigned to share with Elsie her fearful anxieties. Elsie was unworthy to share them. She had indeed said not a single word to Elsie about the condition of the sick man. She rarely confided in a servant; servants could not appreciate a confidence, could not or would not understand that it amounted to an honour. … Do Elsie good to believe for a bit that her master was dying! Serve her right! (And supposing Henry really was dying!) Nevertheless, Mrs. Earlforward could not be, did not desire to be, too harsh with a girl of Elsie’s admirable character. Elsie, even when convicted of theft, inspired respect, willing or unwilling. She had never read the Sermon on the Mount, but without knowing what she was doing she practised its precepts. No credit to her, of course; she had not reasoned her conduct out; it was instinctive; she had little consciousness of being righteous, and much consciousness of sin; and the notion of behaving in such and such a way in order to get to heaven simply had not occurred to her.
It was humiliating for her to go shopping with such a woe-puffed face as she had. But she went, and the mission was part of her penance. The shop-keeping community of the neighbourhood, though they held Mr. and Mrs. Earlforward in scorn, and referred to them with contumely and even detestation, were friendly to Elsie, and privately sympathized with her because she had to do Mr. and Mrs. Earlforward’s dirty little errands. Not that Elsie was ever in the slightest degree disloyal to her master and mistress! On the contrary, her loyalty touched the excessive.
“Anything wrong?” the cheesemonger’s assistant murmured to her in a compassionate tone, as he was cutting the bacon.
Elsie did not take the inquiry amiss. But unfortunately in her blushing answer she lapsed from entire honesty. She ought to have said: “I’ve been crying partly because I’m a thief, and partly because Mr. Earlforward is very seriously ill.” But with shameful suppression of truth she replied in these words:
“Master’s that ill!”
And her tears fell anew.
Within an hour the district had heard that the notorious old skinflint Earlforward of Riceyman Steps was dying at last!
Elsie ate no dinner. She tried to eat but could not. Then it was that she devised an expiatory scheme for fasting until the total amount of her
